The Avro Lancaster was a British four-engined Second World War heavy bomber designed and built by Avro for the Royal Air Force (RAF). It first saw active service with RAF Bomber Command in December, 1941 and it became the main heavy bomber used by the RAF and squadrons from other Commonwealth and European countries serving with RAF Bomber Command
Development
An Air Ministry Specification P.13/36, which was for a new generation of twin-engined medium bombers for "worldwide use" was placed and the resulting aircraft became the Avro Manchester. However, the Manchester was plagued with problems from an under developed engine so Roy Chadwick started to design a replacement from the twin-engine Manchester. He added twelve feet to the wingspan and replaced the two troublesome Vulture engines with four of the proven Rolls Royce Merlins V-12s and the result was the Lancaster which made its maiden flight in January, 1941. A colleague later wrote that Chadwick, "showed himself to be a most resourceful and courageous designer, ultimately snatching success from failure in the most ingenious way with a superlatively successful operational aircraft." The resulting aircraft became the Lancaster which was developed as a mid-wing cantilever monoplane with an oval all-metal fuselage. The wing was constructed in five main sections, the fuselage in five sections. All wing and fuselage sections were built separately and fitted with all the required equipment before final assembly. The tail unit had twin elliptical fins and rudders. It had retractable main landing gear and fixed tailwheel, with the hydraulically operated main landing gear raising rearwards into the inner engine nacelles. The first prototype, BT308, made its maiden flight on 9 January 1941. Avro received an initial contract for 1,070 Lancasters. The majority of Lancasters manufactured during the war years were constructed by Avro at its factory at Chadderton near Oldham, Lancashire and were test-flown from Woodford Aerodrome in Cheshire. The Lancaster was also produced overseas. During early 1942, it was decided that the bomber should be produced in Canada, where it was manufactured by Victory Aircraft in Malton, Ontario. Of later variants, only the Canadian-built Lancaster B X was produced in significant numbers. A total of 430 of this type were built, earlier examples differing little from their British-built predecessors, except for using Packard-built Merlin engines and American-style instruments and electrics. Development proceeded swiftly and the first Lancasters to enter service were delivered to 44 Squadron at RAF Waddington on Christmas Eve 1941.
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In Service
Lancasters were built to accomplish their specific purpose and crew comfort and security was clearly a secondary consideration. Generally flying under the cover of darkness, the Lancaster had virtually no defensive armour. The front, mid-upper, and rear gun turrets were hydraulically powered and carried a total of eight .303 calibre machine guns for defence against enemy aircraft. The first RAF squadron to convert to the Lancaster was No. 44 Squadron RAF in early 1942. While the Lancaster had been designed to conduct night-time operations, daylight raids were occasionally performed by the type as well. Occasionally, lone Lancasters would be dispatched to perform decoy raids on key manufacturing sites, such as munitions factories, with the intention of being spotted to cause workers to go to air raid shelters, thus disrupting production. On 17 October 1942, an audacious daytime raid was performed by 90 Lancasters of No. 5 Group, the bombing of the Schneider Works at Le Creusot, France with only a single aircraft, W4774, was lost during the course of the mission. Throughout 1942, the Lancaster remained in relatively short supply; consequently, both training and crew conversion courses typically had to be performed by the squadrons themselves as there were no aircraft furnished with dual controls at this time, and pilots would therefore have to perform their first flight without their instructors being capable of directly acting on the controls themselves. Furthermore, each Lancaster had its own ground crew early on and centralised servicing was introduced later. By the end of the year, a total of 16 operational squadrons had been stood up while around 200 Lancasters were under Bomber Command.
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On 17 April 1942, 12 Lancasters of No. 44 and No. 99 Squadrons undertook a bombing raid on the Maschinenfabrik Augsburg-Nürnberg A.G., Ausberg engine manufacturing plant in Southern Germany and despite flying at low altitude, three bombers were shot down by Luftwaffe Bf109s over France, and at least two more were lost to anti-aircraft fire at the factory itself. Nonetheless, the factory was successfully bombed, a feat that was personally hailed by Prime Minister Winston Churchill in the aftermath. The attack revealed the existence of the Lancaster to both Germany and the British public alike. On 27 April, an unsuccessful small-scale attack on Tirpitz was performed by Lancasters of both No. 44 and No. 99 Squadrons. On the night of 30/31 May 1942, the Lancaster participated in Operation Millenium, the first 1,000 bomber raid against the German city of Cologne. By this point, the number of Lancasters in operational service had surpassed those of the preceding Manchester.
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During late 1943, Air Chief Marshal Harris advocated to Churchill for the persistent bombing of Berlin in preferences to earlier targets such as the Ruhr. Between 15 November 1943 and 24 November 1944, sixteen major bombing operations were conducted against the German capital in the Battle of Berlin; of the 9,111 sorties flown, 7,256 had been performed by Lancasters. These raids, while often incurring costly losses, were typically deemed to have been 'most satisfactory' by senior officials. In March 1944, the Berlin raids were somewhat lessened as a compromise, Bomber Command having been directed to destroy enemy communications and other targets around France and the low countries ahead of the Normandy landings on D-Day. By April 1945, there were in excess of 1,000 Lancasters in frontline service, dwarfing the numbers of Halifaxes and Mosquitos operated by Bomber Command at that time.
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Specialist Attacks
The Lancaster was responsible for two-thirds of the bombs dropped by Bomber Command over Germany and German-occupied territory between March 1942 and May 1945. The Lancaster is famously associated with Operation 'Chastise', popularly known as the 'Dambusters' Raid, which took place on 16-17 May 1943, when modified Lancasters from 617 Squadron attacked three dams in the Ruhr Valley using 'Bouncing Bombs' designed by Barnes Wallis who also designed the Vickers Wellington bomber. The Lancaster was the only Allied bomber capable of delivering the Grand Slam, a 22,000 pound (10,000kg) bomb, which sank the German Battleship KGM Tirpitz in November 1944. Towards the end of the war, attacking special and hardened targets, other variants of B I Lancaster Specials were modified to carry the 21 ft (6.4 m) long 12,000 lb (5,400 kg) "Tallboy" or 25.5 ft (7.8 m) long Grand Slam bombs and extensive modifications to the aircraft were required. These bombs were capable of destroying hardened concrete shelters of U-boat Pens and the aircraft factories that were being built underground throughout Europe. The Grand Slam, a special purpose bomb designed to penetrate concrete and explode below the surface to create an earthquake effect, could only be delivered by the Lancaster.
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Post War
In the last few weeks of the war, Lancasters were used in Operation 'Manna' in May 1945, when emergency supplies of food were dropped by parachute into Holland. Lancaster squadrons dispatched a total of 3,156 sorties to drop 6,684 tons of food supplies to the starving Dutch in May 1945. At the end of hostilities, many of the Lancaster squadrons were tasked to return Allied Prisoners of War from various locations throughout Europe back to England. In a period of 24 days a total of 2900 round trips were flown and 74,000 ex-POW's were returned. With the end of hostilities on all war fronts, the Lancaster was by no means finished in its service. The RAF continued to use the aircraft in various roles including photographic and maritime duties until October 1956. The Royal Canadian Air Force, who flew back many of the surviving Mk.X's back to Canada, continued to use the aircraft in photographic and maritime reconnaissance roles until the early 1960's. The last three RCAF Lancasters were retired at a ceremony on April 1, 1964. In April 1952 "Just Jane" (NX611) was bought by the French Government. Painted midnight blue, she flew maritime patrol for the French Naval Air Arm. Ten years later, she went to Noumeau, New Caledonia, was painted white and used for air sea rescue and cartography. Then in 1964, the French presented her to the Historical Aircraft Preservation Society and flown back to England, landing at Biggin Hill, on the 13th of May 1965.
Statistics
Lancasters flew some 156,000 sorties and dropped 618,378 tonnes of bombs between 1942 and 1945. Some 7,377 Lancasters built with 430 of them being built in Canada, but losses were so severe that only 35 Lancasters completed more than 100 successful operations each, and 3,249 were lost in action. The most successful survivor completed 139 operations, and was unceremoniously scrapped in 1947.
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