Avro Lancaster Read online

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  AIR VANGUARD 21

  AVRO LANCASTER

  RICHARD MARKS

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  CONTENTS

  INTRODUCTION 4

  DESIGN AND DEVELOPMENT

  6

  • The Manchester

  • From humble beginnings

  • A curate’s egg

  • Grounded

  • Four engines

  • The making of a legend

  • A new bomber for the RAF

  TECHNICAL SPECIFICATIONS

  18

  THE LANCASTER: MARK BY MARK

  21

  • Lancaster B. Mark I

  • Lancaster B. Mark II

  • Lancaster B. Mark III

  • Type 464 ‘Provisioning’ Lancaster

  • Lancaster B. Mark X

  • Lancaster B. Mark I Special

  • Lancaster B. Mark VI

  • Lancaster B. Mark I (FE)

  • Lancaster B. Mark VII (FE)

  • Lancaster A. S. R. /G.R./MR. 3

  • Lancaster Mark I (modified)

  • Lancaster B. Mark IV and B. Mark V

  • Specialist equipment

  OPERATIONAL HISTORY

  43

  • The Lancaster goes to war

  • Augsburg, 17 April 1942

  • The ‘Thousand Bomber’ Raids, May and June 1942

  • The Pathfinders

  • Operation Chastise, 16 May 1943

  • Operation Gomorrah, July to August 1943

  • A precision bomber

  CONCLUSION 58

  FURTHER READING

  63

  INDEX 64

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  AVRO LANCASTER

  INTRODUCTION

  The Avro Lancaster occupies a special place in the imaginations of many people and in the history of the Royal Air Force. It is seen as a key part of the strategic bombing offensive against the German and Italian war effort and is also associated with precision raids on targets as diverse as the Ruhr dams and the battleship Tirpitz. The Lancaster was undoubtedly a fine and capable aircraft but its development had an unpromising beginning.

  The RAF’s Bomber Command was formed in July 1936, as part of the

  expansion and reorganization of the RAF, in response to the instability in Europe and the threat of Nazi Germany. The Command inherited a generation of aging biplane aircraft. The day bomber force consisted of aircraft such as the Hawker Hart (introduced into service in 1932) and Westland Wapiti

  (introduced in 1929) which, even though extremely capable for their time, were almost obsolete by 1936. The heavy and night bomber force was no

  better off, managing with biplane bombers such as the Handley Page Heyford and the Vickers Virginia.

  The Air Ministry and RAF had already realized the shortcomings of its

  Handley Page Hampden

  AT137 (UB-T) of No. 455

  equipment and in 1932 specification B.9/32 had been issued for a modern Squadron RAF in May 1942.

  monoplane twin-engine, daytime medium bomber. In July 1934 the Air

  The Hampden was one of the

  Ministry issued specification B.3/34 for a night-capable heavy bomber to main types that equipped

  replace the aging fleet of night bomber biplanes.

  Bomber Command at the

  These new aircraft would join the force in the late 1930s, seeing the

  beginning of World War II, but

  soon proved to be obsolete.

  Command through the difficult first few years of World War II. Specification B.9/32 produced the sleek Handley Page

  Hampden and the business-like Vickers

  Wellington designed by Barnes Wallis. The

  Hampden entered RAF service in August

  1938, capable of carrying a 4,000lb bomb

  load over 1,100 miles at a speed of

  206mph, although it was lightly defended.

  The Wellington entered service in October

  1938 and would become the RAF’s most-

  produced bomber aircraft of the war. The

  Wellington was a tough aircraft due to

  Barnes Wallis’s geodetic structure, and was

  capable of lifting a 4,000lb bomb load over

  1,200 miles at a speed of 235mph. It was

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  Vickers Wellington IC. The

  Wellington served the RAF

  throughout World War II. The

  Wellington could carry a

  useful load, including the

  heavier 4,000lb high capacity

  ‘cookie’.

  also much more capable of defending itself, being equipped (after the very early Mark I) with two power-operated turrets armed with two .303

  Browning machine guns in the nose and a sting in the tail of four .303

  Browning machine guns.

  The RAF received its first heavy bomber in March 1937 as a result of

  specification B.3/34. The Armstrong Whitworth Whitley was an angular,

  pugnacious-looking aircraft, which flew with a distinct nose-down attitude due to the main wing being given an 8.5 degree angle of incidence. This allowed for the lowest possible approach speed and landing run since flaps were out of favour when it was designed (even though production aircraft were equipped with hydraulically operated split flaps). The Whitley was capable of carrying a 6,000lb bomb load for 1,190 miles at a speed of 193mph.

  The main variant to see service, the Mark IV, was well armed with a single turret mounted Vickers .303 machine gun in a power-operated nose turret, and four Browning .303 machine guns in a power-operated tail turret. The Whitley would serve the RAF well, being the first British bomber to fly over Germany in World War II, the first to cross the Alps to bomb targets in Italy and the first to bomb Berlin. The aircraft also served with Coastal Command in the early battles against the U-boat menace in the Atlantic.

  The Air Ministry knew that despite the great improvement the three new

  bombers offered the RAF, they were still only capable of carrying smaller bombs and had limited capability to match the RAF’s strategic bombing

  mission, and so the search for a second generation of more-capable bombers was begun in 1936. A key figure in the development of the new strategic bombers was the Deputy Director of Plans at the Air Ministry, Group Captain (later Air Vice Marshal) Arthur Harris. Senior colleagues of Harris’s favoured a mass of medium bombers, whereas Harris argued that only the ‘heavy’

  promised the long-range and lifting power that he foresaw Bomber Command needing. Harris won and two specifications, B.12/36 and P.13/36, were issued.

  The former was for a bomber capable of carrying 8,000lb of bombs at 28,000ft with a range of 3,000 miles. This would result in the RAF’s first four-engine heavy bomber, the Short Stirling, which entered service in 1941. The latter specification called for a high-performance heavy bomber capable of operating 5

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  from existing RAF airfields, with a load of 8,000lb of bombs or two aerial torpedoes, resulting in a large bomb bay, and it was to be powered by the new Rolls-Royce Vulture engines. Into the frame would step Roy Chadwick and his design team at A. V. Roe.

  DESIGN AND DEVELOPMENT

  On 10 January 1910, Edwin Alliot Verdon Roe and Humphrey Verdon Roe

  established a company to build aeroplanes for the enthusiast in Manchester.

  The company was A.V. Roe and Company, commonly known as Avro.

  Shortly after its format
ion, a young aircraft designer introduced himself to Alliot Verdon Roe after serving his apprenticeship at the British

  Westinghouse Company in Manchester. He persuaded Roe to employ him,

  and by 1914, at just 21 years old, the young designer was in charge of a workforce of one hundred. The young man’s name was Roy Chadwick,

  who would be instrumental in the design of the Avro 500 series of aircraft, which included the 504, an aircraft that became the mainstay of RAF pilot training until the 1930s. He was also responsible for the creation of the Lancaster and Vulcan for Avro.

  In 1914, Roy Dobson joined Avro and by 1918 was works manager,

  beginning a long working relationship with Chadwick. Dobson was appointed general manager of Avro in 1934 and managing director in 1941. Avro was sold to J. D. Siddeley in 1928, and Chadwick was appointed chief designer, eventually becoming a company director in 1936. Dobson and Chadwick

  continued to work closely together, Chadwick concentrating on aircraft design and Dobson overseeing production. The pieces were now in place for the

  creation of the Lancaster family of aircraft.

  The Manchester

  The Air Ministry specification P.13/36 was issued in September 1936 to

  address Harris’s requirement for a high-performance heavy bomber. The

  specification called for a crew of six, introducing new and more specialized roles for the first time, which consisted of two pilots, a specialized navigator, bomb aimer, wireless operator and air gunner. The design requirement also called for two power-operated turrets in the nose (two guns) and the tail (four guns), a range of not less than 2,000 miles at a speed of not less than 275mph at 15,000ft, and a load of either 8,000lb or two aerial torpedoes, which required the design of a large bomb bay. The specification also called for interchangeable bomb and fuel configurations to give greater operational flexibility.

  The decision was taken at the Air Ministry to include two very-high-

  performance engines in preference to four of the existing power plants then available in the 800 to 1,000hp category, and the new Rolls-Royce Vulture was selected. The Vulture consisted of two sets of Peregrine V12 cylinder blocks mounted together to use a common crank shaft, resulting in a

  24-cylinder engine of X cross section. The Vulture gave a high power-to-weight ratio and was less costly than four engines. Rolls-Royce began design work in 1935, the engine first being tested in 1937, and by August 1939 the Vulture II engine was producing a promising 1,800hp. The engine was not perfect,

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  suffering from connecting

  rod failures that required a

  reduction in engine speed,

  although despite this the

  engine still produced

  promising results. In service,

  the engine would develop a

  habit of catching fire in flight,

  an issue which would

  continue to plague the engine

  throughout its service life,

  much as the double-engine

  power plant in the German

  Heinkel He-117 would do

  later. The Vulture engine

  would develop a number of

  other problems in service, which would result in deplorable reliability, but Armstrong Whitworth Whitley nevertheless the engine was persevered with and designs were submitted to K7191. The Whitley was meet the specification.

  Bomber Command’s first

  heavy bomber and the first to

  A number of companies entered bids for P.13/36. Bristol Aeroplane bomb Berlin and Italy. Its Company submitted a design for a shoulder wing monoplane capable of limited bomb-carrying carrying an 8,000lb load and achieving 315mph, but that used a pair of Bristol capacity and slow speed saw

  Hercules radial engines. The design was rejected, as was a design submitted by it phased out of Bomber

  Hawker for a mid-wing monoplane using two Vulture engines.

  Command as the new

  generation of heavy bombers

  Handley Page submitted a design intended to be fitted with two Vulture began to arrive.

  engines. The H.P.56 was redesigned to be fitted with four Rolls-Royce Merlin engines once concerns about the viability of the Vulture arose. The design would become the H.P.57, later named the Halifax.

  The last design standing was Avro’s submission, the Type 679, first

  submitted in September 1936. It was for a twin Vulture layout with a 69ft-long fuselage coupled to a 72ft wing that tapered in plan form and thickness toward the wing tips, with a tail unit consisting of twin fins and rudders. The front crew was accommodated forward of the main spar, where positions were

  provided for two pilots, a navigator/bomb aimer, and a wireless operator/front gunner. The remaining two crew members were both air gunners and were

  positioned aft of the main spar in the ventral and tail turrets. The specification also called for Chadwick’s team to produce an airframe the like of which they had not produced before, requiring a novel configuration, stressed skinning and of a weight and power not yet attempted. The Avro 679 was the last design remaining in the running and in September 1936, the Air Ministry invited Avro to build two prototypes, L7246 and L7247, to be called the Manchester.

  From humble beginnings

  The first prototype Manchester, L7246, was built at Avro’s Newton Heath factory, the main sections being transported to Ringway airfield for assembly during May 1939. The first prototype was not fitted with turrets, the spaces being faired in for flight testing. The Manchester first took to the air on 25 July 1939, with Avro’s chief test pilot Captain H. A. ‘Sam’ Brown at the controls, but all was not well. The aircraft exhibited a number of handling faults, including an issue with lateral stability and difficult handling caused by high wing loading. The Aeroplane and Armament Experimental Establishment

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  (A&AEE) at Boscombe Down made similar observations when they received L7246 for RAF evaluation. The tests also revealed that the Vulture Mark I engines were limited in boost and lacking power. Despite the teething troubles the design was generally praised, particularly with reference to speed and altitude performance. The Manchester was also viewed as being a big step forward in bomber design despite the issues with its power plants, which, it was hoped, would be resolved by the unrestricted engines intended for the second prototype.

  Despite its shortcomings, events in Europe and the immediate threat of war resulted in plans for mass production of the Manchester being put into place before either prototype had flown. It was to be produced at the Avro plants at Newton Heath and Woodford, as well as the Metropolitan Vickers plant at Trafford Park, Manchester in 1938.

  The second prototype, L7247, differed from its predecessor in having a

  redesigned and extended outer wing and new fins and rudder. L7247 made its maiden flight on 26 May 1940 and whilst generally successful, the problem with lateral stability remained. The airframe was modified almost immediately, with the addition of a shark-like third fin above the centre of the rear fuselage to resolve the problem. Further modifications were made to L7247 throughout 1940, including the fitting of improved Vulture II engines, a larger central fin, and hydraulically powered Fraser Nash turrets in the nose, tail and ventral positions. The ventral turret became a cause for concern since when lowered it produced enough drag to slow the aircraft by 15 knots. The ‘dustbin’, as it became known, was also heavy and crude.

  Production contracts were awarded for an intended 1,200 Manchesters.

  The first contracts were awarded to Avro at Newton Heath in Manchester, under Contract B.648770/37, for an initial run of 200 airframes, and

  Metropolitan Vickers at Trafford Park in Manchester, under Contract

  B.108750/40, for 100 airframes, later expanded to include a further 300

  airframes to be buil
t by the Fairey Aviation Company and Sir W. G. Armstrong Whitworth and Co. The first production aircraft, L7276, was delivered to the A&AEE on 5 August 1940.

  1: AVRO MANCHESTER MARK IA (NO. 50 SQUADRON)

  A

  L7301 (VN-D) was flown by Flying Officer Leslie Manser and his crew during the first

  ’Thousand Bomber’ raid on Cologne during the night of 30 May 1942. Manser’s aircraft was badly damaged by flak over the target and struggled to remain airborne. Manser ordered his crew to abandon the aircraft while he tried to keep it airborne. Manser remained with the aircraft and was killed when it crashed near Bree in Belgium. Manser was awarded a posthumous Victoria Cross for his actions.

  2: AVRO LANCASTER B. MARK III (NO. 44 [RHODESIA] SQUADRON)

  ND578 (KM-Y) completed her 107th mission during January 1945 and had completed 123

  operational missions by April 1945, eventually being retired late in that year. The card in the cockpit window was borrowed by the crew from London Zoo and reads ‘These Animals are Dangerous’.

  3: AVRO LANCASTER B. MARK III (NO. 75 SQUADRON)

  ME321 (AA-N) was flown by Flight Lieutenant Harry Yates DFC and his crew until they completed their tour of operations on 31 December 1944. ME321 was shot down by a night fighter over Holland the following night.

  4: AVRO LANCASTER B. MARK I (NO. 300 [MASOVIAN] SQUADRON)

  LL807 (BH-N), flown by Flying Officer J. Rosanski, carries a small Polish air force marking under the cockpit. No. 300 Squadron was a free Polish unit based at Faldingworth in Lincolnshire.

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  Avro Manchester Mark I, L715

  A curate’s egg

  (EM-S), of No. 207 Squadron,

  which was the first to receive

  The Manchester I was good in parts, but would be plagued by faults with the Manchesters. The first arrived

  Vulture engines. After the summer of 1940 and the exploits of ‘The Few’ in the on 10 November 1940. L715

  clearly shows the Vulture

  Battle of Britain, it appeared that Britain was safe from invasion for the time engines and also the tail