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The Avro Lancaster was a British four-engine Second World War bomber aircraft made initially by Avro for the British Royal Air Force (RAF). It first saw active service in 1942, and together with the Handley-Page Halifax it was one of the main heavy bombers of the RAF, the Royal Canadian Air Force and squadrons from other Commonwealth and European countries serving with RAF Bomber Command. The "Lanc" or "Lankie," as it became affectionately known, became the most famous and most successful of the Second World War night bombers, "delivering 608,612 tons of bombs in 156,000 sorties." Although the Lancaster was primarily a night bomber, it excelled in many other roles including daylight precision bombing, and gained worldwide renown as the "Dam Buster" used in the 1943 Operation Chastise raids on Germany's Ruhr Valley dams.
The origins of the Lancaster lie in a twin-engined bomber design powered by Rolls-Royce Vulture engines submitted to Specification P.13/36 which was for a new generation of twin-engined medium bombers. The resulting aircraft was the Avro Manchester, which, although a capable aircraft, was troubled by the unreliability of the Vulture and withdrawn from service in 1942, by which point 200 aircraft had been built.
Avro's chief designer, Roy Chadwick, was already working on an improved Manchester design using four of the more reliable but less powerful Rolls-Royce Merlin engines on a larger wing. The aircraft was initially designated Avro Type 683 Manchester III, and later re-named the Lancaster. The prototype aircraft BT308 was assembled by Avro's experimental flight department at Manchester's Ringway Airport from where test pilot H.A. "Bill" Thorn took the controls for its first flight on Thursday, 9 January 1941. The aircraft proved to be a great improvement on its predecessor, being "one of the few warplanes in history to be 'right' from the start." Its initial three-finned tail layout, a result of being converted from a Manchester I, was quickly changed on the second prototype DG595 and subsequent production aircraft to the familiar twin-finned specification used on the later Manchesters (below).
Some of the later orders for Manchesters were changed in favour of Lancasters; the designs were very similar and both featured the same distinctive greenhouse cockpit, turret nose and twin tail. The Lancaster discarded the stubby central third tail fin of the early Manchesters and used the wider span tailplane and larger elliptical twin fins from the later Manchester IA.
The majority of Lancasters built during the war years were manufactured by Avro at their factory at Chadderton near Manchester and test flown from Woodford Aerodrome in Cheshire. Other Lancasters were built by Metropolitan-Vickers and Armstrong Whitworth. The aircraft was also produced at the Austin Motor Company works in Longbridge, Birmingham later in the Second World War and postwar at Chester by Vickers-Armstrongs. Only 300 of the Lancaster B II with Bristol Hercules engines were constructed. The Lancaster B III had Packard Merlin engines but was otherwise identical to contemporary B Is, with 3,030 B IIIs built, almost all at A.V. Roe's Newton Heath factory. The B I and B III were built concurrently, and minor modifications were made to both marks as new batches were ordered. Examples of these modifications were the relocation of the pitot head from the nose to the side of the cockpit, and the change from de Havilland "needle blade" propellers to Hamilton Standard or Nash Kelvinator made "paddle blade" propellers.
A total of 7,377 Lancasters of all marks were built throughout the duration of the war, each at a 1943 cost of £45-50,000 (approximately equivalent to £1.3-1.5 million in 2005 currency).
The test pilot Alex Henshaw is the only known pilot to have barrel rolled a Lancaster bomber, a feat considered almost impossible because of the slow speed of the aircraft.
General characteristics
Crew: 7: pilot, flight engineer, navigator, bomb aimer, wireless operator, mid-upper and rear gunners
Length: 69 ft 5 in (21.18 m)
Wingspan: 102 ft (31.09 m)
Height: 19 ft 7 in (5.97 m)
Wing area: 1,300 ft² (120 m²)
Empty weight: 36 828 lb (16,705 kg)
Loaded weight: 63,000 lb (29,000 kg)
Powerplant: 4× Rolls-Royce Merlin XX V12 engines, 1,280 hp (954 kW) each
Performance
Maximum speed: 240 knots (280 mph, 450 km/h) at 15,000 ft (5,600 m)
Range: 2,700 nm (3,000 mi, 4,600 km) with minimal bomb load
Service ceiling: 23,500 ft (8,160 m)
Wing loading: 48 lb/ft² (240 kg/m²)
Power/mass: 0.081 hp/lb (130 W/kg)
Armament
Guns: 8× 0.303 in (7.70 mm) Browning machine guns in three turrets
Bombs:
Maximum: 22,000 lb (10,000 kg)
Typical: 14,000 lb (6,400 kg) |
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For the last three years of the Second World War the Avro Lancaster was the major heavy bomber used by Bomber Command to take the war to the heart-land of Nazi Germany.
It resulted from design work undertaken by Roy Chadwick and his Avro team to overcome the problems experienced with the twin-engined Manchester bomber. The prototype made its first flight in January 1941.
With an impressive performance and excellent flying characteristics it soon established its superiority over other allied four-engined bombers operating in Europe.
The industrial and military organisation needed to build and operate the Lancaster was huge. Six major companies built 7377 aircraft at ten factories on two continents; at the height of production over 1,100,000 men and women were employed working for over 920 companies. More service personnel were involved in flying and maintaining it than any other British aircraft in history.
The Lancaster's operational career is littered with impressive statistics, some are set out below, but it is worth remembering that the average age of the seven-man crew was only 22 years. They endured danger and discomfort and many showed great courage in continuing to fly knowing the odds against survival were high. Bomber Command suffered the highest casualty rate of any branch of the British services in the Second World War.
On average Lancasters completed twenty-one missions before being lost. |
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raf aircraft
In 1936, the Air Ministry had a requirement for a new fighter aircraft with airspeeds that would eventually have to be over 300 mph (480 km/h). Fortunately, two designs had been developed entirely as private venture exercises: the Hawker Hurricane and Supermarine Spitfire. Both were designed around the PV-12 instead of the Kestrel, and were the only British modern fighters to have been so developed. Production contracts for both aircraft were let in 1936. The PV-12 was instantly catapulted to the top of the supply chain and became the Merlin.
Early Merlins were considered to be rather unreliable, but Rolls soon introduced a superb reliability-improvement programme to improve matters. This consisted of taking random engines from the end of assembly line and running them continuously at full power until they failed. Each was then dismantled to find out which part had failed, and that part was redesigned to be stronger. After two years of this, the Merlin had matured into one of the most reliable aero engines in the world, and could be run at full power for eight-hour bombing missions with no problems.
As it turned out, the Peregrine saw use in only two aircraft, the Westland Whirlwind and the Gloster F9/37. Although the Peregrine appeared to be a satisfactory design, it was never allowed to mature; Rolls-Royce's priority was troubleshooting the Merlin. The Vulture was fitted to the Hawker Tornado and Avro Manchester, but proved unreliable owing to big-end failures caused by lubrication problems. With the Merlin itself soon pushing into the 1,500 hp (1,100 kW) range, the Peregrine and Vulture were both cancelled in 1943. upgrades to the Merlin were the result of ever-increasing octane ratings in the aviation fuel available from the US, and ever more efficient supercharger designs. At the start of the war the engine ran on the then-standard 87 octane aviation spirit and
The next major version was the XX which ran on 100 octane fuel. This allowed it to be run at higher manifold pressures, which were achieved by increasing the "boost" from the centrifugal type supercharger. The result was that the otherwise similar engine delivered 1,300 hp (970 kW). The process continued, with later versions running on further-increased octane ratings, delivering higher and higher power ratings. By the end of the war the "little" engine was delivering over 1,600 hp (1,200 kW) in common versions, and as much as 2,070 hp (1,544 kW) in the Merlin 130/131 versions used on the de Havilland Hornet. The Merlin was running on 150 Octane fuel by the time it was used in the Lancaster bomber. This high octane rating was achieved by large quantities of lead anti-knocking agent, so much in fact, that the engine cowlings around the exhaust outlets were usually heavily stained with it. It had to be regularly removed for aerodynamic, not to mention weight, reasons.
The Merlin's lack of direct fuel injection meant that both Spitfires and Hurricanes were, unlike the contemporary Bf-109E, unable to nose down into a deep dive. This meant the Luftwaffe fighters could 'bunt' into a high-power dive to escape attack, leaving the Spitfire spluttering behind as its fuel was forced by negative 'g' out of the carburettor. RAF fighter pilots soon learned to 'half-roll' their aircraft before diving to pursue their opponents. The use of uninjected carburettors was calculated to give a higher specific power output, due to the lower temperature, and hence the greater density, of the fuel/air mixture, compared to injected systems. "Miss Shilling's orifice" (invented in March 1941 by a female engineer named Shilling), a holed diaphragm fitted across the float chambers, went some way towards curing the fuel starvation in a dive. Further improvements were introduced throughout the Merlins, with injection introduced in 1943. |
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A British Airways Virtual (BAV) flight BA2907 (SHT2907). In this video a British Airways Boeing737-500 takes off from EGCC (Manchester) bound for London Gatwick (EGKK. I filmed the Pushback, startup, taxi, a 23L takeoff and my inital climb to 5000ft on a HON1Y SID. I filmed it on VATSIM (No EGCC ATC was on). In it you will see Concorde, an Avro RJX Jodrell bank and EGCC from the air. I used the wilco/feelthere 737 and UK2000 Manchester, enjoy.
PS to anybody who doesn't think BAW own 735 look at this:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/British_Airways#Fleet |
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A rare look at the interior of the Avro Shackleton |
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Designated the Avro type 685, development began in 1941. The design paired a new "squared-off" fuselage with the wings, tail and undercarriage of the Lancaster bomber. Production was undertaken by Avro with the hopes of sales to both the RAF and in the postwar civil airliner market.
The prototype, LV626, was assembled by Avro's experimental flight department at Manchester's Ringway Airport and first flew there on 5 July 1942. It had initially been fitted with the twin fins and rudders of the Lancaster, but the increased fuselage side area forward of the wing compared to the Lancaster necessitated fitting a third central fin to retain adequate control and directional stability. Initial assembly and testing of production Yorks was at Ringway, later Yeadon (Leeds) and Woodford (Cheshire).
One pattern aircraft was built at Victory Aircraft in Canada, but no further orders were received. Victory tooled up for 30 of those aircraft and built parts for five with one ultimately being completed about the time the war came to an end.
The first civilian York (G-AGJA) was delivered to British Overseas Airways Corporation (BOAC) in 1944. One of the prototypes, named Ascalon, became a flying conference room for Winston Churchill; other Yorks were provided for the use of Lord Mountbatten when Viceroy of India, the Duke of Gloucester when Governor-General of Australia, and South African leader Jan Smuts. In RAF Transport Command service, the York was used on the England-India route.
Production orders included 50 civilian Yorks and 208 military versions to the RAF - many of which subsequently passed into civilian hands. During the Berlin Airlift, Yorks flew over 58,000 sorties - close to half of the British contribution, alongside the Douglas Dakota and Handley Page Hastings.
In the postwar years, BOAC used Yorks on their Cairo to Durban service, which had previously been worked by Shorts flying-boats. They were also used by British South American Airways and many private passenger and freight airlines.
When the Distant Early Warning Line (Dew Line) was being constructed in Canada in the late 1950s, the Avro York was introduced as a freighter by Associated Airways. At least one of the Yorks, CF-HAS, was retained, and was in service with Transair as late as 1961.
The Avro York was, like its stablemates, the Lancaster and Lincoln, a very versatile aircraft; one York, LV633 "Ascalon", was custom-built as the personal transport of Prime Minister Winston Churchill. Ascalon was to be fitted with a special pressurised "egg" so that VIP passengers could be carried without their having to use an oxygen mask. Made of aluminium alloy it had eight perspex windows to reduce claustrophobia. It also had a telephone, instrument panel, drinking facilities and an ashtray with room for cigars, thermos flask, newspapers, books. Testing at RAE Farnborough found the "egg" to work satisfactorily. However, Avro said it was too busy with the new Lancaster IV (Avro Lincoln) work so it was never actually installed in the Ascalon. It was considered for installation in the successor aircraft, a Douglas C-54B but the contractor Armstrong Whitworth decided it was impractical and the project was shelved. The whereabouts of "Churchill's Egg" are presently unknown.
MW104 "Endeavour" flew to Australia in 1945 to become the personal aircraft of HRH The Duke of Gloucester, Australia's then Governor-General. It was operated by the Governor-General's Flight and was the Royal Australian Air Force's only York.
Another aeroplane was fitted out as a "flying office" for Lord Mountbatten, then C-in-C South East Asia Command. During its first major overhaul at Manchester (Ringway) in 1945, the aeroplane was re-painted a light duck egg green, a shade intended to cool down the aeroplane, instead of its former normal camouflage colour scheme.
General characteristics
Crew: 5 (two pilots, navigator, wireless operator, cabin steward)
Capacity: 56 passengers
Length: 78 ft 6 in (23.9 m)
Wingspan: 102 ft 0 in (31.1 m)
Height: 16 ft 6 in (5 m)
Wing area: 1,297 ft² (120.5 m²)
Empty weight: 40,000 lb (18,150 kg)
Loaded weight: 65,000 lb (29,480 kg)
Powerplant: 4× Rolls-Royce Merlin 24 liquid-cooled V12 engines, 1,280 hp (950 kW) each
Performance
Maximum speed: 298 mph (258 knots, 479 km/h) at 21,000 ft (6,400 m)
Range: 3,000 mi (2,600 nm, 4,800 km)
Service ceiling: 23,000 ft (7,010 m)
Rate of climb: 820 ft/min (4.2 m/s)
Wing loading: 54 lb/ft² (260 kg/m²)
Power/mass: 0.079 hp/lb (130 W/kg) |
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Crash site of Avro Manchester L7523 EM-M. On crest of hill near the end of the large hedge. |
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Take off from MAN in an ARJ85 of SNBA. See a Dash 8 of Air Southwest among other aircraft! |
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Lancasters and Halifax's (and a Manchester!) participate in a 1000 plane night raid over Germany suffering 5% losses |
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The Manchester Museum of Science and Industry's Air and Space Hall. Free to the public. Several one-of-a-kind aircraft. |
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