Avro Lancaster at the RAF Museum, Hendon

The Avro Lancaster links its roots back to the Avro Manchester, a twin engine piston aircraft that was designed by Roy Chadwick. Designed with two Rolls Royce Vulture engines, the Manchester faced several performance and reliability issues, so Chadwick went back to the drawing board and designed a larger aircraft that was to be fitted with four Rolls Royce Merlin engines. The result was the Avro Lancaster. This Lancaster was built at the Vickers works in Trafford, near Manchester. After being completed at Woodford aerodrome, now sadly a housing estate, it was delivered to 83 squadron based at RAF Scampton, in Lincolnshire. Its first operational sortie was in July 1942 against Wilhelmshaven. It would then go on to attack other targets in Danzig, Bordeaux, Essen, Vegesack, Duisburg, Hamburg, the Gironde River, Osnabruck, Mainz, Flensburg, Frankfurt, Bremen, Krefeld, Kiel, Genoa, Turin, Munich, Berlin, Lorient, Milan, Nuremberg, Cologne, St Nazaire, Stuttgart, Dusseldorf, Wuppertal, Munster, Bochum, Monchanin, Mulheim, Elberfeld, Hanover, Bochum, Kassel, Modane. It attacked a lot of targets!

During its 96th mission, it collided with another Lancaster while flying at 20,000 feet over the target area. This caused the aircraft to go into a severe dive to port, however the pilot was able to save the aircraft and the crew by applying full rudder and aileron trim and managed to return the aircraft safely back to their North Yorkshire base at Tholthorpe, which was located between RAF Topcliffe and RAF Linton-On-Ouse.

What’s your favourite four engine heavy bomber of the war? Let us know in the comments!