Inside a Lancaster bomber

[wolfracesonic]

Wacky Racer said:

Dog Star said:

Mrs DSs dad was tail gunner in a Lancaster during the war (she was quite a late child); I believe it was the riskiest place to be in the plane. Must have been a crazy place to be, and that’s before you even think about shooting/being shot at.

I’ve got all his books about “turrets”.

Are there a lot of swear words in it?

ISWYDT

[Narcisus]

Cliff the gent who organised our Coningsby trip and was a tail gunner on Lancs as mentioned above.

His Lanc crashed on the way back from a mission and the entire crew was killed.

Cliff was thrown out of the turret.

[ecsrobin]

dr_gn said:

Narcisus said:

I spent a good hour in the City of Lincoln when I was 15 it was a great experience.

Out of interest, how?

In the early ‘80’s (I’d be about 12), we went to a Coningsby airshow. We hung around after it had finished, and my Dad noticed a queue of people around the Lancaster. Turned out it was some family members of the display crew, and a few other interested random people. We joined the queue, and, like you, spent the best part of an hour climbing inside it, from one end to the other, trying out all the seats, gun turrets, the lot. What I remember most was getting vertigo while lying down in the nose, looking down through the flat bomb aimers window.

The more I think about that experience, the more I wonder what the chances of it happening today would be (zero). Every time I see the BBMF Lancaster, I think “I’ve been in that!”.

I spent some years supporting BBMF, at airshows any opportunity to show people round I would but generally being parked on airfields it was hard for public access. A memorable point was Bournemouth air show I’d popped into the flying club to hand out some books as I’d spotted a large crowd watching.

A few people asked about being shown round to which I said I’d love to but we’re parked on a spot the wrong side of the taxiway to get safe access for a group without ATC getting grumpy. To which they said we can jump in our planes and taxi round. I agreed. Had 3-4 light aircraft brimmed to the full taxi round and I got to show them round and in the aircraft.

On the way back from Bournemouth the Lancaster had to divert to Biggin Hill due to weather so I diverted in the team vehicle and arrived just as the F1 jet arrived tried to get on to it but the pilot wouldn’t let me but being nice offered the pilot a look round. Got to the cockpit and turns out the Lancaster pilot was in the same university air squadron. One went the RAF route and one the civil route both having a great time.

[5 In a Row]

Newark Air Museum often have open aircraft days including the Shackleton (and Vulcan).

Just watch your head on the way back up from the bomb aimer's position........

[otolith]

My grandad worked on Lancaster bombers at some point, though it must have been in the UK - I know he worked at Woodford at one point. He spent some of the war patching up planes in Burma, and it doesn't look as if they had Lancasters in that campaign.

I wish I'd asked him more about what he did. He was a joiner by trade, and I believe that the aircraft construction process then often relied on wooden forms, but if he was helping to make those in the UK I don't know what they had him doing in Burma.

[Eric Mc]

During World War 2, Lancasters were retained pretty much exclusively for the Bomber Offensive against Germany. For heavy bombing tasks, the middle and far east were allocated Halifaxes and Liberators.

However, as the war in Europe wound down it was decided that some Lancasters would be allocated to supplement the American bomber offensive against Japan. This unit was called the Tiger Force and the Lancasters received a new colour scheme for the task. However, Japan surrendered before they were deployed.

[Simpo Two]

Eric Mc said:

The problem with the Lancastrian was that, for most adults, it was impossible to stand up straight. It really was a stop-gap design.

I expect it was damn noisy too!

Sadly the most famous Lancastrian is probably 'Stardust' which flew into the Andes: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1947_BSAA_Avro_Lanca...

[Hilts]

The BBMF Lancaster was up in Scotland recently, made the local paper, loved the captions!

Yes, indeed it does.


Also:

Accurate.

[otolith]

Suspect those are automatically generated captions. The PH image sharing feature also auto generates captions for images.

[Yertis]

Eric Mc said:

During World War 2, Lancasters were retained pretty much exclusively for the Bomber Offensive against Germany. For heavy bombing tasks, the middle and far east were allocated Halifaxes and Liberators.

However, as the war in Europe wound down it was decided that some Lancasters would be allocated to supplement the American bomber offensive against Japan. This unit was called the Tiger Force and the Lancasters received a new colour scheme for the task. However, Japan surrendered before they were deployed.

The Lancaster already looks a bit of a relic when you sit it alongside the B29.

[Eric Mc]

It was an older design and it wasn't pressurised - so already obsolescent by the end of the war.

[Narcisus]

otolith said:

Suspect those are automatically generated captions. The PH image sharing feature also auto generates captions for images.

More likely the Sub forgot to enter the proper caption and that was just a placeholder

[5 In a Row]

otolith said:

My grandad worked on Lancaster bombers at some point, though it must have been in the UK - I know he worked at Woodford at one point. He spent some of the war patching up planes in Burma, and it doesn't look as if they had Lancasters in that campaign.

I wish I'd asked him more about what he did. He was a joiner by trade, and I believe that the aircraft construction process then often relied on wooden forms, but if he was helping to make those in the UK I don't know what they had him doing in Burma.

They used Mosquitos in the Far East theatre although not sure if they were there before the war's end.
The heat caused issues with the glue used on them.

[Eric Mc]

They did send some to India during the war but the structural issues became too difficult so they were grounded.

One of the reasons why the RAF used Bristol Brigands during the Malay crisis of the early 1950s was because they knew that the hot and humid climate in that area would not be great for Mosquitoes. They did use Mosquitoes in Egypt post war.