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CHAPTER 1
The Avro Lancaster
The Lancaster, which was developed from the disappointing Avro Manchester, began to equip Bomber Command squadrons in 1942, the first being 44 (Rhodesia) Squadron at RAF Waddington, Lincolnshire, followed by 97 Squadron at nearby Woodhall Spa. By 1945 there were 56 squadrons flying them and over 1,000 of the type were either in these squadrons or on the strength of training or operational conversion units (OCUs).
The aircraft achieved many 'firsts': first to fly Pathfinder missions, in August 1942; first to carry 8,000 lb bombs, in April 1943; first to carry a 12,000 lb bomb, in September 1943, followed by the 12,000 lb deep penetration bomb – the Tallboy – in June 1944; then finally the mammoth 22,000 lb Grand Slam bomb, in March 1945.
It also achieved recognition in other ways: the famous raid on the Ruhr dams by the specially formed 617 Squadron in May 1943, and the sinking of the Tirpitz by 9 and 617 Squadrons in November 1944. It played a major part in the important raid on the German experimental rocket base at Peenemünde in August 1943 which resulted in severe delays to the V1 and V2 flying bombs and rocket programme. Of the 32 awards of the Victoria Cross awarded to men of the RAF in World War Two, ten were given to men who flew in the Avro Lancaster.
Some more facts. Empty, the Lancaster weighed 36,900 lbs (16.5 tons), while fully loaded it was 68,000 lbs (30 tons). Bomb loads could and did vary, but the average weight was 14,000 lbs (6.25 tons). With this figure it had a range of 1,600 miles and a service ceiling of 24,500 feet. Four 1,460 hp Merlin 20 or 22 (or 1,640 hp Merlin 24) engines hauled this vast load into the sky, together with a seven-man crew – sometimes eight.
For those unfamiliar with fuel loads the figures in the table below will seem even more fantastic. These are figures for actual raids with accurate bomb loads in 1943.
Anyone who fills their car up each week with, say, 15 gallons of petrol will easily calculate that the bomber that went to Milan carried enough fuel to fill up his or her car for 137 weeks – two and a half years! Multiply that by the number of aircraft that went to Milan that August night – 504 – and the total comes to 1,039,248 gallons (with which the family car would be supplied for 1,330 years). And that was just one night, with another 152 bombers going to Turin as well.
The pure logistics of the amount of aviation fuel needed to sustain not only Bomber Command, but Coastal and Fighter Command too, plus training, transport, communications aircraft et al, not to mention the massive US 8th Air Force operating in Britain, is almost incomprehensible.
The Lancaster crew probably didn't concern themselves with this mind-boggling statistic. One of them could be trying to work out how he might get hold of just two gallons of petrol for his own car in order to see his girlfriend the next night – if he got back from Milan that is. What concentrated the mind of the Lancaster pilot, of course, was that his skill was needed to get this powerful but heavily laden beast off the ground. He and his six crewmen were fully aware of the potential death-trap they were flying; a huge metal tomb stuffed with high-explosives, incendiaries, 2,062 gallons of high octane fuel, not to mention several thousand rounds of .303 ammunition for the Lancaster's eight machine guns.
Bomb loads varied because of either the target or the distance to that target. Less fuel meant a higher bomb load, while longer range, i.e. more fuel, generally resulted in a smaller bomb load. By 1943 the Lancaster was really into its stride, the usual bomb load would be one 4,000 lb 'cookie', another 2,000 lbs of High Explosive (HE) – either two 1,000 pounders or four 500 pounders, plus a selection of 4 lb and or 30 lb incendiaries, depending on room, load capacity and target. The idea was that the bombs blasted the targets, while the burning incendiaries set it on fire.
CHAPTER 2
Researching this Book
It was necessary, when compiling this book, to plough through the squadron diaries (Forms 540 and 541) to list each occasion a particular Lancaster flew an operational sortie. If originally I thought this was just a timeconsuming chore I was soon to discover that it was fraught with all sorts of difficulties.
Anyone reading through the old wartime diaries will know that they are only as accurate as the men – or perhaps women – who compiled them. They range from the excellent to the very poor. If a squadron had, say, a former journalist as its diary compiler then the diary could be not only interesting but well kept and well documented as well as accurate. If, on the other hand, someone who could type with at least one finger was 'volunteered' and was far more interested in getting down to the NAAFI, or trying to get away with the minimum amount of information he knew his CO would be happy with – and sign, (if the CO signed at all and didn't leave the formality to his adjutant) – those records could be poor, inaccurate and sometimes downright untrustworthy.
With bomber operations happening almost every night, the orderly room staff's daily task of typing up everything from 12 to 22 Lancaster serial numbers, along with the seven crewmen's names, plus flying times and comments, has to be riddled with typing errors as well as errors of fact. On several occasions I found the same aircraft serial number flying at the same time with two different crews – an obvious error. Other times it was obvious the clerk typed the serial number of the aircraft a crew usually flew without checking if they had actually flown in it that night.
What was less obvious of course, was when the aircraft I was researching flew and the serial was typed out incorrectly or listed with a fictitious serial number. Aircraft were often referred to by their fuselage letter, eg: A-Able. If this aircraft was lost or sent away for major repair, and a new A-Able arrived, sometimes the old serial number was typed out instead of the new one.
On occasions the copy page I was reading was a very poor carbon copy – almost illegible. Crews might be listed wrongly, misspelt, or a last minute crew change, where say a crew member went sick and was replaced by a spare bod, wasn't noted in the records. That would show a man taking part in a sortie when in reality he was in bed with two aspirins.
What is recorded is the best of the surviving evidence, which is fairly accurate, although I would not be able to vouch that it is 100 per cent so. However, what is produced will give a pretty accurate picture of what each of these 35 Lancasters did and who flew them.
Another problem I found was that where publicity had occurred when a particular Lancaster reached its 100th op, it often proved very difficult to reconcile this to the records. All sorts of things could have happened, of course, and one can picture the scene.
A flight commander happens to mention to the CO that A-Able is nearing its 100th op, according to the bomb tally painted on the side of the cockpit. The CO appears interested and asks for a full breakdown of the sorties flown. The flight commander in turn tells the adjutant, say, who gives the task to a corporal clerk who is about as interested in the job as he is of being away from his bride of two months, who lives 300 miles away from where he is based. So he swiftly, and grudgingly, runs through the Form 541 pages and quickly lists the ops; this list eventually goes back up the chain to the CO.
Thus on such-and-such a night, A-Able flies its 100th sortie. However, what the corporal clerk failed to see, was that one sortie was aborted right after take-off and not counted, and that another was listed as being flown when in fact the aircraft was being serviced. Thus its 100th op was in reality only its 98th! That it eventually went on to fly 109 sorties, is one thing, but because there was now a definite record of its 100th op date, counting forward from that, the record shows that A-Able flew 111 in total.
In any event, it was the aircraft's ground crew who painted the bomb symbols on the nose – it had little to do with the aircrew other than being of interest if it was 'their' particular aircraft for a period of time. The ground crew looked after it, serviced it, repaired minor battle damage, changed the engines from time to time, and so on. They took pride in it. Few of the flyers, if any, took the trouble to check totals, especially if they returned from a short leave, saw that some more bombs had gone up and assumed the aircraft had done additional trips in their absence. Their main preoccupation was staying alive and finishing their tour.
The difficulty was the interpretation the ground crew put on a sortie, and that may be different from the record keepers. That is not to say the ground crew were taking liberties, far from it, but merely being proud of their aircraft and if they understood it had flown an op, then up went another bomb. The only problem comes later, when the actual bomb symbols do not easily tally with the records, and a photograph of the bomb tally must be accurate in terms of ops flown!
As in all things, once a fact, however inaccurate, becomes established it is difficult to reconcile or change it. Therefore the reader will find in some of the aircraft biographies that follow, an occasional reference to total sorties being different – in dispute if you like – to some long-assumed established 'fact'.
Mentioning aborted missions, these too caused problems, in that sometimes they were counted as ops, sometimes not. Obviously if a Lancaster lost an engine right after take-off and the pilot went round and landed again, then the mission was not counted. If on another raid, the Master Bomber called off the raid near or even over the target, the raid might be abandoned but the op counted – quite naturally.
Ron Clark, who flew EE139 with 100 Squadron in 1943 (see The Tour) was asked about aborts and the like. He says:
'The issue of aborts in 1943 was a grey area and sometimes these were credited or half credited or not credited, depending on the circumstances.
'The decision to abort was not easy, it was a terrific anti-climax and a lot of trouble had gone in for nothing. One had the feeling of letting the side down. We aborted our trip to Oberhausen on 14 June because of rear turret failure before reaching the coast. The CO criticised my decision and probably thought a pep-talk was in order as I was a new boy. The night fighter usually approached from the rear and below and Geoff Green in the defective turret would still have had the chance to detect it. Of course, the enemy had tremendous advantage in fire-power and the ability to pick up the glare of a bomber's exhausts. It might have been impossible for Geoff to bale out in an emergency though.
'After having an engine fail on the Nürnberg trip on 27 August, we decided to press on but we gradually lost height and rather than stress the remaining engines for such a long flight we dropped the bombs in the Channel and returned to base. At the debriefing I was taken aback when the ground engineer officer threatened me with a court-martial after I said that I wanted a new engine instead of another re-conditioned one. As I walked away I glanced at "Dinger" Bell, the Flight Commander, who seemed equally surprised. Neither trip was credited of course.'
Bomber Command set up a bomb-line later in the war – a line at which by flying past it the sortie counted towards a crew's tour, but by aborting on the near side of it, it didn't. For obvious reasons, the 'line' was not advertised and in any event it changed from time to time. It has not been clear anywhere in the Form 541s whether each and every raid was made official or not when aborts occurred. The reader will have to pick his own way through that minefield as he reads the raid lists. At this distance I am certainly not going to make decisions of that nature. Ron Clark remarks on this bomb-line:
'My rear gunner, Geoff Green, who operated his second tour in 1944, tells me that the 'Bombing Line' was instituted after the Invasion of Europe to protect the Allied forces from our own bombs. This line fluctuated with the rapid advance and was the cause of some misunderstandings and casualties on the ground. Geoff recalls some awkward moments with Canadian soldiers in a bar in Paddington. They had taken casualties in this way but they ended up by buying him a pint.'
As author of this book I have not, by the same token, set out to prove any points, merely to record the details of these 35 'above-average' Lancasters – centenarians – whose rise to fame was in the number of ops they flew. In some cases, where in the past a certain number of ops have been credited to them, the total figure is a problem. Others are not so problematic, but all went on to, or over, the 100. Some squadrons claimed credits for sorties flown during the food-dropping missions to Holland in 1945 – Operation Manna, while others also gave credit to trips flown during Operation Exodus – the return of released Allied prisoners of war by air.
Where these occurred they have been noted, but it will be up to the reader if he wishes to think whether a Lancaster which flew 109 bombing raids plus two Manna trips and two Exodus trips made a total of 113 sorties or not. That is not germane to the aims of this book. All I might say is that what is good for one Lanc should be good enough for another!
By and large a pattern does emerge when looking at the life of almost any Lancaster during World War Two. It arrived on a squadron, was checked over by the ground crew and assigned to a flight. Unless it was specifically a replacement for a crew's Lancaster which had been seriously damaged a night or so before, then the new bomber was available to any crew who needed an aeroplane. As there were usually more crews than available/serviceable machines, one or two crews regularly shared a Lancaster. From time to time it then became the more or less permanent aeroplane for one specific crew. After a few ops the Lanc was taken from the Availability State for a couple of days while it was looked over by the maintenance section – something like a family car's first 1,000 mile service.
Once back in action, its usual crew would generally continue with it, but then for a couple of nights another crew might take it, this occurring as the regular crew took a 48-hour leave or some such break period. On their return they would take over the machine again until the end of their tour – or they would fail to return while flying another machine. In between times, of course, anything could happen, from slight damage to an engine failure which would take the bomber out of the line for a few days. A Lancaster might have an many as eight or nine engine changes on a squadron. The RAF's accident damage categories referred to in the text need a little explanation: Cat AC = minor damage; Cat E = write off.
Then the regular crew may be lucky enough to finish their tour. The Lancaster then seems to be in a sort of limbo while two or three other crews – probably new crews – start their tours. Suddenly one finds that once again a more or less regular crew is flying it on most ops. This continued until the bomber had another major service, or, as the ops mounted up, it might go away from the squadron – even back to the makers – for a complete refit and overhaul. If it returned to the same squadron it would continue although it could just as easily be reassigned to another squadron.
One might also imagine there were many aspects to flying these Lancs, which had now become veterans, with 60, 70 or 80 missions completed. Not everyone was keen to fly them. On the one hand they were getting old and had perhaps lost some of their sprightliness. Why should a crew choose to fly an old crock when it may have the chance to fly a brand new machine?
Then again, as superstition and luck – real or imagined – played a very large part in any air force crew's flying, one would obviously start thinking that this particular Lancaster with its 80-plus-ops was living on borrowed time. Its luck must surely be running out soon and one did not want to be flying it over Germany when it did. A few Lancasters got into the 90s before they were lost, one even going down on its 99th sortie. Other crews might feel that this particular Lancaster had led a charmed life and would always come home. It is also a fact that some squadrons did not like to add any nose artwork and even bomb symbols to their aircraft; another form of not wanting to invite bad luck.
(Continues…)
Excerpted from "Ton-Up Lancs"
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Copyright © 2005 Grub Street.
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