Our series taking an in depth look at armament used in combat by British forces focuses on the RAF s best known heavy bomber of the Second World War – the Lancaster.
WEA PONS OF WAR
The distant drone of four Rolls- Royce Merlin engines gradually gets louder, and every eye in the crowd turns skyward. The sound increases to a roar as the elegant shape of a Lancaster speeds over the runway in front of the spectators and pulls up smartly, banking over to reveal its open bomb bay. Applause greets the spectacle, and seems to drown out the departing bomber’s powerplants. This is a typical airshow scene in the UK and Canada, home nations to the world’s only two airworthy ‘Lancs’. But as pleasing as the Lancaster’s aesthetics are, it’s truly a weapon of war, and its combat record in World War Two is second to none. It could carry an enormous payload – almost three times that of the American B-17 Flying Fortress; absorb tremendous battle damage and remain flying; had long range; and was relatively straightforward to produce in large numbers. It was, of course, one of the dozen or so aircraft types used by Bomber Command in the Second World War, tasked with stopping Hitler’s tyranny. But it’s the Lancaster that…
