Only History: Avro Lancaster Bomber

Video from the channel Furious about Avro Lancaster, linked on its Above Ten Thousand entry. Duration: 29:20. Video type: Documentary.

The video, in Russian, reviews the history of the Avro Lancaster, Britain's main heavy bomber of the Second World War alongside the Handley Page Halifax. It explains its origin, its configuration, the bomb loads it carried and some of its best-known missions. It also notes that thousands of units were built and that close to half were lost, more due to intensive use than design flaws.

In the late 1930s, British aviation lacked modern bombers, and the Whitley and Hampden of the time were slow. From the twin-engine specifications came the Avro Manchester, but the engines of the day didn't provide enough power. The solution was to lengthen the wing and fit four Rolls-Royce Merlins, the same engines used in the Spitfire, the Hurricane and the Mosquito. The new aircraft flew on 9 January 1941, handled well from its first flight, and replaced the Manchester on the assembly lines, of which only 200 had been built.

It carried a crew of seven and its key feature was a huge bomb bay, with loads of 5,000 to 8,000 kg and a takeoff weight that exceeded 32,000 kg with the Merlin 22 and 24 engines. The most numerous versions were the I and the III, and its defense relied on machine-gun turrets.

In Operation Chastise, on the night of 16-17 May 1943, No. 617 Squadron used Barnes Wallis's bouncing bomb, built by Vickers. It weighed about four tonnes, three of them explosive, spun at 500 revolutions per minute and was dropped at a height of 18 m and a speed of 390 km/h. This breached the Möhne and Eder dams, in the Ruhr basin, releasing about 330 million tonnes of water. Albert Speer wrote that a few bombers caused more damage than many area bombing raids.

The Lancaster was also the only aircraft capable of carrying the 12,000-pound Tallboy and 22,000-pound Grand Slam earthquake bombs, of which 41 were dropped. With them it destroyed the Saumur tunnel, sank the Tirpitz in Operation Catechism, and in March 1945 attacked the Bielefeld and Arnsberg viaducts and the Farge submarine base. After the war there were maritime reconnaissance versions, exports to South America, the Lincoln derivative and the Lancastrian passenger version. It also repatriated nearly 80,000 people.