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Why German Engineers Couldn't Understand How Britain's Worst Bomber Became The Lancaster

British Bastion

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The Avro Lancaster was not a new design. It was a rebuilt failure, the Avro Manchester, an aircraft the RAF had already given up on after just 202 airframes.

This is the engineering history of how Roy Chadwick took Britain's worst bomber, stretched its wing to 102 feet, threw out the two Rolls-Royce Vulture engines, hung four proven Merlins on it, and produced the finest heavy bomber of the Second World War. And it is the story of why German industry, facing the exact same engineering problem at the exact same time, could not do it.

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WHAT THIS VIDEO COVERS

→ Specification P.13/36 and the strange 1936 requirement that accidentally gave the Lancaster a 33-foot bomb bay
→ The Rolls-Royce Vulture X-24 engine, why Avro chose it, and exactly how it failed
→ The two fleet groundings of April and June 1941 that ended the Manchester
→ Roy Chadwick's decision to keep the airframe and change everything else
→ Prototype BT308, first flown at Ringway on 9 January 1941, and the nine-month turnaround
→ Why four Merlins was the available answer, not the clever one, and what mass production really means
→ The Heinkel He 177 Greif and the Daimler-Benz DB 606, Germany's identical mistake, two engines geared to one propeller
→ Why the He 177 earned the nickname Reichsfeuerzeug from its own crews
→ The four-engine He 177 B, flown in December 1943, five years after Ernst Heinkel first asked for it
→ Honest assessment: the Lancaster's escape hatch problem and its defensive blind spot

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THE NUMBER AT THE CENTRE OF IT

202 Manchesters were built before the aircraft was abandoned.
From that failure came 7,377 Lancasters.
Same firm. Same designer. Same fuselage. A longer wing and four different engines.

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PEOPLE FEATURED

→ Roy Chadwick, Avro's chief designer, the man who saw the airframe was sound
→ Hans-Werner Lerche, principal test pilot at Erprobungsstelle Rechlin, who ferried a repaired Lancaster up the Baltic coast in June 1944
→ Squadron Leader John Dering Nettleton VC, 44 Squadron, who led the Augsburg raid of 17 April 1942
→ Flying Officer Leslie Manser VC, 50 Squadron, who won the Victoria Cross flying a Manchester over Cologne
→ Sergeant Norman Jackson VC, 106 Squadron, the flight engineer who climbed onto the wing of a burning Lancaster at 20,000 feet and survived
→ Sir Wilfrid Freeman, the procurement chief behind the Spitfire, the Mosquito and the Lancaster

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MAJOR RESEARCH SOURCES

→ Imperial War Museum, Bomber Command collections and oral history recordings
→ The National Archives, Air Ministry Specification P.13/36 and associated papers
→ RAF Museum, Avro Lancaster production and airframe records
→ Rolls-Royce Heritage Trust material on the Vulture and Merlin programmes
→ Hans-Werner Lerche, Luftwaffe Test Pilot, Flying Captured Allied Aircraft of World War 2, Jane's, 1980
→ Manfred Griehl and Joachim Dressel, Heinkel He 177, 277, 274, Airlife, 1998
→ Robert Kirby, Avro Manchester, The Legend Behind the Lancaster
→ Ernst Heinkel, Stormy Life, memoir, 1956
→ Webster and Frankland, The Strategic Air Offensive Against Germany, the official history
→ London Gazette citations for the Victoria Cross awards to Nettleton, Manser and Jackson

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FURTHER READING

→ Harry Holmes, Avro Lancaster, The Definitive Record
→ Leo McKinstry, Lancaster, The Second World War's Greatest Bomber
→ Tony Iveson and Brian Milton, Lancaster, The Biography
→ Robert Kirby, Avro Manchester, The Legend Behind the Lancaster
→ Manfred Griehl, Heinkel He 177 Greif, Heinkel's Strategic Bomber
→ Sir Wilfrid Freeman, the biography by Anthony Furse, Wilfrid Freeman, The Genius Behind Allied Survival and Air Supremacy
→ Freeman Dyson, Disturbing the Universe, for a first-hand account of the escape hatch argument inside Bomber Command

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A QUESTION FOR THE COMMENTS

If your father, grandfather or uncle served in Bomber Command, or worked in the aircraft factories at Chadderton, Woodford, Longbridge or Trafford Park, leave their name and their unit or their works below. These stories are how the memory survives.

Subscribe to British Bastion for long-form British military engineering history, told properly.

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Historical documentary for educational purposes. Archival material is presented in its historical context.

#AvroLancaster #RAF #MilitaryHistory #AviationHistory #BritishBastion

20 Comments

@AndrewGrange-r7v 2 months ago

Looking at the thumbnail , I never knew Britain had a wingless bomber with four engines sticking sideways out of the fusilage . They never showed that in my bumper book of bombers!

@pauljohnstone4723 2 months ago

Aussie here. My twin uncles Leo (Pat) and Kevin Curtin were pilot officer/navigators, flew with 103 Squadron at Elsham Wolds. As far as we can find, they were the only twins to fly in the same squadron and certainly their squadron (there is a picture of them in the museum) . Kevin completed his tour and was waiting for Pat to finish before they were to leave to go to be instructors. Due to a shortage of crews, Pat's tour was extended and he as killed on the 3rd of the 5 flights. I have seen his file (National Archives of Australia) It contains a detailed description of the crash from a German spotter. Half the crew got out and 3 died. The plane was carrying a full load of incendiary bombs and burnt for 12 hours. There is a lot more detail in the file. Pat was MIA until 1949 and my grandmother would never believe that he was dead.

@BobVeldkamp-l9l 2 weeks ago

I remember being a young boy listening to a 4 engines being started in Auckland, New Zealand, as a demonstration. Absolutely a treat for a lad like myself

@greybeardp 2 months ago

"Stand at the nose wheel of a Lancaster ..." and you won't be standing at a Lancaster - because a Lancaster doesn't have a nose wheel. 🙄😒😢

@WW2Uncovered-i3k 2 weeks ago

This was a fascinating piece of WWII aviation history. The way the story connects the Manchester, Lancaster, and He 177 shows how much engineering success depends on being willing to recognize failure and change direction. The details about the men who actually flew these aircraft also gave the story real weight. What an incredible chapter of aviation history.

@firegunner260 1 month ago

Here’s a little fact for everyone. Out of the 7377 Lancasters built, a dozen or so were preserved. A handful of those can taxi under their own power. Only 2 still fly today. One in Britain, one (a Lancaster Mk X - tail number FM213 - affectionately known as VeRA) in Hamilton, Ontario, Canada. VeRA was produced at the Miltion production line by Victory Aircraft, but came a little too late to see combat in WW2. She now is at the Canadian Warplane Heritage Museum in the same city where Victory Aircraft headquarters once resided

@beau_geste 2 months ago

My father flew several missions in the Avro Manchester. On the night of 29th April 1942, having dropped mines in Kiel Canal, he was shot down by a Messerschmitt 110 night fighter. A bloody encounter in which two of the bomber’s crew were killed and the gunner of the Messerschmitt was also mortally wounded.

@colinbirks5403 1 month ago

Ex RAF. 206 sqd Shackleton Mk3's in the early 60's. Still have fond memories of the Lanc derivative.

@MrAlwaysBlue 2 months ago

Though the story is well known, thank you for expanding on it. My grandfather, Arthur Levio, was retained labour during the war and worked on the Lancaster at Chadderton. He did his service immediately after the war as an engineer in the Royal Navy.
I lived around the corner from the Chadderton factory as a teenager. I vividly recall a fly over of the ill fated Nimrod AEW around 1980. My Mum recalls Vulcan fuselages being transported by road from there.
Alas, the factory is now just a wholesale distribution centre.

@dennispahl7098 2 months ago

Capt Eric Brown has flown over 487 aircraft. That tops all.

@daviddellit8344 10 days ago

Thanks for this video and info. Dad was a bomber aimer / front gunner / co-pilot on Lancasters. Keeping his flying hours up he got to fly G for George now at the Canberra War Memorial and he also crewed on a mission in G for George.

@MGBGT-k6r 2 months ago

Both my grandfather and grandmother worked at Avro on the Lancaster. (It’s how they met). My grandfather wouldn’t have have a bad word said against the Manchester and still called the Lancaster a Manchester, he just saw them as different versions of the same plane, intricately part of the same family ❤

@stevehill4615 2 months ago

My aunt Vera (rip) worked as a control cable rigger at avro's (she was 5'1" so could crawl into the small spaces) in Manchester during the war.

@magloyd4907 1 month ago

My late mother, Elsie, worked on the Lancaster, riveting the fuselage, at the Baginton site near Coventry.

@philhumphries1570 2 months ago

My Father, Flt Lt K J Humphries was the Flt Engineer and sometimes Pilot, on Lancs after Sterlings. He served on Lancs with 622 Squadron flying from Mildenhall for the duration. He was the only married member of the crew. Mildenhall is now a USAF (KC135 tanker) base. The USAF Treat the facility with the respect it has earned.

@mikewhite5511 1 month ago

In my university vacation job, I used to get a lift to Cheadle from a guy close to retirement who referred to colleagues who had worked at "A.V.Roe" - I guess there was a lot of history there !

@Phoenix-g9h 2 months ago

My late father Tom Fannon flew as a Bomb aimer with 37 squadron flying Vickers Wellington X from Amendola in Italy. He refused point blank to fly in the Liberator after 37 Squadron re-equipped with the American aircraft.

@stephenpointon 2 months ago

My grandfather worked at Longbridge on the Lancaster as a welder on the engine mounts. His name was William Ronald Shaw

@984francis 2 months ago

4 engines facing sideways along the starboard side of the fuselage. Right. Got it.

@Millerman77 2 months ago

Further to my previous comment, my Dad, Uncle and Grandfather worked at Avro Woodford and Chadderton, so it's with immense pride that my Grandfather was a Chief Forman working at Chadderton on The Lancaster.