Avro Lancaster

About

The Avro Lancaster was the work of Roy Chadwick at Avro, the British aircraft manufacturer based at Manchester's Chadderton plant. Developed from the unsuccessful twin-engine Avro Manchester by replacing its troubled Rolls-Royce Vultures with four Rolls-Royce Merlin engines, the Lancaster prototype made its first flight on January 9, 1941. The type entered RAF Bomber Command service in February 1942 and went on to become the workhorse of Britain's strategic bombing campaign over Germany.

The Lancaster's defining mission was Operation Chastise — the May 17, 1943 "Dambusters" raid against the Möhne, Eder, and Sorpe dams in the Ruhr Valley, flown by 617 Squadron under Wing Commander Guy Gibson with the specially-developed Barnes Wallis "bouncing bomb." The Dambusters raid demonstrated both the Lancaster's heavy-payload capability and the precision-attack techniques that would characterize Bomber Command operations through the rest of the war. Lancaster crews also delivered the 12,000-lb Tallboy and 22,000-lb Grand Slam earthquake bombs, the largest conventional weapons of WWII.

Total Lancaster production reached approximately 7,377 airframes, and the type continued in RAF service into the early 1950s. The unmistakable Lancaster silhouette — four engines on a long high wing, mid-fuselage tail group with twin vertical fins — is one of the most-modeled RAF heavy bomber subjects in modern RC scale flying, typically tackled at giant-scale.

In the simulator

A demanding four-engine warbird. Substantial inertia, four-engine throttle coordination, and the kind of unhurried pattern flying a real Bomber Command pilot trained for. A natural sibling of the B-17-FlyingFortress (Scale Bombers pack) — two of the great Allied heavy bombers of WWII.