Despite being pretty much a mid/late war aircraft, the most well known RAF bomber of WWII is the Lancaster. This is most likely because it was used on the famous dam raids by 617 squadron and the movie produced in the mid 1950s about the event.

When the RAF entered WWII, its heavy bomber was the Wellington. A capable aircraft that served throughout the war, but it just did not have the range or payload that was required. An aircraft developed to supercede it was the Avro Manchester. This aircraft was blessed with a large bomb bay that could carry a good payload. Unfortunately, the aircraft was plagued by unreliable Vulture engines. Despite several hundred aircraft being built and several squadrons operating the type, it just was not a suggessful bomber due to its poor reliability.

The basic airframe was fine and Avro undertook a program to modify the airframe to accept either four Merlin or Hercules engines. This pretty well took care of the reliability issues and the Lancaster went on to be the most successful of the British heavies. Even post war it soldiered on in the air arms of several nations.

This book looks at the development of the Lancaster and spends quite a bit of time on the Manchester. I'm glad that it does as there is not all that much written about the plane other than as a foot note to most Lancaster books. In addition to the Lancaster, those planes developed from it such as the Lincoln and the Shackleton are also covered, albeit briefly.

Many of the plane's more famous bombing missions such as the 1,000 plane raid and the dam buster mission as well as the very late war 'Tallboy' missions are covered in a bit more detail. Full of superb period photos, some nice art work and a few profiles, it is a very nicely done book that reads well. It is a book that I enjoyed reading and one that I can easily recommend to you.

June 2015

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