[Milsurplus] "Lancaster" - no copilot

[James Whartenby]

Yea, the Avro Lancaster gets no respect.
Single pilot since Great Briton didn't have the manpower.  Great Briton had a population of about 50 million in 1941 while the US had about 133 million.  The Flight engineer assisted the pilot as part of his duties so the pilot wasn't totally on his own.  Most Lancaster pilots started flying missions with less then 200 hours total flying time.  Average life of a Lancaster was about 40 hours which seems to be typical of WW2 aircraft.  Reliability wasn't a big concern since the chance of the Lancaster wearing out was remote; again the same for most WW2 aircraft.
The Lancaster had a crew of 7 vs a crew of 10 for the B-17 and a crew of 11 for the B-24 and B-29.  Bomb load of the Lancaster wasn't equaled by USA aircraft until the B-29 came along.  The Lancaster carried a normal load of 14,000 pounds in a 33 foot long unobstructed bomb bay while the B-17 carried 4,500 pounds and the B-24 carried 5,000 pound bomb load for an 800 mile mission.  The B-29 carried 12,000 pounds at medium altitude and had a 1400 mile range.  The Lancaster could be and was modified to carry it's own weight in bombs!
If you have Amazon Prime Internet TV, there is a movie titled "Bombers over Germany - WW2" which is in two parts.  First is a color training film for Lancaster crews which has good views of the inside of the Lancaster including radios and radar.  The second part of the film is the "Memphis Bell."Jim

      From: Kenneth G. Gordon <kgordon2006 at frontier.com>
 To: Peter Gottlieb <kb2vtl at gmail.com> 
Cc: Milsurplus at mailman.qth.net
 Sent: Monday, October 2, 2017 12:03 PM
 Subject: Re: [Milsurplus] "Lancaster" - no copilot
   
On 1 Oct 2017 at 21:28, Peter Gottlieb wrote:

> Easier to build planes than train pilots?

Maybe. Even "probably". Still seems downright dumb to me. What about the other crew?

Ken W7EKB

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