The flying death trap that helped save civilisation
It’s 75 years since the Lancaster bomber f irst roared aloft. So why do our leaders still refuse to celebrate the giant – and its awesomely brave crews – that smashed the Nazi war machine?
After months of death and destruction — not least the retreat from Dunkirk and the Battle of Britain — few of those present had any idea that they were witnessing a turning point in Britain’s wartime fortunes. It’s now 75 years since that crisp January morning when a small crowd gathered at Manchester’s ringway Airport to see if a new prototype could get off the ground. Its creator, roy Chadwick, had even brought along his elder daughter, Margaret, to share the moment.
the test pilot, Sam Brown, revved up the four engines and the elegant monster tore down the runway and into the sky. It circled the airfield, banked to left and right, came back down and parked. As the crowd rushed to hear the verdict, the fuselage door flew open.
A beaming Brown did not mince his words. ‘It was marvellous!’ he declared.
‘Daddy, you must be very pleased,’ Margaret told her father. ‘Yes, I am,’ Chadwick replied, ‘but one cannot rest on one’s laurels.’
His colleague at the Avro aircraft company, general manager roy Dobson, was l ess restrained. ‘ Oh boy, what an aeroplane!’ he cried. He wasn’t exaggerating. they had all just seen the maiden flight of the mighty Lancaster.
Little more than 12 months later, the Lancaster was on its first operational bombing raid over enemy territory, having gone from drawing board to combat in just two years.
By the end of the war, 7,377 Lancasters would have carried out more than 150,000 missions — including the supremely audacious Dambuster raids of 1943 — and dropped more than 600,000 tons of bombs on the enemy, a feat unequalled by any other plane. Yet 3,249 aircraft and their crews would be lost in action.
Historians and philosophers will be debating the rights and wrongs of the royal Air force’s bombing strategy long after the last Lancaster has rusted away. But s ome t hi ngs are beyond dispute. first, that Britain’s ability to take the war to Germany was transformed by Chadwick’s creation.
Pre-Lancaster, much rAf bombing was hit-and-miss stuff. thereafter, the German war effort really took a pounding. In terms of range, speed, bomb load and sheer agility, the Lancaster was in a league of its own — and its pilots adored it. ‘You used to treat the Lanc like a Spitfire,’ as veteran Michael Maltin put it.
Second, the men who flew it had the most perilous posting of the entire war — Bomber Command. All volunteers, they flew not just in Lancasters but Halifaxes, Wellingtons, Stirlings, Mosquitos, Bristols and others.
their chance of survival was considerably worse than if they’d been a soldier in the Great War trenches. Indeed, russian roulette would have been safer. Half of them — 55,573 men — did not survive the war. Only 30 per cent made it through without being killed, injured or captured.
On the 75th birthday of their flagship, then, one might have expected an acknowledgement of this momentous occasion in British aviation history. Nothing extravagant — a parade, perhaps, or a tV programme — or postage stamp? there was a proper song and dance when the Spitfire marked its 75th in 2006.
THe Imperial War Museum has at least organised a series of f amily days around t he Lancaster on display at Duxford, Cambridgeshire. there is also talk of a dinner next month at rAf Coningsby, home of Britain’s last airworthy Lancaster.
But so far, it hasn’t flickered on Whitehall’s commemorative radar. Nor, for that matter, has anything been planned to mark the 80th anniversary of Bomber Command itself which takes place in July.
Perhaps the Ministry of Defence feels we’ve had too many anniversaries. In addition to the 200th of Waterloo and the 75th of the Battle of Britain l ast year, the MoD was spurred into action by the Daily Mail’s demand for national recognition of the 70th anniversaries of Ve Day and VJ Day — celebrating victory in europe and Japan. this year, it will be involved in major centenary events to commemorate the Battles of the Somme and Jutland.
unhappily, the dwindling band of Bomber Command veterans are wellused to such lamentable oversights by the bureaucrats. At the end of the war itself, to their enduring sadness, they were side-lined by everyone from Winston Churchill down.
the work of Bomber Command was omitted from the Prime Minister’s Ve Day speech. there was no medal for the men. their leader, Air Chief Marshal Sir Arthur Harris, was the only senior wartime commander denied a peerage. the devastation wreaked on German civilian targets was simply an embarrassment.
It helps to explain why the bomber boys had to wait until 2012 — by which time most survivors had passed away — before a magnificent memorial to all those who never returned was finally unveiled in London next to Hyde Park Corner.
It was built only through the dogged determination of the veterans and their loyal supporters, and the generosity of a few philanthropists and members of the public, not least many of our readers.
Now the few surviving veterans — all over 90 — have one further goal.
to ensure that future generations understand what they went through and why, they have chosen this month’s anniversary of the Lancaster to launch a fund-raising campaign for a permanent museum and education centre telling the full story. If the Battle of Britain is forever associated with dogfights in summer skies over the Home Counties, the work of the bomber boys was done very often by night, often in freezing conditions, from the bleaker parts of eastern england.
In their spiritual home of Lincolnshire — which calls itself ‘Bomber County’ — the first phase of the new International Bomber Command Centre was unveiled three months ago.
the site overlooks Lincoln Cathedral, which for so many pilots and aircrew was their final glimpse of home, the landmark from which they took their bearings.
It already draws visitors from all over the world (Bomber Command included thousands of Australians, Canadians, New Zealanders and many other nationalities). the site is dominated by a memorial spire the height of a Lancaster’s wingspan, soaring above a wall which will, in time, be engraved with the name of every single fatality, including ground crews killed in accidents and air raids. It has already inspired a new choral anthem, ‘Strike hard, Strike sure’ — the Bomber Command motto.
A state-of-the-art building — to be called, fittingly, the Chadwick Centre — will not only bring the world of the bomber boys to life but explore the complexities and debates around the bombing offensive.
It will include testimonies from those on the receiving end. reconciliation is the imperative, not triumphalism. this week, the veterans were thrilled to learn the Heritage Lottery fund has awarded £3.1 million to provide educational facilities and a digital archive.
But first the building must be erected, and that is going to cost £3.8 million. the trustees hope to persuade one million people to donate £3 each. It is, surely, long overdue. the scale of sacrifice and enduring sense of loss — for a father, uncle or brother — were reflected in the huge demand for a ticket to see the Queen open the London memorial in 2012.
the new centre is also a worthy tribute to roy Chadwick, killed in a flying accident two years after the war ended and before he had the chance to see another of his great visions, the Vulcan, take shape.
During World War I, he had worked on the Avro 504 — built in greater numbers than any other British aircraft. In World War II, he not only designed the Lancaster but planes
like the Avro York, workhorse of the Berlin airlift after the war. His Vulcan would serve right through the Cold War to the Falklands.
It is extraordinary that one man left his mark on every conflict from 1914 to 1982 and yet had just a CBE to his name before his untimely death in 1947. Compare his legacy with that of today’s recipients of knighthoods and peerages.
His family are touched that his name will be on the new centre. ‘It is super that he’s being recognised like this,’ his surviving daughter, Rosemary Lapham, tells me from her Shropshire home. She recalls the loving, playful father who would enliven every car journey by treating it as an imaginary balloon ride.
Obsessed with planes since childhood, he could not complete a crossword without covering the page in designs and sums — always with his beloved silver propelling pencil.
‘He worked so hard but the war wasn’t really discussed at home,’ says Rosemary, 85, who only gleaned a sense of her father’s importance after the Dambusters Raids, when Guy Gibson and his squadron of Lancasters became national heroes. ‘People seemed to know all about my father after that.’
His admirers included George VI and Queen Elizabeth, who visited the Avro factory outside Manchester. ‘The king and my father sat in the cockpit of a Lancaster and talked and talked about planes,’ Rosemary recalls.
But the new centre, she explains, is really about the men who flew his planes and never got the f ull recognition they deserved.
Among the veterans raising funds for the new appeal is Syd Marshall, 91, from Boston, a flight engineer with 100 Squadron who flew 36 missions in a Lancaster.
‘I was just 20 when I did the last one — not even old enough to vote!’ he chuckles. ‘The Lancaster was the star of the show, no question.
‘I flew in other planes like the Halifax but the Lancaster was ahead of its time. Everyone wanted to be in one.’
HIS priority is that the new centre is up and running while veterans like him are around to see it. ‘I’m one of the young ones but pretty soon there won’t be anyone left,’ he says. That is why these anniversaries really do matter. The fact that Whitehall has overlooked the birthday of the Lancaster is, in a sense, rather fitting.
As the author Leo McKinstry explains in his excellent book, Lancaster, the aircraft was born despite, rather than because of, the men from the Air Ministry.
Whitehall was wedded to other bombers, including the Halifax and a dismal new twin-engined aircraft called the Manchester, which pilots loathed. It was Chadwick who had the idea of taking the Manchester’s air frame and sticking four RollsRoyce Merlin engines on it. Even after that spectacular maiden flight
and dazzling test runs at the start of 1941, the top brass overlooked its potential. In the end, Chadwick’s determination and the heroic performance of the Lancaster crews proved them wrong.
‘It was an iconic aircraft which was absolutely critical to the outcome of the war,’ says the former defence minister, Sir Gerald Howarth, Tory MP for Aldershot and himself a pilot
‘It gave us the capacity to destroy the German arms industry, without which we would not have been able to hit back as we did on D-Day.
‘The Lancaster was a deterrent and it has lessons for today. There should be an appropriate way to remind people of that.
‘It is a great pity that Bomber Command suffered from the appalling post-war funk which included, it must be said, Winston Churchill himself.’
Perhaps the answer is to follow the example of Fighter Command. In 1942, Prime Minister Churchill was asked by a Liberal MP, Sir Henry Morris-Jones, if September 15 — the turning point in the Battle of Britain — could be designated ‘Air Trafalgar Day’.
At the time, Churchill thought not, given that the war was far from over. In 1945, however, the date was chosen for a national service of thanksgiving and would, in time, become known as Battle of Britain Day.
Could the RAF, perhaps, designate a date in the calendar as Bomber Command Day?
Syd Marshall and Rosemary Lapham like the idea. No one would be obliged to do anything but it would give the veterans and their families a focal point. Sir Gerald says he will write to the Ministry of Defence about it and suggests May 16 or 17 — the date of the Dambuster Raids.
Another candidate might be March 31, the date of the 1944 Nuremberg Raid when the RAF suffered the worst death toll in its history — with more than 540 men lost in a single night. Or they might choose January 9, the date on which that first Lancaster took flight.
As Sir Arthur Harris wrote in his letter of condolence to Roy Chadwick’s daughter, Margaret: ‘Your father never received at it he of the recognition and honours due from the nation.
‘The Lancaster took the major part in winning the war. On land, it forced the Germans to retrieve from their armies half their sorely needed anti-tank guns for use as anti-aircraft guns…The Lancaster won the naval war by destroying over one- third of the German submarines in their ports.
‘Above all, the Lancaster won the air war by taking the major part in forcing Germany to concentrate on building and using fighters to defend the Fatherland, thereby depriving their armies.’
A belated, but very happy 75th, dear Avro Lancaster.