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The whole subject of decreasing the Lancaster`s loss rate by increasing its speed (with the removal of its defensive armament) is obviously very interesting. What we do know is that Freeman Dyson did put forward his theories at the time and therefore inclusion of that is definitely relevant in an article about the Lancaster. How deeply this theory should be gone into in an article on Lancasters is more of a question. Personally I would say some supporting statistics are relevant.
The American air force had many theories on bombing and survivability with heavy defensive armament which they which they subsequently had to change in the light of experience. Comparatively quickly they realised unescorted daytime bombing raids over Germany resulted in unsustainable loss rates. Soon after the war they also came round to the theory that speed is the best defence when they removed the defensive armament from their Convair B36s in their Featherweight III programme.
This forum thread on bomber speed v defensive armament has much interest, particularly
this graph of heavy bomber v Mosquito loss rates and BC v US 8th Air Force loss rates.
I quoted the 0.5% Mosquito loss rate (in the Battle of Berlin) from Max Hasting`s book "Bomber Command", but the linked to post above quotes 1.1%. The latter is obviously still far lower than the 5.5% of the heavies but does anyone know which is correct, 0.5% or 1.1% ?--
JustinSmith (
talk)
08:28, 29 August 2012 (UTC)
I agree that a speed optimised Lanc could never compete in loss rates with a Mossie, but, on the other hand, it`s illogical to state that a 300/310mph Lanc could be caught "just as easily" as a 287mph one. On the altitude thing, I`m not an expert in aircraft performance envelopes but surely a lightened speed optimised Lanc could fly higher than the standard model ? I think Dyson had it right and I think the fact BC never even tested his theory is an absolute disgrace condidering it may well have saved the lives of some of the bomber crews. But there`s a further point, a Lanc with no armament would be significantly cheaper to build and operate, one would have thought that, if nothing else, would appeal to BC. -- JustinSmith ( talk) 07:34, 30 September 2012 (UTC)
On Mosquito losses, Max Hastings is slightly over the odds. In late 1943 Hereward de Havilland reported that the two Oboe Mosquito squadrons, 105 and 109, had flown 750 night sorties for the loss of three aircraft, 0.4 per cent. (Bowyer and Sharp, Mosquito, p357.) Total Mosquito losses on night bomber operations from May 1943 to May 1945 were 108 from 26,936 sorties, which is also 0.4 per cent. On speed, top speed is not important, except for day fighters, since a piston-engined aircraft can't use full power for more than five minutes, or in some cases three minutes, without engine damage. The RAF bombers, and the German night fighters chasing them, had to travel around at cruise speed. The fighters could only speed up for short periods. But to gain real immunity from interception, a bomber would have to be faster at cruise power than the enemy's best interceptor at full boost. The only bomber to achieve this, except the German Arado 234 jet, was the Mosquito BIX or BXVI, which, at 30,000ft, was faster at cruise than a Focke-Wulf 190 going flat out. Dyson supposed that an unarmed Lanc would cruise 50mph faster than an armed one with the same load. Maybe, but the unarmed transatlantic mail Lancs with four-ton loads weren't quite that fast, I don't think. Still, if Dyson was right, the Lanc would then cruise at 260mph outbound and 290mph home. This would make it very difficult for either an Me110 or a Ju88 to catch it without cooking the engines, but the Germans would think of something -- they'd have to. Mosquitos they mostly just ignored, but they couldn't ignore Lancasters, which posed a far bigger menace. Re-tooling the production lines for fast He219s in larger numbers might have been a possibility, despite the disruption. The unarmed Lanc's speed margin would be fairly small before target, and when it did get intercepted the pilot, having no gunners to keep lookout, wouldn't know the fighter was coming. About half of all interceptions against armed Lancs failed because the gunners spotted the fighter and the Lanc corkscrewed away and lost the fighter -- the actual guns were not as significant as the eyes of the men behind them. So the unarmed Lanc might have a certain advantage for a time, but would be more vulnerable if improved interceptors whittled that advantage down. You can see why Bomber Command didn't like the idea. Plus, as with re-tooling for the He219 on the other side, the disruption would be impractical unless it was absolutely necessary. As the loss rate for armed Lancs never became unaffordable in the long term, considering the rate of replacements for crew and aircraft, it never was absolutely necessary. So they didn't do it. -Hugo Barnacle 87.114.45.227 ( talk) 15:19, 16 November 2012 (UTC)
Er... it was against Leutnant Arnim Faber's famous captured Fw190A that the de Havilland company made the performance comparisons. The RAF did have a captured 109G which was used for trials against the Mustang in late '43, but 30,000 was some way above its rated altitude and it would have been pushed to catch a Mosquito. Khamba Tendal ( talk) 21:45, 21 December 2015 (UTC)
What do the sources say Dyson said about Lancasters (rather than RAF heavy bombers in general) without defensive armament? Assembling Dyson's arguments for him is OR. GraemeLeggett ( talk) 19:07, 16 November 2012 (UTC)
I later applied the same method of analysis to the question of whether experience helped crews to survive. Bomber Command told the crews that their chances of survival would increase with experience, and the crews believed it. They were told, After you have got through the first few operations, things will get better. This idea was important for morale at a time when the fraction of crews surviving to the end of a 30-operation tour was only about 25 percent. I subdivided the experienced and inexperienced crews on each operation and did the analysis, and again, the result was clear. Experience did not reduce loss rates. The cause of losses, whatever it was, killed novice and expert crews impartially. This result contradicted the official dogma, and the Command never accepted it. I blame the ORS, and I blame myself in particular, for not taking this result seriously enough. The evidence showed that the main cause of losses was an attack that gave experienced crews no chance either to escape or to defend themselves. If we had taken the evidence more seriously, we might have discovered Schräge Musik in time to respond with effective countermeasures. Smeed and I agreed that Bomber Command could substantially reduce losses by ripping out two gun turrets, with all their associated hardware, from each bomber and reducing each crew from seven to five. The gun turrets were costly in aerodynamic drag as well as in weight. The turretless bombers would have flown 50 miles an hour faster and would have spent much less time over Germany. The evidence that experience did not reduce losses confirmed our opinion that the turrets were useless. The turrets did not save bombers, because the gunners rarely saw the fighters that killed them. But our proposal to rip out the turrets went against the official mythology of the gallant gunners defending their crewmates. Dickins never had the courage to push the issue seriously in his conversations with Harris. If he had, Harris might even have listened, and thousands of crewmen might have been saved.
The whole point of the Germans developing
Schräge Musik was so that the night fighter wasn't exposed to defensive fire from the bomber's rear turret.
I thought it was a commonly accepted fact that the most important contribution of the gunners wasn`t to shoot down attacking fighters it was to try and see them before they had a chance to attack the bomber. They`d then communicate the sighting to the pilot ASAP who would corkscrew as fast as poss (unless he was in a Mk1 or Mk2 Halifax......)--
JustinSmith (
talk)
20:17, 30 September 2014 (UTC)
There doesn't seem to be any record of those 'tests'. And many pilots did use evasive action all the time over enemy territory except the bomb run. And the rear turret had ammunition for almost a minute and a half of firing time, about six times longer than most fighters were capable of. Khamba Tendal ( talk) 19:58, 27 August 2015 (UTC)
The problem with radar of course is that once the Germans had the ferquencies they then used it to home in on the bombers (various sources incl "Bomber Command" by Hastings). With the benefit of hindsight if I`d been a bomber pilot in WWII I`d have switched off my radar !-- JustinSmith ( talk) 09:09, 3 October 2014 (UTC)
There are plenty of records of "tests" if you know where to look. Your lack of knowledge of the subject does not mean they didn't occur. They are overlooked by the pop history books because a lot of it was classified until well after the war, and as they rarely contain any original research they often repeat the same errors and omissions as the books they copy. 90 seconds of continuous firing time hardly allows for indiscriminate firing during a multi-hour mission, even before the gunner's training kicks in, which basically limits firing to when a target is in sight, not least because it makes the bomber more visible, while every maneuver the bomber makes slows it down, so is only used when needed as the faster the bomber gets out and back, the less likely it is to be attacked.NiD.29 14:04, 3 October 2015 (UTC)
It is possibly worth bearing in mind that Freeman Dyson was all of nineteen in 1943. He was a very unimportant person at Bomber Command and had no university degree (he didn't attend college until after the war). Nor did he ever fly on a bomber. He had no idea what he was talking about except in theory and his 'get rid of the gun turrets' idea was a fairly typical teenager's Perfect Solution to Everything. He didn't know, for instance -- because nobody did until German combat reports were analysed after the war -- that half of all interceptions by German night fighters failed because the gunners spotted the fighter coming in and the bomber evaded (meaning that his 'perfect solution' would simply have doubled RAF losses). Nor did he know that, while the Germans only lost one night fighter to the bombers' return fire for every ten bombers shot down, the number of German night fighters that actually intercepted the bomber stream was usually less than ten per cent of the bomber force. (Because German night-flying training was not much good, since the Dutch flak killed most of the Luftwaffe's expert blind-flying instructors when they were doubling as Ju52 transport pilots during the disastrous airborne invasion of Holland in May 1940.) Only one-quarter to one-third of the German night fighters scrambled against a given RAF raid ever made contact with the bomber stream and carried out interceptions. This means that RAF bombers inflicted higher proportional losses on the enemy night fighters than they themselves sustained. They couldn't have done that without gunners. Khamba Tendal ( talk) 20:06, 21 December 2015 (UTC)
References
In the collection of crime stories of the Dutch author van de Wetering "The cat of Brigadier de Gier" it is mentioned that rear gunners in Lancasters had "Maxim" machine guns at their disposal. This seems to me unprobable. However - is it correct or an error of the author? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 84.163.117.219 ( talk) 09:52, 3 March 2013 (UTC)
Ignore - I misread what the page was saying. Mcdeans ( talk) 02:12, 20 September 2013 (UTC)
Fascinating insight into RAF Bomber Command's initial failure to discover Schräge Musik and develop effective countermeasures to it, and the shocking INEFFECTIVENESS of Lancaster gun turrets (and Bomber Command's refusal to accept these findings, costing the lives of thousands of additional crew) is provided in this web-accessible article from MIT Technology Review Magazine by Dr. Freeman Dyson:
"
A Failure of Intelligence" | By Dr.
Freeman Dyson on November 1, 2006 | MIT Technology Review Magazine | November/December 2006
Prominent physicist Freeman Dyson recalls the time he spent developing analytical methods to help the British Royal Air Force bomb German targets during World War II:
...I later applied the same method of analysis to the question of whether experience helped crews to survive. Bomber Command told the crews that their chances of survival would increase with experience, and the crews believed it. They were told, After you have got through the first few operations, things will get better. This idea was important for morale at a time when the fraction of crews surviving to the end of a 30-operation tour was only about 25 percent. I subdivided the experienced and inexperienced crews on each operation and did the analysis, and again, the result was clear. Experience did not reduce loss rates. The cause of losses, whatever it was, killed novice and expert crews impartially. This result contradicted the official dogma, and the Command never accepted it. I blame the ORS, and I blame myself in particular, for not taking this result seriously enough. The evidence showed that the main cause of losses was an attack that gave experienced crews no chance either to escape or to defend themselves. If we had taken the evidence more seriously, we might have discovered Schräge Musik in time to respond with effective countermeasures. Smeed and I agreed that Bomber Command could substantially reduce losses by ripping out two gun turrets, with all their associated hardware, from each bomber and reducing each crew from seven to five. The gun turrets were costly in aerodynamic drag as well as in weight. The turretless bombers would have flown 50 miles an hour faster and would have spent much less time over Germany. The evidence that experience did not reduce losses confirmed our opinion that the turrets were useless. The turrets did not save bombers, because the gunners rarely saw the fighters that killed them. But our proposal to rip out the turrets went against the official mythology of the gallant gunners defending their crewmates. Dickins never had the courage to push the issue seriously in his conversations with Harris. If he had, Harris might even have listened, and thousands of crewmen might have been saved.
Fascinating stuff. Check out the full article, which is applicable to many RAF bomber command/ww2 air war subjects on Wikipedia. I'm not sure why this astounding information hasn't been integrated into the material on the Lancaster already, other than, as Dr. Dyson says, their findings contradicted Bomber Command mythology and thus the official record ("This result contradicted the official dogma, and the Command never accepted it.")... Az x2 19:17, 20 October 2013 (UTC)
Well the Germans could have "thrown up almost anything that flew" but the planes would have to have been fast enough to get up to a Lancaster`s altitude, catch it up, then shoot it down. I still don`t see why BC have at least tested the theories, as far as I know they never did. Lastly, Freeman talks about two turrets, since the Lancaster had three what about the other one ? Or have I missed something ?-- JustinSmith ( talk) 12:51, 2 July 2014 (UTC)
Which two turrets did he mean ? The Front and Dorsal ? That`d still leave the rear turret, arguably the most important anyway, and not just for its guns but for the eyes of the gunner. Much extra weight though, plus the extra man, another death on any shot down bomber......-- JustinSmith ( talk) 10:52, 4 July 2014 (UTC)
AND the high drag night paint and given aerodynamic fairings gained only 30 mph in top speed over a stock Lancaster Mk.1, not enough to allow it to outrun night fighters, and without stripping the night paint, the gain would have been even smaller as the RDM2a black paint used on the Lancaster was tested on a Mosquito in special trials and the top speed dropped by 26 mph
On the matt paint thing I was reading Cheshire`s biography (by Morris) and it states on p107 that the substitution of semi gloss for the original matt paint on Halifaxes added (only) 5mph to the speed. --
JustinSmith (
talk)
09:23, 3 October 2014 (UTC)
Minor issue, the performance data, "Maximum speed: 282 mph (246 knots, 454 km/h) at 63,000 lb (29,000 kg) and 13,000 lb (5,900 kg) altitude", makes little sense. The units of altitude are wrong. Possibly meant to read as, "Maximum speed: 282 mph (246 knots, 454 km/h) at 63,000 lb (29,000 kg) and 13,000 ft (3,962 m) altitude". Don;t have the reference to check.
Llynglas ( talk) 20:54, 12 March 2015 (UTC)
Can I ask for the recently-removed paragraph on Dyson's theory to be restored? Even though it wasn't an implemented theory nor one that was universally accepted to be operationally practical (see the above discussion), it's still a well-cited and relatively well known argument that later became the operational norm of the post-war bombers and was voiced by a prominent thinker. My opinion is that it probably deserves some coverage, and the previously present paragraph did a fair job. Kyteto ( talk) 15:00, 2 April 2017 (UTC)
Because it is causing a Checkwiki error #73: "Invalid ISBN-13", I removed the ISBN from the entry:
Chorlton, Martyn. Avro Lancaster Mk I and Mk III: Database. Cudham, Kent, UK: Kelsey Publishing, 2011. ISBN 9-770143-724 Parameter error in {{ ISBN}}: checksum-28-6.
I have tried unsuccessfully to locate the correct ISBN on the Internet. Chorlton is a rather prolific writer, so there are lots of hits on the author. By contrast, few hits occur on the title or a combination of author and title. No hits on UK Amazon. No hits on WorldCat. Even when I changed the second "7" to an "8", the result was an invalid ISBN. Knife-in-the-drawer ( talk) 19:29, 25 June 2015 (UTC)
For the [ Aviation Heritage Centre], at the site of the former [ base East Kirkby], I have created a Virtual Tour of Lancaster NX611 "Just Jane".
I would like to suggest this external link to the virtual tour:
https://www.haraldjoergens.com/panoramas/lancaster/files/
It features three outside interactive panoramas of the Lancaster, and eight of the inside, from the bomb aimer to the rear gunner.
Almost all controls, instruments, and switches are explained when the cursor is moved over them, and the virtual tour works on practically any device. It should be an informative addition to the article.
HaraldJoergens ( talk) 07:19, 17 August 2015 (UTC)
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It would be interesting to add a section discussing the tradeoffs between fuel and bombs at maximum range and the lower ceiling (and commensurately higher loss rates even at night) compared with higher altitude bombers. Is this data available? This would be an interesting section for all the WW2 4 engine bomber articles. Bemcfarland ( talk) 16:16, 5 December 2017 (UTC)
The RAF hated the Boeing B-17C Flying Fortress, operated by 90 Squadron in summer 1941 (at one time the Forts shared an airfield with the Blenheims of 107 Squadron, commanded by a member of my family), for a number of reasons, contrails being the biggest. When the bomber began contrailing, crews were expected to turn back, because it turned out that, contrary to the manufacturer's promises, the B-17 had nothing like enough speed to elude interception. In addition, up around 30,000, the crew were in pain most of the time, the guns and radios froze, and in the low air pressure the engines bled copious oil which froze and caked on the tailplane and seized up the elevators. See John Terraine, The Right of the Line, ISBN 0-340-41919-9, pp.279-80, and Michael JF Bowyer, 2 Group RAF, ISBN 0 947554 25 4, pp.195-206. Later B-17 models -- redesigned in light of the RAF's experience, with much more armament and with that enormous tailfin to try and cure the bomber's appalling directional instability on the bomb run, which was so bad that a 90 Sqn Fort once managed to miss the entire city of Bremen in clear daylight despite having a representative of the Sperry company manning the Sperry bombsight -- were far heavier and couldn't fly much above the Lancaster's normal top-out around 23,500ft. Lancaster losses overall were about 2% from over 150,000 sorties, and could not realistically have been much lower, considering that they were taking on more German manpower, weaponry and materiel than the Red Army. In only one month, January 1944, at the height of the Battle of Berlin, did Lancaster losses from all combat and non-combat causes exceed production -- by five units. Normally Lancaster production was double the loss rate. In contrast, monthly losses of Bf110s, the Luftwaffe's principal night fighters, regularly exceeded production. The Germans liked to attribute their night-fighter losses to 'Mosquitos' or 'unknown causes', but the 'Mosquitos' were usually Lancasters, and the 'unknown causes' were usually Lancasters as well. Khamba Tendal ( talk) 18:28, 7 April 2018 (UTC)
The Second World War section says "the bomb and the Lancaster itself weighed roughly the same". Given the bomb weight of 22,000 pounds and the aircraft empty weight per the specifications section of 36,900 pounds, this doesn't add up. Scartboy ( talk) 20:09, 10 June 2019 (UTC)
Under 'Design', the article makes this claim:- 'Goulding and Garbett have claimed that experienced Lancaster pilots were often able to out-manoeuver [sic] Luftwaffe fighters.' Well, it's not just Garbett and Goulding (the alphabetical order in which their names are usually given, because that's the order used for their most famous book, The Lancaster At War, Ian Allan, Shepperton, 1971, SBN 7110 0225 8.) See, for instance, Alfred Price, Battle Over the Reich, Ian Allan, Shepperton, 1973, ISBN 0 7110 0481 1, p.203:- 'Immediately after the end of the war RAF officers interviewed collectively some of the high-scoring pilots of NJG 4, including Major Heinz-Wolfgang Schnaufer (121 victories, the top-scoring night-fighter pilot) and Hauptmann Hans Krauser (28 victories)... All of the German pilots present agreed that a violent corkscrew, begun early, was the most effective evasive manoeuvre for a bomber. If the bomber was hit at all, it was usually when it was changing direction at the top. The general view was that an evading Halifax was an easier target than an evading Lancaster, though the latter usually caught fire more easily when it was hit. Schnaufer said he was most impressed by the general manoeuvrability of the Lancaster, and the violence of the manoeuvres flown by these aircraft never ceased to amaze him. If a bomber crew opened fire or initiated a corkscrew before they were in a position to open fire themselves, the Experten would often break away rather than enter a long and usually fruitless chase; once in the bomber stream, there was every chance of finding another bomber whose crew would prove less vigilant.' Khamba Tendal ( talk) 21:26, 9 November 2019 (UTC)
![]() | This is an archive of past discussions. Do not edit the contents of this page. If you wish to start a new discussion or revive an old one, please do so on the current talk page. |
Archive 1 | Archive 2 |
The whole subject of decreasing the Lancaster`s loss rate by increasing its speed (with the removal of its defensive armament) is obviously very interesting. What we do know is that Freeman Dyson did put forward his theories at the time and therefore inclusion of that is definitely relevant in an article about the Lancaster. How deeply this theory should be gone into in an article on Lancasters is more of a question. Personally I would say some supporting statistics are relevant.
The American air force had many theories on bombing and survivability with heavy defensive armament which they which they subsequently had to change in the light of experience. Comparatively quickly they realised unescorted daytime bombing raids over Germany resulted in unsustainable loss rates. Soon after the war they also came round to the theory that speed is the best defence when they removed the defensive armament from their Convair B36s in their Featherweight III programme.
This forum thread on bomber speed v defensive armament has much interest, particularly
this graph of heavy bomber v Mosquito loss rates and BC v US 8th Air Force loss rates.
I quoted the 0.5% Mosquito loss rate (in the Battle of Berlin) from Max Hasting`s book "Bomber Command", but the linked to post above quotes 1.1%. The latter is obviously still far lower than the 5.5% of the heavies but does anyone know which is correct, 0.5% or 1.1% ?--
JustinSmith (
talk)
08:28, 29 August 2012 (UTC)
I agree that a speed optimised Lanc could never compete in loss rates with a Mossie, but, on the other hand, it`s illogical to state that a 300/310mph Lanc could be caught "just as easily" as a 287mph one. On the altitude thing, I`m not an expert in aircraft performance envelopes but surely a lightened speed optimised Lanc could fly higher than the standard model ? I think Dyson had it right and I think the fact BC never even tested his theory is an absolute disgrace condidering it may well have saved the lives of some of the bomber crews. But there`s a further point, a Lanc with no armament would be significantly cheaper to build and operate, one would have thought that, if nothing else, would appeal to BC. -- JustinSmith ( talk) 07:34, 30 September 2012 (UTC)
On Mosquito losses, Max Hastings is slightly over the odds. In late 1943 Hereward de Havilland reported that the two Oboe Mosquito squadrons, 105 and 109, had flown 750 night sorties for the loss of three aircraft, 0.4 per cent. (Bowyer and Sharp, Mosquito, p357.) Total Mosquito losses on night bomber operations from May 1943 to May 1945 were 108 from 26,936 sorties, which is also 0.4 per cent. On speed, top speed is not important, except for day fighters, since a piston-engined aircraft can't use full power for more than five minutes, or in some cases three minutes, without engine damage. The RAF bombers, and the German night fighters chasing them, had to travel around at cruise speed. The fighters could only speed up for short periods. But to gain real immunity from interception, a bomber would have to be faster at cruise power than the enemy's best interceptor at full boost. The only bomber to achieve this, except the German Arado 234 jet, was the Mosquito BIX or BXVI, which, at 30,000ft, was faster at cruise than a Focke-Wulf 190 going flat out. Dyson supposed that an unarmed Lanc would cruise 50mph faster than an armed one with the same load. Maybe, but the unarmed transatlantic mail Lancs with four-ton loads weren't quite that fast, I don't think. Still, if Dyson was right, the Lanc would then cruise at 260mph outbound and 290mph home. This would make it very difficult for either an Me110 or a Ju88 to catch it without cooking the engines, but the Germans would think of something -- they'd have to. Mosquitos they mostly just ignored, but they couldn't ignore Lancasters, which posed a far bigger menace. Re-tooling the production lines for fast He219s in larger numbers might have been a possibility, despite the disruption. The unarmed Lanc's speed margin would be fairly small before target, and when it did get intercepted the pilot, having no gunners to keep lookout, wouldn't know the fighter was coming. About half of all interceptions against armed Lancs failed because the gunners spotted the fighter and the Lanc corkscrewed away and lost the fighter -- the actual guns were not as significant as the eyes of the men behind them. So the unarmed Lanc might have a certain advantage for a time, but would be more vulnerable if improved interceptors whittled that advantage down. You can see why Bomber Command didn't like the idea. Plus, as with re-tooling for the He219 on the other side, the disruption would be impractical unless it was absolutely necessary. As the loss rate for armed Lancs never became unaffordable in the long term, considering the rate of replacements for crew and aircraft, it never was absolutely necessary. So they didn't do it. -Hugo Barnacle 87.114.45.227 ( talk) 15:19, 16 November 2012 (UTC)
Er... it was against Leutnant Arnim Faber's famous captured Fw190A that the de Havilland company made the performance comparisons. The RAF did have a captured 109G which was used for trials against the Mustang in late '43, but 30,000 was some way above its rated altitude and it would have been pushed to catch a Mosquito. Khamba Tendal ( talk) 21:45, 21 December 2015 (UTC)
What do the sources say Dyson said about Lancasters (rather than RAF heavy bombers in general) without defensive armament? Assembling Dyson's arguments for him is OR. GraemeLeggett ( talk) 19:07, 16 November 2012 (UTC)
I later applied the same method of analysis to the question of whether experience helped crews to survive. Bomber Command told the crews that their chances of survival would increase with experience, and the crews believed it. They were told, After you have got through the first few operations, things will get better. This idea was important for morale at a time when the fraction of crews surviving to the end of a 30-operation tour was only about 25 percent. I subdivided the experienced and inexperienced crews on each operation and did the analysis, and again, the result was clear. Experience did not reduce loss rates. The cause of losses, whatever it was, killed novice and expert crews impartially. This result contradicted the official dogma, and the Command never accepted it. I blame the ORS, and I blame myself in particular, for not taking this result seriously enough. The evidence showed that the main cause of losses was an attack that gave experienced crews no chance either to escape or to defend themselves. If we had taken the evidence more seriously, we might have discovered Schräge Musik in time to respond with effective countermeasures. Smeed and I agreed that Bomber Command could substantially reduce losses by ripping out two gun turrets, with all their associated hardware, from each bomber and reducing each crew from seven to five. The gun turrets were costly in aerodynamic drag as well as in weight. The turretless bombers would have flown 50 miles an hour faster and would have spent much less time over Germany. The evidence that experience did not reduce losses confirmed our opinion that the turrets were useless. The turrets did not save bombers, because the gunners rarely saw the fighters that killed them. But our proposal to rip out the turrets went against the official mythology of the gallant gunners defending their crewmates. Dickins never had the courage to push the issue seriously in his conversations with Harris. If he had, Harris might even have listened, and thousands of crewmen might have been saved.
The whole point of the Germans developing
Schräge Musik was so that the night fighter wasn't exposed to defensive fire from the bomber's rear turret.
I thought it was a commonly accepted fact that the most important contribution of the gunners wasn`t to shoot down attacking fighters it was to try and see them before they had a chance to attack the bomber. They`d then communicate the sighting to the pilot ASAP who would corkscrew as fast as poss (unless he was in a Mk1 or Mk2 Halifax......)--
JustinSmith (
talk)
20:17, 30 September 2014 (UTC)
There doesn't seem to be any record of those 'tests'. And many pilots did use evasive action all the time over enemy territory except the bomb run. And the rear turret had ammunition for almost a minute and a half of firing time, about six times longer than most fighters were capable of. Khamba Tendal ( talk) 19:58, 27 August 2015 (UTC)
The problem with radar of course is that once the Germans had the ferquencies they then used it to home in on the bombers (various sources incl "Bomber Command" by Hastings). With the benefit of hindsight if I`d been a bomber pilot in WWII I`d have switched off my radar !-- JustinSmith ( talk) 09:09, 3 October 2014 (UTC)
There are plenty of records of "tests" if you know where to look. Your lack of knowledge of the subject does not mean they didn't occur. They are overlooked by the pop history books because a lot of it was classified until well after the war, and as they rarely contain any original research they often repeat the same errors and omissions as the books they copy. 90 seconds of continuous firing time hardly allows for indiscriminate firing during a multi-hour mission, even before the gunner's training kicks in, which basically limits firing to when a target is in sight, not least because it makes the bomber more visible, while every maneuver the bomber makes slows it down, so is only used when needed as the faster the bomber gets out and back, the less likely it is to be attacked.NiD.29 14:04, 3 October 2015 (UTC)
It is possibly worth bearing in mind that Freeman Dyson was all of nineteen in 1943. He was a very unimportant person at Bomber Command and had no university degree (he didn't attend college until after the war). Nor did he ever fly on a bomber. He had no idea what he was talking about except in theory and his 'get rid of the gun turrets' idea was a fairly typical teenager's Perfect Solution to Everything. He didn't know, for instance -- because nobody did until German combat reports were analysed after the war -- that half of all interceptions by German night fighters failed because the gunners spotted the fighter coming in and the bomber evaded (meaning that his 'perfect solution' would simply have doubled RAF losses). Nor did he know that, while the Germans only lost one night fighter to the bombers' return fire for every ten bombers shot down, the number of German night fighters that actually intercepted the bomber stream was usually less than ten per cent of the bomber force. (Because German night-flying training was not much good, since the Dutch flak killed most of the Luftwaffe's expert blind-flying instructors when they were doubling as Ju52 transport pilots during the disastrous airborne invasion of Holland in May 1940.) Only one-quarter to one-third of the German night fighters scrambled against a given RAF raid ever made contact with the bomber stream and carried out interceptions. This means that RAF bombers inflicted higher proportional losses on the enemy night fighters than they themselves sustained. They couldn't have done that without gunners. Khamba Tendal ( talk) 20:06, 21 December 2015 (UTC)
References
In the collection of crime stories of the Dutch author van de Wetering "The cat of Brigadier de Gier" it is mentioned that rear gunners in Lancasters had "Maxim" machine guns at their disposal. This seems to me unprobable. However - is it correct or an error of the author? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 84.163.117.219 ( talk) 09:52, 3 March 2013 (UTC)
Ignore - I misread what the page was saying. Mcdeans ( talk) 02:12, 20 September 2013 (UTC)
Fascinating insight into RAF Bomber Command's initial failure to discover Schräge Musik and develop effective countermeasures to it, and the shocking INEFFECTIVENESS of Lancaster gun turrets (and Bomber Command's refusal to accept these findings, costing the lives of thousands of additional crew) is provided in this web-accessible article from MIT Technology Review Magazine by Dr. Freeman Dyson:
"
A Failure of Intelligence" | By Dr.
Freeman Dyson on November 1, 2006 | MIT Technology Review Magazine | November/December 2006
Prominent physicist Freeman Dyson recalls the time he spent developing analytical methods to help the British Royal Air Force bomb German targets during World War II:
...I later applied the same method of analysis to the question of whether experience helped crews to survive. Bomber Command told the crews that their chances of survival would increase with experience, and the crews believed it. They were told, After you have got through the first few operations, things will get better. This idea was important for morale at a time when the fraction of crews surviving to the end of a 30-operation tour was only about 25 percent. I subdivided the experienced and inexperienced crews on each operation and did the analysis, and again, the result was clear. Experience did not reduce loss rates. The cause of losses, whatever it was, killed novice and expert crews impartially. This result contradicted the official dogma, and the Command never accepted it. I blame the ORS, and I blame myself in particular, for not taking this result seriously enough. The evidence showed that the main cause of losses was an attack that gave experienced crews no chance either to escape or to defend themselves. If we had taken the evidence more seriously, we might have discovered Schräge Musik in time to respond with effective countermeasures. Smeed and I agreed that Bomber Command could substantially reduce losses by ripping out two gun turrets, with all their associated hardware, from each bomber and reducing each crew from seven to five. The gun turrets were costly in aerodynamic drag as well as in weight. The turretless bombers would have flown 50 miles an hour faster and would have spent much less time over Germany. The evidence that experience did not reduce losses confirmed our opinion that the turrets were useless. The turrets did not save bombers, because the gunners rarely saw the fighters that killed them. But our proposal to rip out the turrets went against the official mythology of the gallant gunners defending their crewmates. Dickins never had the courage to push the issue seriously in his conversations with Harris. If he had, Harris might even have listened, and thousands of crewmen might have been saved.
Fascinating stuff. Check out the full article, which is applicable to many RAF bomber command/ww2 air war subjects on Wikipedia. I'm not sure why this astounding information hasn't been integrated into the material on the Lancaster already, other than, as Dr. Dyson says, their findings contradicted Bomber Command mythology and thus the official record ("This result contradicted the official dogma, and the Command never accepted it.")... Az x2 19:17, 20 October 2013 (UTC)
Well the Germans could have "thrown up almost anything that flew" but the planes would have to have been fast enough to get up to a Lancaster`s altitude, catch it up, then shoot it down. I still don`t see why BC have at least tested the theories, as far as I know they never did. Lastly, Freeman talks about two turrets, since the Lancaster had three what about the other one ? Or have I missed something ?-- JustinSmith ( talk) 12:51, 2 July 2014 (UTC)
Which two turrets did he mean ? The Front and Dorsal ? That`d still leave the rear turret, arguably the most important anyway, and not just for its guns but for the eyes of the gunner. Much extra weight though, plus the extra man, another death on any shot down bomber......-- JustinSmith ( talk) 10:52, 4 July 2014 (UTC)
AND the high drag night paint and given aerodynamic fairings gained only 30 mph in top speed over a stock Lancaster Mk.1, not enough to allow it to outrun night fighters, and without stripping the night paint, the gain would have been even smaller as the RDM2a black paint used on the Lancaster was tested on a Mosquito in special trials and the top speed dropped by 26 mph
On the matt paint thing I was reading Cheshire`s biography (by Morris) and it states on p107 that the substitution of semi gloss for the original matt paint on Halifaxes added (only) 5mph to the speed. --
JustinSmith (
talk)
09:23, 3 October 2014 (UTC)
Minor issue, the performance data, "Maximum speed: 282 mph (246 knots, 454 km/h) at 63,000 lb (29,000 kg) and 13,000 lb (5,900 kg) altitude", makes little sense. The units of altitude are wrong. Possibly meant to read as, "Maximum speed: 282 mph (246 knots, 454 km/h) at 63,000 lb (29,000 kg) and 13,000 ft (3,962 m) altitude". Don;t have the reference to check.
Llynglas ( talk) 20:54, 12 March 2015 (UTC)
Can I ask for the recently-removed paragraph on Dyson's theory to be restored? Even though it wasn't an implemented theory nor one that was universally accepted to be operationally practical (see the above discussion), it's still a well-cited and relatively well known argument that later became the operational norm of the post-war bombers and was voiced by a prominent thinker. My opinion is that it probably deserves some coverage, and the previously present paragraph did a fair job. Kyteto ( talk) 15:00, 2 April 2017 (UTC)
Because it is causing a Checkwiki error #73: "Invalid ISBN-13", I removed the ISBN from the entry:
Chorlton, Martyn. Avro Lancaster Mk I and Mk III: Database. Cudham, Kent, UK: Kelsey Publishing, 2011. ISBN 9-770143-724 Parameter error in {{ ISBN}}: checksum-28-6.
I have tried unsuccessfully to locate the correct ISBN on the Internet. Chorlton is a rather prolific writer, so there are lots of hits on the author. By contrast, few hits occur on the title or a combination of author and title. No hits on UK Amazon. No hits on WorldCat. Even when I changed the second "7" to an "8", the result was an invalid ISBN. Knife-in-the-drawer ( talk) 19:29, 25 June 2015 (UTC)
For the [ Aviation Heritage Centre], at the site of the former [ base East Kirkby], I have created a Virtual Tour of Lancaster NX611 "Just Jane".
I would like to suggest this external link to the virtual tour:
https://www.haraldjoergens.com/panoramas/lancaster/files/
It features three outside interactive panoramas of the Lancaster, and eight of the inside, from the bomb aimer to the rear gunner.
Almost all controls, instruments, and switches are explained when the cursor is moved over them, and the virtual tour works on practically any device. It should be an informative addition to the article.
HaraldJoergens ( talk) 07:19, 17 August 2015 (UTC)
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It would be interesting to add a section discussing the tradeoffs between fuel and bombs at maximum range and the lower ceiling (and commensurately higher loss rates even at night) compared with higher altitude bombers. Is this data available? This would be an interesting section for all the WW2 4 engine bomber articles. Bemcfarland ( talk) 16:16, 5 December 2017 (UTC)
The RAF hated the Boeing B-17C Flying Fortress, operated by 90 Squadron in summer 1941 (at one time the Forts shared an airfield with the Blenheims of 107 Squadron, commanded by a member of my family), for a number of reasons, contrails being the biggest. When the bomber began contrailing, crews were expected to turn back, because it turned out that, contrary to the manufacturer's promises, the B-17 had nothing like enough speed to elude interception. In addition, up around 30,000, the crew were in pain most of the time, the guns and radios froze, and in the low air pressure the engines bled copious oil which froze and caked on the tailplane and seized up the elevators. See John Terraine, The Right of the Line, ISBN 0-340-41919-9, pp.279-80, and Michael JF Bowyer, 2 Group RAF, ISBN 0 947554 25 4, pp.195-206. Later B-17 models -- redesigned in light of the RAF's experience, with much more armament and with that enormous tailfin to try and cure the bomber's appalling directional instability on the bomb run, which was so bad that a 90 Sqn Fort once managed to miss the entire city of Bremen in clear daylight despite having a representative of the Sperry company manning the Sperry bombsight -- were far heavier and couldn't fly much above the Lancaster's normal top-out around 23,500ft. Lancaster losses overall were about 2% from over 150,000 sorties, and could not realistically have been much lower, considering that they were taking on more German manpower, weaponry and materiel than the Red Army. In only one month, January 1944, at the height of the Battle of Berlin, did Lancaster losses from all combat and non-combat causes exceed production -- by five units. Normally Lancaster production was double the loss rate. In contrast, monthly losses of Bf110s, the Luftwaffe's principal night fighters, regularly exceeded production. The Germans liked to attribute their night-fighter losses to 'Mosquitos' or 'unknown causes', but the 'Mosquitos' were usually Lancasters, and the 'unknown causes' were usually Lancasters as well. Khamba Tendal ( talk) 18:28, 7 April 2018 (UTC)
The Second World War section says "the bomb and the Lancaster itself weighed roughly the same". Given the bomb weight of 22,000 pounds and the aircraft empty weight per the specifications section of 36,900 pounds, this doesn't add up. Scartboy ( talk) 20:09, 10 June 2019 (UTC)
Under 'Design', the article makes this claim:- 'Goulding and Garbett have claimed that experienced Lancaster pilots were often able to out-manoeuver [sic] Luftwaffe fighters.' Well, it's not just Garbett and Goulding (the alphabetical order in which their names are usually given, because that's the order used for their most famous book, The Lancaster At War, Ian Allan, Shepperton, 1971, SBN 7110 0225 8.) See, for instance, Alfred Price, Battle Over the Reich, Ian Allan, Shepperton, 1973, ISBN 0 7110 0481 1, p.203:- 'Immediately after the end of the war RAF officers interviewed collectively some of the high-scoring pilots of NJG 4, including Major Heinz-Wolfgang Schnaufer (121 victories, the top-scoring night-fighter pilot) and Hauptmann Hans Krauser (28 victories)... All of the German pilots present agreed that a violent corkscrew, begun early, was the most effective evasive manoeuvre for a bomber. If the bomber was hit at all, it was usually when it was changing direction at the top. The general view was that an evading Halifax was an easier target than an evading Lancaster, though the latter usually caught fire more easily when it was hit. Schnaufer said he was most impressed by the general manoeuvrability of the Lancaster, and the violence of the manoeuvres flown by these aircraft never ceased to amaze him. If a bomber crew opened fire or initiated a corkscrew before they were in a position to open fire themselves, the Experten would often break away rather than enter a long and usually fruitless chase; once in the bomber stream, there was every chance of finding another bomber whose crew would prove less vigilant.' Khamba Tendal ( talk) 21:26, 9 November 2019 (UTC)