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General Specifications
Wingspan: 102 ft. 0 in. (31.09 m.) Length: 69 ft. 6 in. (21.18 m.) Height: 20 ft. 6 in. (6.2 m.) Empty Weight: 41,000 lbs. (18,600 kg) Max T/O Weight: 72,000 lbs. (29,710 kg) Engine: Four Rolls-Royce Merlin XX Horsepower: 1,460 hp. Guns: Eight .303 in. (7.7mm) Browning machine guns Crew: 7 ________________________________________________________________
The famous Lancaster formed the backbone of the RAF Bomber Command during their night offensive against Germany in the time between 1943 and the end of the war in May 1945. While she was called upon to perform a number of roles during and after the war, it was the Lancaster's overwhelming capability in the capacity of a bomb delivery "truck" that established her reputation. She and her dauntless crews compiled an enviable record, delivering 608,612 tons of bombs in 156,000 sorties. She out-performed her other RAF stablemates, losing only one bomber per every 132 tons of bombs dropped, which eclipses the 56 tons for each Halifax and 41 tons for each Stirling.
One of its main features was the immense bomb bay, which handled bombs up to the 22,000-pound Grand Slam, a massive bomb that was designed to fall at supersonic speed and penetrate up to 23 feet of reinforced concrete before exploding. In one of its most famous missions, the Lancaster carried the Wallis "spinning drum" bombs against the Ruhr dams. These unusual bombs were made to skip across the surface of the water and then roll down the face of the dam, exploding below water to destroy the dam.
The Lancaster was an integral part of the Combined Bomber Offensive, or CBO, which teamed British night bombers with American day bombers to harry the Germans around-the-clock. This offensive crippled the Nazi production capability and, more importantly, ground the Luftwaffe down into virtual impotence by the time of the Allied invasion. After the war, the Lancaster lived on in her descendants, the Lincoln and Shackleton. The last Shackletons were retired in the 1990s.
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