Tales Of Lancasters And Other Aircraft

Of every 100 operational airmen in World War Two, 9 were killed flying in England and 3 severely injured in crashes, so non-operational casualties were significant in numbers, over 15,000. Operational casualties were of course chillingly grim – over 56,000 airmen died in the Second World War, over half those involved. George Culling was a nineteen-year-old Lancaster navigator whose own experiences often involved battling tricky and dangerous conditions. Fascinated by the ever-present dangers for airmen even well away from combat, he has collated tales from comrades and combined them with his own to preserve some of the unexpected, inconvenient, dangerous, and often downright bizarre experiences that frequently typified daily life for airmen in the Second World War.

Covers the history of this aircraft in full, chronologically. Includes appendices giving details of production and service use.

The Avro Lancaster is the most iconic bomber ever to have worn the markings of the Royal Air Force. This legendary aircraft was the mainstay of Bomber Command throughout World War II and served throughout the war with distinction. This hardback book looks at the role of the aircraft and features over 70 illustrations of the Lancaster. It also includes cutaways that show the structure of the aircraft that demonstrate what made this such a unique aircraft.

Marshal of the Royal Air Force Sir Arthur Harris called the Lancaster the greatest single factor in winning the war . The Lancaster Story tells the tale of this aircraft from birth to its last operational flights with the RAF in 1956. The evocative Lancaster lives on with the Battle of Britain Memorial Flight, also covered here, and the book contains fascinating did you know facts with a complete listing of Lancaster milestones and surviving airframes. The DVD contains wartime footage, with more recent film of the BBMF City of Lincoln, the last of the line.

A dramatic and vividly rendered account of the most successful RAF bomber of the Second World War - the Avro Lancaster - and the lives of the men and women who flew, designed, constructed, maintained it.

A moving tribute to the sacrifice and bravery of the fliers of RAF Bomber Command. The Crew, based on interviews with Ken Cook, the crew's sole surviving member, recounts the wartime exploits of the members of an Avro Lancaster crew between 1942 and the war's end. Gloucestershire-born bomb aimer Ken Cook, hard-bitten Australian pilot Jim Comans, Navigator Don Bowes, Upper Gunner George Widdis, Tail Gunner 'Jock' Bolland, Flight Engineer Ken Randle and Radio Operator Roy Woollford were seven ordinary young men living in extraordinary times, risking their lives in freedom's cause in the dark skies above Hitler's Reich. From their earliest beginnings - in places as far apart as a Cotswold village and the suburbs of Sydney - through the adventure of training in North America and the dread and danger of the forty-five bombing raids they flew with 97 Squadron, David Price describes the crew's wartime experiences with human sympathy allied to a secure technical understanding of one of the RAF's most iconic aircraft. The drama and anxiety of individual missions - to Kassel, Munich and Augsburg as well as Berlin - is evoked with thrilling immediacy; while the military events and strategic decisions that drove the RAF's area bombing campaign against Nazi Germany are interwoven deftly with the narrative of the crew's operational careers.

Captain William Lancaster was the subject of public attention and controversy during his life as a record-breaking flyer, because of his love affair with Jessie Chubbie Miller (dubbed the Australian Aviatrix) and as the defendant in one of the most sensational murder trials of the twentieth century. His disappearance, which occurred during an attempt to break the London to Cape Town record in 1933, less than a year after his acquittal, led to speculation that his ill-prepared last flight had been driven by desperation, perhaps even guilt.Twenty nine years later, a French military patrol in the Sahara stumbled across the wreck of Bills plane and his body, along with his perfectly preserved log book. For eight days he had calmly recorded his thoughts, looking back over his life as he stoically faced death. In Bill Lancaster: the Final Verdict, we are presented with the original story in full (first published in 1969 as Verdict on a Lost Flyer), complete with an additional postscript written by the late author's daughter. Meticulously researched by Ralph Barker and written with the full cooperation of Chubbie Miller and the Lancaster family, it includes a complete transcript and photographs of the moving account contained within Lancaster's final diary a precious record that has since gone missing.

'The Lancasters looked like enormous deadly black birds going off into the night; somehow they looked different when they came back. The planes carried from this field 117,000 pounds of high explosives and the crews flew all night to drop the load as ordered. Now the trains would not run between France and Italy for a while, not on those bombed tracks anyhow. Here are the men who did it, with mussed hair and weary faces, dirty sweaters under their flying suits, sleep-bright eyes, making humble comradely little jokes and eating their saved-up chocolate bars' Martha GellhornThis riveting and highly intriguing collection of pilot and civilian reminiscences works to commemorate the spirit of the almighty Lancaster bomber. Each chapter is dedicated to a unique individual or group of individuals who took part in its history in some capacity. Be they pilot, civilian, or journalist, each played their own part and their accounts offer a host of fascinating insights. Episodes featured include the battle for Munich and the Nuremburg and Berlin Raids. Stories of PoWs downed in their Lancasters and captured in enemy territory also feature, communicating a real sense of peril experienced behind enemy lines. Two sections of fascinating black and white photographs supplement and complete this trawl through the history of the Lancaster bomber and the men and women who witnessed its glory days.

From 11 June 1943 (the date of Lancaster Mark III EE136 WS/R's first op) to her last with 9 Squadron (on 19 October 1944), eighty-six Lancasters were assigned to Number 9. Of these, fifty were lost to enemy action, another five crashed at home, three crashed in Russia on the first Tirpitz raid and four were transferred to other squadrons only to be lost by them, leaving just twenty-four still flying.As more came in, three of those twenty-four were transferred to a new squadron, the reforming No 189. These were EE136 (93 operations), PB146 (36 ops), and LM745 (four ops). All three saw the war out, unlike so many others. During 189 Squadron's operational period featuring EE136 (1 November 1944 to 3 February 1945) thirty-four Lancasters came on the strength of which nine were lost in that time. Over the operational lifetime of Lancaster EE136, forty-two different skippers took her on her grand total of 109 trips. Altogether, 315 men flew on ops in this machine, many of them more than once - the most 'capped' captain, F/O Roy Lake, twenty-two times - and of those men, 101 were killed in other aircraft.Those are the statistics. But this is the story of the men behind the numbers.

It is no accident that the RAF's Battle of Britain Memorial Flight consists primarily of three aircraft types, the Spitfire, the Hurricane and the Lancaster. The Spitfire and Hurricane, of course, are famous for their roles during the Battle of Britain over the skies of southern England in 1940. The Lancaster, on the other hand, did not enter operational service with the RAF until 1942, long after the 'official' Battle of Britain was over. Yet the aircraft has more than earned its place in the Battle of Britain flight. The Lancaster has carved its place in history in its own unique way. During the Spitfire's lifetime, more than 20,000 were built while the Lancaster's total is less than half of that. Yet the Lancaster had a crew of seven, with at least as many again in each Lanc's ground crew. More personnel, therefore, had a close association with the Lanc than with the world's most famous fighter plane.Neither should it be forgotten that, when Britain defended its shores as an island fortress during the darkest days of WW II, the Lancaster and its crews were taking the fight to the enemy, delivering their deadly payloads to targets deep in the heart of Germany. A tangible reminder to everyone suffering in Britain that we were still striking back, still fighting, the Lancaster and its crews won the affection of the British people. Lancasters dropped Barnes Wallis' 'bouncing bombs' on Germany's Ruhr Valley dams to earn 617 Squadron its 'Dam Busters' nickname and Tony Iveson was among those Lanc pilots whose aircraft crossed the North Sea to sink the battleship Tirpitz.In ''Lancaster'', Tony Iveson has created a riveting biography of the aircraft, focussing not just on its operational history, but on the crews who flew and maintained Lancs, even talking to German fighter pilots who flew against them. The stories in ''Lancaster'' run from the time of its initial design right through the war to when variants such as the Lancastrian entered civilian service, BOAC using the aircraft on scheduled services between Britain and Australia from May 1945. A salute to the men and women who built, flew and maintained the Lancaster, this book stands as a tribute to a truly great British icon.