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Avro 683 Lancaster

The Avro Lancaster was the mainstay of the Royal Air Force offensive capabilities during World War II. 7,377 Lancasters were produced in total.

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The "Lanc" was designed by Roy Chadwick as an upgrade to the Avro Manchester. The twin-engined Manchester had proven to be seriously under-powered, so Chadwick designed larger wings to take 4 Rolls-Royce Merlin engines. It proved to be a master-stroke. Its massive bomb bay could hold a variety of bomb loads dependent on the mission. Later modifications to the bomb bay allowed the Lancaster to carry the 22,000lb "Grand Slam" bomb. This was the largest bomb load carried by any aircraft during the war.

Colour Codes

Links on the Units and Bases pages are colour coded so you can easily see what data is available on the site.

BLACK

ORBs not obtained yet

ORBs digitised and input

GREEN

BLUE

ORBs obtained but not digitised

Information partially input, so not complete

PURPLE

Note: . For PURPLE, some aircraft flew with more than one Squadron therefore the data may be incomplete, or that I haven't digitised the full set of data yet. For Squadrons I am inputting data on a year by year basis. Check the Updates page for what has been uploaded.

Disclaimer

This site will never be fully accurate or fully complete. The Operational Record Books contain many typing errors and omissions. Where this is obvious it has been corrected. Certain missions were not logged in the ORBs. As an example, senior ranking officers were banned from taking part in operations, but did anyway. They made sure that these op's were not recorded in the ORBs. If any aircraft is missing sorties or contains errors, and you can prove it, let me know using the contact page and I'll get back to you. 

Sources

Commonwealth War Graves Commission

International Bomber Command Centre

National Archives UK

Royal Air Force

Bomber Command History Forum (Facebook)

Royal Air Force Bomber Command Losses - Bill Chorley

Aircrew Remembered

100 Squadron Association

Friends of 61 Sqn

Most importantly, family members of Bomber Command crews.

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