I was transfixed by this audio and the amazing artwork by Piotr Forkasiewicz. https://peterfor.com/index.html

No bad language / so calm and professional in the most terrifying circumstances...

''Watch your height - I am watching everything''
''I can read my watch in the searchlight''
''They are looking for us - must be 2000 searchlights''
''That was close - you could light your cig on that flak''
''I could do with a pint''
''We have been holed in the front - oil leaking out - nothing to worry about skipper''

Amazing and inspiring to hear this. I smiled at one of the comments left on the video.... The huge wings and engines were not for the bomb loads - they were needed to lift these men's enormous testicles off the ground....
I have been in a Lancaster (My pics below) and cant imagine what it would be like to face missions like this night after night.

 

I wonder which watch he was reading.... Omega maybe

https://omegaforums.net/threads/1942-lancaster-bomber-pilots-watch.26915/

https://omegaforums.net/threads/fsot-omega-raf-uk2292-43.106869/

 

That is amazing. So calm and collected while being spotlighted and shot at. Great listening while enjoying my late morning coffee. Thank you for sharing.

 

Engineer: "Hello Skipper"
Skipper: "Hello"
Engineer: "*We've been holed in the front here."
Skipper: "oh, I see."
Engineer: " Oil is leaking out the front turret so there's not to worry about."
Skipper: "oh, okay."

This reminds me of a story my old boss told me - he was a navigator on a Canadian Lancaster in WW2. He told me that they had been hit and were losing hydraulic oil for the controls, so they all poured whatever liquid they had into the tank to keep the fluid level up. This included whatever was in their thermos, and also what was in their "bottles" at that point. The bottles were where they urinated as there weren't any facilities in the planes...

 

A bit like with the mercury programme I think they improved 'facilities' over time. I recall being on a tour of an air sea rescue helicopter (Wessex or Sea King) and a very noisy / nosey schoolboy was getting into everything and asking too many questions. At one point he stuck his finger into a tube and asked what it was for. The Winch operator said … ''we p-ss down there on long flights'' which took the wind out of his sails - I don't recall if it was true or not :0)

 

I often ride my bicycle past the CWH museum in Hamilton, home to VERA, one of two flying Lancaster bombers left in the world (the other is in the UK). They had a traveling virtual 3D reality Lancaster bomber experience there for a few months.The 14-minute experience transports visitors back to 1943 when a BBC reporter and sound engineer with a microphone boarded a Lancaster bomber and set out on a mission into the heart of Nazi-occupied Europe. It was free to museum visitors. I experienced it three times. It had you sitting behind the pilot and as you turned your head, you saw everything that he could see. The hair on the back of my neck was standing up on end every time I sat through it.

And when VERA is the the air, the sound of the engines is unbelievable. I can't imagine what a hundred of Lanc's would sound like.








Education
Virtual reality Lancaster bomber experience launches at warplane museum

By Ken Mann 900 CHML
Posted March 8, 2019 3:58 pm
Updated March 8, 2019 4:27 pm

The Canadian Warplane Heritage Museum's Lancaster bomber is one of only two that continues to fly. Ken Mann

 

I marvel when I hear things like this- truly the greatest generation. All I can think is that if anyone under the age of 60 now were in that situation:

 

My grandfather trained as a Lancaster navigator in the RCAF, luckily the war ended before he deployed.

 

C-GVRA (FM213) "Vera" with PA474 "City of Lincoln" on 24 August 2014.

 

Back in I think it was the summer of 1988-89 I had a chance one Early Morning To
Have a Private tour inside VRA at the M.O.T. Ramp in Ottawa. The sun was just rising and the early morning had a very soft misty quality to it . Almost a surreal
Heavenly light. I sat inside that Aircraft in various positions. Quietly. Reverendly .
It was magic.
You could easily imagine being transported to some distant Airfield.
Those Merlins have a sound that you never forget. 4 of them are a mechanical
Symphony. It was a day that will stay with me for life.
These Young men just younger than my own Son - were true Heroes.
About 2 years ago I met the Aircraft Commander of that Aircraft. My M in L was
In the same facility. He brought his personal photo Album. We had Tea.
There He was ...proudly posing with his crew . There was that big beautiful
Lanc.
Funny...how You Never Know Who You May meet.

 

This is too true. On a slight tangent, my uncle was retired USAF, flew fighters in Vietnam and was a test pilot for Northrop-Grumman. When I was about 10 he took be to an airfield outside LA somewhere to see vintage jets- it was an active air strip with lots of planes flying by and things moving about. He was chatting with an older gentleman outside of a hanger and introduced me- his name was Chuck....I didn’t realize who he was until I saw the movie The Right Stuff....you never know who you’re gonna meet.

 

Incredible pics and recording.... I think anyone who boarded any aircraft (or equally who served) during wartime is brave beyond compare and likely has balls (if a male) bigger than Ben Hur. It must be and have been a truly terrifying experience and I guess many here have father's or relatives who flew and fought in combat situations. Aviation today is a little different from days gone past and a in a bomber at times one must have felt like a sitting duck.... Little wonder early pilot and military watches are a highly sort after and desirable commodity...

 

I got to see the twin Lancasters when they flew over Stamford in 2014. I think the Canadian one needed to borrow an engine to get home / that must have been an amazing trip to make. Lovely planes and so much power. If they ran all four engines up full power without a bomb load it would bow to the crowd / smack its nose and bend all the props - so they don't do that....

 

When I was a young kid (late 1950s) the neighbour's house was the local school headmaster.
His boys were about my age, and we spent many hours playing games, riding our bikes all over, hiking around the locality.

I remember one year, about the time of Anzac Day, we were showing each other our Dad's photo albums from the war.

My Dad had heaps of pics of him and his mates (Navy) in the most incredibly exotic places (to me at that age).
All the way from the Med, through the Indian Ocean Theatre and then on to the Pacific Theatre. He actually had photos of other ships being bombed in the Med, and one exploding, all taken with a Box Brownie.
Unfortunately the Battle of the Coral Sea was his last, he was badly shot up by strafing aircraft and he spent the rest of the war behind a desk.

But back to Rod's father.

He was a Lancaster pilot in the UK, and Rod showed me his Dad's photos and I noticed a pic of him and some mates as they graduated from flight training in Canada. Just a normal looking guy with a great head of black hair.

Flicking through the pics, we saw the same face, just not as much smiling any more, except for a few shots where they'd obviously had a few beers.

I said to Rod "I thought your Dad had black hair, how come it's all white now?".

"Dunno" was the answer, "he doesn't talk about it, and his hair's always been like that."

My Dad was much the same.
He'd spin a yarns about the girls in Malta, or monkeys in Columbo, but ask about the "war" and he'd usually divert the conversation, or go and chop firewood.

 

Great audio and Pics @Omegafanman - thank you.

I’ve mentioned this before in another thread but my father was a Navigator on Lancs.
Volunteered after joining the university air squadron.
Trained to fly in Canada,( navigators had to be able to fly - I suppose ‘just in case’)

Had to cross the North Atlantic into New York on the Queen Elizabeth - which in itself must have been a daunting prospect with the ‘Wolf-packs’ at large all the while.
Ended up in Winnipeg in the middle of the Canadian winter, having been issued shorts and t-shirts because the alternative training ground was Zimbabwe (Rhodesia as it was then)

Eventually based in East Anglia, he (only very occasionally, as he didn’t talk about the war either) would regale us with stories of riding around the airfield on 12,000lb bombs and the airfield being strafed by marauding German planes.

I’m not sure about big balls - he was no more than a kid himself at 19 or 20.
I suspect a lot of the bravado was the invincibility of youth and gallows humour, probably the only way to stay sane under the circumstances.

His navigator wing and my mother’s sweet-heart brooch.

 

I'll take my time to peruse this, but I've gotta say, "F*king whoa". Great find!

 

Very touching to read some of the stories above. I also know none of us are blind to the suffering on the ground for those on the receiving end. You would think people would have learned the lessons by now but I worry we might be warming up another go / has war ever really stopped.
Unlike the last two flying Lancasters the war time versions were not duel control, so I imagine the more crew who could take over in an emergency the better. The Engineers station was standing / semi -standing and it must have been an horrendous situation if the pilot was incapacitated. The protection on these planes was wafer thin / the doors into the rear gunners station are balsa wood (shown in my BW pictures above). Looking at the losses from the Dam busters raid and some of the ordnance the planes went on to carry - it does raise the hairs on the back of your neck and we owe that generation a lot. My war time RAF Omega is a very small and understated piece which seems to match their ethos perfectly / It always means a lot to me when I wear that watch - still ticking on after 78 years.

 

The ‘grand slams’ were a massive 22,000lb bombs, nearly twice the size of the 12,000lb ‘tall boys’ and the largest ordnance the Lancs carried.

 

Great thread - coincidentally I just finished watching the Spitfire documentary on Netflix.

When I was at Primary school I lived near Northolt aerodrome (near the Polish War Memorial), and every Remembrance Day at first break I’d get to see the fly past of Lancaster, Spitfire and Hurricane on their way into London. Great memories, and as @barmy said, the sound on one Lancaster is amazing, so a whole squadron would be incredible.

 

This is cool also - a Lancaster filmed from in front https://twitter.com/RAFBBMF/status/837940236516753409