Wonder how the Lancaster compared with the B-24 and B-17? Heard an interesting review by a 91 year old AAF pilot over a local talk show, (Vicky McKenna WNIB, am 1310 Madison WI.) who flew both. He said the 24 carried almost twice the bomb load and went twice as far but was slower and had a lower service ceiling the “Flying Fortress”.
The ocassion for the talk show was while the 24 along with other WWII aircraft were being exhibited at the Madison airport prior to the EAA convention in Oshgosh WI. Paid for rides on the 24 were being promoted the funding of which would go into WWII aircraft restoration.
The “Lanc” was easily the best heavy bomber produced by Great Britain in WWII—clearly superior to its predecessors, the Wellington, Stirling and Manchester. In fact, it incorporated lessons learned from those earlier designs; the Lancaster had more power than the Manchester (as a four-engine bomber) and a higher service ceiling than the Stirling.
Contrasting the Lanc to the B-17 and B-24 is really an apples-and-oranges comparison. Both of the American bombers were built around the doctrine of daylight precision bombing, so they were more heavily armored (and armed) than their RAF counterparts, and both the Fort and Liberator were equipped with the Norden bombsight.
By the time the Lancaster entered service, the RAF had long abandoned daylight raids, settling for area attacks at night. So accuracy was less important and the Lancaster didn’t carry as many machine guns to fend off enemy attack.
In fact, the great vulnerability of the Lancaster was that it lacked a ball turret, found on the B-17 and B-24. As a result, Germany began fitting its night fighters with upward firing guns; the standard tactic was to fly beneath the bomber stream and when the fighter was under a Lanc, the pilot would loose a deadly stream of fire that sent many an RAF bomber plunging to the ground. That’s one reason the rear turret gunner was (perhaps) the most important man on the crew; his job was to look for any sign a night fighter was over-taking the Lancaster and tell the pilot to maneuver. More than a few rear gunners asked that the Perspex glass of their eye-level panels be removed from the turret to maximize their visibility.
Despite its deficiencies, the Lancaster was a great bomber. Along with the famous dam buster raid, Lancs were also quite successful delivering Tall Boy and Grand Slam bombs against such targets as the U-boat pens in France and sinking the battleship Tirpitz in Norway. A magnificent plane, piloted by brave men; as I recall, Bomber Command had more than 55,000 casualties in WWII; the odds of a crew member completing an operational tour was somewhere between 30 and 40%.