26. WWII’s Heaviest Bomber
Britain’s most successful bomber of WWII was the Avro Lancaster, which first flew in 1941 and entered operational service in February of 1942. From early on, Bomber Command grew enamored with the Lancaster, and made plans to make it the mainstay of Britain’s strategic bombing campaign. As soon as it became available in numbers, it began displacing the Royal Air Force’s other heavy bombers, the Halifax and Sterling, to become Britain’s principal bombers in the second half of the war. They were capable of carrying the war’s heaviest payload, a 22,000 lbs bomb, exceeding the 20,000 lbs maximum payload of the bigger and more advanced B-29 – an airplane twice as heavy as the Lancaster.
Another reason why Bomber Command preferred Lancasters was that its predecessor and competitor the Halifax, had a bomb that was compartmentalized, which limited the size of the individual bombs it could carry. By contrast, the Lancasters had a long and unobstructed bomb bay. That allowed them to carry the RAF’s biggest bombs, such as the 4000 lbs “Cookie” and 12,000 lbs “Tall Boy”. Specially modified Lancasters could also carry the 22,000 lbs “Grand Slam” – the heaviest payload of any WWII bomber. When fully loaded, a single Lancaster could carry nearly five times as much bomb tonnage as that typically carried by a B-17 Flying Fortress. By war’s end, Lancasters had carried 64% of the tonnage dropped by RAF Bomber Command during the conflict.