A View from the Front

Many Lancaster crewmembers considered it the best design they had flown in. The bomber flew higher and faster than the previous generation of mainly twin-engine bombers. The Lancaster was developed from an earlier, unsuccessful twin-engine aircraft called a Manchester, which suffered from unreliable Rolls-Royce “Vulture” engines. The first operational flight of a Lancaster was in March 1942, and by the end of the war they had completed an amazing 156,000 operations.