The Manchester must go down as one of the worst bombers of WW2. It had coupled engines that failed spectacularly. On one raid 12 planes were lost this way.
Thankfully Beaverbrook took one look at this flying coffin and ordered Avro to produce the Halifax.
But there was a plan by the Manchester's designer, Roy Chadwick, to convert the plane to 4 Merlins and some historians think it might have worked.
I for one disagree. As we know from the Halifax the Merlin was not a suitable engine for a bomber. The Hx only achieved its potential once it was fitted with the Hercules radial engine.
So, yes, good job they only built 200 Manchesters as Avro went on to build 4,000 of the 9,500 Halifaxes built!
Do other members of the forum think this scheme had any chance of success?
Um, a few things at odds with reality here, firstly, Avro didn't build the Halifax, Handley Page did. Chadwick had nothing to do with it, its designer was George Volkert. The Merlin engined Manchester became the Lancaster, although it was originally known as the Manchester Mk.III.
Next, whilst the Manchester was a bit of a dog, the issues that beset it were largely cured by late 1941 early 1942 and in essence it was a sound design, the fuselage required little change when conversion to the Lancaster took place. That massive 33-foot long unobstructed bomb bay, unique in a WW2 bomber was applied to the Lancaster and enabled enormous flexibility in the types of loads it could carry, the armament remained the same although crew positions changed with a rationalisation within Bomber Command itself. The hori stab increased in length, but not much else apart from a new wing and powerplant and strengthened undercarriage to cope with increased all-up weight. This is why Lancasters got into frontline service relatively quickly after the prototype flew - the production line building Manchesters could make the change to the new type relatively swiftly.
The Manchester certainly had issues with its engines, which were
not coupled, but by the time the Manchester Mk.Ia was in service in numbers had already been fixed and the engine displayed good reliability. The Vulture was discontinued by Rolls-Royce because of rationalisation of production of the Merlin since more aircraft were powered by it. Next, the Manchester's electrical issues were largely solved by the time the Lancaster entered production as has already been said here.
One of the problems that beset it was severe vibration when the Nash & Thompson FN.7 top turret turned, which induced vibration due to airflow around the turret when turned, the simple answer was to get rid of it in the Manchester Mk.III. The stability issues were fixed by increasing the height of the vertical stabilisers which were first applied to the Manchester Mk. III prototype BT308, (which became the Lancaster prototype) and then retrofitted to the Manchester Mk.Ia and the centre fin was removed.
Let's also put the Manchester into context, it was among the first big all-metal bombers being built around the world; in the late 1930s there weren't that many and it was thoroughly new and innovative, with largely electrical systems and a full armament of power-operated turrets, which was unique; Only the Wellington had full armament in power turrets at that time (the early Whitleys had an unpowered Armstrong Whitworth turret fitted to them). The Manchester was the first large all-metal modern bomber that Avro had designed and built, it was only the second all-metal modern aeroplane Avro had built, the first was the Bristol Blenheim under licence. Up to that time, the most modern aircraft Avro had built was the Anson, which was based on the 1920s Fokker F.VIIb in technology, with a tubular fuselage covered in fabric and wooden wings. It didn't even have hydraulics.
So, given all that and the immediate success of the Lancaster as soon as it entered service, the Manchester proved a worthy foundation for Britain's most successful bomber of WW2. As for the Handley Page Halifax, it was a dud for different reasons.
