Lancaster as an escorted, daylight bomber ala B-17/24?

Milosh said:

The 15th flew the same kind of missions as the 8th, even having to fly over mountains to get to their targets which the 8th didn't have to do.

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What I was responding to was why not use B-24's for night missions. The 15th and the 8th were trained for daytime missions as per USAAF doctrine. Not whether or not they were capable.

If the RAF had a pressing need for a high altitude day bomber I reckon the Avro Lincoln and Handley Page Hastings (name reused for post war transport) would have been pushed into production.

The Lincoln could carry the same bomb load as a Lancaster higher faster further with a much heavier armament. A while ago I read that the reason the Lincoln wasn't rushed into service was that it cost 50% more and took nearly twice as long to build as a Lanc. (I might have those figures about face)

SaparotRob said:

What I was responding to was why not use B-24's for night missions. The 15th and the 8th were trained for daytime missions as per USAAF doctrine. Not whether or not they were capable.

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RAF Bomber Command aircraft carried a lot of electronic equipment that wasn't carried by the B17/24. I am not saying that the B24 couldn't carry it, but it would have added a lot of weight to the B24 and that would have needed compensating for. The ball turret and one of the waist gunners were removed from the B24 in Europe from around May 1944 to reduce weight and improve handling. Add a load of electronic equipment and someone to operate it and something else will have to give.
It isn't quite as easy as it first looks.

Glider said:

RAF Bomber Command aircraft carried a lot of electronic equipment that wasn't carried by the B17/24. I am not saying that the B24 couldn't carry it, but it would have added a lot of weight to the B24 and that would have needed compensating for. The ball turret and one of the waist gunners were removed from the B24 in Europe from around May 1944 to reduce weight and improve handling. Add a load of electronic equipment and someone to operate it and something else will have to give.
It isn't quite as easy as it first looks.

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No argument there.

Koopernic said:

in both cases the aircraft achieves its maximum speed at 16,000ft but then both climb and speed decrease until the aircraft reaches its service ceiling of 23,000ft. An The Lancaster III can simply carry 10,000libs more weight. An aircraft at its service ceiling is at a climb rate of 100ft/minute (0.5m/sec) and is on the edge of a stall with little margin for manoeuvring. With reduced load we can get the Lancaster III operating at 23,000ft but the aircraft will be much slower in speed and climb than a B17G.

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So, let's argue the point, as Glider rightly points out, why is that a problem? It's a bomber, not a fighter, far less likely to be achieving this over the target area, at which point of the flight regime the aircraft is at cruising speed and best altitude that the operation dictates. When fully laden you don't blat up at your maximum climb speed after take-off, you'd short change yourself of fuel. You climb at the most economic rate of climb to the best altitude for the operation required and the time it takes and speed of the climb is of secondary importance to preserving fuel economy at its maximum weight, which is at take-off.

Koopernic said:

n aircraft at its service ceiling is at a climb rate of 100ft/minute (0.5m/sec) and is on the edge of a stall with little margin for manoeuvring.

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Taken from the document "A review of the performance and handling trials of ten production Lancaster Mk.III aircraft"

All up weights from 63,000 lbs to 54,000 lbs

4.13. Climb in FS Gear at max. climbing power, i.e. 2850 rpm + 9lb/sq in boost. Mean of ten aircraft.
Rate of climb: Constant from 12,000 ft to the full throttle height. 590 ft/min
Full throttle height, 15,800 ft
Time from 12,000 ft to 20,000 ft, 16.7 min
Service ceiling 23,200 ft

Here: Lancaster III Performance (wwiiaircraftperformance.org)

Taken from the document " Memorandum Report on B-17G Airplane AAF No. 43-37746"

One climb... was run at a take-off gross weight of 57,650 lbs, cowl flaps wide open, calibrated airspeed 138 mph and 2,300 rpm and 38 inches of mercury. The results are as follows:
Altitude Bhp per engine Rate of climb Ft/min Time to climb min Gross weight lbs
SL 985 720 0 57,600
10,000 990 640 14.5 56,950
15,000 995 550 22.5 56,570
25,000 1015 270 47.5 55,550

Here: Memorandum Report on B-17G Airplane, AAF No. 43-37746 (wwiiaircraftperformance.org)

I've been working on a related project and after going through Middlebrook & Everitt's "The Bomber Command War Diaries" as well as RAF fighter unit Operations Records Books, I was struck by the extent of daylight RAF heavy bomber missions during autumn 1944, the lack of German air reaction and the light losses suffered by the bomber force. Principal daylight bombing attacks by Lancasters and Halifaxes from Sept. 1944 – Dec. 1944 with escort typically provided by Spitfire IX & XIV, Mustang III and occasionally Tempests:

9/1/44 – V-2 Rocket stores Lumbres & La Pourchinte
9/3/44 – Airfields in southern Holland
9/5/44 – Le Havre
9/6/44 - Le Havre, Emden
9/8/44 – Le Havre
9/9/44 – Le Havre
9/10/44 – Le Havre
9/11/44 – Le Havre. Synthetic oil plants at Castrop-Rauxel, Kamen and Gelsenkirchen
9/12/44 – Synthetic oil plants at Dortmund, Scholven/Buer and Wanne-Eickel.
9/13/44 – Gelsenkirchen & Osnakbruck
9/15/44 – Tirpitz
9/17/44 – Boulogne
9/19/44 – Walcheren
9/20/44 – Calais
9/23/44 – Walcheren
9/24/44 – Calais
9/25/44 – Calais
9/26/44 – Calais area
9/27/44 – Calais area, Bottrop, Sterkrade
9/28/44 – Calais area
9/30/44 – Sterkrade, Bottrop
10/3/44 – Walcheren
10/4/44 – Bergen
10/5/44 – Wilhelmshaven
10/6/44 - Synthetic oil plants at Sterkrade and Scholven/Buer
10/7/44 - Kleve, Emmerich
10/11/44 – River Scheldt gun batteries
10/12/44 – Wanne-Eickel oil plant
10/14/44 – Duisburg
10/17/44 – Walcheren
10/18/44 – Bonn
10/22/44 – Neuss
10/23/44 – Walcheren
10/25/44 – Essen, Homberg
10/26/44 – Leverkusen chemical works
10/28/44 – Cologne, Walcheren
10/29/44 – Walcheren, Tirpitz
10/30/44 – Walcheren, Wesseling
10/31/44 – Bottrop oil plant
11/1/44 – Homberg oil plant
11/2/44 – Homberg oil plant
11/4/44 – Soligen
11/5/44 – Soligen
11/6/44 – Gelsenkirchen oil plant
11/8/44 – Homberg oil plant
11/9/44 – Wanne-Eickel oil refinery
11/11/44 – Castrop-Rauxel oil refinery
11/12/44 – Tirpitz capsized
11/16/44 – American army support
11/18/44 – Munster
11/20/44 – Homberg oil plant
11/21/44 – Homberg oil refinery
11/23/44 – Gelsenkirchen oil plant
11/26/44 – Fulda railway centre
11/27/44 – Cologne railway yards
11/29/44 – Dortmund, Duisburg tar & benzol plant
11/30/44 – Bottrop coking plant. Osterfeld benzol plant
12/2/44 – Dortmund benzol plant
12/3/44 – Heimbach
12/4/44 – Oberhausen
12/5/44 – Hamm
12/8/44 – Urft Dam, Duisburg railway yards
12/11/44 – Urft Dam, Osterfel railway yards, Duisburg coking & benzol plants
12/12/44 – Witten steelworks
12/15/44 – Siegen
12/16/44 – Siegen railway yards
12/19/44 – Trier railway yards
12/21/44 – Trier railway yards
12/23/44 – Trier railway yards, Cologne/Gremberg railway yards
12/24/44 – Lohausen & Mulheim airfields
12/26/44 – St-Vith troop positions
12/27/44 – Reydt railway yards
12/28/44 – Cologne/Gremberg marshalling yards
12/29/44 – Koblenz railway yards
12/31/44 – Vohinkel railway yards

I wonder how many of the raids were carried out using electronic bombing aids due to weather and poor visibility.

Glider said:

RAF Bomber Command aircraft carried a lot of electronic equipment that wasn't carried by the B17/24. I am not saying that the B24 couldn't carry it, but it would have added a lot of weight to the B24 and that would have needed compensating for. The ball turret and one of the waist gunners were removed from the B24 in Europe from around May 1944 to reduce weight and improve handling. Add a load of electronic equipment and someone to operate it and something else will have to give.
It isn't quite as easy as it first looks.

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Agreed that it's not as easy as it looks, so my question is how much weight are we talking about for the added electronics suite?

Peter Gunn said:

Agreed that it's not as easy as it looks, so my question is how much weight are we talking about for the added electronics suite?

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Oohhh. Good one.

Peter Gunn said:

Agreed that it's not as easy as it looks, so my question is how much weight are we talking about for the added electronics suite?

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Actually, it seems surprisingly difficult to get equipment weights for British electronic equipment flown in heavy bombers during WW2.

I did find this entry in the IWM Collections section that hints at a total weight of 330kg for the H2S radar system...but the item and component descriptions are confusing, and the total weight is actually listed as a length (weird!):

Navigation Equipment, Radar H2S Mark II, British

The list would be extensive.
H2s
H2s Fishpond
Gee
Various jamming devices
Homing Equipment
'Normal' navigation equipment
IFF
plus no doubt others

And then there's all the extra gubbins carried by 100 Group aircraft, in the form of ELINT and ECM equipment etc. some heavy stuff there.

Up the Lancaster's armament. Four gun dorsal turret out of the Defiant. Return the ventral turret. Can we get four guns into the nose?

Glider said:

The list would be extensive.
H2s
H2s Fishpond
Gee
Various jamming devices
Homing Equipment
'Normal' navigation equipment
IFF
plus no doubt others

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1 Only Pathfinder carried H2S. American bombers also carried H2S, in large numbers, only their version was called H2X and was used for bombing through the clouds. Fishpond was a rare late WW2 device that simply allowed H2S screen to display fighters approach from below.
2 Various blind bombing navigation aids were carried by US bombers. Micro-H was their version of Gee-H
3 American bombers carried the same Carpet 1, Carpet 2 etc noise jammers as RAF aircraft. They too wanted to degrade Gun laying radar. About the size of a shoe box.
4 American aircraft carried homing equipment and the ability to land in bad weather, fog etc.

I doubt there was any substantive difference between the US electronic warfare fitout and the British.

What American bombers carried was 4 electric generators not 1. They also carried multiple hydraulic pumps, not the notorious single pump on the Lancaster that powered the turrets.

All that redundancy, armour, turbo charging equipment added weight but it made daylight bombing possible.

Koopernic said:

1 Only Pathfinder carried H2S.

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Not true. On 21 Feb 1943, Bomber Command decided to fit H2S to every aircraft and by the summer of that year it was in regular use as both a bombing aid and a navigation aid.

Koopernic said:

American bombers also carried H2S, in large numbers, only their version was called H2X and was used for bombing through the clouds.

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H2S was not the same thing as H2X. The latter was an American adaptation of the former. Both systems were used by the RAF and USAAF. While the USAAF bomber fleet may have had large numbers of H2S/H2X, it was not carried in every airframe as was the case with Bomber Command.

Koopernic said:

Fishpond was a rare late WW2 device that simply allowed H2S screen to display fighters approach from below.

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Again, not correct. Fishpond entered service in the autumn of 1943 (hardly "late WW2") and it was fitted to most Bomber Command aircraft (so hardly "rare").

Koopernic said:

4 American aircraft carried homing equipment and the ability to land in bad weather, fog etc.

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Are you suggesting Bomber Command aircraft didn't have homing equipment? What about Rebecca/Eureka and BABS (Beam Approach Beacon System). IIRC, the USAAF equipment you reference were actually these UK-developed systems.

Koopernic said:

I doubt there was any substantive difference between the US electronic warfare fitout and the British.

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Apart from the fact that relatively few US bombers carried H2S whereas every Bomber Command heavy bomber had that equipment. The Brits also had extensive EW suites fitted to Mosquitos and 100 Group dedicated jammers (e.g. Benjamin, Domino, Hookah, Jostle, Lucero, Mandrel, Piperack, Rope, Serrate, Tinsel etc.).

buffnut453 said:

Not true. On 21 Feb 1943, Bomber Command decided to fit H2S to every aircraft and by the summer of that year it was in regular use as both a bombing aid and a navigation aid.




H2S was not the same thing as H2X. The latter was an American adaptation of the former. Both systems were used by the RAF and USAAF. While the USAAF bomber fleet may have had large numbers of H2S/H2X, it was not carried in every airframe as was the case with Bomber Command.




Again, not correct. Fishpond entered service in the autumn of 1943 (hardly "late WW2") and it was fitted to most Bomber Command aircraft (so hardly "rare").




Are you suggesting Bomber Command aircraft didn't have homing equipment? What about Rebecca/Eureka and BABS (Beam Approach Beacon System). IIRC, the USAAF equipment you reference were actually these UK-developed systems.




Apart from the fact that relatively few US bombers carried H2S whereas every Bomber Command heavy bomber had that equipment. The Brits also had extensive EW suites fitted to Mosquitos and 100 Group dedicated jammers (e.g. Benjamin, Domino, Hookah, Jostle, Lucero, Mandrel, Piperack, Rope, Serrate, Tinsel etc.).

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H2S replaced a belly turret on Lancaster as it did on Liberator and Fortress.

B17/B24 carried carpet jammers and dropped huge amounts of window to degrade FLAK radar. Windows was the main load of Electronic Warfare equipment.

Some of that Electronic Warfare equipment you mentioned wasn't carried by every Lancaster. It was carried by RAF B17 to high altitude to try and spread the jamming energy over a wider area.

Im saying USAAF bombers carried considerable electronic navigation equipment. Loran from 1944, Micro-H, Windows, H2X at the expense of a turret and the weight they were burdened with was not less in terms of electronics but more burden in the form of armour, armament, redundancy.

How would a Lancaster flying at 240mph max cruise at 21000ft, a perfect height for the 190, deter a 416mph Fw 190A6 attacking from the side and below?

Koopernic said:

H2S replaced a belly turret on Lancaster as it did on Liberator and Fortress.

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Yes, but that still doesn't make your initial statement correct. H2S was fitted to every RAF Bomber Command heavy bomber. That was not the case in the USAAF.

Koopernic said:

Some of that Electronic Warfare equipment you mentioned wasn't carried by every Lancaster. It was carried by RAF B17 to high altitude to try and spread the jamming energy over a wider area.

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I never said that it was carried by every bomber. I specifically called out Mosquitos and 100 Group aircraft. I was responding to your comment that "I doubt there was any substantive difference between the US electronic warfare fitout and the British" (which clearly isn't correct given the broader use of H2S/H2X in the RAF) coupled with your mention of homing devices on USAAF aircraft which suggested that the RAF was somehow less flush with electronic systems than the USAAF. Again, methinks you're mistaken in that belief.

Koopernic said:

How would a Lancaster flying at 240mph max cruise at 21000ft, a perfect height for the 190, deter a 416mph Fw 190A6 attacking from the side and below?

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If' you look at Mike's post #26, it seems RAF Bomber Command was undertaking daylight raids on almost a daily basis from 1 September 1944 onwards so, clearly, the Lancaster could survive under the operational conditions of the time based on the tactics employed by Bomber Command and its supporting escort fighters (which were different than those of the USAAF).

Koopernic said:

How would a Lancaster flying at 240mph max cruise at 21000ft, a perfect height for the 190, deter a 416mph Fw 190A6 attacking from the side and below?

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Same as the B-17 and B-24 had to; with escort fighters.

Greyman said:

Same as the B-17 and B-24 had to; with escort fighters.

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There is a world of difference between the escorts B17's had in 1942/43/early 1944 to the escorts Lancasters had over France (not Germany) while being escorted by thousands of land based fighters based in France and able to attack German airfields in France and Germany. It's not the same thing.

A Fw 190 operating at 20,000ft was in its element of speed and manoeuvrability. It can use attack angles with ease to get at blind spots and weaknesses. At 25,000ft and above it has drastically fallen of in performance.

FLAK is about 3 times more deadly at 20,000 versus 25,000ft. 1/(0.8 x 0.8 x 0.8 x 0.8) the factors are x, y, z(shell burst and range accuracy) and engagement time.

The Lancaster I/III simply could not have conducted daylight raids over Germany. in the same way as the B17 It would get destroyed at attrition levels beyond sustainable even with escorts. The Lancaster VI, with heavy modification, maybe could.

buffnut453 said:

Yes, but that still doesn't make your initial statement correct. H2S was fitted to every RAF Bomber Command heavy bomber. That was not the case in the USAAF.




I never said that it was carried by every bomber. I specifically called out Mosquitos and 100 Group aircraft. I was responding to your comment that "I doubt there was any substantive difference between the US electronic warfare fitout and the British" (which clearly isn't correct given the broader use of H2S/H2X in the RAF) coupled with your mention of homing devices on USAAF aircraft which suggested that the RAF was somehow less flush with electronic systems than the USAAF. Again, methinks you're mistaken in that belief.




If' you look at Mike's post #26, it seems RAF Bomber Command was undertaking daylight raids on almost a daily basis from 1 September 1944 onwards so, clearly, the Lancaster could survive under the operational conditions of the time based on the tactics employed by Bomber Command and its supporting escort fighters (which were different than those of the USAAF).

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Lancaster operating over France were not challenged by FLAK in anywhere near the way USAAF bombers were challenged while opperating over Germany. Nor were they challenged by Luftwaffe fighters in significant numbers.