Would an unarmed Lancaster be effective or a death trap?

Admiral Beez said:

Drop the armament, focus on streamlining and top speed, like a big Mosquito or Lancastrian with bombs. The benefits are speed and reduced cost and manpower. Effective as a night bomber or death trap?

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I think it would have been more effective. Especially taking into account the roughly 2000 lb in weight that can now go toward the bombload/fuel. Possibly hundreds of pounds more still, considering the fuel gains due to less drag.

Bomber Command showed very noticeable reductions in percentage losses when a) a new type or b) a modified existing type entered service with higher cruising speeds. These were generally in the order of 10-20 mph 'leaps' (granted, 1000 to 3000 ft gain in cruising altitude occurred in these cases as well).

Overall the question comes down to: would a Lancaster that cruises 60-70 mph faster evade more interceptions than the turret Lancaster would defend against.

My gut says yes. Two caveats though.

1. LW night fighter tactics and mindset would probably change when there is nothing to fear from the bomber. As soon as a LW pilot has eyes on the unarmed Lancaster -- aside from losing contact there is nothing preventing him from fixing himself to his target and not letting go. This was absolutely not the case with the threat of Lancasters spitting 75-100 rounds per second back at him (at close range). How many crews were saved just by this deterrence alone -- combat not even having to take place. Anecdotes and PoW/postwar testimony indicates a significant number.
2. What effect does this have on bomber crew psychology. I have a feeling you can show young airmen all the spreadsheets you want, having no way to fight back would have a tough effect on morale. The Mosquito trades defensive armament for near immunity. The Lancaster would trade it for a few percentage points in a favourable direction.

Of course the powers-that-be thought of this as well. Front and mid-upper turrets were at times removed, and ideas were put forward for removing rear turrets and replacing them with simple clear-vision stations with a pair of hand-held guns.

I can't remember if the reason this was decided against was ever explicitly stated, but Bomber Command always kept daylight bombing in the back of their minds. Evolving their bomber force away from turrets would render Bomber Command's fleet unable to venture out in daylight. Based on all the documents / correspondence I've read I believe this is what forestalled these ideas.

pbehn said:

The Halifax ditched the front turret to achieve that.

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The Halifax ditched the front turret to save weight and decrease drag; the aeroplane was too heavy and draggy and thus was too slow, not being able to reach its target performance figures. Keeping up was its problem.

Greyman said:

Bomber Command always kept daylight bombing in the back of their minds.

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Very much so, as I mentioned a considerable percentage of Bomber Command raids were flown in daylight hours, particularly raids against coastal ports and over occupied France because it was reasoned that during the day, accuracy increased, particularly at low level, which is what many of the daylight raids were flown at.

This is where questions have to be asked about the efficacy of such an aircraft combined with existing types within Bomber Command. It's not a bad idea, but to what degree to you apply this? As I mentioned earlier, standardisation on a single (or two) type/s is sensible, so how many of these 'fast' Lancs can you afford to convert? Bomber streams are flown at the cruise speed of your slowest aircraft, so having a mixed fleet is not going to enable any real advantage in speed until the drive to get home, that is, unless these aircraft fly single type ops only. And then what does that look like in terms of planning a raid? The higher the number of bombers, the more effective destroying larger targets becomes.

The other thing is that by adding more powerful engines to the Lancaster, you create a Lincoln and with a Halifax, you get a Halifax VI, both of which demonstrated excellent performance compared to their base models, so what advantage would building an unarmed variant have that these armed aircraft with more powerful engines don't have?

Another factor wirth considering is that the RAF acquired B-29s post war, which demonstrated that perhaps it needed a faster bomber, but it was an interim until the Canberra. Would this unarmed Lanc be able to match that performance of a B-29? Not likely. best to build an entirely new bomber

nuuumannn said:

The Halifax ditched the front turret to save weight and decrease drag; the aeroplane was too heavy and draggy and thus was too slow, not being able to reach its target performance figures. Keeping up was its problem.
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I think that is what I said (it is what I meant) the bomber stream was based on all planes going at the same speed, so they must go at the speed of the slowest.

pbehn said:

I think that is what I said

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Yup, I wanted to clarify that the Halifax really dropped the ball performance wise. It suffered numerous issues on its introduction and with a nasty tendency to get into irrecoverable spins owing to rudder overbalance, thus causing needless aircrew deaths, it really needed to undertake redesign or retirement. It took HP two years after its introduction to slowly iron out the bugs and even then they weren't completely resolved following the introduction of the Halifax III, which was initially intended on being an interim design. The Lancaster tended to highlight the inadequacies of the Halifax more because it had better performance and better serviceability rates.

nuuumannn said:

Yup, I wanted to clarify that the Halifax really dropped the ball performance wise. It suffered numerous issues on its introduction and with a nasty tendency to get into irrecoverable spins owing to rudder overbalance, thus causing needless aircrew deaths, it really needed to undertake redesign or retirement. It took HP two years after its introduction to slowly iron out the bugs and even then they weren't completely resolved following the introduction of the Halifax III, which was initially intended on being an interim design. The Lancaster tended to highlight the inadequacies of the Halifax more because it had better performance and better serviceability rates.

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Harris famously loved H-P as a father loves his son Luckily the Lancaster got off the ground or the RAF would have been stuck with a real POS that no one could prove wasn't a world beater.

swampyankee said:

I've weighed in on the counter-intuitive OR results about bombers' defensive armament, with the reduced net number of casualties, but this is due to the increased bomber payload permitting fewer sorties and the smaller crews resulting in a net reduction in the number of personnel lost even if the loss rate increases.

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This would have been a very hard sell to the crew and a lost plane is lost. Or if you could make 2 Mosquito like bombers with the resources of 1 Lanc, that might have been a viable alternative. Still with the development of very large single bombs, the Lancaster was needed.

The role envisioned for a gunless Lancaster would have been better filled by a derivative of the Boeing Fortress I. The British took delivery of a small number of B-17Cs in 1941 which were slightly modified (including fitting of self-sealing fuel tanks) and designated "Fortress I". The B-17C was not unarmed, in fact it had reasonably-heavily armed with a 50-cal in each waist position, one in a dorsal blister, and one in a ventral blister, yet the B-17C was rated at a top speed of 323 MPH. (The slightly upgunned B-17D was rated at 317 MPH, and is probably closer to the Fortress-I as delivered.)

Historically, the Fortress I was deemed to be a failure in the strategic bombing role as practiced by the British in late 1941, early 1942, but the experimental raids were conducted in daylight, with very small numbers of bombers, and at 30,000 foot altitude. The Luftwaffe proved capable of intercepting the bombers at that altitude, and the bombers proved incapable of hitting their targets at that altitude. That being said, in the hypothetical in this thread, the fast bomber would be attacking at night with whatever nightbombing technology was available at the time. There would still be a problem with hitting the target, but no different than with any other alternative.

I would keep the ventral gun position, delete the rest. Even without an engine swap, a cleaned up Fortress I would have been immune to interception by radar-equipped Me-110s. (Later night fighters could be a problem though.) Could a cleaned up Lancaster reach that performance? I don't know.

For the concept of an unarmed Lancaster is; reduced hazards through greater speed, less time in the danger zone (there are the same number of night fighters and AA guns but less time to deal with the bombers) less crew losses/training, lower resource costs to build so more Lancasters built and cruising at greater heights.

Against is the Bomber Command will just go 'Huzzah! Now we can load more bombs on it or send it to further targets' and negate the whole benefits.

While you are at it, lower the cockpit into the fuselage and retract the tail wheel to do the job properly.

Conslaw said:

The role envisioned for a gunless Lancaster would have been better filled by a derivative of the Boeing Fortress I. The British took delivery of a small number of B-17Cs in 1941 which were slightly modified (including fitting of self-sealing fuel tanks) and designated "Fortress I". The B-17C was not unarmed, in fact it had reasonably-heavily armed with a 50-cal in each waist position, one in a dorsal blister, and one in a ventral blister, yet the B-17C was rated at a top speed of 323 MPH. (The slightly upgunned B-17D was rated at 317 MPH, and is probably closer to the Fortress-I as delivered.)

Historically, the Fortress I was deemed to be a failure in the strategic bombing role as practiced by the British in late 1941, early 1942, but the experimental raids were conducted in daylight, with very small numbers of bombers, and at 30,000 foot altitude. The Luftwaffe proved capable of intercepting the bombers at that altitude, and the bombers proved incapable of hitting their targets at that altitude. That being said, in the hypothetical in this thread, the fast bomber would be attacking at night with whatever nightbombing technology was available at the time. There would still be a problem with hitting the target, but no different than with any other alternative.

I would keep the ventral gun position, delete the rest. Even without an engine swap, a cleaned up Fortress I would have been immune to interception by radar-equipped Me-110s. (Later night fighters could be a problem though.) Could a cleaned up Lancaster reach that performance? I don't know.

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The Lancaster had more powerful engines and cruised faster than a B17 and did both with a larger bomb load so there is no reason to expect the faster versions to not similarly differ.

yulzari said:

While you are at it, lower the cockpit into the fuselage and retract the tail wheel to do the job properly.

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I seem to remember that the wheel was also needed while in the air for stability? From Manchester to Lancaster it lost a central fin.

pbehn said:

I seem to remember that the wheel was also needed while in the air for stability? From Manchester to Lancaster it lost a central fin.

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And gained bigger fins and rudders. Actually, they were fitted to the last of the Manchesters.

yulzari said:

The Lancaster had more powerful engines and cruised faster than a B17 and did both with a larger bomb load so there is no reason to expect the faster versions to not similarly differ.

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More powerful at take-off, yes - at altitude? Depends at what altitude.

Certainly the turbos in the B-17 assisted in maintaining power to higher altitudes, and had a higher critical altitude than the Lancaster's single stage Merlin XXs.

As for cruise, I believe that was largely down to the situation and tactics of the two air forces. The B-17s were flown in formation during the daylight, while the Lancasters flew at night, with looser formations, if any at all.