Lancaster II for Graeme C

Strangely, it appears Merlins suited the Lancaster and the Hercules suited the Halifax. Apparently, neither were quite as good with the “wrong” engines.

The father of a friend of mine flew a tour as a Flight Engineer on Mk II’s with 514 Squadron from Waterbeach I think. He liked them, think his aircraft was LL635. His crew completed 31 ops so they could finish their tour together. Didn’t have a bad word to say about the Lancaster, unlike the Stirlings he instructed on later.

Regards,

kev35

The Mk.II Lancs were faster and had a better climb rate then the Merlin powered versions.It’s drawbacks,as said before,were it’s ceiling (although this was only 2 or 3k short of the Merlin versions) and a higher rate of fuel consumption,however this latter characteristic was counterbalanced by the Mk.II’s higher performance,giving both Merlin and Herc powered Lancs the same approximate range.

Wasn’t the Mkll operated predominantly by the Canadian Squadrons ?

I concur that the performance of the Radial engined Mkll was inferior at altitude, read that quite recently in Lancaster at War.

I’m not sure whether it was much faster, but the MkII certainly had poorer performance at altitude.

Without the books before me, I cannot say for sure, but I’ll take a look tonight if someone doesn’t give you a better answer first! 😉

I seem to recall the radial engined one being faster. It’ll be interesting to see if I’m right.

Moggy

thanks DazdaMan!, the lanc mkII looks very different?, was there a big difference in speed between the merlin and radial engined lanc?