Lancaster defensive tactics

[Karnak]

I wasn't putting you down, I was trying to help you.  However, you are clearly an all knowing god who is incapable of being civil, so I am done with you.

[EskimoJoe]

Squeakin' 11 year old vs Karnak, I declare the winner to be Karnak 



 

[Krusty]

i've never seen anyone release bombs while inverted. if this happens, you should've probably reported it as a bug.

First, sorry for the delay in response, but no I actually meant beer bottles. Commonly thought to distract searchlights as they fell, but that's bunk. Ask the crews and some swore by it, even though it was 110% useless.

As for the bombs, this has been the way AH works for 10 years now. Your own dropped objects will NOT impact with your airframe. However, your "blast radius" will still damage you. Meaning if somehow you lobbed a bomb up and then dove into it again, you wouldn't take any damage. You can't drop your own DT into yourself, etc.

It's a gameplay design that's been around forever. I think "if" they ever fix this issue it will be part of a much larger change to how the entire game works (read: a complete overhaul of the game code) and isn't coming any time soon.

[Angus]

An old RAF stick I knew did some "playing" with Lancasters in Spitfires. It was either a return flight or a training flight, for the Lancasters were quite light, - no bombs and little fuel.
To stay with them in a turn you had to turn good he said. And he saw something he claimed that "had someone else told me he saw this, I'd not have belived him", - i.e. a Lancaster doing a full loop.
As for the corkscrew, it was tried and tested in night combat and turned out rather well. Of course the key feature was to see the enemy before you were toast, but the other key figure was that it was all about throwing the enemy off aim and off visibility. The twin engined night figthers could not get a bead on a Lancaster in the cork, and there were odds that they would loose sight. I have read some German accounts on the corkscrew that support this.
  for ack-ack for this.

[FTJR]

Lancaster was regularly rolled during demonstration flights. I believe refernece to it can be found in the book.."Sigh for a Merlin"

[CAP1]

First, sorry for the delay in response, but no I actually meant beer bottles. Commonly thought to distract searchlights as they fell, but that's bunk. Ask the crews and some swore by it, even though it was 110% useless.

As for the bombs, this has been the way AH works for 10 years now. Your own dropped objects will NOT impact with your airframe. However, your "blast radius" will still damage you. Meaning if somehow you lobbed a bomb up and then dove into it again, you wouldn't take any damage. You can't drop your own DT into yourself, etc.

It's a gameplay design that's been around forever. I think "if" they ever fix this issue it will be part of a much larger change to how the entire game works (read: a complete overhaul of the game code) and isn't coming any time soon.

lol.

i actually thought you meant tinfoil. i had never heard the beer bottle one before. that's kinda funny really.

[W7LPNRICK]

  One tactic I use to get away quickly is the put LANC in auto climb, the type .speed 350  ENTER. this alows it to dive well beyond it's speed of airspeed damage w/o falling apart or tearing wings off.

[Angus]

Lancaster was regularly rolled during demonstration flights. I believe refernece to it can be found in the book.."Sigh for a Merlin"

Would be something to see. I do not doubt that it could. Videos?

[Tails]

  Even a 707 can roll when properly executed. As long as you never exceed the G and speed limits of the airframe, there really is no limit to the maneuvers you can perform. As such, I can believe a Lancaster looping in the real world if the pilot knew what he was doing.

[Furball]

It was Alex Henshaw that looped and barrel rolled a Lancaster.

"Well to start with, the Lancaster was really like flying a very large Moth; the responses were good, it was a thoroughbred aircraft in its own class.  Now rolling the Lancaster, it wasn't a trick but it was something that I'd learnt over the years, in the first instance from the Spitfire. We used to dive the Lancaster on test to 370 mph, indicated, then when you pulled out you were at a very awkward high pitched angle, and so to get back to normal flying conditions you would either do a turn or you'd do a pitching move, neither of which were particularly elegant. And so on one of these I thought well, after diving and pulling up, I've got just about the right speed to do a roll. But I was aware that if I stalled on top of the roll it wouldn't do me or the aircraft any good , and moreover, if I over‑stressed it, it wouldn't do the aircraft any good at all!

So I put my glove on the top of the Instrument panel coving and as I pulled up we started to get into negative 'G'. As the glove started to float then I pulled on a slightly positive 'G', and in fact I got into a situation where I was operating precisely between positive and negative 'G'.  It was so accurate that on one instance I had my number one fighter pilot up with me, a man called Venda Jicha, and he was in the well of the aircraft taking down the various figures for the engine temperatures and pressures and what‑have‑you, and I beckoned to him that I was going to roll the aircraft and he didn't really understand what I meant. I pulled it up and I shall never forget the look on his face as we were completely inverted and he was looking at what he thought was the sky but it was the ground!

Well the look on his face will live with me to the end of my days.  And yet his feet only gently left the ground.  Do you remember those ping‑pong balls that they used to put on columns of water? Well that's exactly what the glove was doing, it was gently riding up, and as long as I kept it like that, I had full power, the power‑to‑weight ratio at that weight was first-class and I didn't over‑stress the engine because the glove would have told me if I was putting on too much positive or too much negative. It was something that was very effective."

Was this manoeuvre part of your regular test‑programme?

"No, not always, just depending, but always the crew and passengers were absolutely bewildered, they didn't know what the hell was going on; they were sitting there and yet they were upside down!  But I've certainly done it dozens of times, and I'd always ask someone if I'm taking them aloft would they like to roll, and in most cases they said no, but those that did, they just sat there and they didn't know what on earth was going on."

Have you ever heard of anyone else rolling the Lanc?

"I've heard of a number of test pilots doing it. There was a test pilot next door, in fact two people with Lancasters, they wrote to the Air Ministry asking permission to loop the aircraft. Well a loop, you see, is so simple it isn't even worth considering, and anyway, I don't ask permission from anyone if I fly; I'm not over‑stressing the aircraft, my job is to fly that aircraft and to prove whether it's worthy and suitable for battle, and that's what I was doing."

http://www.spitfiresocietyeastern.org.uk/interview%20archive01.html

[iwomba]

I thought the corkscrew move by lancs was used mostly to escape the searchlights & not the night fighters.
Once trapped in the searchlights the night fighters could pick them easily.

[JunkyII]

Sorry, kinda off topic, does the Lanc actually go upside down in that "corkscrew" ? I think I have seen A10s doing something similar to that over here in Korea. They dont go upside down, once they reach that slow speed they push nose down into another dive

[Angus]

It was Alex Henshaw that looped and barrel rolled a Lancaster.

http://www.spitfiresocietyeastern.org.uk/interview%20archive01.html

Thanks for this Furbie!!!

[Ack-Ack]

I thought the corkscrew move by lancs was used mostly to escape the searchlights & not the night fighters.
Once trapped in the searchlights the night fighters could pick them easily.

It was done primarily to avoid night fighters and was considered the most effective tactic to employ. 


ack-ack

[Simba]

"Query : did the Brits ever outfit any Lancs with lower gun positions??"

Yes, in the early days of its service. But the sighting was difficult, the 'bin' being aft of the wing trailing edge collected all kinds of muck and oil and often jammed as a result, and the drag slowed the aircraft something awful, so the 'lower mid turret' was deleted. The opening for the mounting was retained in Mk.I production but plated over; it was omitted altogether in later production runs. The RAF publication AP 2062 A, Vol.1, Sect.7, Chap.1 covering maintenance of the aircraft includes a drawing of the turret's mounting; the turret itself was covered by the manual supplied by the turret's manufacturer - Fraser-Nash, I think.

Cheers!