back to article World's only flyable WWII Lancaster bombers meet in Lincs

Aviation history is being made in Lincolnshire today as the only two airworthy Avro Lancasters in the world met up at RAF Coningsby this afternoon. The two World War II bombers – one operated by the Canadian Warplane Heritage Museum (CWHM), the other by the RAF's Battle of Britain Memorial Flight (BBMF) – are due to rendezvous …

      1. Phil O'Sophical Silver badge
        Thumb Up

        Re: Love that noise

        Many years ago I was driving round the Heathrow perimeter road, to return a hire car. I was just passing the end of the runway when the whole world started to shake. I looked up though the sunroof to see what the hell was making that noise, and found myself looking straight into 4 purple afterburner cones of a Concorde climbing away. Beautiful, visually and audibly, and stunning in more ways than one!

        1. Anonymous Coward
          Anonymous Coward

          Re: Love that noise

          However, for sheer loud noise (with not much thrust) I think Russian passenger aircraft hold some sort of record.

          1. Chicken Marengo
            Black Helicopters

            Re: Love that noise

            Agreed with the Rusky noise record.

            Flew in a Russian military helicopter once in Nepal. It was approximately 2 days before I got my hearing back.

            Not a good noise, but definitely a loud noise! I've also flown in Sea Kings (wonderful beasts) and Lynx. they were positively silent compared to the Russian monster

            Obvious icon choice, although the one I flew in was white.

            1. Chicken Marengo

              Re: Love that noise

              actually, it was rust coloured with hints of white

        2. Toastan Buttar

          Re: Love that noise

          @Phil O'Sophical:

          Almost identical story to yours, except I was returning the hire car when Concorde was just coming in to land. It was like the Space Shuttle or something! Nearly wrote off the hire car as a result of staring in awe at the big bird.

    1. nichomach

      Re: Love that noise

      Noise-wise, I don't know whether I'd say I *liked* it as such, but lo these many years ago when I lived in Aberystwyth, I remember being overflown by a couple of (I think Turkish) Starfighters, and I've never heard another aircraft produce anything like the unearthly shriek from them. THAT was a noise which could occasion a swift trouser change....

      1. Uffish

        Re: Love that noise

        Many years ago also - Cape Cod, Mass, US of A. The parents found a nice camping site with surprisingly low prices. In the middle of the night we found out that we were at the end of a runway with single engined planes taking off on full afterburner. Think they were Starfighters, they had ridiculously short wings. Fabulous, never seen flames or heard a noise like it - but four big piston engines on a WWII bomber trumps it.

        1. MrT

          Re: Love that noise

          A Lancaster flew over my house earlier today, (Durham), about 13:30...

          Sadly, the weather has spoiled the meet-up between the two and the BBMF Lancaster is reportedly grounded, so I guess it was the Canadian Lanc flying in...

          1. Dave Bell

            Re: Love that noise

            Yep, seriously horrible weather moved into Lincolnshire from Cambridgeshire and the BBMF had to cancel flying. It was very severe rain in Cambridgeshire.

            I think I might have seen Vera in the distance if the visibility hadn't been lousy.

            You have to find the local news page for Lincolnshire to see any mention by the BBC. I haven't even seen a mention of the flash flooding except as local news. If it's not in London, it never happened...

      2. cortland

        Re: Love that noise

        I grew up in a USAF family... When throttled back the J-79 produced an unearthly moan; imagine the reaction of troops on the ground at night.. If I recall correctly, the USAF used them for point air defense, although the German Air Force used them for ground attack, a role whose accident rate in training led USAF pilots (presumably of OTHER fighters) to call them "Lawn Darts."

      3. Pete 47
        Happy

        Re: Love that noise

        I "fondly" recall the utterly un-holy noise Starfighters make after attending the Leicester (Stoughton) air-display in probably the late seventies.

        The crowd were primed to look out for two (RCAF I think) Starfighters coming from a particular direction and the announcer was saying can you see them yet? when without any warning and from directly behind the crowd at very low level the two blasted overhead. The noise was biblical, people screamed, some actually fell over with shock or dropped to their knees hands over ears, children were crying it was pandemonium.

        I loved aircraft at the time but that scared me just a little. I can still feel my spleen shaking from the sheer sound pressure when I recall it.

        Wouldn't be allowed today of course.

        1. Mark Allen

          Re: Love that noise

          Starfighters - F104G. Can't remember if it was Fairford or Greenham Common. Was a RIAT show. We were at the far end of the runway when the pair of Starfighters did a pass. One going as slow as possible, when his partner came screaming through at high speed underneath.... and then he pulled up right in front of us... and crack!! Naughty boy broke the sound barrier!! Loud Plus!! (And no doubt a certain pilot got a bit of a bo11ocking when he landed)

          For fans of those silly flying coffins it is well worth tracking down Bob Calvert's album "Captain Lockheed and the Starfighters". https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Captain_Lockheed_and_the_Starfighters

          Even though my post is about Startfighters... I'd much rather have the noise of any other of the aircraft being mentioned here. From Mossies to Lightnings... it is such a pity we will never hear those awesome soundtracks ever again.

          I now have to go and book some tickets for an airshow to see those two Lancs together. Two lancs, Spitfire, Hurricane makes ten Merlins. Still doesn't quite out roar the Spitfire flypast of a RIAT of the past where there were at least 15 flying together! (Some time in the 1980s)

          A BIG thank you to all those enthusiasts who keep these historic aircraft in the air.

          1. John Brown (no body) Silver badge
            Thumb Up

            Re: Love that noise

            "For fans of those silly flying coffins it is well worth tracking down Bob Calvert's album "Captain Lockheed and the Starfighters"

            Oh hell yes! I'd love to get a replacement copy of that! Funny as hell.

            Catch a falling starfighter

            Put it in the pocket of your jeans

            You can use it as a cigarette lighter

            Or as an opener for a can of beans.

            Once heard, never forgotten :-)

    2. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: Love that noise

      Vulcan recently flew low over Chippenham - my god what a beautiful plane

      1. Tim Russell

        Re: Love that noise

        And all three should be flying together this year.... Two Lancs and a Vulcan...drool

    3. joms
      Thumb Up

      Re: Love that noise

      The only thing that sounds better than a Merlin engine is 4 Merlin engines.

    4. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: Love that noise

      At an air display at Wem in the late 1960s - they announced that the English Electric Lightning was delayed. Was it heck - the next minute it came in really low over the hedges then climbed with glowing afterburners over the crowd. The sound was pulverising - and the view fantastic.

      There have been times in the past when the BBMF trio would follow the main East Coast railway line out of London. While crossing the Luton Airport approach path they would be really low and the sound was incredible.

    5. Toastan Buttar

      Re: Love that noise

      @Chicken Marengo:

      Precisely what I came to the comments section to say - AND I was also going to say about the only exception being the Vulcan.

      (Though I'm sure a Saturn 5 rocket would be something to behold).

  1. phuzz Silver badge
    Thumb Up

    While I was at a festival just down the road from Conigsby last year, the BBMF Lanc flew over at what seemed like tree-top height.

    Not much is more impressive than four Merlins at full chat about 100m above your head, lovely sight!

    (We also got to see a Spit and a Hurricane, and the Vulcan XH588 flew over the day before, I'll be keeping my eyes peeled again this year. Actually, four Bristol Olympus's are pretty damn impressive as well)

  2. Vulch
    Black Helicopters

    Random factoid.

    Next time you see a Lanc, remember its wingspan is a gnats over 100ft so when flying a dam buster attack run the height above water was about the same as the distance from one wingtip to the inboard engine the other side...

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: Random factoid.

      One of my most satisfying moments was in a car with a loud, obnoxious Yank (sorry, friends, they do exist, just like loud obnoxious Brits) telling me how some US aircraft at the local base could fly at 600mph at 65ft. Without thinking I repeated a comment from a colleague formerly in the RAF: "So, high and slow then".

      The visit did not go well till I discovered that none of the engineers at the plant could stand him either.

      1. Paul_Murphy

        Re: Random factoid.

        Well you could have started a discussion about the Buccaneer, or the TSR2 I suppose.

      2. MJI Silver badge

        Re: Random factoid.

        I wonder what he would have thought about a Buccaneer?

  3. GlenP Silver badge
    Unhappy

    Rats

    They will be flying over my house a week on Sunday - and I'll be on a train heading for Scotland.

  4. on ap standa

    A couple of times in the Peaks I've been buzzed by WWII era planes (not counting the regular pleasure flights) with no warning

  5. lawndart

    says:

    Blood ran cold for a moment on reading the title to this article - a meet can be construed as a collision.

    The nice thing about living near Sywell in Northamptonshire is the Vulcan and the Lancaster frequent the place for display training with the local acrobatic team The Blades. I have had the Lanc orbit my house at low level while waiting for its slot.

  6. Richard Scratcher

    Pleasure flights

    I saw Vera on display at the Canadian warplane museum a couple of years ago. It's possible to book it for a flight - but it's expensive at about $10,000 for a group of 4 people.

  7. Neil 44

    BBMF flies over my house almost every year when its going to Farnborough.... Heard it but didn't quite have time to grab anything photographic this year.

    Remember seeing a Vulcan at RAF Holton airshow (quite a few) years ago when they were still in service. Definitely impressive when he put the burners on and climbed!

    They also had a Lightning there that sat on its tail and went straight up....

    Last but not least, they had a middle-eastern private airliner do a flypast at low level: its pilot had trained at Holton!

    Lincolnshire to see 3 Lancs: have to see what we're doing that w/e !!

    1. Ivan Headache

      error!

      No burners on a Vulcan.

      1. Chris Miller

        Re: error!

        And it's RAF Halton not Holton (though that's how it's pronounced).

      2. Fruit and Nutcase Silver badge
        Thumb Up

        Re: error!

        Unless you count the Olympus 593 testbed Vulcan XA903 used for Concorde...

        http://www.avrovulcan.org.uk/903/903_flypast.htm

        https://encrypted.google.com/#q=vulcan+olympus+testbed+593+image

  8. I ain't Spartacus Gold badge

    My friend's Dad was a navigator on Lancasters in WWII. He was known as 'old man', as he was the oldest surviving guy in the squadron for a long time, including the CO. He was 24.

    On a more cheerful note, the trans-Atlantic crossing reminds me of a documentary I caught some of - and didn't manage to track down. Don Bennett was given the job of getting US and Canadian built planes across to Blighty in the war. That flight was a dangerous and difficult passage in those days, with inexperienced crews not helping. Apparently (according to said documentary) he trained his navigators and crews so well, that he didn't lose a single plane when in charge. Although losses were rather higher once he'd left.

    He then was put in charge of setting up the RAF's pathfinder force. Which he was also very good at. Again from documentary he was at an Air Ministry meeting asking for more Mosquitoes for the pathfinders, to be told they were impossible to use at night, due to the flames from the engine exhaust. To which his response was, "that's funny, I've been flying one all this week."

    1. Mike Moyle

      Ferrying planes...

      I suspect that my dad's crew would have LOVED to only have to ferry their plane to England during the war. Ferrying B-25 Mitchell medium bombers from the states to India was a long and dangerous haul, even with the reduced risk of being shot down on the trip over. I recall him mentioning (I think) stops in Venezuela, Rio, Ascension Island, Cape Town... And I know I'm missing a good few.

      The standard joke was that, if your were carrying maximum fuel and minimum everything else and if you had a good tailwind and your navigator and pilot were on the top of their game, you had just enough fuel to fall 10 feet sort of the runway at Ascension.

      Dad was the radio operator and, as the time approached for him to pick up the Ascension radio beacon, everyone was understandably on edge -- there was a LOT of water out there -- and all eyes that weren't busy flying the plane were watching the navigator. Finally, he caught the beacon -- they were coming straight down the beam. As he told it, he first patched the navigator in to his signal so he knew they were on the beam, but he apparently didn't hear it and continued checking and rechecking his maps, tables, and calculations, getting visibly more nervous as time went on. Dad checked his system again -- radio beacon good, patch to navigator good... He was just about to speak up when the nav just grabbed everything on the table up in his arms, screamed "I CAN'T TAKE IT ANYMORE!!" and threw the whole mess out the hatch.

      There was a moment of horrified silence before dad patched everyone else in, so the whole crew could hear the beacon. The nav fell over laughing hysterically at his little joke. How did the others take it? As dad put it, "We almost saved the Japanese the trouble of killing him."

  9. Johnny Canuck

    "Vera" was a day late taking off, because of a problem with the magnetos on one of the engines. They had her ready to go around 10:00AM the next morning. Also, they filmed the takeoff from behind Vera in a Mitchell B-25 medium bomber for a documentary.

  10. Alistair
    Pint

    It makes me think somewhat.

    That parts of Vera were assembled not many feet from where I sit these days.....

    You folks over there enjoy the tour please, since we wont get the joy of seeing two of these in the air togther....

  11. Gene Cash Silver badge

    I'd love to see a Lanc fly

    ...though a B-17 is an adequate substitute. I also was privileged enough to see "Glacier Girl" (only flying P-38) this summer. She sounded a lot like the turbofans in an A-10, strangely enough.

    Speaking of Merlin engines, I remember seeing a TV show showing ancient films of the production lines. One of the machines honed all 12 cylinders in both blocks simultaneously. I've always wondered what happened to that piece of equipment.

    And of course you can also read about Miss Shilling's orifice on Wikipedia...

    1. mky

      Re: I'd love to see a Lanc fly

      Glacier Girl is the only P38F in airworthy condition, there are about a dozen P-38s of various models currently flying. I'd love to see the Lancs up and about together. closest I've come is the Collings Foundations B-24 and B-17 together. You Brits are very lucky to have the opportunity.

  12. JaitcH
    Happy

    I was amazed at how SMALL these aircraft were

    I read all the usual rah-rah British books on the feats achieved by the Lancasters and their crews.

    Then, after moving to Canada, I passed by what is now ONTARIO PLACE on the :Lakeshore Boulevard where for many, many years a Lancaster was mounted atop a pedestal right next to the downtown direction traffic lanes.

    Unfortunately it was removed and replaced by more politically acceptable objects.

    1. Pen-y-gors

      Re: I was amazed at how SMALL these aircraft were

      Some years ago I had a holiday job at RAF Scampton washing Vulcans for 617 squadron (beats stacking shelves in Tesco!). As a treat one day they let me go into the static Lanc they had at the main gate to vacuum it - boy, was it cramped! And it was made worse as it was a very sunny summer day and every time bare flesh brushed against metal I got burned - serious respect for the thousands who sat in them for hours on end while being shot at.

      1. Vic

        Re: I was amazed at how SMALL these aircraft were

        As a treat one day they let me go into the static Lanc they had at the main gate

        Not quite a Lanc, but the Wellesbourne Vulcan mob do tours of XM655 on Saturdays. They do a cockpit tour in return for a donation - I've not made that yet.

        Vic.

        1. Mark Allen

          Re: I was amazed at how SMALL these aircraft were

          Lanc or Vulcan cockpits - don't know which is the scariest! Tiny little dark spaces to sit in. Especially when you think of the distance you would have to cover when flying one. And if things went wrong, it wasn't exactly easy to get back out again.

          Reading this thread I am realising how lucky I was to have been in a small Air Cadet Squadron in the late 1980s which meant I got to experience so many of these classic aircraft. And can only be amazed at what the crews of these craft had to go through.

          Though the true heroes that I met in those years were the members of the Guinea Pig Club. Men were really made of something different back then.

          1. Vic

            Re: I was amazed at how SMALL these aircraft were

            And if things went wrong, it wasn't exactly easy to get back out again.

            Vulcan pilots had ejector seats. They'd get out just fine.

            The "back office" crew - the other three members of the flight crew - had to slide down the entry hatch and fall out of the bottom of the aircraft.

            That's bad enough - but the entry hatch is forward of the nosewheel. There is a procedure in the manual for getting out when the nosewheel is down - the designers calculated that the crew would miss the mainwheels by some 12 inches...

            Vic.

            1. Mark Allen

              Re: I was amazed at how SMALL these aircraft were

              It was the guys in the less fashionable seats of the Vulcan I was thinking about. The three of them in an ordered queue trying to get down a narrow stairwell and out of that hatch. All while the aircraft was likely to be a bit windy if the front two had already banged out. And where would they be landing in their parachutes if they did jump out?

              If anything I think the Lanc guys almost had an easier time of it!

              (Now off to read accounts of the people who *did* try and get out of that daft hatch... this thread has had me off reading all kinds of reports :))

              1. Anonymous Coward
                Anonymous Coward

                Re: I was amazed at how SMALL these aircraft were

                It was the guys in the less fashionable seats of the Vulcan I was thinking about. The three of them in an ordered queue trying to get down a narrow stairwell and out of that hatch.

                There's a Concorde at Duxford (well, there was 20 years ago!) which is partially set up to show how the plane looked during early test flights. Right at the back there's an escape hatch in the floor, with a hefty steel blade a bit like a boat's centreboard that could be lowered in front of it. If everything went titsup their best hope was to lower the blade into the airflow, which would in theory allow them to "drop" through the hatch and be completely clear of the plane without being decapitated by the edge of the hatch when the wind caught them. If they survived that, they wouldn't care where their parachute took then!

                As a child I remember the early test flights up & down the Irish sea, standing in the garden to hear the sonic boom (before the complaints about smashed greenhouses stopped them). My Mum's cousin worked on the team, I still have a cast alloy model he made sitting on a shelf beside me.

                1. AdamT

                  Re: I was amazed at how SMALL these aircraft were

                  That's because it _is_ one of the test planes. The passenger seats, etc. were added at the museum to show ordinary mortals what the commercial version was like.

                  But, yes, I did look at those chutes and think "how bad would it have to get before _that_ starts looking like a good idea" !

  13. Terrence Bayrock
    Thumb Up

    The NOISE is fabulous!!

    In Alberta, there is a Lanc at : http://www.bombercommandmuseum.ca/

    It is not flightworthy, but they fire up all 4 Merlins occasionally. Was there on the first run. WOW! Could just imagine hundred's of them in the aerodromes and in flight....

  14. Stevie

    Bah!

    Daaaah daah dahdah dadadaaaaah dah

    Daaaah daah dahdah dadadaaaaah dah

    Daaaah dah daaah dah daaaaah dadaaaaah

    Dah dah dadadah daaaaaaaah...

    1. Michael M

      Re: Bah!

      There is an extra a. I'll leave it to the diligent readers to spot the obvious mistake.

      1. Stevie

        Re: There is an extra a.

        No, there isn't. That particular bit was hummed in a Canadian accent as a tribute to Guy Gibson and "S for Sugar".

  15. asdf

    Lancaster vs B17

    The Lancaster could hold a lot more payload and was much better for carpet bombing at night but check out the battle damage a B17 could take and return home on this page. Both won the war.

    http://www.armchairgeneral.com/forums/showthread.php?t=109255

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