Rear Turret

To start with rear turrets were commonly Fraser Nash or Boulton-Paul types which contained 4 Browning 0.303 machine guns. It was a cold and lonely position at the back of the aircraft and a very dangerous one. The rear gunner was the main defence for the bomber, but since German night-fighters tended to attack from the rear, the rear gunner was in the direct line of fire. It was known for bombers to come back undamaged except for missing the entire rear turret. Visibility was the key to survival, and often gunners removed the perspex panel immediately in front of them to improve the view, despite the stunning cold of the wind blast. The eyes of an alert, professional rear gunner were the salvation of many a bomber crew, and the chilling cry of "Corkscrew starboard, GO!" as the gunner opened fire on a night fighter bearing down on them caused an instinctive and immediate violent reaction in any Bomber Command pilot. Later in the war the new Rose turrets were introduced which contained two 0.5 inch Browning machine guns giving the bombers greater firepower against the more heavily armoured night fighters. Back to the top

Mid Upper Turret

A wide variety of twin and in the case of several marks of the Halifax, four gun mid upper turrets were fitted to Bomber Command aircraft. The position of the turret can be seen as a hangover from the daylight bombing doctrine that existed when the aircraft were designed. In night operations the turrets were really of little practical use. The majority of night fighter attacks were made stealthily from astern and below, indeed, with the advent of Schräge Musik, the inclined cannon armament system fitted to German night fighters, the majority of the attacks occurred from almost directly below, completely out of sight of the mid upper gunner. There were some aircraft fitted with belly or ventral gun positions such as the Lancaster Mk II and several versions of the Halifax, but these were not brought into widespread service although many aircraft on the production line were perfectly capable of having them installed. Since it was a simple matter to extrapolate the direction of attack from the damage done to the aircraft which managed to return after being attacked, and several engineers in Bomber Command remarked upon the attack patterns in official reports, it is a matter of conjecture how many lives would have been saved by the deletion of the traditional mid upper turret and the acceptance of ventral positions as the norm in reply to the tactics employed by the German night fighter force. In many late production aircraft the ventral position designed into the Lancaster and Halifax was taken up with the H₂S ground mapping radar head. Back to the top

Cockpit

Most heavy bombers only had one pilot who sat on the left hand side, the exeption being the Short Stirling which was fitted with full dual controls. Most of the bomber types had relatively heavy controls, so the long range bomber raids could have been exhausting without the simple auto-pilots fitted to most types. The instrument panel was made up of the standard RAF blind flying 'T' of instruments, which was added to as various navigation and bombing aids were developed. The center and right panels were largely taken up with engine instruments. On the right hand side of the Halifax and Lancaster cockpits was a fold down seat that the flight engineer used. The centre mounted throttles could be reached by both the pilot and flight engineer, on take-off the flight engineer handled these while the pilot concentrated on keeping the heavily laden aircraft straight. The flight engineer was there to assist the pilot, monitor the engines and fuel levels and transfer fuel to maintain the balance of the aircraft. The presence of these skilled crew members meant that the pressure of pilot training was reduced and Bomber Command could deploy a larger force of aircraft. Back to the top

Navigator's Seat

The navigator's job was to find the way to and from the target. He had repeaters of certain instruments, such as altimeter, airspeed indicator and compass at his desk to assist him in calculations, and in the early years of the war such instruments as a sextant or astrolabe to calculate his position. This training and equipment was insufficient for a variety of reasons, not least of which was the difficulty of predicting and evaluating the upper winds accurately over the continent once it was all in German hands. As a result, in early raids it was common for only one bomb in fifty to fall within 50 miles of its intended target. Great efforts, both scientific and operational, were made to counter this deficieny. During the course of the war a series of electronic aids were developed to assist navigation, such as Gee and H₂S. The Pathfinder Force was also introduced to act as navigation leaders to the main force, dropping marker flares at turning points and over the target itself as guides, as well as spoof and decoy flares to confuse the defences. The Pathfinders were considered the cream of Bomber Command navigators, a small number of men responsible for the overall effectiveness of an entire force. Consequently, they were often the first units to receive the new navigation aids. Back to the top

Bomb Aimer's position

At the beginning of the war the navigator also used to do the bomb aiming as well as the navigational duties. As time went on, however, and bomber crews were reorganized, a separate bomb aiming position was created. This meant that the navigator could concentrate more on his main duties, vital to the success of any crew. This resulted in bomber crews becoming more specialised and professional in their fields. The bomb aimer had the duty of releasing the bombs at the right point, which considering they were often released between eighteen and twenty-eight thousand feet, from an aircraft moving at anything up to 380 mph, was a considerable computational task. These variables were further complicated by the wind over the target, known as 'drift' by airmen of the day, and the make-up of the bomb-load itself, different bombs having different aerodynamics. To assist the bomb aimer in this task, the accuracy of bomb-sights improved during the course of the war, culminating in the remarkable SABS bombsight of 1944, an incredibly accurate semi-computerised device, much used by 9 and 617 Squadrons to drop the twelve and twenty-two thousand pound 'Tallboy' and 'Grand Slam' bombs. The bomb aimer also manned the front gun or turret when required. Back to the top

Dinghy

Ditching was one of the worst fears for bomber crews, the internal spaces of bombers were cramped and full of protruding equipment, so rapidly exiting a sinking aircraft was a real struggle. Once you were safely out of the aircraft, survival was first order of the day in often freezing temeratures at sea. There was faint hope of rescue, reliant on the position report the wireless operator may have managed to send prior to ditching, which may be several hours old by the time rescuers arrived in the area. All bombers had dinghys on board and the crew were trained how to use them. The aircraft also carried with them homing pigeons so if a crew ditched or crashed they could release the pigeons with a message of their approximate position. Even with this system some crews were not found for days and many were never found at all. One account describes how 4 members of a crew were afloat on the English channel for 9 days with only a small tin of Horlicks tablets, a small tin of chocolate and about a pint of water. They were eventually spotted and picked up by an RAF high-speed rescue launch. Back to the top

Bomb Bay

The size of the bomb bay on Bomber Command aircraft varied enormously between designs, and the maximum bomb load would of course be limited by this factor, as well as other aerodynamic, range and all-up weight considerations. For example, a Handley Page Hampden's official maximum bomb load was 4,000 lbs, although usually only half of this was carried to allow greater range by trading the weight of bombs against the fuel load. An Avro Lancaster's official maximum bomb load was 18,500 lbs, but in order to reach Berlin this could be reduced to 10,000 lbs or less, dependent on the forecast winds. The Handley Page Halifax had small compartments in the inner wing sections which could take single bombs or mines in the early versions of the aircraft, as well as the main bomb bay. Both this aircraft and the Short Stirling suffered from one drawback, the structure of the aircraft impinged on the bomb bay, limiting the maximum size of any bomb that could be carried. The Avro Lancaster suffered from no such limitation, it is said that in order to design the Manchester, the forerunner of the Lancaster, Roy Chadwick began with a thirty-three foot long hole and built a bomber around it! This huge area was capable of taking any bomb in the Bomber Command arsenal, and was modified at times to take special weapons such as the Bouncing Bomb, Tall Boy and Grand Slam. For the Bouncing Bomb, the bomb doors were taken off and the apparatus installed which could hold and rotate the bomb, giving it the backspin required for it to work properly. A Grand Slam bomb weighed 22,000 lbs so could only be carried by specially strengthened and lightened Lancasters with the nose and mid-upper turrets removed. As the bomb was so large, again the bomb doors were taken off. Back to the top