The Lancaster was a heavily armed bomber. It had eight 0.303 machine guns in various turrets on board. As time progressed, the bomb bay in the plane was changed to allow such mighty bombs as the ‘Grand Slam’ to be carried. The ‘Grand Slam’ at 22,000 lb (9979 kg) was the heaviest bomb carried in World War Two.
The Lancasters took part in many raids on Germany in World War Two. They were also used in specific raids such as the one on the ‘Tirpitz’ (November 1944) holed up in a Norwegian fjord. The most famous bombing raid by Lancasters was the ‘Dambuster Raids’. For this, Barnes Wallis had to make a number of modifications to the Lancasters that took part in this raid. Nineteen Lancasters took part in this raid on May 17th 1943, with eight planes being lost.
The Lancaster flew more than 156,000 sorties in World War Two. The plane dropped a total of 608,000 tons of high explosive bombs and more than 51 million incendiary bombs.
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