I recently remarked, in a different forum, about the use of nitrous oxide gas in WW2 British fighter air craft engines, as an emergency boost for added horsepower in a critical situation. It seems that many people nowadays, are unaware of this fact. It was also used in the Lancaster 4 engine heavy bomber aircraft, when a particular Lancaster was going to be carrying the 22,000 pound Grand Slam Bomb. The nitrous gas was used during the takeoff roll to get the aircraft off the ground before it ran out of paved runway space. The bomb bay doors on the Lancaster were 33 feet long, but to accommodate the Grand Slam Bomb. they had to be removed, and a special holding cradle was installed to carry the GSB.
Once the Grand Slam aircraft was in the air, the bomb had to be dropped on the target, because the load was so heavy that the landing gear would have collapsed, if the Lancaster would have attempted to land with it still on board. The Grand Slam was designed by Barnes Wallace, who also designed the Tall Boy, a 11,000 pound bomb, and the "bouncing bomb" use to attack the 3 German dams, by RAF 613 Squadron, The Dam Busters.
The specific targets for Tall Boys and Grand Slams were typically hardened bunkers made of reinforced steel and concrete, like the U boat repair pens on the French coast, or the V1 and V2 rocket launch sites in Holland and France.
During WW2 the RAF's Bomber Command air crews had a FIFTY PERCENT death rate. 55,456 RAF air crew died on operations, which was the highest death rate of any WW 2 British military force. A typical RAF bomber crew "tour " was 30 missions. One memorable crew did an incredible 65 trips, as a Path Finder group leader aircraft. The Path Finders flew ahead of the main bomber stream, and dropped marker flares on the target center, then they continued to fly a circle course dropping more coloured marker flares. That meant the Path Finders were over the target area for up to 45 minutes, while the main bomber stream passed over the target area.
Of the 7,787 Lancasters built during WW2, only TWO are still flying. One is a part of the RAF's Memorial Flight, and the other is the Canadian Lancaster, which is flown by the Canadian War Plane Heritage Museum, located in Hamilton, Ontario. The CWPHM Lancaster is known as VERA, but is officially the Charles Mynarski Victoria Cross Memorial aircraft.
In 2014, VERA was flown to the United Kingdom, via the North Atlantic route, with stops in Newfoundland, Iceland, then Scotland, and finally arriving in England. VERA and the RAF's Lancaster flew together for the whole summer, appearing at more than 30 air shows in the UK, France, Belgium Holland. During that summer VERA lost an engine, and the RAF loaned one of theirs to VERA. Upon her return to Canada, the spare engine was sent back to the UK via an Air Canada cargo flight.
here is a link to the Canadian War Plane Heritage Museum's web site. They FLY more than 25 WW2 aircraft from their collection.
link.
Canadian Warplane Heritage Museum - Canadian Aviation History - Wartime Vintage Aircraft
