The Failed Bomber That Gave Britain The Lancaster | Avro Manchester

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Today we're taking a look at the Avro Manchester, a bomber that suffered from a horribly unreliable engine: the Rolls-Royce Vulture. The engine's performance was so bad, that designers went back to the drawing board and eventually re-designed the Manchester into the four-engine Lancaster of WW2 Fame.

0:00 Intro
2:15 Initial Design & Prototype
6:46 The Rolls-Royce Vulture
10:42 Mk 1 Manchesters In Service
14:31 Engine Problems By The Score
18:06 Mk.1-A Models
18:40 Birth of the Lancaster
19:54 Peak, Swansong & Legacy

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Producing these videos is a hobby of mine - and apparently its now a full-time job too! I have a passion for history, and personally own a large collection of books, journals and other texts, and endeavor to do as much research as possible. However if there are any mistakes, please don't hesitate to reach out and correct anything :)

[RexsHangar]

Part 2 of the Wellington video is coming, I promise! (Please put down the torches and pitchforks xD)
F.A.Q Section

Q: Do you take aircraft requests?
A: I have a list of aircraft I plan to cover, but feel free to add to it with suggestions:)

Q: Why do you use imperial measurements for some videos, and metric for others?
A: I do this based on country of manufacture. Imperial measurements for Britain and the U.S, metric for the rest of the world, but I include text in my videos that convert it for both.

Q: Will you include video footage in your videos, or just photos?
A: Video footage is very expensive to licence, if I can find footage in the public domain I will try to use it, but a lot of it is hoarded by licencing studies (British Pathe, Periscope films etc). In the future I may be able to afford clips :)

Q: Why do you sometimes feature images/screenshots from flight simulators?
A: Sometimes there are not a lot of photos available for certain aircraft, so I substitute this with digital images that are as accurate as possible.

Feel free to leave you questions below - I may not be able to answer all of them, but I will keep my eyes open :)

[kringe]

Given how the Manchester spawned several off-shoots, from the Lancaster bomber, the Shackleton MPA, all the way to the Ashton jet airliner. It is basically a "task failed successfully" in a plane's form and really show how a bad engine ruined a good plane design.

[zachmiller]

"sir we put all the fuel in the wings to make room for more payload" "Excellent! Now we have room to make the chairs in the lounge reclinable!"

[davidpope]

A fighter pilot’s experience of the Manchester.
After serving in 501 Squadron through the Battle of Britain and the Blitz, the fighter ace Ginger Lacey had to serve six months as an instructor in an Operational Training Unit ~ this euphemistically being called a ‘rest’. Beginning in autumn of 1941, he found this to be not particularly enjoyable or inspiring apart from when the soon to be legendary ’Screwball’ Beurling joined the unit but it did give the opportunity to meet up with his old friend, the former Chief Flying Instructor at the Yorkshire Aeroplane Club, Captain Worral, who had been Sir Alan Cobham's navigator in the latter's flight round Africa in the Short 'Singapore' in 1927-8.
In his late 50’s when the war broke out, he’d immediately joined Avro's as a test pilot. Lacey went to lunch with him one day and just as he arrived Worral was about to test a Manchester.
'Sorry I can't take you up in this one, Ginger, but I've got a lot of boffins and flight engineers aboard. However, I've got another one to test before lunch, so I'll take you up with me in that.'
Half-way down the runway, when it was too late to stop, one engine caught fire. Worral took off, went round the aerodrome in flames, and landed.
He strolled back and said, 'Come on, Ginger, we'll go and test the other one now.'
Lacey implied that you couldn't have got him into that second one even with an armed escort.
He watched Worral take off again. Half-way down the runway, one engine of this Manchester also caught fire. The pilot flew round the circuit, in flames, and landed.
Lacey stated,
'This is a gentleman of fifty-nine or sixty; and not even batting an eyelid: we went straight off to lunch as though nothing had happened.'
After this, Lacey reflected that his time at the OTU didn’t seem to have been quite so bad after all….

[ThomasFarquhar]

I always love this channel because they don't just post about the typical "war winning" aircraft (or famous axis aircraft) like the Spitfire, BF109, P51, etc. They bring up the failures, the planes that didn't work in the end and I think it's always good to know both sides of the coin, what worked well and what didn't, so we can study them and not make the same mistakes in the future

[pachanga]

My grandmother's brother, Sgt Lewis Compton was a tail gunner in one of these that was shot down over Belgium Oct 14 1941. Only the navigator and radio operator survived.

[duncanhamilton]

Fundamentally the underlying design was sound: Father to the Lancaster, Grandfather to the Lincoln, and Great-Grandfather to the Shackleton - which was in service until 1991. Not bad really

[hughbarton]

Great work, as always.
Here in the US, I have witnessed the frightening spectacle of
a piston exiting the engine block, and shortly thereafter leaving the vehicle altogether ( this usually happens during drag racing...).
The sound it makes really defies description....
We call that phenomenon " windowing the block", because you can often during the post mortem stick your head inside the engine to have a look around.
I can't imagine climbing into an airplane that exhibited a propensity for that sort of thing. Some very brave lads.

[destroyinator]

Oh lord, you said a troubled powerplant, and I immediately thought, "oh no, not the Peregrine that doomed my favorite plane, the Whirlwind!". Then you said Vulture, and I thought it would all be fine... and then you said they took two Peregrines and strapped them together...

[roscoewhite]

According to one reference book, 49 Squadron's Manchesters were grounded so often that the unit was nicknamed the 49th Foot. I suspect that the nickname would have been more widely applied.

[teaandmedals]

As we're all so accustomed to seeing the Lancaster with it's 4 engines, the twin engine Manchester just looks like it's missing something.

Fantastic video as always.

[LastGoatKnight]

19:39 well well well, look who's hiding in the background. Good ol' Blackburn Roc

[johnlewan]

Your sense of humor and delivery is what makes you one of my favorite channels. The amount of research you must do really shows, and I've learned so much about aviation development during WW 1 and 2. Thank you.

[mikemullay]

Sounds like the Manchester could always fly reliably all the way to the scene of the crash!

[LancashireAndYorkshire]

I absolutely love how formal yet silly the testimonies of British airmen are. You can tell they had a bloody good sense of humour!

[ianleithhead]

Rex. I really like the compassion, and occasional fondness, with which you speak of planes that were not outstanding successes. You seem to have a soft spot for planes that "did their best"

[LeCharles]

I'm so happy that I found you. Drachinifel of planes is a perfect addition to my watch cycle.

[richuar]

Another aircraft that also suffered the indignity of having a pair of RR Vultures bolted to it was the Vickers Warwick. In the Warwick’s case though not even changing the engines could save that design but it might make an interesting video comparison piece with the Wellington. Two extremely similar looking aircraft from the same designer with very different places in history.

[JohnRodriguesPhotographer]

With all the problems that the engines had it just seems ironic that the engines were named vultures!

[mkendallpk]

Rex, this was excellent! I have heard about the Manchester on another channel, but what you did here is vastly superior. Thank you.