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As another anecdote, IIRC the Avro Lancaster crew escape hatch was found to be too small when wearing a parachute. Probably a non-trivial number of crew met the
by jabl 4y ago
As another anecdote, IIRC the Avro Lancaster crew escape hatch was found to be too small when wearing a parachute. Probably a non-trivial number of crew met their end trapped inside the aircraft.
There were IIRC plans to fix it, but they didn't want a hiccup in production due to implementing the fix, so it was never fixed.
- phire 4y agoThe development of the Avro Manchester (and then Lancaster) was a bit of a mess. The first Manchester prototype flew just five weeks before WW2 started, and might have been rushed into production. But there were major flaws with the reliability and power of the engines, and Avro were already working on the Lancaster to replace the Manchester before the first production models even entered service. The Lancaster is simply a Manchester, with the two Rolls-Royce Vulture engines replaced by four Merlin engines.