The personnel required to keep one Avro Lancaster flying on operations, taken at Scampton, Lincolnshire. Front row (left to right); flying control officer, WAAF parachute packer, meteorological officer, seven aircrew (pilot and captain, navigator and observer, air bomber, flight engineer, wireless operator/air gunner and two air gunners): second row.

Twelve flight maintenance crew (left to right; n.c.o. fitter, flight maintenance mechanic, n.c.o. fitter, five flight maintenance mechanics, electrical mechanic, instrument repairer, and two radio mechanics): third row, bombing up team; WAAF tractor driver with a bomb train of 16 Small Bomb Containers (SBC), each loaded with 236 x 4-lb No. 15 incendiaries.

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Behind, three bombing-up crew: fourth row, seventeen ground servicing crew (left to right; corporal mechanic, four aircraft mechanics, engineer officer, fitter/armourer, three armourers, radio mechanic, two instrument repairers, three bomb handlers, machine gunbelt fitter): back row (left to right); AEC Matador petrol tender and two crew, Avro Lancaster B Mark I heavy bomber, mobile workshop and three crew.

The rear section of Avro Lancaster B Mark I, DV305 ‘BQ-O’, No. 550 Squadron RAF based at North Killingholme, Lincolnshire, seen at Woodbridge Emergency Landing Ground, Suffolk, after the severely-damaged aircraft crash-landed there following an attack by a German night fighter over Berlin on the night of 30/31 January 1944. In the course of the attack both the rear gunner and the mid-upper gunner were killed, and the bomb-aimer baled out having misunderstood orders. The pilot, Flying Officer G A Morrison, managed to bring the crippled aircraft back without any navigation aids.

Lancaster B Mark III, LM449 PG-H, of No. 619 Squadron RAF based at Coningsby, Lincolnshire, in flight.

Credits: Imperial War Museum & Canadian War Memorial )

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