February 1946: the last of the piston-engined bombers

The world and technology changed rapidly after the end of the second world war, perhaps nowhere more noticeably than in aerospace. The RAF’s iconic heavy bomber, the Lancaster, had served the country well, but by the mid-1940s it was ageing and needed replacement.

Jet engines had already started to make their presence felt in military aircraft, but only in single-seat fighters, and the replacement for the Lancaster was the AVRO Lincoln, which The Engineer covered in 1946. Classed as a Superbomber, it bore a strong resemblance to the Lancaster despite being larger, and indeed used many of the same components: it was another four-engined aircraft, using Rolls-Royce Merlin engines (although a more powerful variant than the Lancaster), with a wingspan of 120ft and a 78ft long fuselage carrying 4.5 tons of equipment and housing a crew of seven.

A notable use of new technology was radar, including a complete unit just for the rear gunner, allowing him to aim his weaponry even if he didn’t have a direct line of sight to the target. The forward guns were aimed and fired by the air bomber (formerly called the bomb aimer).