#29, Avro Lancaster: Carried the Heaviest Bombs of World War II
The Avro Lancaster delivered 64% of all bombs dropped by RAF Bomber Command during World War II, 608,612 tons of ordnance in 156,000 sorties. Its cavernous, unobstructed bomb bay could carry weapons that no other Allied bomber could handle, including the 12,000-pound Tallboy and the 22,000-pound Grand Slam earthquake bombs designed by Barnes Wallis. No other WWII bomber could carry anything close to these massive weapons.
The Lancaster's most famous mission was Operation Chastise, the Dambusters raid of May 1943, when specially modified Lancasters skipped Barnes Wallis's bouncing bombs across German reservoirs, breaching the Möhne and Eder dams and flooding the Ruhr valley. It was one of the most audacious precision strikes in aviation history. Lancasters also sank the battleship Tirpitz with Tallboy bombs, destroyed V-weapon launch sites, and conducted the relentless night bombing campaign that burned German cities. Of the 7,377 Lancasters built, 3,249 were lost in combat, a 44% attrition rate that testifies to both the danger of the mission and the courage of Bomber Command crews.
