Avro Lancaster Mk.1 - H2s - Yes or no?

[Shark444]

Hopefully this is a quick question rather than opening a can of worms in the discussion forums.

 

I'm building the 1/72 Airfix Lancaster kit to represent the machine that my second cousin was killed in during the Battle of the Ruhr.  I know that it was a Mk.1 machine (s/n W4140), but I would like to know if I should be adding the H2s blister or not.  Anyone have insight or a source that could help pinpoint if W4140 was so equipped?

 

Thanks in advance.

[AWFK10]

W4140 was lost by 156 Sqn, part of the Pathfinder Force (PFF), on 27 April 1943. In his postwar despatch on war operations, Arthur Harris says that the first PFF H2S operation took place on 30/31 January when just two flights' worth of aircraft had been fitted with it, and that it wasn't fitted to "all the heavy aircraft of the PFF" until the end of September. He adds that "the average number of H2S-equipped aircraft despatched per raid during the first two or three months of its operational career was about 14", which suggests that any given PFF aircraft is more likely not to have had it during that period.

 

You could try the 156 Sqn Record of Events and Summary of Events for April, available as downloads from the National Archives, in case they might throw any light on it. When I was looking in the Archives while researching a 77 Sqn air gunner recently, I also came across a combat report that he'd filed and which mentioned that his aircraft was fitted with Monica.

[Steve Brown]

I appreciate this post is a few years old and you have may have the answer already, but just in case. As I have a family connection to W4140 (the Flight Engineer was my uncle) I have researched this aircraft in the past.  According to the loss report the aircraft was fitted with GEE as opposed to H2S. 

[SafetyDad]

The Wingleader series on the Lancaster is your friend here  - they present Lancasters by production batch and highlight the changes.

 

The batch containing W4140 had

 

No H2S

Fuselage windows - but possibly overpainted

Faired windscreen wash cleaners

Small bomb aimers blister

Original pitot head

Aluminium painted interiors to turrets

Rear mounted trailing aerial

 

Photos of other Lancasters from this batch show they had the anti-shimmy tail tyre fitted.

 

HTH

 

SD