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Typical Lancaster bomb load for Karlsruhe ?


stuartp

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I'm normally a Cold War modeller so apologies if this is a stupid question. I'm currently building Airfix's BIII as LM486 BH-C, 300 (Polish) Sqn, shot down returning from a raid on Karlsruhe 25/4/44. 

 

It occurs to me that Karlsuhe is quite a long way from Lincolnshire, although not quite as far as Berlin or Nuremberg. Would that have restricted the bomb load carried or can I load it up with the usual cookie + 250lbs or incendiaries ? I'm assuming it would have been an area bombing raid.

 

Thanks all 🙂

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Here is a diagram showing the stations in the bomb bay:

 

4f17f0116fd329a1df7af7c0ca0b3e46.jpg

In the above Briefings those stations marked with brackets like this: [#] (# - indicates station number) in this case it means 2 SBCs on 1 station so there would be 4 across.

 

Jari

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Without an exact bomb load reference there is plenty of choice given the variation in loads between aircraft.  Bomber Command was out of the 250 pound HE bomb dropping business for most of 1944, resuming in December.  Night of 24/25 April 1944, two raids, to Karlsruhe and Munich, Lancaster statistics,

 

619 despatched, 589 credited with bombing the primary targets, another 11 with bombing secondary targets, 21 missing, 3 Category E (2 enemy action), 1 Category B, 12 Category AC (8 enemy action), 13 personnel killed, 141 missing.

 

HE bombs, 15X8000 HC, 3X4000 GP, 142x4000 HC, 120x4000 M2, 356x2000 MC, 180x1000 MC, 72x500 MC, 16x500 GP

 

Incendiaries, 7,868x30 J (562 clusters), 36x250 Spot fire, 112x250 TI, 36,784x30, 25,581x4 "X", 444,581x4

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