Achtung! Lancaster!

Came roaring over during the Remembrance Day ceremonies. One of the benefits of living a few kilometers away from one of the last flying exemplars. Won’t see or hear her again for several months. She’s torn down, inspected and rebuilt over the winter.

Lancaster

Crappy pictures, but hearing and seeing the Lancaster always gives me goosebumps.

Strange bundle of emotions wrapped up in it. If it wasn’t for this and so many other planes like it, I might not be alive today. The bombing raids they carried out helped to slow down or halt Nazi Germany’s ability to wage war. Towards the end of the war, they dropped food to the starving citizens of the country I was born in. Without the efforts they and their crews made my own parents may well have starved to death, or the Nazis brutal hold on the Netherlands and the rest of Europe may have continued for many more years.

I also recognize how many young men died horrible deaths or were maimed crewing them, or were carried to years of languishing in a POW camp. I also recognized how many people were killed by them, people who likely didn’t want to have anything to do with the war mongering of a psychotic, and just wanted to get on with their lives, practice their trades and raise their families.

Witnessing it in flight, always makes me happy, recognizing the good it did, and yet also sad at the same time, recognizing the suffering that happened in and because of it.

This is one of only two still left flying in the world. Whenever I hear the roar of those four Merlin engines I have to stop. Partly to admire the sound of those engines, and to watch the last of a once plentiful breed, and also just to reflect on what it all means.

Given that another of a once plentiful breed, a B17, crashed this past week, it made seeing and hearing the Lancaster especially poignant.

There is an airshow going on here this weekend, so they were likely taking her out for a test flight. I know it gets completely stripped down, inspected and rebuilt over the winter. This is the first I’ve seen it or heard it, so this might have been its inaugural flight of the year. You can book a flight in her. Pricey, but one day I hope to scrape together the cash to do so. I imagine it will be a very emotional experience.

B-25 Mitchell

Living where I do, I get to hear and see some of the planes from the Warplane Heritage Museum flying over. I heard the loud roar of the B-25 Mitchell’s two Wright Cyclone radial engines this morning. Very different from the sound of the four Rolls-Royce Merlin engines of the Lancaster, which I also find thrilling to hear and see. I went out to see if I could snap some pics of it flying over. 

I just think the Mitchell is a really cool plane. Sleek, fast, used in a multitude of roles. Its most famous use was in the amazing Doolittle Raid. I particularly like the variant with a 75mm cannon and multiple .50 cals mounted in the nose, that was used for strafing and bombing Japanese shipping.

During the war it quite often flew at tree top level, and today it flew not much higher than that. At one point it would have had guys aiming a quad 20mm anti-aircraft gun at it and trying to shoot it down. Now it merely has a guy pointing a camera at it to shoot some photos.

Not really great pictures, but it’s always a real thrill for me when I hear that sound and then see that beautiful plane come ripping past, fast and low.

The Museum offers flights in some of their planes. Pricey, but I hope one day to have the chance to go up in the Mitchell or the Lancaster. It would be a very humbling experience I’m sure.