I was on vacation in England back around April of 1980. I spent a couple days in the little town of Benson doing some personal research on the activities that happened at RAF Benson during the war. That base was the home of Allied photographic reconnaissance in Britian (along with the American operations at Mount Farm). I was off the normal beaten path for American tourists and quite the novelty. They were very friendly people and pleased that I knew about their town's contributions to the war effort.

After leaving Benson, I went to London for several days. While there, I visited several of the great museums (Battle of Britian Museum, RAF Museum, Imperial War Museum, etc.) and had a good time in the RAF archives. One day while riding in the Underground, I saw a poster with a Spitfire on it. Naturally, that caught my eye. It turned out that the Battle of Britian Memorial Flight would be appearing at Brighton the following weekend. I'd planned on leaving England before then but immediately extended my stay. That weekend, I got to finally see a Spitfire fly, along with a Hurricane, a Lancaster, and several other vintage planes. I also was impressed by the RAF Red Arrow demonstration team. It was a fun day. That night was one of the most bizarre of my life (Victoria Station at 2 AM, "Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance", and a host of wierd characters killing time like I was - but that's another story).

The Lancaster isn't as widely known on this side of the ocean as the B-17 and B-24, but it was an incredible (if somewhat beauty challenged) plane none the less. The Lancaster was first built as the twin-engined Manchester, but the engines on that plane were a disaster. Someone bright person had the great idea of putting 4 Merlin engines on the Manchester airframe, creating the Lancaster and a legend.

The Lancaster could carry a far larger bomb load than either of the American "heavy" bombers in the ETO. The Lancaster was the only plane to carry the 11,000 and 22,000 pound bombs - incidentally by the same squadron that performed the Damn Buster mission. It had a smaller crew than our planes and lighter machine gun armament. Most of them didn't carry a copilot because the British didn't have the pilots to spare. Instead, the flight engineer was often given some informal flying lessons in the hope that he could bring the plane home if the pilot was hit. Those night bombing missions were tough, especially after the Germans stepped up their defenses in 1943.