Lancaster missing a ball turret

While the Lancaster was one of the planes that helped win the war over Germany, it had one drawback I believe, the lack of a ball turret like the B-17 on the underside of which the night-fighting Me-110's took advantage of. I think the Lancaster is one beautiful airplane and that is the only flaw I see in it. Who's decision was it to not include one? Was it designed without one because it would allow the aircraft to carry more ordinance? Finally, what did the pilots and crewmembers think of not having one?

 

The Lancaster had 7 crewmembers vs ten for the B-24, so that's 30% crew spared for other aircrafts for a start. Then the weight of one two or three extra men + turret + equipment would prevent the aircraft from carying extra bombs.
The absence of the ball turret gunner was partly compensated by having a Flight engineer also acting as a bom aimer and looking down in the front + the tailgunner watching the rear side. Furthermore , U.S. bombers flew during day Missions and having a ball turret spotting a camouflaged nightfighter coming out of the clouds in the middle of the night would have been a tremendously exhausting job, and doing this in such an unconfortable foetal position would have been hell . strategies like flying with "ABC cigar" lancs or "Windowing" would also compensate for the lack of this turret.

 

Not sure if that was meant to answer the question of was the missing ball turret because they could then cary more bombs, but I understand the loss of all that weight allows for larger bomb loads. So was it intentional on the Britsh part to skip it to allow larger bomb loads or did they feel it was not necessary to have the extra guns?

 

The RAF actually did try a dorsal turret on the Lancaster, though very few were produced. It severely affected the aerodynamics, speed and manouverability of the aircraft and the decision was made that the trade-off was not worth it.

The fact that Bomber Command also flew the majority of its missions at night also weighed in the decision. The Lancaster was very manouverable for an aircraft of its size. If the mid-upper gunner and rear gunner worked well together and could warn the pilot quickly enough, the Lanc could be put into a corkscrew dive that, with the advantage of low visibility at night, could usually evade German night-fighters.

I just finished reading a wonderful book entitled "Rear Gunner Pathfinders" by Ron Smith. It is a first hand account (by Mr. Smith) who flew 65 missions as a rear gunner in Lancasters. I read it in one sitting, not being able to put it down. I highly recommend this book as it gives a first-hand account of the method of successful evasion a well-oiled lanc crew could use to evade attacks.

Cheers,
Don

 

The typical Lanc bombload (6 tonns) was much larger than that of a B17 or B24 (3 to 4 tonns) with very similar engine power if you rule out the late Merlin engineds version that sometimes carried up to 10 tonns, so one could say the there was a tradeoff of bombload vs defensive armament, let's not forget the defensive armament of the British bombers was usually made up of rifle caliber MGs not .5 which also would save some weight,
In WW2 at night the number of "eyes" is probably more important than defensive firepower, defensive mamouvering was effective as many German fighters had a rather small speed advantage even against a loaded bomber so if they lost contact they would have problems reacquiring. A belly turret would have added too little to the chances of spotting a fighter to justify the added weight and drag.
Overall Bomber comand was not a great believer in defensive armament, they removed turrets from a lot of bombers to improve peformance, something the USAAF did too with the B 29 in the later stages of the campaign. While I know of no explicit bombload vs defensive armament tradeoff, but bomber Command is not my field, it looks like there well may have been one.

 

Weight and aerodynamics were indeed two major factors, but I insist on the extra crew aspect as well. Recruitng airmen was a major issue and it would have been almost impossible to recruit even more volunteers. Bomber Command had a tremendous high casualty rate and a complete tour was 30 Operations, and being a gunner was exactly the most popular position.
Also a fourth factor was extra cost.

 

As Big Daddy has correctly pointed out, the Lancaster was designed with a twin-.303 underbelly turret. However, it was operated by remote control and was nothing like as effective as the US ball-turret. It was fairly useless and quickly 'dropped'. Arguments have also raged ever since about how much more effective .50cal machineguns would have been over .303s.

Personally, although it's not stated officially, the hard truth is that delivering the maximum bombload took precedence over protecting Bomber Command crews. It was originally believed that night would provide its own protection but of course, events moved much faster with the development of the Nachtjagd and, especially, Schrage Musik. Toward the end of the War, experiments were made with .50 Rose turrets and the Avro Lincoln was designed with 20mm cannon - but it was too late.