(Image: Ministry of Information)
These historical photographs reveal the clamour of work inside the A. V. Roe & Company aircraft factory at Woodford, in Cheshire, England, at the height of World War Two. Captured in 1943, the colour scenes reveal the final assembly of RAF Bomber Command’s famed heavy bomber, the Avro Lancaster, which entered service the previous year in a bid to take the fight to the heart of industrial Germany. Some 3,500 Lancs (40% of the RAF fleet) were produced at Avro’s Chadderton factory near Oldham, before being transported to Woodford Aerodrome by road for final assembly.
Due to the sheer numbers needed for the war effort, other Lancaster airframes were built by a range of manufacturers including Metropolitan-Vickers and Armstrong Whitworth, as well as the Austin Motor Company at its plant in Longbridge, Birmingham. Canadian-built machines were manufactured by Victory Aircraft in Malton, Ontario.
(Image: Ministry of Information)
Over 7,300 of Avro’s most celebrated design were produced during the chaotic years of the Second World War. Today, only 17 intact airframes survive across the world, including two airworthy Lancasters in the UK and Canada. A specially-adapted variant of the type was famously used during Operation Chastise when, on May 16-17 1943, ‘the Dambusters’ of No. 617 Squadron dropped Barnes Wallis’ bouncing bomb on the major dams of Germany’s Ruhr valley. (10 full-scale replica Lancasters have been built for a remake of the classic 1955 film of the same name.)
(Image: Christie Michael)
The photograph above shows a number of completed Lancasters on the ramp at Woodford, awaiting delivery to operational units. The caption reads:
Newly-completed Avro Lancaster B Mark IIIs on the apron of the A V Roe & Co. factory at Woodford, Cheshire. NE124 (centre) served as ‘OF-J’ with No. 97 Squadron RAF and was shot down over France by a German night-fighter while raiding the flying-bomb site at Prouville on the night of 24/25 June 1944. LM578 (second right), a Yeadon-built example, served as ‘EM-L’ with No. 207 Squadron RAF, with whom it crashed off the Dutch coast while outbound for a night raid on Wesseling, Germany, on 21/22 June 1944.
Woodford Aerodrome witnessed almost 80 years of continuous flight testing until its last owner, BAE Systems, finally sold the facility off 2011. The airfield’s proud history remains alive in the Avro Heritage Museum, outside which stands another of the company’s most iconic products – the Avro Vulcan.
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