6 engined Lancaster?

[Wuzak]

DO you think it was feasible that a 6 engined variant of the Lancaster could have been built in short time to use Tallboy and Grand Slam?

I have jsut been reading Stephen Flower, A Hell of a Bomb: The Bombs of Barnes Wallis and How They Won the War, which makes the Lancaster sound particularly underpowered when carrying the Grand Slam - despite having a lot of equipment discarded.

Would it have been possible, therefore, to extend the wings of the Lanc and add a couple of engines? Maybe replicate the wing section to the inboard engines. Then you could keep the main landing gear in the new engines and have 4 main landing wheels.


btw Flower mentions a rumour that an unladen BI Special (for the Grand Slam) was barrel rolled around a B-17!

[Groggy]

Hi Wuzak,
Happy New Year! They called it the Lincoln, but that was with a new wing?. Yes you have a good point Jim Floyd produced a design for an extended wing with engine for the Manchester in short time, could they have got away with a eight foot extension and the similar engines, or say a inner Centaurus , Sabre, or Griffon with outer Merlin. Or maybe another outer Griffon, Could a new outer wing extension take the four Sabres or Centaurus ?

[Wuzak]

Hey Groggy, welcome back!

I don't think the Sabre was in sufficient supply to be seriously considered - otherwise I think we would have seen it in more production aircraft.

They could have done a Centaurus version of the normal 4 engined Lanc - that would have given extra power - 800 to 1000hp per engine more. But would it be enough?