The Deadliest British Bombers: Top 10 Crew Killers of WWII

did you ever wonder which World War II British bomber was the deadliest and I don't mean to the enemy I'm into the Allied Cruiser operated it it's obviously the lank well not necessarily come on it's the Lancaster alright technically it's the Lancaster but I've been looking at the data and depending on a few key factors the answer actually changes so first let's look at the simplest interpretation in which British aircraft the most men from bomber command die coming in at position 10 is the fairy battle which was no match for the German Fighters it faced of the air crew who had to operate the type 280 would perish this may sound like a tiny proportion of the eventual 57 750 men of all ranks who would die while serving with bomber command but when you consider that this represents nine percent of all Air crew who died in the first 15 months of the war is nothing to be sniffed at next up is the less than successful every Manchester seeing that this air crop was used in fairly small numbers during its short Heyday 375 young men died while operating the type notoriously unreliable many of these deaths came from flying accidents rather than enemy action eighth on the list of the British bombers were the highest death toll is the de Havilland mosquito often quoted as being the safest British aircraft of its day with the highest crew survival rate 626 men still failed to return from Mozzy sorties perhaps the obvious reason for this is that mosquitoes were sent on some of the most hazardous missions as the war progressed interestingly it was this aircraft that would be used to hit some of the key German targets unsupported in the last months of the war namely Berlin the Bristol Blenheim despite its much shorter operational career is associated with more than double the deaths as the mosquito 1755 aircrew died operating this beautiful yet horribly obsolete bomber confita in those early years of the war by the beginning of 1942 most of the deaths associated with this iconic aircraft were among otu's and other training units a classmate of the Blenheim the Armstrong Whitworth Whitley was operated by 2001 men who would die flying her the Whitley would be operated exclusively by the six squadrons of number four group this remained the case in February 1942 even with the addition of five Halifax equipped squadrons to the group by the following year the Whitley had been relegated to other duties the Hadley page Hampton which was used extensively in the first year or so of the war and found its niche as a mine layer would be flown by 2052 of the men to die with bomber command this included four of the men I've been researching who have a personal connection to me check out the video about them on my channel there will be a link above when it goes live the fourth most deadly bomber for the British in terms of men actually lost on operations is the short Sterling one of the first heavy bombers to reach Frontline squadrons this often forgotten aircraft was operated by 4182 of the Fallen this is where we start getting into crazy numbers the Wellington was the true Workhorse of bomber command and was one of the most unusually constructed bombers of the war ten thousand and twenty men would die while operating this aircraft or while attached to units that did many of these men were killed while in Advanced Training as you've probably guessed second in our top 10 is the Hanley page Halifax this bomber was not quite as widely used as the Avro Lancaster but it was more than capable of the role it was given an astounding 11 238 men were lost in Halifax's the majority were serving a number four group and number six group for all Canadian Air Force and of course top of the list as the most deadly British bomber through its own Cruise in terms of sheer losses is the Avro Lancaster 21 579 aircrew died on lanks that's not too far off the total losses of the other nine bombers put together but of course these results especially the top three deadliest bombers are pretty obvious more lengths halifaxes and to a lesser extent sterlins were operated then your battle was blend until Manchester's let's remember that back in August 1939 there were 40 bomber command squadrons on strength by January 1945 there were 96. with more of these bombers around naturally more men were likely to die in them so what if we asked a different question which British bomber was the most dangerous to its Crews if you suffered a prang which aircraft would you be least likely to walk away from before we see if this will change any of those aircraft in our list of the top 10. let's talk data if you want to study this second world war Through The Eyes of bomber command you are extremely lucky there are some absolutely world-class resources out there and the majority of them are free if you want to dig into the story of any casualty who served with RF bomber command the international bomber Command Center is the place to go it will give you all the key information you'd need to really fall into a genealogy coma for me the key nugget of data was an aircraft serial number for each and every man killed on operations pair this with the Fantastic database built on Hank velting's research hosted on rftemands.com and you can figure out what I've just presented to you in this video how many men were lost flying which aircraft now I need to confess that this isn't going to give you 100 accurate results the ibcc's Mandate is to memorialize those who served in bomber command it's not simply a list of the men killed on operations so on their database they also list the ground staff killed in accidents spies killed while being ferried by British aircraft and even pows shot by the Gestapo years after Crash Landing in occupied Europe as much as possible I've removed the non-aircrew results from my figures but as ever take all these numbers with a pinch of salt saying that there is something else you can do with this data using the late Hank velton's resource you can determine how many incidents each type of aircraft encountered these incidents could be as harmless as a Aviation fender bender on the ground to a flying accident or belly landing up to the entire destruction of an aircraft over enemy territory so consider this as we know that an operational aircraft would almost always be fully crewed in some cases taking on additional passengers for training or transportation we can estimate the total number of men exposed to Danger during these incidents of course not all these accidents resulted in fatalities by using the other resources available to us concerning bomber command losses we can also determine how many men were actually harmed during these incidents I'm calling this a potential casualty percentage EG out of X number of men who could have been killed in those accidents how many as a percentage actually were let's see how this changes our top 10. with this criteria applied the Lancaster and Halifax remain at the top of the table 72.2 percent of the men potentially exposed to Danger while operating the lank were actually killed 48.2 percent of those who experienced an incident while flying at Halifax also paid with their lives I think the obvious conclusion is that the incidents these two Heavies were exposed to were more perilous than perhaps other aircraft which suffered the same amount of incidents but fewer casualties being later wore aircraft they were subjected to more and more sophisticated German defenses as well as much more crowded Skies however before we put the lank and the Halifax down as death traps of their Crews there is another calculation I'll be discussing a little later in the video it turns all of this on its head while the Wellington's commendable War record does put it third on the list in terms of the number of aircrew casualties a lot fewer men died in them than statistically seemed possible the Wimpy drops to position 7 in terms of potential crew casualties with 35.8 of those men exposed to Danger being killed this pushes the Sterling up to position three and the Hamden to position four with 47.7 and 45.8 percent of air crew in trouble becoming casualties I was surprised to see the Manchester shift from position 8 in overall aircrew losses to fifth place in this new interpretation 43.6 of the air crew operating this type were lost when it got into difficulties then we find the Boeing B17 although not operated extensively by the Brits it was certainly used by the RAF by January 1945 number 100 SD group was operating six squadrons of forts in specialized roles 125 men were killed while flying The Fortress which didn't get a spot in the original top 10. however in terms of the potential crew casualties it becomes relatively more dangerous assuming that 10 men were operating this bomber that means 40.3 percent of those Airmen died doing it in fact I've seen a lot of evidence to suggest that the Fortress was routinely operated with up to 12 men on operations this is down to the nature of the work these British b-17s undertook which is best described as bomber support So this makes the potential risk of this aircraft in British hands even higher next was the Whitley which by my calculations had a potential casualty rate of 37.9 percent followed by the Wellington which we've already discussed another new aircraft in the top 10 here was another American-made design the Lockheed Ventura very much loved by its Crews just shy of a quarter of the men who experienced an incident in the type actually died bringing up the rear is the mosquito 23.3 of the pilots Navigators who flew the wooden Wonder died in accidents and combat absent from the list is of course the fairy battle which despite its reputation comes in at position 11 with a potential casualty rate of 22.7 percent if you want to find out about any other aircraft operated by bomber command please check out the description I'll put a link in there to my website where I'll do a write-up of all these numbers for you well there you have it it seems that the Lancaster Still Remains the riskiest bomber for RF Crews but there's another way to approach the question of the deadliest British bomber of World War II for its own Cruise every aircraft ever made could have itself an impeccable safety record if one thing remained true it never left the ground so here's my question based on the individual Cruise experience which aircraft put them most at risk for every salty flown which aircraft brought back the fewest Airmen safe and sound now this is going to change things dramatically in the top three most deadly British bombers in terms of deaths per operational salty third is the Wellington according to my handy copy of the bomber command War Diaries the Wimpy took part in 38 795 salties from Britain during the war this gives it a death basalty ratio of 0.26 roughly speaking this means one man died for just shy of every four sorties flown by Wellington second place in this ignoble competition goes to the Avro Manchester although a more modest 1185 sorties were flown by this twin-engine bomber its death to Salty ratio is 0.32 meaning that one man would be sacrificed for almost every three sorties flow then we have perhaps a surprising candidate for the most deadly British bomber when you consider its very short career as an operational aircraft it's the fairy battle based on the bomber command War Diaries Britain lost a man almost every salty this aircraft flew its debt to Salty ratio is an astounding 0.98 bomber command only launched 287 individual missions in this aircraft and lost 280 men now I was a bit dubious of this result at first ever and Middlebrook authors of the bomber command War Diaries only credit six battles as lost while flying for bomber command either this means a lot of Pilots managed to bring back dead crew members or the actual loss of aircraft has to be higher does this mean that their figures for salties is also underreported firstly we have to remember that the 10 squadrons of fairy battles in number one group in 1939 were attached to the Advanced Air striking Force this organization was not officially under bomber command control so does that mean that Everett Middlebrook omitted this information in May 1940 alone there are 120 reported incidents involving battles you'd have to think most of these involved the enemy after researching it I believe that 287 sorties is about right for the battle it had an exceedingly short career in France and only participated in a limited way during the battle the barges from July 1940. by October 1914 it had been relegated to the rear and a training role if we fill out the rest of the top 10 lists with the new criteria you can see that those aircraft with the highest casualty rate the Lancaster and Halifax have a death to Salty ratio of 0.14 this means that for a little over seven salties flown by each heavy bomber one man would be killed as you've made it this far in the video I want to take things a step further and talk about a current research project I have because there's another Avenue of study and it's around the survivability of these aircraft what I mean by that is if the bomber was hit or involved in an accident How likely was it that the entire crew would be lost based on some very rough numbers it looks like this interestingly from the original list I gave you those bombers which are associated with the most casualties retain their reputation as being a death trap of the reported incidents in the Hank velting database 42.3 of those lancasters were lost with seven men aboard in reality 49.8 would be lost with seven or more men aboard this clearly shows that some training flights were overcrowded 23.4 percent of Halifax's and difficulties were lost with an entire crew aboard and a modest 13.5 percent of wellingtons if you want to look at the full data for this study keep an eye on my channel for new videos and also head over to my website for the post I've written about this I find this interesting but as I said I'm planning to look into this more and give a bit more context to these figures were some British bombers lost with more of their Crews than others were there also particular periods of the war that saw entire Crews perish on a more regular basis why was that exactly was it down to the enemy the design of the bombers or both when I do get those answers you'll find that video on my channel so please give this little study a like to help it spread to more people and let me know in the comments which British bomber you now think is the deadliest of all and as you like your top 10 videos why not check out this study I made for you on screen now is it good

Channel: Caliban Rising - Aviation History

Views: 137,146

Keywords: aviation history, military aviation

Id: RzjI6l7yntQ

Length: 15min 33sec (933 seconds)

Published: Fri Jun 16 2023