Advertisement
Lancaster flypast will honour AVRO
Reporter: Janice Barker
Date online: 05 May 2010
A LANCASTER bomber designed in Chadderton will fly low over the town this month in tribute to the centenary of the world famous company which built it.
Alliot Verdon Roe (A V Roe) founded the first company in the world for the sole purpose of designing and manufacturing flying machines, in Manchester in 1910.
His factories — known as Avro’s — included the massive Greengate operation in Chadderton which produced, among many famous aircraft, the war-winning Lancaster bomber.
In Oldham, during the Second World War, there were 29,000 people employed building Lancasters, including night shifts and sub-contractors across the town.
The Lancaster, with its distinctive silhouette and four Merlin engines, will fly over Chadderton and Manchester on May 16, to mark the anniversary.
It will dip to 100ft at Manchester airport, then rise to 1,000ft and is expected over the site of the AVRO factory in Greengate, now BAe Systems, at 4.38pm, travelling from Manchester centre towards Chadderton.
The prototype AVRO Lancaster made its first flight from Manchester’s Ringway Airport on January 9, 1941, and a total of 7,377 Lancasters were built throughout the war, each costing £45,000 to £50,000, approximately equivalent to £1.4 million to £1.6 million today.
Designed in Chadderton by Roy Chadwick, the Lancaster was the aircraft chosen for the heroic raids on German dams in heavy industrialised valleys, immortalised by the film “The Dambusters”.
And after the evacuation of British troops from Dunkirk, the Lancasters and other bombers took the war into the German heartlands.
The fly-past begins at 4.25pm from Manchester Airport. At 4.35pm it will fly over Manchester Town Hall and the Brownsfield Mill in Great Ancoats Street — the location of AV Roe’s first factory — travelling towards Oldham.
l The timings are all approximate and if the weather is against the aircraft, it will fly in the reverse direction, starting above the BAe factory at Greengate at 4 25pm.
Comments
For anyone going to see this, close your eyes for a few seconds and listen to the amazing sound of those Merlin engines.
I will be making the effort to see this wonderful machine when it passes over.
Wouldn't it be great to have a Lancaster bomber on display in Oldham?
Wouldn't it be great to still have an aircraft industry in Oldham. A lack of investment from our labour government put paid to that along with thousands of other manufacturing jobs.
Owdamer - there's 125,000 people employed in aerospace in the UK; 25% of all the aerospace jobs in Europe. That's more than at any time in the past.
These are big ticket items, so most manufacturing is based (in the North-West) near Preston (Typhoon) and Warton (Airbus). Britain is the fourth-largest manufacturing economy in the world - it's just that these days we make little pills and tiny electronics.
Try and see the big picture will you?
When I hear the sound of one of these bombers it sends shivers down my spine imagine when there was a full squadron taking off . WOW
Have Your Say
My parents met while building the Lancaster so it will be great to see this fly over Oldham. Well done to everyone who has worked hard to keep this wonderfull plane in our skies.
By oldwood @ 05/05/2010 14:50:19