Lancaster PA474 80 years old

Header image: Lancaster B1 PA474 photographed at the 2024 BBMF Members’ Day (Photo: Claire Hartley). (Inset: PA474’s data plate giving its build completion date as 31-5-45.)

On 31st May, BBMF Lancaster B1 PA474 is officially 80 years old, with the data plate located inside the aircraft recording that its original build was completed on 31st May 1945.

PA474 was built at the Vickers-Armstrong ‘shadow’ aircraft factory at Broughton, on Hawarden airfield in North Wales, as one of the 235 Lancasters manufactured at the plant. PA474 was completed just over three weeks after the Second World War in Europe had ended. As a late production Lancaster, PA474 was built with the later reshaped rudders, redesigned larger diameter main wheels and larger tailwheel. These features were used on Avro Lincolns, Yorks and Shackletons, leading some to surmise that PA474 ‘borrowed’ these later in her life, but in fact they are authentic to the aircraft’s original build.

After serving with 82 Squadron on photo-surveillance mapping duties in Africa for just over three years, and as a flying test bed with the Cranfield College of Aeronautics for 10 years, PA474 was grounded in late 1963 and was destined to become a static exhibit in a museum. It was saved from that fate by the determined intervention of various people at RAF Waddington, brought back to full flying condition and flown from Waddington from November 1967 to November 1973 when it joined the BBMF.

Currently one of only two airworthy Lancasters in the world, PA474 has now been with the BBMF for over 50 years and this venerable and marvellous survivor is now 80 years old.