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Most People Picture History Wrong, These Facts Will Set them Straight

Khalid Elhassan April 25, 2020 34 min

Franklin D. Roosevelt - Joseph Stalin — The Big Three of Stalin, Roosevelt, and Churchill, at the Tehran Conference in 1943. Rare Historical Photos

31. A Big British Beast

Loading up a Lancaster for a bombing raid. Getty Images

RAF Bomber Command preferred Lancasters over Britain’s other mainstay heavy bomber, the Handley Page Halifax. Unlike the Halifax, whose bomb bay was compartmentalized, thus limiting the size of the individual bombs it could carry, the Lancaster had a long and unobstructed bomb bay.

That allowed Lancasters to carry the RAF’s biggest bombs, such as the 4000-pound “Cookie” and 12,000-pound “Tall Boy”. Specially modified Lancasters could also carry the 22,000 pound “Grand Slam” – the heaviest payload of any WWII bomber.

Written by

Khalid Elhassan

A lifelong history buff, I developed a particular passion for WW2 history as a child, when I spent hours listening to my grandfather, enraptured, as he recounted his wartime experiences in the British East African Campaign and with the British 8th Army in North Africa.

I graduated with a history BA from George Mason University, then went on to get a JD from the University of Virginia School of Law. After lawyering for a decade, I moved to sunny Rio de Janeiro and a less demanding career, opening a tourism agency in Copacabana.

A big chunk of my free time is spent blogging (you can follow me on Quora https://www.quora.com/profile/Khalid-Elhassan ) or freelance writing, mostly about my favorite subject, history.