Avro Lancaster ‘S-for-Sugar’ carried out an incredible 137 combat sorties during World War Two and proudly thumbed its nose at Hermann Göring. Andrew Simpson and Nigel Price profile this Bomber Command veteran...
As war gripped the world in 1939, an overconfident Reichsmarschall Hermann Göring made a comment akin to: “No enemy aircraft will fly over the Reich territory”, so sure was he that his Luftwaffe controlled the skies over mainland Europe. Famously, the air force leader had to eat his words as the Allies hit target after target across Germany from May 1940 onwards. However, the Luftwaffe exacted a terrible price – more than 44% of Bomber Command’s aircrew were killed in action, while some 18,000 were wounded or taken prisoner.
To keep up spirits, one Lancaster crew with an especially high number of successful operations to its credit mocked the Reichsmarschall by adorning its aircraft with his infamous quote, along with an arrow pointing to nearly 100 mission marks. That aeroplane was Avro Lancaster Mk.I R5868/PO-S, an incredible machine that not only has pride-of-place within the RAF Museum’s collec…
