The Lancaster is one of the iconic British planes, and one that I have a certain fondness for, disappointingly only came into service in 1942 and forcing the RAF to use lesser aircraft. So I was wondering, is there any way to get it into service any earlier? It's forerunner the Avro Manchester was by most accounts fairly disappointing as it used the problematic and underpowered Rolls-Royce Vulture engine which installed in the Manchester was also highly unreliable. When Rolls-Royce ran into trouble during the development phase of the Vulture in 1938 and had to delay production to make changes so that the first Manchester flew later in 1939, Avro's chief designer Roy Chadwick wasn't that impressed since he apparently drew up modified designs that used Napier engines instead. There's also some mentions of his also considering another alternate using four Rolls-Royce Merlin engines but I'm having some trouble pinning that one down. The Ministry doesn't seem to of been very happy either since after the contracted 200 aircraft had been produced they seriously considered shutting down the Newton Heath factory.
So for our point of departure both Avro and the Ministry are vexed enough with the problems of the Vulture that they decide to shift to alternate engines, Rolls-Royce is told to carry on developing the Vulture but in the meantime four Merlin engines will be used instead. Looking at the Lancaster it seems to of had a pretty short development period but that shouldn't be surprising since it shared roughly 75% of the Manchester's parts and assemblies. From the order given in September 1940 for a pair of prototypes they had the technical drawing complete in a month, the first one flying three months after that in January, the second prototype - that was apparently a sort of Manchester-Lancaster hybrid - flew in May and the first production Lancaster flew in October 1941 for a total development time of just over a year. If the Ministry were to order the changeover to what would effectively be the Lancaster in mid-1938, using our timeline's development period as a guide and perhaps even saying they need to use four or five extra months development time for miscellaneous reasons, would there be any massive barriers to having the Lancaster coming off the production line at the start of 1940? The most glaring one I can think of is the production levels of Merlin engines, everyone and their brother seems to of wanted them. After that the general idea would be to perhaps see the Avro Lincoln be developed and in service for 1943 and possibly the Avro 684, the proposed high altitude version of the Lancaster with a pressurised cabin able to fly at 40,000 ft., also seriously looked into. But that of course all falls down if you don't see the Lancaster in service earlier than it did.
So for our point of departure both Avro and the Ministry are vexed enough with the problems of the Vulture that they decide to shift to alternate engines, Rolls-Royce is told to carry on developing the Vulture but in the meantime four Merlin engines will be used instead. Looking at the Lancaster it seems to of had a pretty short development period but that shouldn't be surprising since it shared roughly 75% of the Manchester's parts and assemblies. From the order given in September 1940 for a pair of prototypes they had the technical drawing complete in a month, the first one flying three months after that in January, the second prototype - that was apparently a sort of Manchester-Lancaster hybrid - flew in May and the first production Lancaster flew in October 1941 for a total development time of just over a year. If the Ministry were to order the changeover to what would effectively be the Lancaster in mid-1938, using our timeline's development period as a guide and perhaps even saying they need to use four or five extra months development time for miscellaneous reasons, would there be any massive barriers to having the Lancaster coming off the production line at the start of 1940? The most glaring one I can think of is the production levels of Merlin engines, everyone and their brother seems to of wanted them. After that the general idea would be to perhaps see the Avro Lincoln be developed and in service for 1943 and possibly the Avro 684, the proposed high altitude version of the Lancaster with a pressurised cabin able to fly at 40,000 ft., also seriously looked into. But that of course all falls down if you don't see the Lancaster in service earlier than it did.