Ask The Former Generation

As my husband Brian and I were on route home from our week's holiday in Wyoming, we stopped at the Bomber Command Museum of Canada in Nanton, Alberta. I wanted to tour this museum since I moved to Alberta because it has an Avro Lancaster on display. Lancasters and Spitfires are the two main airplanes my father worked on when he was an air-frame mechanic for the Canadian Air Force for five years. I saw a Supermarine Spitfire, a British front line fighter aircraft last year at the Alberta Aviation Museum, but I was disappointed when there wasn't a Lancaster there to view.

An Avro Lancaster is a British four-engined World War II heavy bomber.

The Lancaster became the most famous and successful of the World War II bombers.

The long unobstructed bomb bay was designed to carry the largest bombs:  1,800 kg, 3,600 kg, and 5,400 kg Blockbusters (often supplemented with incendiaries), 5,400 kg Tailboys, and the 10,000 kg Grand Slam earthquake bombs.

The bombardier  laid on the floor of the nose of the aircraft, with access to the bombsight controls facing forward, with the bombsight computer on his left and bomb release selectors on the right.

He also assisted the navigator with map reading because he could see out of the large transparent perspex nose cupola.

Even though my father has been gone for several years now, I try to get to know him a bit better. I have so many questions to ask him and I regret now that I didn't.

"Ask the former generation

and find out what their ancestors learned,

for we were born only yesterday and know nothing,

and our days on earth are but a shadow.

Will they not instruct you and tell you?

Will they not bring forth words from their understanding?"

Job 8:8-10 (NIV)