Originally Posted by
staircase
''they carried a reduced bomb load''.
The weight I have seen quoted for ABC was 650lb's, plus the weight of the extra crew member, so effectively a 1,000 reduction in payload.
As for Harris not wanting to miss an opportunity. In my (long ago) youth I once was talking over the bomber offensive with an old Lancaster man. I suggested that it may have been worth trying to remove all the guns, and fair over the turrets. The point being that the decease in load and drag would have given the aeroplane a much better chance of survival since it would be flying a lot higher and faster.
He burst out laughing and said that if they took off what I had suggested, they would not be flying higher or faster, since the first thing Harris would have done, would have been to increase the load! He had no doubt they would have been back where they started only with no guns.
Freeman Dyson advocated this during the war, calculating a Lancaster would have increased top speed of 50mph. The reason it was never implemented was to do with disruption of production and moral. Aircrew felt they had something to fight back with by keeping turrets.