Danny:
Re your 9851:
Yes you are right, the 4,000 pound cookies did not have any method of being dropped safe, as was illustrated by Dad's emergency jettison of the entire bomb load of their Lanc following the second engine failure. As he put it, once you dropped the thing, it was going to go bang. They dropped it from just under 5,000 feet, did a sharp turn away, yet the aircraft was severely shaken up by the detonation. It did give them pause to think what happened over the target.
As far as the pins/lanyards, if the bombs were dropped normally, they would return with a bomb bay full of them. However, reading several books on Bomber Command, it was not an uncommon practise for the Skipper to operate the jettison bar ( a lever in the cockpit of Lancasters) after the bomb aimer had called bombs gone, and they were waiting the dreaded 30 seconds for the much hated bomb picture. This to ensure that there were no hang ups, but would result in all the lanyards being dropped. I have no idea if that was something Dad's crew did, but in the books nobody seemed to call the practise into question
Jeff