Differences between American and British heavy bombers
 

I noticed that the cockpits of American aircraft like the B17 resemble a modern airliner cockpit whereas the British aircraft appear to be from a different evolutionary tree. (I've just been watching a walk through of a Halifax on YouTube, which had one position, instruments scattered seemingly randomly, a control pedestal that looks lie it came off a ship ... and a staircase! It looks like a carryover from Upstairs Downstairs

Why was that? and when did British aircraft design 'mature' into what we're used to today

I'm not entirely sure the British cockpit design ever matured, though my experience was limited to the very early 70's Vampires, Venoms, Scout..

There is of course the theory that a box of instruments was chucked into the area at the end of the build process, and that they were mounted where they landed...

Joking aside, the difference is mostly in a different crew concept. The US-built heavy bombers operated with a pilot and co-pilot, while the British-built ones used only a single pilot. This single pilot operation was supported by a flight engineer, who could take the controls for a spell and who would assist during take off and landing. This drove the different cockpit layouts that you describe.

As for when it changed, the next British-built bomber was the Canberra, and that was still single-pilot. The next one is the Vickers Valiant I think, and this one had a proper two-man cockpit.

During WW2 it was the norm on british 4 engine bombers to have just One Pilot,the Bomb Aimer or Flight Engineer might have been capable of flying the Aircraft in an emergency or to let the pilot visit the ELSAN - either due to previous training ('washed out' of pilot training in many Bomb Aimers case) or because of being given some 'stick time' by the Pilot.
Up to and including the Hawker Hunter the cockpit layout was usually very non ergonomic,after that things improved significantly.
I never worked on 'Heavies' but ISTR that the Victor Flight Deck seemed quite neat and orderly (as seen by me as an Air Cadet circa 1966),The Vulcan Flight Deck was a little cramped as it had originally been designed for single pilot operation.

Another significant difference between British and American Bombers was that the Single Pilot in a British Bomber was quite often a 19 year old Sergeant Pilot,indeed the whole crew was often Sgt Aircrew.
In American Bombers it was the norm that Pilots/Navs/Bombardiers were usually commissioned.Although slightly later in the war I believe some Bombardiers were initially given the Rank of 'Flight Officer' (like U.S Glider Pilots).And of course eventually it was realised that they did not really need all those highly trained Bombardiers and their role was often performed by 'Toggliers' (often an armourer or gunner ?) who toggled the bombs away when formation leads dropped,of course formation leads/deputy leads still needed a 'proper' Bombardier .

British cockpit design matured with the Comet which was a revolution in design. The engineer's panel set the standard for all future panels and the Concord cockpit is essentially a Comet cockpit slightly upgraded.

Interestingly in his memoirs ("Fly and Deliver" - memoirs of an ATA pilot) Hugh Bergel says the exact opposite. His view was that the standardised layout of British military aircraft (especially the six instruments in the "blind flying panel") made these aircraft much easier to assimilate than the American ones, whose cockpit layouts he describes as "haphazard". He also expressed frustration about the way that all British aircraft with supercharged engines had automatic boost control - a system which ensured that when you set (say) +6lbs of boost it stayed at +6lbs at all altitudes and throttle settings, whereas the boost control of american aircraft just controlled the wastegate and needed constant monitoring/adjustment with changes in altitude or throttle setting which (he suggests) would have been a major pain in combat and was suspected to be the cause of some engine reliability shortfalls.

I'm not saying he's right - I'm just contributing the view of a pilot who was flying a large variety of these types while they were in service.

PDR

Don't knock the British cockpit that much. They all used the same instrument setup, the 'standard tee'. American cockpits would have the instruments wherever the manufacturer felt was eye pleasing or convenient.

That's what my father used to say and he used to fly both.

One of the main differences was the Lancaster in particular could carry a truck load of bombs compared to say the Fortress, up to 22000lb grand slam. Not designed for comfort, safety or anything but carrying bombs, fantastic aircraft in that sense. I think the Mosquito could carry the same load as the average B17, 4000lb? The B17G could carry max 9600lb.

The actual 'flying panel' with the 6 important instruments was extremely good,but the rest of the cockpit layout could be an ergonomic nightmare,I definitely agree that generally our engine controls were definitely much better/easier.

I don't think this has been posted here but while we are discussing instrumentation what about bomb load...

B-17 vs Lancaster Payloads & Armour -
"Both the B-17 and Lancaster have maximum take off weights around 65,000 pounds, yet it's commonly thought that the Lancaster has a much higher maximum bomb load. Is that true? Let's find out!"

That's an interesting and well-balanced video. Thanks

I think that would be the difference between mechanically-driven superchargers and turbo-superchargers - the "wastegate" was in effect a turbine bypass, which was to be found on the latter. However not all supercharged US aeroengines were turbo-supercharged and I wonder what Hugh Bergel made of them.
As I remember from reading his book* many years ago, Bergel was pretty forthright about the aeroplanes he had flown - it was he who claimed that the vibration of the P39 Airacobra caused it to become a blur, even when you were inside it.

*ETA it was "Flying Wartime Aircraft" rather than "Fly and Deliver" I now remember!

I grew up believing that Lancasters carried bombs and B.17s carried crew !

well the video was interesting - but in all my years I'd never seen pictures of a B-17 carrying external bombs - which made up half the potential load.

I'll be there wasn't a Lancaster crew in existence that would have swapped a Lanc at night for a B-17 in daylight................

Just to put the record straight. A number of U.S. bombers were modelled on airliners. The B17 being partly based on the Boeing 247, the Hudson the Electra. British bombers were designed for one purpose only, delivering bombs, crew comfort was secondary. British 4 engined bombers did originally have 2 pilots early in the war. Early 42 saw the change over to 1 pilot operations.

Ditto on the video - very enlightening.
I doubt there was another WWII bomber that could take the punishment and return home that the B-17 could. I've read several places where the 8th AF brass preferred the B-24 because it could carry a larger bomb load, but the crews all wanted to fly B-17s because the surviveability was so much better.
Asturias - perhaps, but did you catch the casualty rate of the RAF bombers vs. 8th Air Force quoted in the video?

Regardless of the comparison between the B17 and the British Heavies, remember that the Luftwaffe had to maintain both day fighter and night fighter forces simply because the allies could bomb day or night.

And I grew up with the song which included (to the tune of Glory Glory) the lines:

"The yanks were flying Fortresses at forty fousand feet (x 3)

With loads of ammunition and a teeny weeny bomb."

AND

"The RAF were flying Lancasters at zero zero feet (x 3)

With no ammunition and a f***in' great bomb!"

While on the subject of WW II bombers, I was watching "Battle of Britain" for the umpteenth time last night, and it reminded me of something that's long puzzled me.
The German bombers carried their bombs vertically - not horizontally like the American and British bombers. Now, I can appreciate there may be some packaging advantages to vertically loaded bombs that influenced the German designers. But, there are several scenes where it is obvious that the bombs exiting are fins down - i.e. backwards. This causes the bombs to initially tumble unpredictably and scatter before they 'straighten out and fly right' - which would have a very detrimental effect on accuracy.
Why would they do that? Was it intentional done to increase scatter when bombing London (it's not like they're going to miss the city)? If so, did they load the bombs fins up when precision targeting mattered?
Or is an inaccuracy in the movie (seems unlikely - aside from some dated special effects, the movie is rather well done)? Anyone out there know?

BTW:
The B-17 normally carried about sixty seconds worth of ammo for each gun. I doubt many of the crew considered that to be 'loads' of ammo when they were spending hours over enemy territory...