No. 460 Squadron
- Group
- 1 Group
- Home station
- RAF Binbrook
About
No. 460 Squadron was the senior Australian heavy-bomber squadron in Bomber Command and one of its hardest-working. Formed in November 1941, it flew the Vickers Wellington and briefly the Handley Page Halifax before re-equipping with the Avro Lancaster in late 1942, and it served in No. 1 Group, latterly making its home at RAF Binbrook in Lincolnshire after a first spell at RAF Breighton.
The squadron dropped a greater tonnage of bombs than any other unit in the whole of Bomber Command, and paid for it with some of the heaviest losses. Its memory lives on in its one surviving Lancaster, “G for George”, which completed ninety operations and is now preserved at the Australian War Memorial in Canberra. The squadron’s motto was “Strike and return”.
Sources: This page was compiled from publicly available historical sources, including History of War — No. 460 Squadron (RAAF) in the Second World War and Wikipedia: No. 460 Squadron RAAF. The text is original and has been written from factual source material; no source text has been copied unless specifically quoted and attributed.
Photographs
ⓘ licence & credit
Forward (F/O), Royal Air Force official photographer / Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons — https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Royal_Air_Force_1939-1945-_Bomber_Command_CH5354.jpgView source & full licence →Operations flown
- Operation Nuremberg raid — 30 March 1944 (Nuremberg)
Aircraft (5)
| Serial | Code | Type | Fate |
|---|---|---|---|
| ND361 | AR-? | Avro Lancaster | Lost on operations |
| ND738 | AR-? | Avro Lancaster | Lost on operations |
| ND750 | AR-? | Avro Lancaster | Lost on operations |
| PB812 | AR-Y | Avro Lancaster | Written off (non-op) |
| W4783 | AR-G | Avro Lancaster | Survived the war |
No service records linked to this squadron yet. Aircraft, crews and sorties will appear here soon.