No. 460 Squadron

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”.