Avro Lancaster B.III (JB138) QR-J ‘Just Jane’ of 61 Squadron returns home after a mission to Stettin on the night of 5 / 6 January 1944.

The Avro Lancaster can justifiably claim to have been the RAF’s most successful bomber of WWII. Following its first operational sortie in 1942, for the last three years of the war the Lancaster, supported by the Halifax, formed the backbone of Bomber Command’s relentless offensive against strategic industrial targets of Nazi Germany. Night after night the brave airmen took off knowing that highly-trained Luftwaffe crews and ferocious ground-based defences awaited them over objectives that included shipyards, aircraft factories, transport, synthetic oil plants along with anything else deemed responsible for keeping its war machine functioning.

In tribute to this legendary aircraft and the brave crews who flew her, Anthony Saunders has fittingly chosen to depict one of the few Lancasters to have completed more than 100 operational sorties, in fact QR-J 'Just Jane' survived an incredible 123 missions!

With holes in her fuselage, wings and fin and with her outer port engine feathered we see the damaged bomber, having crossed the English coast, descend through cloud towards an emergency landing at RAF Matlaske in Norfolk.