Lancaster Bomber crews reunite at WW2 plane factory

Lancaster Bomber veterans have visited a factory where the World War Two plane was built 80 years ago.

The Avro factory in Chadderton, Greater Manchester, built up to seven bombers a day during the war.

A former pilot and a bomb aimer were among the nine men, aged in their 90s, who stood side by side to commemorate the factory's contribution to aviation.

The historic journey made by the Lancaster bomber on Tuesday was re-enacted to mark the milestone.

Sections of the aircraft would be transported from Chadderton through the streets to Woodford in Stockport to be assembled.

A Lancaster cockpit made the same journey to mark the factory's anniversary as well as the 80th anniversary of the declaration of the war.

Jeff Brown, from Mottram St Andrew, Cheshire, was 18 when he went to war.

He took part in Operation Manna - a food drop which saved thousands in Holland from starvation.

The 93-year-old said: "We flew at a very low levels, just a few hundred feet and then dropped thousands of tonnes of food."

Sam Thompson, 97, from Accrington, Lancashire, served as a gunner and flew 50 operations in Lancasters and Halifax planes.

He remembers "two or three" close encounters with fighters over Germany.

"We were lucky to get home after other poor souls were shot down," he said.

The factory in Chadderton, which opened in 1939, was a world leader in aircraft design and production for 72 years.

A total of 38,000 people worked around the clock making the parts including Lillian Grundy, who manufactured screws at Avro's Newton Heath plant.

She said: "It was a 12-hour shift.

"It was freezing cold in the winter and in the summer, it was mad hot."