[QUOTE=WHBM;14923839]correct. ...... Well certainly on their trips to Europe in their Halifax 4-engined bombers (main aircraft of the squadron, the Anson was just a trainer and hack) they had seen these forced by fighters into barrel rolls and other extreme attitudes, this time without any advanced planning, from which the crew returned to tell the tale.[QUOTE]

IIRC, the RAF Bomber Command had the highest casualty rate among the various British service commands, a solemn comment on the occasional need for violent untested maneuvers when faced by desperate situations.

Since this thread was about Avro, the company did build the more numerous and preferable alternative to the Halifax, the Lancaster. I did have an operational hop nearly half century ago on the maritime patrol successor to that bird, the Shackleton, a long-lived a/c, operationally flying in SAfrican colors into the 80s. When I was serving with the US 6th Fleet, '62-'65, the RAF was still flying Shackletions out of Malta, while the USN based its ASW P2H Neptunes and Electronic Warfare "Willie Victors" - WV2 military versions of the TATL Super Constellation at Sigonella in Sicily in the shadows of Mt. Aetna.

Airliners seem to be natural candidates for various long range military uses. The P3 Orion in US service (ASW, EW, Weather, Border Security, fire-fighting) for more than 40 years is based on a redesign of the Lockheed Electra. The RAF's Nimrod is every bit the child of the first DH Comet. Now, Boeing is hard at work on a 737 redesign to replace the P3 Orions in US and many foreign services.