The Mk. 10 AR was the 1952 answer to a need Canada had, to protect and patrol the far northern regions of the country. In the early 1950’s, aircraft flying Arctic patrols were returning to base with growing evidence of Soviet manned ice stations built on ice flows in the high arctic.

The Mk. 10AR Area Reconnaissance (often wrongly called Arctic Reconnaissance) modification was based on the Lancaster Mk. 10P standard airframe, although several major changes were made. The most noticeable change to the airframe was the addition of a forty inch extension to the nose of the aircraft.
The extension allowed a navigation / weather radar to be fitted along with a low-level camera system fitted in the former bomb aimer’s perspex. The Mk. 10 AR would be equipped with a total of ten camera systems, a drastic increase when compared to the two systems of the Mk. 10P airframe. Other airframe modifications included:
• The addition of two windows in the rear fuselage just forward of the tail (as on the 10MR).
• UPD search radar, located in the mid lower fuselage, where the former H2S radar was located.
• A wide array of antennas for various radio and passive ECM systems.

A normal crew complement of eight (two pilots, two navigators, two radio officers, a flight engineer and camera operator) was often supplemented with additional crew members when electronic surveillance sorties were carried out. A typical sortie would last ten hours. An operational deployment away from the home base at Rockcliff would last on average ten days. The aircraft deployed to forward locations such as: Churchill, Manitoba; Thule, Greenland or any one of a number airfields in the Canadian Arctic. In May 1958, a Lancaster 10AR photographed a Tupolev TU-16 “Badger” bomber being repaired on ice island North Pole Six.
Only three airframes were modified to 10AR configuration, they were: KB839, KB882 and KB976. KB 839 and KB 882 both saw combat during the last months of the World War II. 408 Squadron operated the three aircraft until they were finally retired from RCAF service in 1964.

All three airframes have escaped the scrapper’s torch. KB839 currently resides in Nova Scotia as part of the Greenwood Aviation Museum. KB882 is on display at the small airport, along side the Trans-Canada Highway at St. Jacques, New Brunswick. KB976 made history as being the last Lancaster to fly the Atlantic in the mid 1970’s on a delivery flight for the Stathallen Collection.  It has since been purchased by Kermit Weeks and shipped back to North America."