All canadian Lancs were flown across the atlantic without turrets, these were fitted in the UK and some photos show these ferry planes, in addition due to production problems at Nash & Thomson there were times when turrets supply failed to meet demand, production was prioritied for nose and tail, this meant that some Lancs went into service without a upper turret, some of these bombers were retro fitted with turrets some were not, so while he was right in some respect but for completely the wrong reason (probably a fluke) it is of note that all three mks suffered this shortage yet stirling and halifax's (as far as I can tell) did not
Yes I agree that
some Lancs did not have a top turret but I would say that almost
all of the
Main Force Lancs did have a Top turret,I have read many autobiographies/reference books etc...the Mid upper turret was the norm,I have never seen a normal Main Force a/c without one -
During WW2.
The top turrets tended to be removed postwar and this is where confusion reigns and it is where Bullshooter45 was being disingenuous by posting a photo of PA474 obviously taken over Lincoln in the 1970's.
The BBMF went to great trouble to fit a mid upper turret to PA474 so that it represented the great majority of
wartime Lancaster a/c !He was also being disingenuous about the Lancs being 'field modified' because of performance shortfalls
Here is an extract from the raf mod website regarding mid upper/ventral turrets,the last 2 sentences questioning the inexplicable failure to brief the crews about schrage musik and refit a ventral gun,as I previously posted - some crews did fit a scare gun but schrage musik did not seem to be known about by the majority of regular squadron crews...
RAF MOD...The majority of night fighter attacks were made stealthily from astern and below, indeed, with the advent of Schräge Musik, the inclined cannon armament system fitted to German night fighters, the majority of the attacks occurred from almost directly below, completely out of sight of the mid upper gunner. There were some aircraft fitted with belly or ventral gun positions such as the Lancaster Mk II and several versions of the Halifax, but these were not brought into widespread service although many aircraft on the production line were perfectly capable of having them installed. Since it was a simple matter to extrapolate the direction of attack from the damage done to the aircraft which managed to return after being attacked, and several engineers in Bomber Command remarked upon the attack patterns in official reports, it is a matter of conjecture how many lives would have been saved by the deletion of the traditional mid upper turret and the acceptance of ventral positions as the norm in reply to the tactics employed by the German night fighter force. In many late production aircraft the ventral position designed into the Lancaster and Halifax was taken up with the H2S ground mapping radar head.