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Old 5th Jun 2012, 01:50
  #2650 (permalink)  
Danny42C
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Chugalug and Kookabat,
 
More riches piled on my undeserving head! Chugalug, I had a quick look at your last link, and had a good laugh at "Berlin Express". Dream on - he had as much chance of getting to Berlin as I've got now of running a 4-minute mile!

But not without interest. They must have had some kind of double winch to haul two bombs up. AFAIK, we had to winch them up one at a time. The winch fitted on the big slot just in front of the stick in the pilot's cockpit. This also came in useful for sweeping out mud and rubbish out from the cockpit floor - every family car should have something like that! (Don't be surprised at the crewman enjoying his fag - in the US our instructors openly puffed their "see-gars" in the cockpit!)

And I'm puzzled a bit about the Camden VV, How come one shot shows a single .50 Browning poking out the back? That is an A-35/Mk.IV fit. Two old .303s should be, if anything, much easier to find - but then you'd need the right back canopy section for them. It's very hard to tell an A-31 from an A-35 from the outside. Dark suspicions arise! ("EZ999" wouldn't take a signwriter long).

Per contra, the cockpit is mostly familiar to me; the wings only have two gunports, (A-35s AFAIK had 3 x .50 a side, but I think a few had only 2 x .50). The hole in the wing is no guide, it is the size of the long blast tube down which the gun fired and it would take a .50 as easily as a.303.

There seems to be plenty of provenance, though. Perhaps it's just my suspicious nature! And what purpose could it possibly serve to dress up an old Mk.IV as a Mk.I? (Kookabat, you've worked on the thing - am I talking nonsense?)

Time I was in bed! Goodnight, both,

Danny 

Last edited by Danny42C; 5th Jun 2012 at 01:57.