Revell 1/72 Lancaster B.III

[falcon]

..PICS REMOVED..

Edited January 26, 2009 by falcon

[perry]

You're making a good job of it!

[avro683]

Great work Chris.

Tony

[AnonymousA667]

Nice work Chris.

peebeep

[AnonymousDFB1]

Wow, nice work.

[Seamus]

That looks very nice indeed

I've got one of these on the way for Christmas courtesy of my brother, looking forward to it

[plastic]

Very nice, clean, neat job there Chris! Very nice indeed mate.

[Dave Gibson]

A cracking build Chris and the modification to the wing looks spot on. . Just one question: why did you put a yellow dot on the back of the pilots seat? References seem to be fairly well split 50/50 both front and back with a dot and only front with a dot. Opinion seems equally divided. The reason I ask is because I'm building a Tamiya Dambuster Lancaster and have just painted out the rear yellow dot I had originally applied. I'd like to know one way or the other before applying the seat.

Cheers,

Dave.

[daz greenwood]

Of all the pics i've seen of Lanc's I've only ever seen it on the front of the seat and not the rear.

Edited December 9, 2008 by daz greenwood

[Hardtarget]

Chris, could i ask what with and how you covered all that plastic glass please. I cant imagine you cut each individual piece out and stuck it on....i could be wrong.

[Warris]

Nice work Chris

[Honeybee]

Hi

Very nice Falcon, look forward to seeing it at Elsecar. Is it possible that the seats with the dot on the back actually show the armour lowered backwards and you're actually seeing the dot on the front?

RegardsPaul

Edited December 10, 2008 by Honeybee

[Miggers]

It is simply a quick visual check item to ensure that the armor was in the up position before take-off,i.e,if the circle wasn't seen the pilot would be rapidly signalled to put it into the up position.

We discussed this on the Lancaster Archive forum some months ago and that was the answer given by a couple of ex-wartime Lanc aircrew.

They agreed that the pilot had such armor because he was the last person on board that anyone wanted to be injured.

Although the F/E or Nav could well be capable of flying the aircraft to a reasonable degree,the pilot was the man to fly them home and pull off a safe landing.

Nice build falcon,don't forget though,"Grogs" was a high ops Lanc and so would be showing a lot of signs of use and well weathered.

Mark

Edited December 15, 2008 by Miggers

[Graham]

Checked my Lancaster at War books and the yellow circle was painted on both sides of the armour plate, in book 1 there is a good photo on page 57 with the caption "clearly visible is the only piece of armour plating in the aircraft- the pilots seat with extended head plate" I would scan it but not sure of copyright.

Graham.

[DHP]

Checked my Lancaster at War books and the yellow circle was painted on both sides of the armour plate, in book 1 there is a good photo on page 57 with the caption "clearly visible is the only piece of armour plating in the aircraft- the pilots seat with extended head plate" I would scan it but not sure of copyright.

Graham.

Couldn't you scan the shot under 'fair usage'?

Cheers.

Derek

[Dave Fleming]

Couldn't you scan the shot under 'fair usage'?

Cheers.

Derek

Only if it was for personal use and not posted on the internet

[Graham]

If anybody watched the RAF at 90 during the week then the yellow dot pops up again during the colour film of Lanc's taking off and it could be seen on the back plate in the cockpit shot, there are other photos of it in the other Lanc at war books.

Graham.

[avro683]

If anybody watched the RAF at 90 during the week then the yellow dot pops up again during the colour film of Lanc's taking off and it could be seen on the back plate in the cockpit shot, there are other photos of it in the other Lanc at war books.

Graham.

I did Graham and I started a thread to let people be aware of it. I thought there was going to be a real bunfight ast one stage.

Tony

[bobgpw]

The "yellow dot" is a gas detection disc. All Lancs had them applied on both sides of the pilot's head armour. Some Bomber Groups also had a large gas detection disc painted on the nose of the aircraft, 3 Group I think were the main culprits. Many other aircraft had gas paint applied, especially in the run up to the potential invasion of Britain in 1940.

Gas detection paint was common on most British vehicles of the era as well. A friend of mine had a Morris Commercial that had "gas sensitive" paint applied to it, and I believe that the yellow "bridge plates" on vehicles may also have been gas sensitive. US vehicles had olive drab gas paint that turned red when mustard gas was detected.

Gas paint was applied all over the place, letter boxes, air raid shelters, factories etc.

[Dave Gibson]

The "yellow dot" is a gas detection disc. All Lancs had them applied on both sides of the pilot's head armour.

When I postulated this on the Lanc Forum, I was very quickly told the yellow dot marked armour plate and it was a visual aid so that ground control could see that the armour was protecting the pilot. Personally I find this ridiculous. Marking armour plate in yellow? I much prefer the gas disk idea. That would mean front and back yellow dots to be effective, wouldn't it?

Dave.

[Miggers]

And here's the link to that post on the Lancaster Archive that Dave has mentioned:

http://lancaster-archive.com/forum/viewtop...p;sk=t&sd=a

Mark

[bobgpw]

There is another aspect to this debate!

If you take a close look at the production/assembly line photos of Lancs at Woodford and Chadderton, you can see that the yellow disc is present at a very early stage of the manufacturing process. As gas attack was a very real fear, the presence of the disc within the cockpit may also have been to alert production workers to the presence of gas. The colour photographs show the disc to be very similar in colour to the "anti-gas" paint found on other aircraft and buildings. As for denoting armour plate, I would have thought that AVRO would have painted "ARMOUR" on it!? The engine armour plate does not carry this marking, and the idea that the runway controller would visually check that the armour plate was up is tenuous.

Both 1 and 3 Group painted gas detection discs on the nose of their aircraft at some stage of the war. I can only presume that this was a Group instruction due to either gas weapon stockpile being located nearby, or that the Group would be called upon to perform some form of chemical warfare role. Interestingly, in Cambridgeshire, Lords Bridge Depot was a filling station for Mustard Gas and in Nottinghamshire, Norton Disney was a Mustard gas filling depot. There were, I think, three other Forward Filling Depots.

That said, if someone can produce the Lanc AP or AVRO work instruction that proves otherwise, I'm all ears.

Bob

[Dave Gibson]

And here's the link to that post on the Lancaster Archive that Dave has mentioned:

http://lancaster-archive.com/forum/viewtop...p;sk=t&sd=a

Mark

Hi Mark,

I was refering specifically to carbon monoxide poisoning, by virtue of the fact that the heater air comes directly from the nacelle and could become contaminated. Personally, I think that the claim that it denotes armour plating is facile as this would be well known by all involved.

Such patches are available today and are used in light aircraft as a quick visual aid.

Details of these patches can be found here: http://www.aircraftspruce.com/catalog/pspa...codetectors.php

Dave.

[Test Graham]

No other RAF aircraft had internal paint markings for gas attacks, so this makes it very unlikely that the Lancaster did. I don't believe that gas attack was considered a real threat on production sites later in the war - 1940 maybe, but that's pre-Lancaster. To be fair, notices do hang around for a long time after being marked.

Exhaust gas contamination was much more common on single-engine fighters, but no such markings are seen on them. (Or are they?) However, such a marking would be most useful where the pilot could see it, not on the back of his seat. Given that the yellow diamond was to detect mustard gas, would the same paint work with CO? I'm no chemist, but I'd be surprised if the same reaction worked with both.

The point about the obvious marking for armourplate is that the seat back of the Lancaster is detachable, and an unwary fitter might well find himself with literally more than he could handle. Yes, AVRO could have written "armour", but without casting any aspersions on Mancunian literacy, a yellow dot is simpler.

I hope I'm not misquoting him here, but Derek Pennington was around in the RAF at the same time as Lancasters, and I recall him saying it was to mark armour plate.

Edited December 16, 2008 by Graham Boak

[daz greenwood]

According to the Lanc datafile the yellow dot was to show that the pilots head armour was in the up position and to show that the pilot was still upright.