Iain Wyllie

The Aviation News drawings were produced by a late friend of mine, Roy Miller, who worked in Shorts and he told me that he had used the only information available from that source, which was precious little. I am sure that there is probably more available in the hands of ex Shorts employees which will never surface, though.

Sounds good to me, Bob. I did wonder why it was only on the early canopies and, if what I'd been told was correct, it would have been called a knock in panel, iI suppose!

I think you mean the knockout panel, not clear view panel. As far as I know, it was intended to be used from the outside so that rescuers would be able to reach inside to open the door in the event of an aircraft ending up in an inverted position. I may have been misinformed, of course!

I found this cutaway showing the camera. - not a photo but it is useful. Incidentally, I don't think that the gun in the observers position should be a Vickers K. There was not enough room to swing the gun, due to the width of the magazine. It should be a .303 Browning.

Well, it's beginning to look like nobody has a sharp photo, not all bad, though, as nobody will be able to tell me that the one I made about four years ago is wrong. It is in place on the fuselage so I may some day get on and finish the model. Thanks to those who posted replies.

That's the one, Shane, but there is not enough detail to show what is going on at the forward side where ,presumably. the camera lens is hiding. It must be behind a door of some sort but I have never seen a clear enough photo to show how it would work.

I'm afraid not, Jerry, the one I am looking for is mounted just above and to the rear of the cockpit canopy in a streamlined fairing.

Does anyone have a good close-up photo of the above? I have seen quite a few photos showing it on a TFX but they do not show the front end clearly.

Thank you for your comments. I see, however, the reason that lawyers use such long winded statements - in order to avoid the statement being misconstrued, either wilfully or accidentally. For a start, I did not ​say that it was either books or the internet or that one was better than the other; the two are complementary. ​Second, I did not advocate spending anywhere near to the equivalent of the cost of a new computer on building up a complete library, especially in one lump sum. Third, I made no comment about the efforts of those who do valuable research from original sources. What I did say was that the majority of questions about details, which are the largest proportion of the questions, can be easily found with a relatively minor expenditure and cited two books which give masses of information relevant to detailing a model of the Hurricane. There are others equally as cheap for the Spitfire, showing the internal details during rebuilds and separate components which give a clear idea of what goes where. Of course you can find walkarounds on the web but they tend to have less information on internal and hidden details as they are generally external photographs of museum airframes. The purchase of a few cheap new or used books would greatly expand the knowledge of those with a modicum of interest in a particular type and, perhaps, help prevent the number of queries from people who start their post with something like "I know nothing about Spitfires ...." and then ask a question about something that a simple Google search would give an answer to in a few seconds. It's the old saw "Give a man a fish and he will eat for a day, teach him how to fish and he will never be hungry." It seems to me that there are goodly number of people who rely on being spoon fed and have no ability to shift for themselves, despite, or perhaps because of, their ability to post on the internet. And, while I'm at it, as for posts consisting of nothing more than "Wow" and a row of emoticons, spare me!

I am a bit puzzled by this series of topics as the thread gets more and more cumbersome as time goes by. The Spitfire version has now got 47 pages and the Hurricane 16 and growing daily. The sheer size of these threads makes it harder to pin down any one question or subject Do few people buy a book or books in order to shift for themselves and learn a lot in the process? The answers to questions on Hurricane details, for example, would virtually all be answered by buying a relatively cheap book such as "Hawker Hurricane, inside and out" or the excellent Haynes manual on the subject. These two books are full of very useful detail photos and together would cost less than £20 and will provide the answers to most questions and any queries would be quickly resolved by taking either off the shelf and a few minutes searching for the detail, rather than trawling through a huge long thread in order to find something, unless you get good answers from a search Books are also more useful to refer to when building as they can be opened at the relevant page and consulted as work goes on, than having a computer running and or printing photos from the web, even if a useful one is actually in the thread. One can also use a rule to measure off proportions from a photo or diagram in a book. I'd be interested to know the answer as books provide quick reference and save lots of valuable time.

When I click on the scale, I get $25 for 1/72, $40 for 1/48 and $60 for 1/32.

For "fiscally" read "physically", unless, of course, five were cheaper than six.

Well, thank you for the clarification, Graham. I was spending too much time trying to figure it out ....... and I am not even going to build a Hampden. Seems that Barnes could have stated things somewhat more clearly and with less room for misinterpretation. I have over 30 Putnam books and find that, by their nature, they don't give nearly enough of the sort of detailed information that interests me - very good though they are for an overall description in a compact format. It has been a good discussion, and strangely lacking the usual number of theories based on ill informed speculation.

Graham, I would agree with the verticaldimensions that you quote ( they were also in the copy of AI that I referred to/ The one that puzzles me is the 12" shorter gondola - is the 12" removed from the front or the back, since the rear edge of the gondola where it sprouts from the fuselage, looks to be in much the same position as the bomber version but I would need clearer underside views to establish that. If the shorter aft section just began at the rear of the bomb doors and is 12" shorter, you would expect to see a difference in photos from the side, but if the opposite was the case, the doors would have to be 12"longer than standard to make up the difference, which seems the less likely option as it would entail moving the rear rams and bulkhead aft by 12", Looking at the photo of the restored section, there appears to a cutout in the bottom at the rear end to provide clearance for the the upper tail of the torpedo

Hmm, I thought it would be very expensive - I'll stick to 1/32 scale, I think.

It is not speculation on my part - that is what the windows were for. Two cameras were required due to the amount of angle off and the range and direction in which the target vessel is travelling in relation to the flight path, since the nose could obscure the vessel if only one camera was available. How much "soot and grime" do you think would accumulate during the course of a training sortie? You might as well ask "What happens if it rains as drops might land on the windows?".

With regard to the cameras, from the team restoring the Barracuda who have all manuals, etc. For the structure, I have technical drawings and diagrams.

See my edit above.

Indeed, Graham, but I was thinking more of those modelling a T.B.I, as it would give a definitive measurement for altering a kit. The main culprits in perpetuating the myth are colour profile "artists" who assumed that the rear section was the same depth as standard bomber and adding larger doors which they then had to deepen and angle down in order to show a step at the rear end. This was even taken a step further in "Soviet Air Power in World War2" by Yefim Gordon where the colour profiles of the T.B.I all display this error but with one, obviously based on the photo that I posted above, having the rear end of the torpedo misinterpreted as a gun mounted below the rear of the gondola! Plagiarism does nobody any favours. As you say, the information has been in the public domain for a long time, the line drawings accompanying an article in Air International back in November '84 in Vol. 27/5 got it right and, no doubt, others before that. EDIT I have just pulled out of my library my copy of Famous Bombers of the Second World War by William Green and both the line profiles and the tone drawing get the T.B.I correct, and this in 1960, when I bought the book.

I just read the discussion about the wing root glazing and the wildly varying opinions about what these "windows" were for. They were there to house film cameras for recording the results of practice torpedo runs. There was pretty much nothing in there apart from the leading edge ribs with large lightening holes (except the rib in way of the glazing which had a scallop at the forward edge) and forward side of the strut link wells. Most operational aircraft appear to have had the glazing replaced by metal panels.

I don't know as I don't have a copy. It would be of interest if you would post a scan but it still wouldn't give the actual dimension of the depth compared with the standard bomber version.

Might be an idea if someone with access to Cosford could measure the depth of the rear section of the gondola and photos of the bottom. This would end speculation about it.

I found this pretty comprehensive set of resin, white metal, turned brass and p/e. It is made in Korea and looks very good but I can't see a price. They also do a set for the 1/32 Tamiya Corsair, as well as a new 1/48 109, as if we need another one. http://www.ka-models.com/index.php?route=product/product&product_id=638

I used a bit of lateral thinking and looked through my Russian aircraft references to see if I could find photos of any of their Hampdens fitted with torpedoes. I did find one showing a loaded torpedo which is clearly fitted with the aerodynamic tail. You can see the rudder and propeller as well as the tapered tailcone of the torpedo. The forward edge of the vertical surface of the aerodynamic tail is just visible behind the ground crewmans collar, as well as the horizontal plane. EDIT You can also see that the front end of the bomb bay doors are slightly open, due to their being held apart by contacting the torpedo. Might be an idea if someone could measure the depth of the lower gondola section at Cosford and take a photo of its underside in order to put an end to speculation about it.

Here is a photo of the area on a standard bomber showing the glazed areas. This area on the torpedo version is somewhat shallower in depth as you can see by comparing it with the photo of the restoration, so that when closed, the bomb bay doors project below this rear section.