Breguet Br. 1150 Atlantic

[Jeffry Fontaine]

I have the Revell of Germany Breguet Br. 1150 Atlantic kit in protective custody. The kit has a rather nicely detailed weapons bay that includes a pair of torpedo shapes and three cylinder shapes with a truncated cone at one end. Does anyone know what these things are supposed to represent?

In the image below (model built by Ted Taylor) you can see the three cylindrical shapes mounted at the rear of the weapons bay. I am supposing they are life raft containers and not depth bombs as someone on another forum suggested.

(Thank you Ted for providing the image!)

[CPNGROATS]

Three large kegs of draught beer....

Cheers,

ggc

[Sten Ekedahl]

Three large kegs of draught beer....

Cheers,

ggc

Of course not! Since it's a French aircraft it must be wine barrels!

[CPNGROATS]

And I suppose those longish red tipped thingys are actually "heat seeking" suppositories....

Cheers,

ggc

[upnorth]

I would say depth charges due to the colour, air dropable survival kits or life raft containers would be a bright colour like red, yellow, orange or dayglow so they could be found easily once dropped.

However, as I'm totally ignorant of the workings of sonobuoy deployment systems; the thought occured to me that they might be compressed air cylinders to launch sonobuoys out of the aircraft. Perhaps sonobuoys simply leave by gravity, but I though with the proximity of those things to the sonobuoy grid behind the weapons bay that compressed gas to launch them might be a possibility if gravity wasn't enough to get them clear of the aircraft.

Edited August 27, 2008 by upnorth

[Dads203]

They look rather like depth charges to me ?

[Stebos]

I always thought sonobuoys were launched from the grid of holes further towards the tail (the Orion has a similiar grid).

I would tend to agree with them being depth charges. According to wiki it carried 9 torps, 12 charges or 4 exocets in there.

[stringbag]

They look rather like depth charges to me ?

Yep!!!!

As CPNGROATS has said, suppositories.

[emlra]

Yep!!!!

As CPNGROATS has said, suppositories.

Containers full of 'white flags' for use when crapping themselves!

Rex

[Antoine]

[Greg B]

Gents,

At first the thread was asking a serious question about a kit build which immediately was hijacked into a comedy calavacade of replies. Can we please in future refrain from moving a post off topic until the original post has at least been properly answered.

The 2nd point is that there are quite a few French members who post on this forum, Antoine being one of them who has a pretty good sense of humour himself as you have seen by his reply (nice one mate!). However I must remind you of the recent loss of French Soldiers in Afghanistan, not the best timing in the world there Gents and no doubt it will have caused offence with some of our French guests and members.

REgards

Greg B

[emlra]

Gents,

At first the thread was asking a serious question about a kit build which immediately was hijacked into a comedy calavacade of replies. Can we please in future refrain from moving a post off topic until the original post has at least been properly answered.

The 2nd point is that there are quite a few French members who post on this forum, Antoine being one of them who has a pretty good sense of humour himself as you have seen by his reply (nice one mate!). However I must remind you of the recent loss of French Soldiers in Afghanistan, not the best timing in the world there Gents and no doubt it will have caused offence with some of our French guests and members.

REgards

Greg B

no offence intended

sri

Rex

[Antoine]

No offence taken.

Matter closed.

Greg, thanks for the kind words.

[spike7451]

99.9% sure they are liferaft kit.(mainy for the crew if they have to ditch in the Atlantic or somewhere)

[The Velociweiler]

Never having worked on French Ordnance I can't vouch for them specifically, but British Depth charges are effectively the same diameter as air-dropped torpedoes, I would imagine that the case would be the same for France, and so the three containers at the rear of the weapon bay would appear to be life-raft canisters.

All the expendible sonobouy capable aircraft I have ever seen utilise Sonobouys which drop under gravity influence only, I've never experienced any which needed some form of Low Pressure air assistance for launch, so I'd surmise that the location of these items as close to the Sonobouy tubes as being coincidental. Liferaft canisters have oft been carried by Maritime Patrol Aircraft when frequently called upon to assist in Coastguard investigation, search and rescue missions. Have been carried so for practically the entire post-war period, and the features seen on this model appear as very closely similar to life-rafts which inflate under hydrostatic trigger (i.e. inflate when immersed...).

Depth charges on the other hand are simply large buckets of explosive held together by a thin steel container. I've never seen a post-war air dropped depth charge yet which did not have a tail unit of some description, and their forward facing end will usually comprise some form of angled shape feature to preclude 'slamming' directly into the sea (The Revell Wessex 3 in 1\48 features depth charges with such an angled 'face', albeit one in which the angle of the wedge shape is dramatically exaggerated - academic, yes, I know....). So if these cylinders as seen are not liferafts, they'd still be far too big for any Depth Charge which would commonly be seen in use.

But of course, I could be wrong...!!