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Bristol Bolingbroke


Barneydhc82

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During WW2, the RCAF utilized many hundreds of Canadian built Bolingbrokes in many roles....multi-engine trainers...bombing and gunnery...anti-submarine patrols on both East and West coasts.

These two models were built from the Classic Airframes 1:48 scale kits with only a few minor corrections. The yellow trainer/bombing and gunnery aircraft was built for a friend whose grandfather bought the 1:1 scale aircraft from was assets disposal and towed it home for use as a play house for John and his friends. The second coastal patrol a/c 9048 was built for my personal collection.

I've included a photo of the Bolies instrument panel which was scratch-built as the kit item was of the Blenheim variety.

Barney

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I am a sucker for yellow aeroplanes and I really like that top one (well, both are terrific but it's the top one that makes me want one). What became of your mate's Boly: did it end up getting scrapped, or did it become one of the museum / restored examples?

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Interesting that I should come across this on BM this morning. I spent a very enjoyable afternoon yesterday at the East Fortune Museum of Flight just south of Edinburgh. The Bollingbroke that resides in the restoration hangar is coming along very nicely and I would estimate its about 80% complete and resplendent in its primer ready for the paintshop. The museum is well worth a visit to get up close to some interesting types and well suited to taking reference photos for modelling projects. I took a stack of the Jaguar GR1A for my forthcoming Kittyhawk build......and, of course, it has Concorde as well !.

Tiger331

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I am a sucker for yellow aeroplanes and I really like that top one (well, both are terrific but it's the top one that makes me want one). What became of your mate's Boly: did it end up getting scrapped, or did it become one of the museum / restored examples?

http://www.warplane.com/vintage-aircraft-collection/aircraft-history.aspx?aircraftId=7

yes the canadian warplane heritage museum near me been restoring one for quite a while now.

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Was the single gun in the turret normal for Bolingbrokes? Blenheim Mk.IVs would have gone over to the two-gun turret by then, but that wouldn't necessarily read across to the Canadian build.

Super Aero: Not Day Fighter but Temperate Sea Scheme, surely?

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Thanks for the comments guys. To answer the questions: the Canadian landscape was littered with thousands of aircraft after the war, most purchased by farmers for the parts that could be used to make farm equipment. John's "play house" was one of these. A few were salvaged for museum displays many years later but most were allowed to deteriorate into junk after they were scabenged for parts.

On one field trip for the Western Development Museum in Moose Jaw, I found 14 Anson MkI airframes and a couple of Bolies and one Lysander. The Lizzie was recovered by Harry Wherreat of Assiniboia, Sask and restored to airworthy condition.

The single gun top turret was standard on the Bombing and Gunnery aircraft and the Camo pattern was DG/OG. Airframe 9048 was used on the west coast of Canada as far north as the Aleutian Islands in Alaska while assigned to 8 Sqn, RCAF

Barney

Here is a pic of a Cessna Crane which we recovered from a farm in 1974. It was rebuilt for the WDM in Moose Jaw. and it is typical of the condition of relics found 30 years after they were disposed of.

Crane004.jpg

Crane001.jpg.

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  • 4 years later...

Hi Nsmekanik,

 

Links work.   Jealous you can go visit the museum there in Nanton so easily as it's very well done.   The Alberta Aviation museum also has a bollingbroke undergoing restoration but it was mostly bare frame list time I got to go there.

 

Next time I'll hopefully get more than 20 minutes at the Bomber Command Museum in Nanton.

 

Cheers;

foresterab

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  • 4 months later...

While thrashing around trying to find Bolingbroke I images I turned up this from HERE

a064225-v8.jpg

This doesn't look like any other Bolly cockpit I've seen and @tonyot has stated that the Bolly I was a Blenheim MkIV nose on a Blenheim MkI airframe. Is this a picture of one of the first 20 planes built? The photo is dated 29 April 1942 if that helps.

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12 hours ago, dogsbody said:

My pictures of The Bomber Command Museum Of Canada ( Nanton ) Blenheim ( Bolingbroke ). They have a full aircraft and a separate nose section.

 

NLM 001NLM 002NLM 002a 001NLM 002a 002NLM 008NLM 003NLM 004NLM 005NLM 006NLM 007NLM 008NLM 009

 

 

 

Chris

Wow Chris,...... great pics of a superb looking museum,....thanks for sharing these,.....I really do have to get to Canada one day!!

Cheers

           Tony

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14 hours ago, SleeperService said:

While thrashing around trying to find Bolingbroke I images I turned up this from HERE

a064225-v8.jpg

This doesn't look like any other Bolly cockpit I've seen and @tonyot has stated that the Bolly I was a Blenheim MkIV nose on a Blenheim MkI airframe. Is this a picture of one of the first 20 planes built? The photo is dated 29 April 1942 if that helps.

That looks more like a Blenheim cockpit to me,....but there was a design progression with Bolly cockpits so it could be an early one. As Chris`s pics show, the mid to later Bolly`s did have an instrument pattern which extended across the entire cockpit and the seat padding was seen in some and not others.

 

It has the windows along the complete  right side of the nose, as seen below;

 

Image result for blenheim iv

 

Whereas the standard Bolly had a solid section below the windscreen area, as seen here;

Image result for bolingbroke rcaf 

Cheers

         Tony

Edited by tonyot
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I think the window issue settles that one nicely. Oh well it was worth the effort.

 

I'm seriously beginning to think all of the Bolly I s were different to each other which rather challenges the standard view of being assembled from British supplied parts.

The shots of 717 with floats certainly show the metal area ahead of the windscreen for example. It's a good thing that model-makers like a challenge :D

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Bits and bobs, as above.  However the shape of the nacelle fairing on top of the wing is different, something Airfix missed when they based their Blenheim on the Duxford Bolingbroke.  Or so I'm told, I didn't realise there was such a difference.  However the photo in post 17 also shows an additional bulge for a dinghy above the starboard nacelle, only on Bolis.  I've just noticed the large dorsal aerial is at an angle - is that a generic Boli/Blenheim difference or just an indication that aircraft do vary?

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I converted an Airfix Blenheim into a Bolingbroke a while ago and after editing the post to replace the missing Photobucket photos with new Flickr pics,....here it is if anybody is interested,..it might help explain the diferences between the types,

and here is one of the pics;                                   

27991321859_1684575b16_k.jpgDSCF4903 by Tony OToole, on Flickr

 

Cheers,

           Tony

 

 

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On the photographs that Chris (dogsbody) kindly posted the mid-upper turret appears to be semi-retractable. Is this so, and was this a characteristic of at least some Bolingbrokes?

 

Regards,

 

Jason 

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20 minutes ago, Learstang said:

On the photographs that Chris (dogsbody) kindly posted the mid-upper turret appears to be semi-retractable. Is this so, and was this a characteristic of at least some Bolingbrokes?

 

Regards,

 

Jason 

Surely the dorsal turret, in both single-gun and two-gun versions, was semi-retractable as fitted to all* mainstream Blenheims and Bolingbrokes, and least the I/ IV/ Boli?

 

(*with the obvious exception of the turretless ones, and any few-off oddity conversions or experimental ones that may have had different turrets altogether fitted, and possibly the V which I think had a different dorsal turret)

Edited by Work In Progress
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1 hour ago, Learstang said:

On the photographs that Chris (dogsbody) kindly posted the mid-upper turret appears to be semi-retractable. Is this so, and was this a characteristic of at least some Bolingbrokes?

 

Regards,

 

Jason 

 

The turret wasn't really "semi retractable".  Rather, the glazed portion raised or lowered as the gun was, respectively, pointed down or up. 

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