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Blenheim Bomb Bays and Bombs (Warning picture heavy,1500 pixel wide images!)


Daniel Cox

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Hi All,

Since Airfix will be bringing us some new tool Blenheim aircraft kits, a few pictures that show the bombs as carried plus the bomb bays of various Finnish Blenheim variants may be of interest. Since I am putting up a lot of pictures I decided not to flood Mark Haselden's thread on the Airfix Blenheim with them.

All of the 62 images which will follow below are sourced from the SA-Kuva website. To date I have examined around 144,450 images from SA-Kuva and have downloaded 4703 images of interest which include 3122 aviation pictures. Fortunately I am most of the way through what SA-Kuva has online.

Anyway here are some pictures;

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More to follow, over....

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New to me, Never ever picked up on the Blenheim having wing bomb cells as well as the bomb bay!

I can't recall seeing these ever open or being used on a RAF Aircraft image, or even being referred to in reference material. I thought the RAF only used light series carriers on the fuselage for small bombs.

Or is this something specific to the original as ordered by the FAF aircraft? I know the bomb bay was reputed to be a different size to the RAF standard on to supposedly fit US Manufactured bombs.

Of course later supplied aircraft came from RAF Stocks and would be the same as RAF Aircraft.

Selwyn

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Hi Selwyn,

It's worth revisiting this thread on Britmodeller and reading Walter Lindekens post #20 which has diagrams that indicate the position of the wing bomb load as being coincident with the photographs I posted. Also if you get a chance to see some images that are of a sufficient resolution that show that area of the wing on RAF Blenheim aircraft, you will see the presence of the wing bomb bay doors.

Cheers,

Daniel.

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New to me, Never ever picked up on the Blenheim having wing bomb cells as well as the bomb bay!

Same here, I thought I knew a reasonable amount about Blenheims too!

Wonderful set of photos, they will become very useful to me later this year,

Cheers,

Bill.

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Thank you ever so much. Wonderful set of pictures.

I wonder how long stocks of British bombs lasted. Clearly thay had to switch over to local production. And it seems use of Finnish bombs requires ome modification to the bombay, including removal of the doors.

I still have a CA Finnish Blenheim in the stash. Just wish there were finnish bombs and a conversion for the bomb bay.

Thanks again.

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Right-click, "Save Picture As"...Right-click, "Save Picture As"...rinse, repeat many, many times.

THANK YOU! These are wonderful pics. Really, REALLY appreciate you're sharing them. I, too, never knew about the wing bays. Puts a whole new light on 27 Sqn's bombing and strafing operations against the Japanese on 8 Dec 41!

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Hi Selwyn,

It's worth revisiting this thread on Britmodeller and reading Walter Lindekens post #20 which has diagrams that indicate the position of the wing bomb load as being coincident with the photographs I posted. Also if you get a chance to see some images that are of a sufficient resolution that show that area of the wing on RAF Blenheim aircraft, you will see the presence of the wing bomb bay doors.

Cheers,

Daniel.

Daniel,

I remember the diagram in post 20, I took this at first hand as being external carriage rather than internal,as it appears on the diagram the same way as the fuselage light series installation.

"You learn something new every day!"

Selwyn

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Hello!

This is just a quick response of this complicated subject of Finnish Blenheim bomb doors, wells and equipment.

In short only the Blenheims arriving to Finland during Winter War have similar equipment than RAF. So of the pictures above not all are suitable reference for other users models. So Caveat.

All photos in Daniel's post #1 and #2 seem to be III-sarja which is similarily configured than RAF Mk IV bomber at the time (there are differences, too). And is useful reference for the same.

On other posts there are sarja I (open bombbays) and sarja II (bulged bomb bay doors) and sarja VI (Finnish manufacture long-nose with yet another version of bombbay and doors) and sarja V (Finnish manufacture shortnose, bombbay similar to sarja VI).

If you want more clearer picture of this subject you can do no better than obtain issue 4/2001 of magazine Suomen ilmailuhistoriallinen lehti which has good article with photos and drawings. Homesite of the magazine is: http://www.kolumbus.fi/sil/ . English translation is available with request. E-mail address for inquiries is given at the site, too. I have no fincancial interest in this, just happy customer.

Finnish, (Swedish?), British, German (later edit: Blenheim did not have electrical system to prime the German bomb detonators. No German bombs carried by FinnAF Blenheims. My slip of mind, apologies) and Soviet bombs were dropped by FinnAF Blenheims.

Have to go now.

Cheers,

Kari

Edited by Kari Lumppio
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Hi

One blenheim IV should be exactly the same as the raf aircraft.

as from memory the luftwaffe captured a IV and later sold ? it to the finnish air force, think the info was on LEMB or somewhere.

cheers

Jerry

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...

as from memory the luftwaffe captured a IV and later sold ? it to the finnish air force, think the info was on LEMB or somewhere.

...

Hello!

You are probably thinking the Yugoslavian made fuselage shells, wings, aluminium raw material etc.? Which Germans indeed sold to Finland. They were probably used at least partly for the V and IV sarja and repairs. No full airplanes. They had to be built first.

The title of this thread is "Blenheim Bomb Bays and Bombs". Finnish manufactured and sarja I Blenheims did have different bomb bay and bombs than the British. This is all I wanted to say about the photos. There are lots of other detail differences. For example the sand filters which you can see on the BL-199 (long nose being fuelled) cowling. Radio equipment, instrument panels, landing lights, wooden propellers etc.

Cheers,

Kari

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Hi Kari,

Thanks for your input and the link as well, I was hoping you would add some of your knowledge on the subject.

I concur on the differences of which there are a number, of the images I have collected so far from SA-Kuva, I have 369 Blenheim and or Blenheim related images, this archive is certainly a tremendous accesible resource for the study of Finland's war with the Soviet Union.

Considering the availability of a number of terrific pictures from SA-Kuva, I can't see why some wouldn't consider undertaking the work required to make Finnish examples out of the forthcoming Airfix Blenheim kit releases.

Cheers,

Daniel.

P.S. You're welcome all, I am very grateful that a number of archives around the world have put considerable effort into making their photographic collections more accessible through the internet.

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Considering the availability of a number of terrific pictures from SA-Kuva, I can't see why some wouldn't consider undertaking the work required to make Finnish examples out of the forthcoming Airfix Blenheim kit releases.

This is my only Finnish Blenheim to date, many more will follow now there's an easier path to getting there,

IMG_4456_zps585aa134.jpg

Cheers,

Bill.

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