Wellington Mk III

[James Taylor]

I have begun building the 1/72 Trumpeter Wellington Mk III intending to use markings SR*F of 101 squadron as it appears in Ian Allan's Bomber Squadron at War. I choose these markings as the captions suggest the bomber was lost on the Thousand Bomber raid to Cologne. I am developing an interest in this raid and have already purchased the Italeri Stirling Mk 1 to be modelled as a 15 squadron aircraft which also flew on the raid. 

 

From the pics I have of the Wellington it is unclear as to whether the waist guns were fitted. Can anyone help? Was it the norm to fit these weapons?

 

 

[Graham Boak]

They would normally be fitted but not necessarily kept on the aircraft between missions.  In the early days of the war there are photos of gunners carrying their weapons away to be cleaned/looked after.  Obviously not tail gunners from 4-gun turrets!

[Work In Progress]

As Graham says, waist guns were easily dismounted. There's no reason to leave them on the aeroplane between missions and every reason to remove them.

 

Every gun being fired with ammunition using corrosive primers (meaning all of the US 30-06, .50 BMG and .303 British ammunition in use during WW2) required regular cleaning after use, and all will suffer unnecessarily from being out in the rain for most of the week. If I had to trust my life on such a gun there's no way I would leave it out if I could have it taken care of properly between missions.

Tangentially , so what then about turret guns?

 

On a B-17 thread a few months ago we had an interesting debate about "why did they leave the guns in the aeroplane?" - photos of clearly closed-up bombers showing evidence of guns in place. Until someone pointed out that the USAAF manual of arms has you removing the actual machine gun but leaving the perforated cooling jacket in the airframe. The actual barrel and action slides out of the cooling jacket and you take it inside for the armourers (or they remove it for you).  What looks in a photo from a distance like a bomber bristling with machine guns is in fact no such thing. And on some of the close-ups you can see daylight through aligned holes in the cooling jackets. 

 

I haven't seen the equivalent manual of arms for RAF bombers, and of course the turrets themselves were of different designs, so I have no direct evidence for the practice there. But the guns themselves were minor variations on the same design, and it would be a pretty significant and obvious failing in turret design if the removal of the guns were a burdensome task for the squadron armourers. Apart from anything else the barrel life on a air-cooled Browning M1919 being driven at a high cyclical rate can be not much more than 5000 rounds, so something like a Lancaster tail turret gun carrying 2500 rounds per gun could need it changing every few missions anyway.

Edited May 2, 2019 by Work In Progress

[Finn]

Here is a video showing the cleaning of a Wellington's guns:

 

 

as well as other details that may be of use or interest.

 

Jari

[bhouse]

@Finn - thank you for posting that video, I learnt a lot!

[James Taylor]

Gents - thank you for responses, all most helpful and informative.

[593jones]

Flinn, that's a great video, thanks for posting it, loads of info there!  It does give you an idea how much work was involved in bombing up a squadron of heavy bombers.  Who'd be an armourer? 

Edited May 4, 2019 by 593jones