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Any good images of Lancaster III wing walkway markings?


Mark Harmsworth

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Are there any good images of the walkway markings on a Lancaster III (I assume the Mk I would be the same) ?

 

I'm building the Hasegawa 1:72 Lanc and have decided to paint the walkway markings rather than use the kit decals - I hate long thin decals.

 

I've done some research on this and have a few images but none are particularly clear. I'm reluctant to rely solely on the kit instructions.

 

I'm building a Mk III which was delivered in January 1944 if that's relevant.

 

thanks

Mark 

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Thanks @SafetyDad- that's very helpful. Hasegawa's decals are completely different to that of course. The two moderately useful images I've found also have the single line from fuselage to inner engine and then a double from the inner engine outwards - although where those double lines end seems to vary. The rearmost lines seem to mirror the forward lines. Hasegawa has all the lines being continuous which may be the case on these two images but it's difficult to be sure - although definitely not the case on yours.

 

Images of Lancasters from above are a rarity - not surprisingly of course.

 

This from the IWM:

5jxaYuBh.jpg

 

And this from World War Photos:

dUbjRfuh.jpg

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3 hours ago, Mancunian airman said:

You will note that the walk way lines are not the same length in the b/w photos  . .

Yes - they end in different positions towards the wing tips. The image of the BBMF Lancaster shows similar markings to that shown on the IWM image.

 

I think I'll probably be going for a 'good enough' approach.

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2 hours ago, Phoenix44 said:

Very bright night and really quite low for a Lancaster bomb run that photo! And taken from what as its directly above? And it seems to ge bombing fields!

 

Surely a posed photo? Very nice though. 

 

Looks to be fitted with the later bulged bomb doors.

 

 

Chris

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There's an old Dirk Bogarde film, Appointment in London. I remember seeing a segment around the 3/4 mark with a chap working on the wing.

You can see that it's a three colour roundel but I hoped that the walkway was visible for you.

All I can find on the tube is the start of the film. But it's worth watching and listening to anyway. Full throttles for take off. Glorious sound!

 

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On 1/10/2022 at 5:21 PM, Phoenix44 said:

Very bright night and really quite low for a Lancaster bomb run that photo! And taken from what as its directly above? And it seems to ge bombing fields!

 

Surely a posed photo? Very nice though. 

Bomber Command did bomb in daylights hours  . . . 

 

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On 1/10/2022 at 5:21 PM, Phoenix44 said:

Very bright night and really quite low for a Lancaster bomb run that photo! And taken from what as its directly above? And it seems to ge bombing fields!

 

Surely a posed photo? Very nice though. 

You can’t actually see this aircraft’s bomb(s): don’t forget that the bombs will be travelling at the same speed as their carrier aircraft when released and will retain much of that forward speed until impact; they will therefore have to be dropped some distance short of the target, how far short dependent on weapon size/mass, speed, altitude, head- or tail-wind and several other variables.  It’s also entirely possible that this aircraft’s crew had already dropped their weapon(s) and were clearing the target area; with such a close-cropped image it’s pretty much impossible to tell.

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Why assume this picture was taken at night, or even on an operation? 

 

There sure is a lot of sunlight, or else the moon is awfully bright to be throwing distinct shadows like that.  It could easily have been an equipment test, or a training flight or even a publicity photo shoot.

 

Interesting details though, including the rotated turrets and bulged bomb doors.

 

Posed?  Sure, why not?  Or at least planned.  Cameras back then were heavy, bulky things, nothing automatic to do the work for you.  And then you had to do the work of processing the film and prints.  Not like today when any kid with a phone can go snap happy. 

 

 

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Daylight missions were flown, especially later in the war, as for the above pic i posted, my guess it's just after D Day bombing troop concentrations, or armour formations. Here is another daylight mission:

 

Lancaster_Bomber.jpg

 

Jari

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Another interesting shot.  Note the forward-placed Martin turret. the cabin heater intake above the wing and the apparent lack of flame dampers.  Great stuff.

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  • 1 year later...

I noticed the exhaust stain of the 4 engines on the wings, one picture has 3 stains on each wing and the other picture has 4 stains on the wing.

Looks to me the exhaust stains are grey? rather than black.

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High-lead fuel and lean mixture tended to produce light grey exhaust stains. You could see the same effect inside a car's exhaust after extended running, back in the day when we had lots of lead in our petrol!

 

And the outer exhausts of the outer engines on a Lancaster tended to discharge under the wing, hence the lack of staining in the first picture. There would be quite pronounced staining on the underside.

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4 hours ago, Admiral Puff said:

High-lead fuel and lean mixture tended to produce light grey exhaust stains. You could see the same effect inside a car's exhaust after extended running, back in the day when we had lots of lead in our petrol!

 

And still to be seen today, in aviation, as today's AVGAS 100LL still contains roughly as much tetra-ethyl lead as 1970s car fuel did. Though it's now only a low proportion of the world's piston-engined aircraft that get used for serious long-distance travel, and are properly leaned for cruise. 

Cklasse said "grey? not black?" which leaves a reasonable implicit question: "when black?" If you went out to do an hour's circuit training in a Lancaster, then black. And if you look around the edges of the grey, when you see grey, you can expect there to be a fringe of black, from the take-off and initial climb at full rich, and the black is deposited at full power so covers a slightly wider area than the lean-mixture cruise-power grey that gets laid down over the top of the initial black. Of course all this can be hard to discern from black and white photos. But similar engines will put down very different stains in different uses: those from a Merlin used for short point defence flights a la Battle of Britain will look very different from those from a Merlin in a Mustang or Mosquito that's just been to Berlin and back.

Edited by Work In Progress
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7 hours ago, Work In Progress said:

Cklasse said "grey? not black?" which leaves a reasonable implicit question: "when black?" If you went out to do an hour's circuit training in a Lancaster, then black. And if you look around the edges of the grey, when you see grey, you can expect there to be a fringe of black, from the take-off and initial climb at full rich, and the black is deposited at full power so covers a slightly wider area than the lean-mixture cruise-power grey that gets laid down over the top of the initial black. Of course all this can be hard to discern from black and white photos.

 

12 hours ago, Cklasse said:

Looks to me the exhaust stains are grey? rather than black.

 

note how due to the wing dihedral and outer engine, the outboard stain goes under the wing, rather than over.

 

7809630994_a6e2cc4e19_c.jpgAvro Lancaster     1942. by Etienne du Plessis, on Flickr

 

17684693261_a90fd50ed3_b.jpgLancasters at Swinderby, 1942. by Etienne du Plessis, on Flickr

 

7145872669_0a356b1ee5_b.jpg44 Sqn. Lancaster. by Etienne du Plessis, on Flickr

 

15360443002_fea9397bbc_b.jpg50 Sqn. Lancaster, 1942. by Etienne du Plessis, on Flickr

 

8685606534_2d90380ba0_b.jpgLancaster service. by Etienne du Plessis, on Flickr

 

 

 

 

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