Early Beaufighter 1F air intakes- was there a mesh screen?

[Stephen Allen]

Greetings

 

I am part way through converting the Tamiya Beaufighter VI kit to a very early Beaufighter 1F, one of the first 50 or so completed without wing armament and with the early short square air intakes above the engines. I have been able to complete most of the needed external changes, such as the early canopy, flat tail etc, and I have made a rough representation of the early drum feeds for the cannon, but none of the photos I have been able to look at online or in my references show the engine intake mouths as other than a completely shaded hole.

 

Would anyone be able to point me towards a source or photo that might indicate whether any mesh, guard or screen was fitted inside the opening? I am thinking that the answer might be ‘none’. As a supplementary question, were the early Beaus without the .303s in the wing produced without associated features such as wing access hatches? Its easy enough to see the absence of gun ports and ejection holes, but, again, none of the photos I have access to show any indication of this one way or the other. I am at the point where filling and rescribing is easy, but will pass this stage quickly.

 

cheers

 

Steve

[rossm]

Best photo I can find, note the additional small intakes at the rear of the intake you are interested in. If you follow the link you can enlarge to almost full screen size.

 

AIRCRAFT OF THE ROYAL AIR FORCE 1939-1945: BRISTOL BEAUFIGHTER.. © IWM (CH 2736) IWM Non Commercial License

[AndyL]

Here's a crop taken from one of my 604 Squadron photos which may be of use. I do have a separate air to air image in which you can just make out the mesh over the intake, however, I may be looking at a time frame later than the Beau you want to model.

 

Regards

 

Andy

[Stephen Allen]

Andy

 

That’s a really useful photo! The fact that the screen is mounted externally suggests that early machines without such visible attachments lacked any such provision within the intake. I guess somebody thought that something was needed to keep the occasional solid object out of the intake.

 

Steve