It was poorly defended with 1 .303 machine gun in the nose and one in the turret..
And carried a smaller bomb load than single engine fighter bombers in 43'-45'.
Posted on 06/14/2015 12:04:15 PM PDT by DFG
Beneath the panes of Perspex in her floor, the daisy-strewn runway falls away as fast as 80 years of history. The Blenheim’s snout lifts skywards, her twin engines casting a heat haze behind the propellers’ silver blur. At 200mph, she throttles towards a patchwork of cumulus and sun, quiet, quick and deft. Inside she is bare of today’s technology. Her khaki flight deck contains pedals as delicate as a piano’s, a joystick, and a small black bank of antique instruments. I am perched in the navigator’s place on a circular seat the size of a dinner plate. Above me and in front, on both sides and beneath my boots, I can see the sky through the windowed cutouts of her cockpit. From here, by the Blenheim’s bomb mount, there is truly a fly’s-eye view of Earth. It’s one that few people have been privileged to see since the end of the Second World War when the RAF’s Blenheim fleet was retired. This old warbird is the only craft of her type still flying.
(Excerpt) Read more at dailymail.co.uk ...
Blenheim. It’s a great apricot.
(((.)))
It was poorly defended with 1 .303 machine gun in the nose and one in the turret..
And carried a smaller bomb load than single engine fighter bombers in 43'-45'.
Looks like they used up all the fair curves on the engine nacelles and fuselage by the time they got to the butt-ugly nose. “Here, mates...there’s a few flat pieces left over...piece them together into a nose.”
You fight with what you’ve got, not what you want or even need.
Yeah I saw that, I wonder what the story is. The other pic shows a rounded nose.
Early stealth.
The early version had the flat nose, later version had the snout look.
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LOL...”let’s defeat this new dangled radar gadget.”
Yep, pretty crappy bomber, yet not the crappiest British bomber of the war.
Had the misfortune of being designed just a few years before the latest WWII developments, and being optimized for one thing: speed. Now, when war rolls around and your only strong suit, speed, is marginal, you get screwed.
Other just-before-the-war designs had better luck, but still fell behind as the war progressed, like the Zero, Bf109, P-40, and B-17. Only a few pre-war designs kept getting better and better, like the Spitfire and Lightning.
End-of-war Lightnings were formidable, with most of their handling quirks ironed out by design, and proved both fast and manouverable. Spitfires kept taking bigger and bigger engines, while maintaing most of their good aspects (and some of their bad), and had a decent post-war career.
Looks like a fragile B-25 Mitchell.
I know a little about this bird. That is an early mark nose installed in place of the more graceful one in the first picture. It very well may be accurate for the particular paint scheme they are using these days.
The Blenheim was not as bad (or useless) as the Fairy Battle, but it was close. Under-armed, and too slow, they suffered terrible losses.
Still, a torpedo bomber relative of the Blenheim, the Beaufort, dropped a torpedo that won the war in North Africa.
Just before the second battle of El Alamein, Rommel was desperately short on petrol (more so that he usually was) and, in response to his pleading, the Germans and Allies sent a convoy, including a small petrol tanker, the Prosperina. The British got wind in the usual way, and, just before it reached harbor in Tobruk, they launched an attack on it. In the desperate fight that followed, a Beaufort managed to torpedo the tanker which blew up nicely. As a result, Rommel went into the second battle of El Alamein with tanks that couldn’t maneuver.
give me a Mozzie any day
Better as A-20 or B-26 ... B-25 is a different tail design.
Then they decided the nav/bombaimer might like room for an actual chart table.
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