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Post by Richard Wesley on Mar 22, 2012 21:24:33 GMT 12
I found this photo in my collection BUT it may well be one I have downloaded from this forum. I will have to do a search to verify it. It clearly shows two holes for the guns so Barry East must have acquired it in the early stages of the restoration. That is Barry East with the hat on. Great old photo there, thanks for posting. Do you have others from the early days of Motat to share?
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Post by shorty on Mar 26, 2012 19:26:41 GMT 12
Richard, have a look in my "stash" thread, photos in there from pre Lancaster days. Will post some more after I have shifted and gone to broadband.
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Post by baz62 on Mar 27, 2012 17:00:24 GMT 12
Richard, have a look in my "stash" thread, photos in there from pre Lancaster days. Will post some more after I have shifted and gone to broadband. B R O A D B A N D? Joining the 21st Century at last Shorty? Welcome aboard and enjoy the ride! Only have to get Dave off his steam powered modem and we will be sweet! ;D
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Post by shorty on Mar 27, 2012 19:58:51 GMT 12
Its a bugger when you have to shift 6 hours down the road to get tho Baz!
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Post by emron on Jul 10, 2016 18:59:29 GMT 12
I'm surveying and overhauling the gun mounts in Ventura NZ4600 in follow up of restoration work done 40-some years ago. The weapons were removed to secure storage when it was last outdoors and at risk of vandalism and theft. I'm planning to instal simple replicas in their place and use copies of American Brownings. The twin mount in the tail is reasonably complete and just needs cleaning and repaint as do the fittings in the Martin turret. The adaptors for the 2 .50's forward will be refurbished next. The mount for the 2 .30's in the nose is incomplete and only the back half is fitted. This mount could be adjusted in flight by the bombadier to either fire directly forward or depressed 25 degrees. I haven't yet found a diagram of the front bracket but I've taken measurements and will mock-up something workable as it's the pivot point and easy to calculate. I've already checked out a variety of manuals but found little detail. If anyone's got a copy of the B-34 E&M Manual T.O.01-55EA-2 please look it up for me. I was also asked recently if I planned to do anything with the 2 side gun ports in the rear fuselage. I didn't have a clue about what that mount even looked like until earlier today. Both ports are blanked off and there's no sign of any fittings on the cabin wall. The flight instructions refer to a ball mount and I've just found useful data and image of the K2A ball and socket mount that may have been installed there. Does anyone know if these were used on RNZAF aircraft ? As they would have occupied two more crew members if ever fired simultaneous to the turrets. I'll hold off on doing more about those until I get some confirmation. I'll also consider changing to British Brownings if there's compelling evidence.
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Post by davidd on Jul 12, 2016 9:44:35 GMT 12
Emron, Many of the questions you are asking have interested me for some time, but hard and fast answers are very difficult to come by. There is little doubt that at least some of the B-34s shipped to NZ were supplied complete with the side guns, but according to the files that I have seen, these seem to have been held in little regard, although there are statements that they were thought better than some of the RNZAF's attempts to fit side (beam) guns to our PV-1s, even though the US Navy seems to have been of the opinion that the latter project was a complete waste of time and resources. And apart from the six B-34s sent to Fiji in latter part of 1943, there was little enthusiasm to commit our B-34s to the forward area, so that self-defence for these aircraft was not really gone into once the decision was made to concentrate on properly equipping the PV-1s. I doubt that the B-34 side guns (with ball and socket mounts) were even fired in New Zealand, and if they were it would probably have been only for trials purposes. The RNZAF also gave up all attempts to fit beam guns on the PV-1s after even radical ideas to improve visibility and field of fire were dismissed as unlikely to be of any benefit to the crews in a fight, and then came some of the most derisory descriptions of the set up installed in our Hudsons at Guadlacanal (VGOs with Australian mounts). which were stated to be Heath Robinson affairs providing little chance of the firere ever hitting anything becasue of his poor view and cumbersome handling. The 25 degree depression angle of the '303" nose guns was a half baked idea that Venturas could be used for ground strafing, but as the intended targets would have been invisible to the pilot who was supposedly aiming the guns, it can be seen that they might serve more usefully by being locked into the straight-ahead firing angle. There were other really poor designs dreamed up in 1942 when strenuous efforst were being masde by the Americans to make their combat aircraft more likely to survive in war-torn skies after some very bad experiences in the earlier months of the war in the Pacific, such as the installation of armour plate in the front turret of Catalinas which not only made the turret very difficcult to operate, but preveneted the hapless gunner inside from even seeing anything of interset before he was shot down. Also on the Catalina, some genius came up with an extra pair of what were then called "scatter guns" which were supposedly designed to cover "blind spots" to the rear, but these were rapidly abandoned once crews found how completely useless were these positions, although the locations for these ball and socket mountings and their associated small windows remained on production aircraft for the rest of the war and beyond. No additional crew members were added to crews to fire these additional guns, as it was anticipated that non-gunners would be ordered to man them in emergencies such as second pilots, navigators, or wireless/radar operators. Sorry to be so imprecise on specific details of the use and deployment of these guns, but as I said, inormation in official fles is very scarce and that which has survived is frequently vague and non-definitive. David D
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