British aircraft

[Karaya1]

Thanks Karaya

I have not seen that version before

Nick

The shortnosed one is a Mk 1, and apparently the oldest version..? The other, more commonly seen is a Mk 4 and it was used also as a kind of heavy fighter with ventral gunpack ( 4x .303 browning´s ) with little succes. Imagine meeting a pack of prowling Me 109´s in your twin engined, hardpressed 250 mph, 8 ton Blenheim ```fighter´´ and then take them on

[lithgow]

Hello-Ju 86 would be South African ex civil airliner used as a bomber transport, the Bristol Blenheim Fighter variant was not intended to mix it with single seaters but as an improvised heavy interceptor like the Bf110-not very successful but led to the related 'Whispering Death' Bristol Beaufighter via the Beaufort torpedo bomber-great photos of various rarely seen types that were major players early in the war: Gloster Gladiators, Fiat CR42s, Savoia Marchetti SM79s, Marylands etc

[Chris L]

AMAZING post and photos! Thanks guys for posting them.

[militarymania]

yes thanks indeed,,,do you have any more?..

[justlookin]

yes thanks indeed,,,do you have any more?..

Last 3 are from what was RAE Farnborough

[justlookin]

[big ned]

What an excellent thread! The first batch of pic's must have been taken during the East African Campaign of 1940-41, a virtually unheard of, and long forgotten, part of the war before the later battles of the North African Campaign when the allies gave the Italians a damned good thrashing!

As can be seen by the photo's, the aircraft available to the RAF/SAAF were a hotch-potch of random and obsolete types on the whole. The story is a fascinating one and details can be found on this Wiki thread, it's well worth a squint.

East African Campaign (World War II) - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Regards, Ned.