Bulldog - Guns revisited

 Between coats of paint, I have started rethinking the guns. It seems that a factory-fresh Bulldog would have louvred covers over the gun barrels, but I'm not sure whether these were retained in service, or in deliveries of the Mk IIA for that matter. The reconstructed Bulldog at Hendon certainly doesn't have them.

By now, I've decided I will probably make a Bulldog from No. 32 Squadron, for a few reasons:

1. It will be fun to do a colour scheme other than the one provided for in the kit
2. An aircraft from this squadron, K2481, is shown in a reference book I've just received from Amazon: Single No. 52 from MMP Books, by Mariusz Kubryn and Krzysztof Wolowski.
3. It will be fun to make a tailwheel, which deliveries to this squadron seemed to have

David Luff has two photos of aircraft in this squadron. Unfortunately it's difficult to make out from these whether the louvred panels are in place or not, but the area where these would be is certainly darker in these photos than the surrounding cowling, and this suggests that the panels were not there. Also, the drawings in Kubryn and Wolowski don't show panels. And neither does the reconstruction at Hendon, as I mentioned.

There is one other factor. If I build this Bulldog without the panels, then the guns I have made, with the plain brass barrels, won't do. The Bulldog had a pair of Vickers Mk. 2 guns, and the barrels had a distinctive set of perforations which would be noticeable by their absence if the barrels were exposed to public view.

I had a look at what Hannants had available: no Vickers Mk. 2 at this scale; but they did have brass barrels for Browning machine guns with the same calibre (0.303"). I decided to order some and wait to see whether they would do the job before doing anything drastic. (I ordered two sets; partly to fulfil the minimum order and partly because I have a Gloster Gladiator to make. But I forgot that the Gladiator had four guns: two in the fuselage and two in wing pods (this arrangement calls to mind the field mods made by No. 87 Squadron to their Sopwith Dolphins). So I will have to order more at some point. By then, I will have thought of something else to make up the minimum order.)

They arrived today and they are absolutely beautiful:

 They certainly knock the spots off the brass cylinders of my home-made Vickers, and - perhaps more importantly - I think they will be fairly convincing. It's difficult to imagine someone saying, "that's a pretty good build of a Bristol Bulldog, but hang on a second: why has it got Browning guns?"

In short, there's no way I'm not going to use these. Now I just need some kind of louvre remover.