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Re: IIB or not IIB?
I've been rereading work in progress on the subject, and it includes quotes from internal Air Ministry documents where the lower case is used for armament variants. The documents were not entirely consistent, as things were in flux. The driving need was the messy situation regarding Spitfire PR designations. It is my feeling that the concurrent use of role prefixes, which were invariably(?) in capitals, meant that the armament variants were initially thought of as lower case. The possibility for confusion is evident - consider your example of the Hurricane. The Mk.IIb is the 12 gun fighter, the Mk.IIB the 10-gun fighter-bomber. I don't know if this was ever considered (I doubt it), but it is entirely consistent with the nomenclatures of the time. It does show why some improvement in the system was needed.
Prewar, of course, this would have meant a name change - Vincent/Vildebeeste, Hart/Audax/Demon/Osprey are the same basic aircraft, but no-one (as far as I know) ever suggested the Blenheim Mk.IF be renamed. Once the role codes became prefixes, only the armament codes remained so they could be either capitals or lower case.
Which is interesting (at least, I think so) but doesn't get any nearer defining "official" usage.
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