Single .5in Browing Mid-Uppergun in Lancaster

[hanshauprich]

How many Lancaster have this Modification? Only for Daylight Missions?
Are their photos and drawings from this Modification? I know of an crashside from an No. 90 Sqdn. Lancaster. The ship was shoot down by Flak during an Daylight Mission.

[Graham Boak]

I have never heard of such a modification. However many late Lancasters has the Martin twin 0.5 Browning uppergun turret, could this be what you have encountered? It was not specifically for daylight missions.

[hanshauprich]

Hello, I do an mistake, I mean "Mid-Under", sorry for that!!! Those Lancasters have an eight Crewman for the Machinegun.

[Graham Boak]

OK, ventral not dorsal. Still news to me: I'm familiar with the Preston-Green single 0.5 mounting on Halifaxes, and Johnen reports being fired on from a ventral position on a Stirling, but this seems to be very poorly referenced. There was originally intended to be a Frazer-Nash ventral turret on Lancasters, but I believe that to have been for twin 0.303s. This turret was soon abandoned, but did make a return on Lancaster Mk.IIs with the bulged bombbay - possibly on other aircraft with the bulged bombbay too?

Ventral gun positions were discouraged by the need to carry the H2S radar in the ventral gun position. My apologies for not having anything more to offer.