Where all aircraft in WWII equiped with gun cameras? If so, where were they usually located and do ya’ll put them on your models? I don’t recall seeing them on any WWII models. If they weren’t always equiped, how did pilots get “confirmed” kills? Other pilots seeing it?
The simple and unhelpful answer to that is, everywhere! On your reference photos, look for the tiny round piece of glass covering the lens. It’s most often near very front of the nose somewhere, or on a wing leading edge. Some of the early ones were added as an afterthought. On the Grunnan F3F the whole camera was mounted on top, dead center, of the upper wing. F3F build isn’t complete without it. Mig 15 has it faired into the top of the nose intake. Strike cameras were added later to F-105s and they are forward and readward facing. They are not gun cameras (showing run-in to target, switching to bomb hits as a/c passes the target) but were a permanent part of the jet. Uner the nose of 105D, F and G you see that “M” shaped fairing. That camera is what got the most famous Thud driver of them all, Col .Jack Broughton, drummed out of the Air Force after a long, distinguished career. As a wing commander, he was accused of destroying the strike camera film of his pilots shooting up an off-limits SAM site which had been harrassing strike planes. Just another instance of the insanity of the running of that war. It cost us some of the best and brightest officers either killed by insane restrictions on defending themselves, or all those brilliant military minds who quit, like uber-decorated Army Col. David Hackworth, who resigned in disgust. When you see Hack being used as a miliary expert by the TV networks, pay attention. He knows well of what he speaks.
most of the time the germans put them in there me-109s,me-262 mostly in the nose cone of the plane.I am sure the americans and the british sometimes put them in there mustangs, spitfires,hurricanes,and mosquitoes.hope this works!
Mustangs and tbolts usually had them in the left wing mounted through the leading egde between the the #3 gun and the wing root.
On P-40’s they where mounted on the lower l/h wing between the main gear bay and the shell ejector ports, on the newer plane like the F-14, F-15, F-16, F/A-18, F/A-22, A-10 are mounted in front or behind the HUD’s ( Heads Up Displays for you non- militay types)
Gun camera’s are mounted either in the nose cones on twin engined aircraft, in the wing root on most Spitfires and Hurricanes and most other British aircraft, some Beaufighter’s had them mounted in the DF loop housings. The Mosquito’s gun camera is in th enose cone under one gun barrel.
Rob.