By Malcolm Ulhman
March  2010

Ironically the Bolingbroke/Blenheim was an aircraft obsolete before the first unit was rolled off the assembly line! Despite being the fastest aircraft in the British inventory, the first forays into enemy territory during the opening salvos of World War II the enemy proved to have faster more agile aircraft. Nevertheless, almost 7000 Blenheims were manufactured in many countries and almost 700 Bolingbrokes were produced in Canada. At this stage in history the aviation industry virtually exploded with faster fighter and larger bomber aircraft. The Bolingbroke became one of the first multi-role aircraft and was ordered by the RCAF in 1939 to replace the Anson, constructed largely of wood and thus not as durable as the all-aluminum Bolingbroke. This then is a natural progression for the Greenwood Military Aviation Museum, linking with the Anson and the Lancaster as aircraft flown from Greenwood. To date there are a mere half dozen Bolingbrokes at various stages of restoration in Canada.

In the early years of WWII, Eastern Air Command, responsible for Canada's Atlantic coast, recorded three attacks on enemy submarines by the Bolingbrokes. In Greenwood, in the early 1940's, the aircraft flew in support of the British Commonwealth Air Training Plan, converting basic graduates into fighting crews; basic flight training was done mainly on the prairies, due to much clearer skies there. Pilots, navigators, bombardiers and air gunners honed their skills and learned to work together. They did cross-country navigation around the Maritimes, bombed targets in the Berwick, Gaspereau Lake and Fundy ranges, and did target runs on ships and ferries in the Bay. The Bolingbroke was used as a target "tug", pulling a cloth drogue (a target for gunners and pilots to shoot at in the air). Practice ammunition had a different colour-coded wax coating for each shooter that, upon hitting the drogue, left that colour around the hole in the material giving instructors an assessment of the gunners' accuracy. The target tug itself was painted bright yellow with large diagonal black stripes, allowing for high visibility and a degree of depth of field serving as protection for the tug and distance orientation for the gunner. Mosquitoes and Hurricanes were other notable aircraft at Greenwood training crews for their next step to Europe and defending the world from the Nazi scourge.

Work on the Museum's aircraft last month centered on the fuselage, now inverted in a jig. The damaged panels along the bottom have been removed and an assessment of the longitudinal "stringers" is being made. Many are twisted or bent and are very brittle, negating any possibility for straightening. Stringers run from front to back on the fuselage giving strength and form and inhibiting twisting of the outer skin. The old stringers are no longer available and would be cost -prohibitive to produce; three-quarter inch square aluminum tubing is being considered as a substitute.

The last six "formers", that give the cross-sectional oval shape to the fuselage, are bent and cracked along the bottom of the fuselage. They are located every 18" to 24" along the fuselage between the heavier "bulkheads". Stringers run through the formers, but are not riveted to them, allowing for contraction and expansion and also contributing to the squeaks/moans and groans heard during flight in the Bolingbroke. Templates, from cardboard, will be made from the old formers, transferred to wooden forms and then used to hand-manufacture the required sections.

Many panels were removed from the bottom of the cockpit section, where evidence of the belly landing in 1943 is evident. Three escape hatches were identified, as well as a small tilt-out window thought to be for ventilation and communication for pilot to the ground crew. A curious construction was noticed in the windows where a rubber gasket on the outside paralleled a wood and tar gasket on the inside. Wood panels are attached to the inside skin in the cockpit area to aid in noise reduction from the engines and, perhaps, a little added protection from flying debris off the propeller wash. A large streamlining panel was removed under the nose which revealed the construction of the three foot nose addition to the original-design fuselage.

In the next article, the unique peculiarities of the Bolingbroke will be presented. Questions and/or comments are welcome. The pictorial diary of the restoration progress is updated weekly and can be seen on the following link:

http://cid-51dcd035840dc300.photos.live.com/albums.aspx

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