Dave_Richardson wrote:
I don't know if this photo will help with the colours? The front of the engine cowling seems to have taken on 2 colours and the undecarraige seems to be black with steel bits and chips (note my excllent grasp of the technical details!)
Dave
I believe the lighter ring around the lip of the starboard inner Hercules is an armoured ring. It was actually spaced off from the exhaust collector ring, not part of it. You see them occasionally fitted in 1940, more commonly later on. Their installation coincides with the introduction of cable-cutter devices built into wing leading edges. I assume the hollow, welded exhaust collectors at the front of the engine cowlings were judged to be vulnerable to damage from balloon cables. They seem to have been provided as part of the power egg by the Bristol factory, as aircraft are sometimes seen without them fitted to all engines - presumably after an engine change.
I can't prove it, but I suspect that the armoured ring was eventually built into the front of the exhaust collectors, to improve streamlining and lower drag. Some machines have a very prominent lighter ring at the front of a cowling, which is nevertheless flush with the high temperature alloy section (the rusty brown section).
If anyone is in doubt as to the dangers presented by balloon cables there is a picture (pg 28) in the Ian Allen book on the Handley Page Hampden of Guy Gibson's machine on its return from Hamburg. It has a thin, German balloon cable wound tightly around its propeller shaft.