… who was manning the front turrets of the Lancs? Wasn’t that normally the Bomb Aimer? …

Thank you Don. Excellent point and yes it was. But, tossing it back: what were the mid-upper gunners doing in these crews? 🙂

Interestingly in AJ-C, which was coned by searchlights and shot down (blew up in fact) on the way out near Hamm, Sgt Frank Tees had swapped places for the trip and was in the rear, not front, turret. The turret lost power when the engines were knocked out but incredibly Tees survived the fireball. He came to on the ground badly burned and became PoW. The others all died. [Sweetman’s book]

Are the tracer rounds put in the magazines so they are in perfect synch …

I went to some trouble to ensure they are not in perfect synch as you can see if you look at the picture(s), though presumably each barrel would fire at approximately the same rate?

Not nit picking either but Star Wars lasers are *precisely* what tracer seems to look like up close (melding to dots further off). For example:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TOlRKbWwGTo

And remember the Lancasters were using 100% tracer. I think if anything they ought to appear as almost a constant stream or “rope”, as the air gunners themselves described it.

But to return to the OP, the question was: what colour? I think red – in fact I suspect red on both sides, but this is what i wanted advice on.

… may I suggest a slight tweak that will add to the realism? …

That is helpful, thanks. Usually in these scenes I try to work out what you would actually see. So the aircraft is doing nominally 232 mph; in my mind’s eye, in the perspective of the picture, it is some 25 yards from the viewer. That’s the equivalent in time of a quarter of a second. The .303s fired at about 20 rounds per second. So you’d see five or thereabouts. Someone check my reckoning – I’m probably failing to take something into account ! – but I think if anything there are too many 20mm rounds visible.

It never occurred to me to have them bouncing off the far shore – which is about 1,500 yards distant, by the way (I adhere to the idea that Gibson opted to attack straight in, over the Heversberg peninsula). None is hitting the water.

EDIT also I had the .303 tracer redder but figured they were very bright, up close (one of the issues the bomb aimers had to contend with).

Ta. More reading later – summarised by this extract from a long and very detailed article by Dan Mouritzsen:
http://www.tiono.com/model/Flak-from_a_modellers_viewpoint.pdf

“A 5mm-wide red, green, yellow or white band on or just above the shell’s driving band on the calibres from 2cm to 4cm. The rest had a 1cm-wide band. The band reflected the shell’s tracer colour. Red was the most common.”

And British .303 tracer … was likely red?

Great pic. The beams of light being to one side took me by surprise …

Thank you. O/T but a lot of pictures get the lights wrong but as you deduce, pointing straight down would have been little use. They were offset to starboard, the rear one also forwards, so as to form a figure of eight at 60ft that could be seen from the blister on the side of the cockpit.
http://www.rafmuseum.org.uk/research/archive-exhibitions/617-squadron-and-the-dams-raid/spotlights-low-altitude-flying-modification.aspx

Im sure if you read up on the many accounts from aircrew and flak stations you will quickly be able to fill in the gaps for your painting.. How far have you got with it??

pistonrob: I don’t paint, I work photorealistically. At the moment I have the main elements in place but need the tracer etc to bring it alive. Here’s a work-in-progress draft with flak bursts – P-Popsie’s starboard outer fuel tank and aileron being holed as the store was released: http://flickr.com/gp/garyeason/P5df8u

I am catching up on the personal accounts. The trouble is, everyone refers to “flak” – because they dealt with it every day, either firing it or flying through it, and they are so familiar with it they do not think to explain it. Bit like (as an example) my saying, “I filled my car up with petrol”. We all know immediately what that means and can visualise the scene – but one can easily imagine, in a later era without internal combustion engines or petrol stations, sheer bafflement!

As for colour – I’ve just re-read Gibson’s account: on his initial recce he saw three colours of tracer then in the attack says they had all become one colour (without saying which one!) Also, eye witnesses are notoriously unreliable, especially in moments of high drama and years later.

To defend against low level attacks they would have used 20mm Flakvierling 38’s, four 20mm cannons mounted together ‘vierling’ meaning four.

Good point about the expected targets. Apparently they were single barrel 38s though, not twos or fours.