He111 bomb-bay windows

can you narrow that down a bit? models, years, stuff like that?

Most P and H series(?)

hmm, never seen windows on the bomb bay doors. they stack bombs vertically and out they tumble.

They are not on the doors but on fuselage sides. Two each side behind the cockpit.

I checked my best reference and it seems that some had the windows glazed and some had them blanked off. It went right on down to the H-22 variant as I have a pic of one carrying an Fi 103 under the starboard wing root. Apparently the Gruppe was involved in air launching the bombs. If there's a logic to the presence or absence of the windows I haven't detected it yet.

Bill Banaszak, MFE Sr.

Well, that's what I have known too, so far :-(

Do you have any close-up of blanked windows? Is window outline still visible?

So the windows are just blanked off.. the easiest to do on a model ;-)

It's not exactly a close picture but one can see the outline even at a short distance. My reference book is William Green's "Warplanes of the Third Reich."

Bill Banaszak, MFE Sr.

According to the drawings I have the P series had the bomb bay windows open on the port side and blanked off on starboard, which might account for some of the confusion. The H series had them blanked off on both sides, but some versions (H-16 and higher?) had small circular portholes in the blanks, again on the port side only.

These windows are not to be confused with those at the trailing edge of the wing, which were almost always glazed.

Source is Bombers & Recce Aircraft vol. 9 by William Green.

Hope this helps some. Regards, Ralph

Of course as soon as I posted this I found a photo that contradicts it. :-)

This shows two aircraft (both 111Ps?) one with the starboard windows glazed and another with them apparently blanked off. Not sure what the rhyme or reason is here ... perhaps the configuration could be changed by forward maintenance units.

Regards, Ralph

Yes there's a confusion about it.. nothing definitive yet :-(