ORIGINAL: geofflambert
It's odd that those Spits in the artwork are unarmed.
Most of the time guns had tape over the ends of the barrels to improve aerodynamics and keep the barrels as clean as possible. When the guns were fired, the tape was blown open. Many times the ground crews would look to see if their plane was coming back with the tape blown open to indicate their pilot was in a fight.
The Americans used something akin to masking tape and it only covered the end up the barrel, so it isn't really very visible in pictures. Same thing with British cannons. But for the .303s the British put large squares of red tape over the entire area where the gun met the edge of the wing. In that picture you can see 8 red squares on the leading edges of the wings where the guns were. The Hurricane with 8X .303s had the guns together in blocks of 4 per wing and the tape usually looked continuous across the area where the guns were. The Spitfire had the guns distributed where ever they could squeeze them in.
Bill
