page_title: Bristol Blenheim
section_title: South East Asia
hierarchical_section_title: Bristol Blenheim / Operational history / South East Asia
caption_attribution_description: English: BURMA. 1942-11-10. LOW LEVEL ATTACKS BY RAF BLENHEIM SQUADRONS. AIRCRAFT FROM NO. 60 SQUADRON LEVELLING OUT FOR THE "RUN IN" TO MAKE A MAST-HEAD ATTACK ON A JAPANESE COASTER OFF AKYAB. A SPRINKLING OF RAAF MEN SERVED WITH THIS SQUADRON. (AIR MINISTRY). (PHOTOGRAPH REPRODUCED IN OFFICIAL HISTORY VOLUME: RAAF 1939-42, PAGE 466).
context_page_description: The Bristol Blenheim is a British light bomber aircraft designed and built by the Bristol Aeroplane Company which was used extensively in the first two years and in some cases throughout the Second World War. The aircraft was developed as Type 142, a civil airliner, in response to a challenge from Lord Rothermere to produce the fastest commercial aircraft in Europe. The Type 142 first flew in April 1935, and the Air Ministry, impressed by its performance, ordered a modified design as the Type 142M for the Royal Air Force as a bomber. Deliveries of the newly named Blenheim to RAF squadrons commenced on 10 March 1937.
  A development of the Type 142M was the Type 149 which Bristol named the Bolingbroke, retrospectively changed by the Air Ministry to Blenheim Mk IV and the Type 142M to the Blenheim Mk I. Fairchild Canada built the Type 149 under licence as the Bolingbroke. Blenheims Mk I and the Mk IV were adapted as fighters by the addition of a gun pack of four Browning .303 machine guns in the bomb bay. The Mk IV was used as a long range fighter and as a maritime patrol aircraft; both aircraft were also used as bomber/gunnery trainers.
context_section_description: Blenheims continued to operate widely in many combat roles until about 1943, equipping RAF squadrons in the UK and at British bases in Aden, India, British Malaya, Singapore, and the Dutch East Indies. Many Blenheims were lost to Japanese fighters during the Malayan Campaign and the battles for Singapore and Sumatra. By that point, the traditional daylight light bomber role was more effectively carried out by suitable fighter-bombers, and the surviving examples were relegated to training duties. Nonetheless, the Blenheim played a role in preventing India from falling and in recapturing Burma, destroying over 60 aircraft on the ground in raids on Bangkok early in the campaign.
  One Blenheim pilot, Squadron Leader Arthur Scarf, was posthumously awarded the Victoria Cross for an attack on Singora, Thailand, on 9 December 1941. Another bomber of No. 60 Squadron RAF was credited with shooting down Lt Col Tateo Katō's Nakajima Ki-43 fighter and badly damaging two others in a single engagement on 22 May 1942, over the Bay of Bengal. Katō's death was a severe blow to the Imperial Japanese Army Air Force.
  The Air Ministry's replacement for the Blenheim as a daylight bomber, another Bristol design, the Buckingham, was overtaken by events and changes in requirements, and considered inferior to the de Havilland Mosquito, and as such did not see combat. The final ground-attack version – the Blenheim Mk V – first equipped 139 Squadron in June 1942.  Eventually thirteen squadrons – mainly in the Middle East and Far East – received this variant but operated them generally only for a few months.
caption: Blenheims of No. 60 Squadron RAF flying low to attack a Japanese coaster off Akyab, Burma on 11 October 1942
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