I KNEW someone would mention the Battle in reaction to my comment! The Battle was....a turkey. Its empty weight was 600lbs heavier than the Defiant - and THAT's remembering the Defiant's turret and DOUBLE the armament - the Battle only had one rear-firing and one forward firing MG! :mellow: It was an unnecessarily HUGE fecker! The Battle COULD carry 1,000lbs of bombs "internally" - in its wing bays - and supposedly another 500lbs externally. But the penalty it paid for THIS....and for its heavy airframe.....AND the third crewmember...was it was 45 mph slower than even the Defiant! It was a sitting duck for Luftwaffe fighters. For the speed vs. weight penalty - it didn't even have either an armoured cockpit OR selfsealing fuel tanks! The two aircraft come from two different design streams; the Battle was seen as the last gasp of the RAF's single-engined light bombers in the class of the Hawker Hind/Hart that had provided sterling service through the late 1920s/early '30s. The Defiant was very much a two-man fighter....and you can see that in its (compromised) fighter weight and speed. The ONE thing I haven't ever found is what weight of ordnance that first Defiant prototype was designed to carry. Take the weight of the turret off, give the no.2 a pintle MG...and how much extra weight would be freed up for bombload on hardpoints - AND still attain 304mph???
from Profile publications The Boulton Paul Defiant Superficially similar to the Hawker Hurricane but carried 1500lb more weight Prototype 7500lb ,trials with turret top speed 302mph Max Permis loaded weight FI 8350lb FII 8318lb TTI 8250lb TTIII 8227lb NFI 8600lb NFII 8680lb
Max Permis loaded weight FI 8350lb FII 8318lb I have those two weights (approx.) as plain loaded weight (William Green) - the MTOW was actually up at 8,600lbs for the dayfigher. trials with turret top speed 302mph ...at 16-17,000 feet. Just like the Spitfire and Hurricane....the Defiant's Merlin II (in the Mk1) benefitted from the arrival of U.S.-brewed 100 octane fuel in 1940 This actually rose from 302-304 mph to around 315mph.
If only the defiant was used properly in the first place, i.e. as a night fighter. It eventually equipped 13 RAF squadrons and for a while was quite a successful plane when used at night. Apparently it recorded more kills in 1940-41 than any other night fighter, and when the Mk II came along (with a Merlin XX engine) it provided a bit more get up and go, top speed rising to about 315 mph.
Like all British nightfighters - it was only useful once it had been fitted with AI radar :mellow: Prior to that - Bitish nightfighting...well, everyone's!....was hopeless. During the first weeks of the Night Blitz on London, more RAF fighters were damaged or destroyed in collisions and landing accidents than they ever damaged or destroyed German aircraft! The British had a whole range of "smart" ideas for early nightfighting. They had designated Hurricane and Spitfire night/day fighter squadrons; they had Blenheim IF nightfighter squadrons; some were trained specifically to work at hunting bombers illuminated by ground searchlights....and several units had converted (redirected French order) Bostons with searchlights on them that would chase and illuminate enemy aircraft IN THE AIR for the fighters to catch and bring down! Guess how successful THAT was....! Point is....in 1939 and for most of 1940 before AI radar arrived they had "real" Fighter Command fighters tasked to the job, so to speak!
Interesting. It apepars the Defiant could mount a Light Series Carrier and possibly 4 Cooper Bombs per wing... http://forum.axishistory.com/download/file.php?id=211777 http://forum.axishistory.com/download/file.php?id=211776 ...and it should be remembered that the turret COULD be traversed downwards to either side of the fuselage! :mellow:certainly would have made a better Army Co-op aircraft in France than the bloody Lysander! Can you imagine the mess the four Brownings firing down from above would have made of lorried infantry...or the engine deck of something light like a PzI or II??? And it wasn't a theoretical or prototype exercise either... If you look under the wing of the top picture...it's L6950, the first PRODUCTION Defiant!!! According to Turret Fighters - Defiant and Roc... No. 264 Squadron, one of the two Defiant day fighter squadrons in Fighter Command... ...practised dive bombing and ground strafing at Orfordness, a role for which the aircraft was equipped with light duty bomb racks, but which nonetheless seemed to be contrary to the basic concept of the turret fighter. !!!
Pyloroadking The Battle was....a turkey. Its empty weight was 600lbs heavier than the Defiant - and THAT's remembering the Defiant's turret and DOUBLE the armament - the Battle only had one rear-firing and one forward firing MG! :mellow: It was an unnecessarily HUGE fecker! She was no Sturmovik that is for sure and as you say size wise she was not nimble chicken.
She was no Sturmovik that is for sure Funny you should say that.... I was thinking the other night - What if the Defiant traded speed down to the Sturmovik's 257mph...I wonder how much weightcarrying ability THAT would have freed up for armour??? Interestingly - in the reference page linked to in the new thread on the Blackburn Roc, those Light Series carriers were VERY versatile... loads that each universal carrier could carry was listed in the pilots notes as either a 250 lb "B" or Semi-Armour Piercing (S.A.P.) bomb or a 100 lb Anti-submarine (A.S.) bomb or a bomb container The Defiant may not have been as fast as contemporary specialised fighter-interceptors....but if it traded DOWN what speed it DID have to that of a period light bomber... A British Sturmovik??? In 1939-40...
...except of course we don't do WIs here! But it makes you think; ALL aircraft are a trade-of of engine power against weight to be got off the ground.... The Defiant's designers - and the Air Staff who issued the original O.R. and Specification - were thinking far enough outside the box to produce the Defiant in the first place to exploit the principle of No-Allowance Shooting; isn't it a pity they simply didn't think that little bit further??? Of course - by the middle of the war we had the "Universal Wing" Hurricane for ordnance and ground attack, P40s carrying out the role and the first Allison-engined P51's were arriving...we had PLENTY of fighters to use for Army-Co-op...by then.
...and it should be remembered that the turret COULD be traversed downwards to either side of the fuselage! Just a note for clarification... Elsewhere I was challenged on this and accused of posting "fiction" IN SERVICE - the RAF "preferrred" the Defiant's four Browning installation to elevate from zero degrees (hotizontal) to 84 degrees, just a fraction off vertical. However...that was NOT the actual lower limit of the turret installation. The arc the Browning installation could elevate through could actually be adjusted. The fourth Defiant off the production line was taken to Boscombe Down and tested thoroughly in simulated air combat with an RAF Blenheim...and the Defiant gave the Blenheim VERY considerable problems. But one identified weakness was that at very low altitude, the pilot would have to tilt the Defiant slightly to get the guns to bear on the Blenheim. Boulton Paul technicians who had accompanied the test Defiant to Boscombe repositioned the Brownings' firing arc and found that at the expense of seven degrees of elevation at the TOP of the range....the guns could actually be got to depress to seven degrees BELOW horizontal! :mellow: But the RAF as I said after the tests expressed a prefererence for the original setting, which allowed the Defiant to make "conventional fighter attacks".... Bloody stupid idea and attitude when using such an UNconventional aircraft!!! (Above details from Mark Ansell's "Boulton Paul Defiant") It also appears that the provision to carry bombs on a Mk1 Light Series Carrier lasted at least as late as the Defiant MkII Air Sea Rescue variant - for the Type M dinghy in its canister was carried under the wing between the two sets of bolt-on lugs in the wing where the carrier would "normally" bolt on. Two cables between each of the two sets of lugs simply held it straped in there.
CL1 - that's certainly a "Light Series Carrier"....but is THAT a Defiant on top of it??? This is....and as you can see, no recess...instead you can just see the two tiny lugs at the front (and somewhere there's two at the back) that protruded out of the wings for the purpose. They're the ones with the gurt big spouting bolt through them! http://forum.axishistory.com/download/file.php?id=211776
There is, however, a strange postscript to the Defiant story... Looking through Ansell's book last night, and Alex Brew's "The Turret Fighters - Defiant and Roc", I was struck but something very odd. Having DONE all that research into no-allowance shooting in the 1920s and early 1930s, issued Operational Requirement after Specification for various designs to exploit the principle including a plethora of designs that - like Schrage Musik -carried fixed MGs/cannon in the fuselage firing up at 45 degress as well as forward firing MG armament...actually ordered and PAID for the Defiant and Roc, and made provision for pilots to lock the turret forward and fire it from their control column... Quite literally - someone at the Air Ministry seems to have forgotten to bother telling Fighter Command about it all! The first Defiant squadron - No.264 - was left in 1939/early 1940 for months to formulate and work up their OWN tactics! There's one anecdote in Ansell from a Colin R Bryant that says If the gunner was killed it was supposed to be his last despairing action to turn the guns forward and elevate them 19 degrees. This cleared the prop and he could transfer the firing mechanism to the pilot by a switch. No one ever told me, however, how I was expected to aim them. Noone had told him he didn't NEED to aim!!! Things seem to have got even worse.... note this comment This cleared the prop and he could transfer the firing mechanism to the pilot by a switch At some undefined time in the future career of the Defiant, a significant amendment was made to the BP A MkII D turret in the Defiant...talking about what sat on the "table in the turret in front of the gunner, taken from "British Aircraft Armament Vol.1: RAF Gun Turrets", by R Wallace Clarke - This control had two positions. When pulled to the rear 'Free' position the rotation drive was disconnected mechanically and the connections to the hydraulic elevation rams short-circuited through a bypass valve. When pushed forward to the 'Engaged' position, the turret was operational. The gun master switch was a three-position switch marked PILOT, OFF, GUNNER. The PILOT position was never used and was disconnected, being in effect another OFF position; when the GUNNER position was selected the gun firing circuit was alive. They even did away with it!!! :mellow: In other words - after SO much time, effort and money over SO many years.....by stages they simply relegated - blanked out - the proven scientific principle of no-allowance shooting....then did away with it's built in provision in the Defiant entirely! No wonder Schrage Musik came as such a bloody shock... :p
A postscript... The arguments on AHF rumbled on, so i contacted Hendon. Unfortuantely the thread at AHF was locked before I got a reply, but I received it today. Remember this? Quite literally - someone at the Air Ministry seems to have forgotten to bother telling Fighter Command about it all! The reply from Andrew Dennis, assistant curator at Hendon, was that there wasn't ANYTHING in the Pilot's Notes about the pilot being able to fire the guns! :mellow: But he DID scan and email me a couple of pages from the relevant Air Ministry "Air Publication" on operating the Defiant! "....and an alternative pushbutton (see Sect.1) on the pilot's control column provide the means of firing the guns." "This is a three-way switch to enable firing of the turret guns to be transferred to the pilot." So it's quite clear that wherever the information came from on the modification to the turret master switch - it wasn't the original configuration of the B.P. Defiant, and certainly it was done sometime AFTER that AP was issued for aircrew EDIT: I have since heard back from Andew in response to another query on this. The AP manual for the Defiant MkI was a "live" document - it wasn't published in a new edition if things changed, any pages that needed amendment were sent out from the Ministry, those in the manual were repalced and the originals destroyed. He confirmed that between the issue of the AP for the Defiant MkI in September 1939 and the last amendment released in October 1942, NO amendments were issued for the sections regarding the transfer of control of the guns to the Pilot in extremis. So to be clear - the official Air Ministry manual for the Defiant MkI makes no mention of the change to the gunner's master switch reported by Clarke.
Interestingly, on the subject of the Defiant being capable of dropping light ordnance... While searching for something else, I came across THESE entries in the Squadron Diary for No. 307 (Polish) Sqn RAF... 1941-06-15 Exeter Weather was dull but flying training was continued. A Co-operation exercise with Home Guard was carried out with practice dive bombing.Total flying hours :- 10.05 (day) , Nil (night) As late as 1941, No. 307 Sqn ALSO practised ground strafing with their Defiants! 1941-06-18 Exeter Weather conditions were favourable throughout the day and training was continued. Air to ground firing at Warmwell was carried out by five aircraft. A searchlight co-operation flight was also carried out. Conditions were favourable for night flying but no flying took place before midnight. Defiant V.1129 was involved in a taxying accident on returning from air to ground firing. A roller moved on to the runway while the aircraft was taxying back to Dispersal and collision occurred. Total Flying Hours :- 13.50 (day) , Nil (night) 1941-06-20 Exeter Fine weather conditions obtained throughout the day and flying training continued. Air to ground firing at Warmwell was carried out. Night searchlight co-operation exercise was carried out. 23.25 Defiant T.3946 took off from Exeter on operational patrol. 23.40 Defiant T.3946 landed and reported no incident. Total Flying Hours :- 9.35 (day) , 5.25 (night) 1941-06-23 Exeter 00.25 Defiants N.3490 and T.3946 landed and reported no interceptions. 00.30 Defiants T.4058 and N.3330 landed and reported no interceptions. Air to ground firing was carried out at Warmwell and in addition an Army Co-operation exercise. During the night searchlight exercise were also carried out. Total Flying Hours :- 12.10 (day) , 6.40 (night) 1941-06-25 Exeter 01.00 Defiant T.3990 took off Exeter on operational patrol. 01.25 Defiant N.3425 landed and reported no incident. 01.30 Defiant T.3946 landed and reported no incident. 01.50 Defiant T.3990 landed and reported no incident. Weather throughout the day was fine. In the afternoon a co-operation exercise with the Army was carried out and Defiants dive bombed and machined gunned Army targets and forces. In the evening a co-operation exercise with the Home Guard was carried out. During the night a searchlight exercise was also carried out. Total Flying Hours :- 12.00 (day) , 5.25 (night) 1941-07-04 Exeter Weather conditions were favourable and training was continued. Cross countries and formation flying were carried out and an Army Co-operation flight was also made. Seven aircraft did air to ground firing at Warmwell. Weather conditions were excellent for night flying but no patrols were carried out before midnight. Total Flying Hours :- 24.10 (day) , Nil (night). So it looks as if the Defiant WAS capable of firing at the ground in close support by whatever means/tactic - they practised at Warmwell range AND practised in joint exercies with the Army and Home Guard across three months in total in 1941 before their re-equiping with beaufighters in the second half of the year. Polish Air Force Operations Record Books 1940-1947 ยป No. 307 Squadron
thanks PR interesting story found this link "Took off at 04.15 hrs from Martlesham along with 5 other Boulton Paul Defiant's together with 6 Spitfires from 66 Squadron. The object being to patrol the Dutch coast between Ijmuiden and the Hague to attack German troop transport. " Thomas Mcleod
