Talk:Boulton Paul Defiant/Archive 1

Some questions

This aircraft has always fascinated me, but there are some questions this article does not answer. Firstly, the article states that the Defiant had "interrupter gear which prevented the gunner from firing at any part of the aircraft". What is the source of this statement? I assume it is The Turret Fighters. It sounds reasonable enough, but was the gunner also prevented from shooting at the aircraft's own tail fin? Was there no way at all for the turret to fire forwards. Secondly, and this may fall outside the scope of the article, what practical or logistical problems prevented Boulton from converting the Defiant design into a conventional single-seat fighter with wing-mounted machine guns? The only proper book I have read about the Defiant - Warpaint 42 - states that the Defiant was a well-designed aircraft that was easy to maintain and superior to the Hurricane in many respects. I assume that the wing would have had to be modified in order to find space for machine guns, and that the time and work involved would not have been worth it, and that by late 1940 the RAF had a plentiful supply of Hurricanes anyway. The Defiant seems like a wasted opportunity. The history of its history seems to have swung from lamenting its failure as a day fighter for being an outdated concept, to praising its worth as a night fighter, to lamenting its failure as a night fighter, and now to a position whereby its failure as a day fighter is blamed on unsound tactics rather than the aircraft itself. -Ashley Pomeroy 16:51, 26 July 2006 (UTC)

I don't think the fin would have omitted from the interruptor settings. The picture here shows the turret rotated into the forward arc, so it appears it could fire into targets forward of the aircraft - firing directly forward would have put the muzzles behind the pilot's head and the lines of fire would have been either side of the cockpit through the propellor disc, but to not include the arc above and foward would have been a serious and unlikely omission. If the RAF had wanted fighters in a hurry, the Miles M.20 offered a quicker route than converting Defiants. The Defiant handled its roles well, but its oppposition changed (evolved if you will)- escorted bombers, faster night fighters - and without development it was bound to fall behind. GraemeLeggett 09:37, 27 July 2006 (UTC)

In fact I've answered my own questions, with the help of this book, which cites a former Defiant pilot. It quotes the pilot as saying that, if the gunner was badly injured, his last despairing acts would have been to turn the turret forwards, point the guns upwards at 19 degrees, and transfer firing control to the pilot. However the pilots were never trained to aim or fire the guns this way, and I suspect that it was never actually done in practice, in the couple of months during which the Defiant was as a front-line fighter. -Ashley Pomeroy 16:54, 29 July 2006 (UTC)

One Wonders why the Defiant was nver fitted with any fixed forward firing armament. I appreciate that the weight of a Spitfire style extra eight machine guns would have probably grossly exceeded the aircraft's carrying capacity, but at least a pair of machine guns - one in each wing, seems such an obvious design modification and would surely have greatly improved the aircraft's effectiveness in air combat... Getztashida 10:33, 9 October 2006 (UTC)

Your question is quite a good one, but I think you've answered it yourself. The Defiant followed-on from the Bristol Fighter via the Hawker Demon, and if the situation in aerial combat had been the same then the Defiant may well have enjoyed similar success, however the Bristol Fighter and Hawker Demon had only the extra weight of a second crew member and a Scarff ring, which added little extra weight for the engine to haul round, as well as little extra drag. In the Defiant (and competing Hotspur) the turret was of substantial weight and so really demanded much more power than was available from the early Mark of Merlin fitted. In the Bristol Fighter the Rolls-Royce Falcon was of considerable power compared to the engines of contemporary single-seat fighters and coped well with the weight of a second crew member, the fixed forward-firing Vickers allowing it to be used like a normal fighter. The Defiant possibly to save weight, omitted any forward-firing armament, as the power available was probably insufficient anyway. As it was, it could probably have used an engine of 500hp more than the early Marks of Merlin could provide, and so compared to the Bristol Fighter it was probably underpowered. This situation affected the Fairey Barracuda as well, the original engine it was designed for (the Rolls-Royce Exe) being cancelled and the lower-power Merlin being substituted. Both could probably have with benefited from using the Rolls-Royce Griffon from the start, (as could the 'unfortunate' Fairey Battle) but it was not available when they were designed, the Barracuda not trialling it till much later in the war, and the early Marks of Griffon not being much more powerful than the contemporary Merlin anyway.

Another thing that the Bristol Fighter and Hawker Demon had that the Defiant didn't, was generous wing-area compared to their single-seat contemporaries, and the substantial engine power available allowed this, the Defiant on the other hand, had similar wing-area as the Hurricane and so the Defiant was less manouverable compared to its single-seat contemporaries. Extra wing-area would have needed even more engine power to get the required performance so again, that was not possible with the engine power available.

The thing that really caused the shortcomings of the Defiant to be felt was the Fall of France, which allowed the Luftwaffe fighter airfields to be moved to within range of the south east of England, a situation that had been considered inconceivable when the Defiant was designed. This meant that instead of just attacking unescorted bombers, the Defiant had to try and survive against short-range first-rate single-engined fighters (i.e., Bf 109s) and this it could not do once they discovered its blind spot below the aircraft.

Incidentally, the reduction in rate-of-fire caused by any interrupter gear was the reason that the RAF discarded fuselage-mounted guns in the Hurricane and Spitfire. Both aircraft specifications demanded wing-mounted armament (outside of the propeller arc) to allow the greatest possible rate-of-fire and this was why all RAF fighters had wing-mounted guns until the advent of the jet fighter, IIRC, the last UK fighter with wing-mounted guns being the Supermarine Attacker (a jet based on the wings of the Supermarine Spiteful) - at the much higher speeds involved it was found that flexure in the wings during manoeuvres affected the sighting of the guns, throwing the aim-off. Guns were moved back to the fuselage, as-per the Meteor, with jets. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 86.112.60.119 (talk) 10:30, 30 September 2010 (UTC)

Merge with Bolton-Paul Defiant (note the dash)

There are two articles covering the Defiant. This One (i.e. Boulton Paul No Dash appears to be more developed. Nigel Ish 18:21, 4 February 2007 (UTC)

I didn't even know there was another article; I would agree to combine the two. I took a quick look at the other article and it seems to be very similar- I think I can see only one comment that needs to be added to the larger article. Note that the other article has the title misspelled as "Bolton-Paul" instead of "Boulton Paul." Bzuk 18:25, 4 February 2007 (UTC).

British India vs India

In Accordance With (IAW) accepted standards I have decided to revert, the revert, back to the original. IMHO (In My Humble Opinion) the original conveys more accurate information and the edit removes useful information. Removal of useful information is something I believe we as editors should be loath to do. --Colputt 01:04, 14 August 2007 (UTC)

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Guns query

Hi. An editor just added a query to the second paragraph of "Design". There's a sentence that says: The gunner could rotate the turret directly forward and transfer firing control of the guns to the pilot, with the guns firing along each side of the cockpit canopy; this was rarely done as the turret's minimum forward elevation was 19° and the pilot did not have a gunsight, possibly because the Defiant was outfitted to perform zero deflection shooting, as were several contemporaneous designs arising from Air Ministry specifications. and in the reference that follows this, which is TO Sinnott, Colin (2014), they've added the query ( Unable to fire through the propeller arc at less that 19 deg elevation perhaps?). It can't stay there because we don't do speculative queries or comments in the articles themselves, and it showed up looking wrong in the reference, but I hope it might help to have moved it here in case its author or others might like to discuss it here. Best wishes to all, DBaK (talk) 09:21, 10 March 2018 (UTC)

Mounting of defiant-style turrets on Beaufighter and Mosquito

The main article claims the turrets were tried on Beaufighter and Mosquito. I believe it should read (Bristol) Blenheim and Beaufighter. Mosquitoes never had such a thing, to my knowledge. (Where would you fit a turret in a two-seater, 'wooden wonder'? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 81.79.98.20 (talk) 07:05, 27 March 2008 (UTC)

According to Brew's The Turret Fighters (p105), Boulton Paul turrets were installed for tests on both Beaufighters and two Mosquito night fighters in 1941 for tests - the reduction in performance stopped further progress in both cases.Nigel Ish (talk) 18:46, 27 March 2008 (UTC)

A dorsal turret was experimentally fitted to both types of night fighter aircraft for the same reason the Northrop P-61 Black Widow also had one. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 95.150.10.189 (talk) 16:47, 20 November 2017 (UTC)

I have seen photos of the turret installation on the Mosquito - pretty sure some of the newer references would have more. The Blenheim was already fitted with a turret so mentioning it would make no sense whatsoever. - NiD.29 (talk) 00:57, 11 April 2021 (UTC)