I have always had a soft spot for the Boulton Paul Defiant singe-engined, turretted fighter.
The Defiant was designed to be a day and night fighter that could attack enemy bombers. At the time that the RAF drew up the specification for a turretted fighter (F.9/35), it was expected that enemy bombers would not have any fighter escorts.
The Defiant was in front-line service with Nos. 141 and 264 Squadrons by May 1940, and although they enjoyed initial success against Luftwaffe aircraft during Operation Dynamo and the opening days of the Battle of Britain, once German fighters realised that they had no forward-facing armament, the losses of aircraft led to it withdrawal from daytime service and it took on a night fighter role.
The design was trialled in the Army Co-operation role (close air support: Providing, tactical reconnaissance, artillery spotting, and training anti-aircraft gunners) and Boulton Paul produced a prototype fixed-gun fighter that was armed with either twelve .303-inche (7.7mm) Browning machine guns (with six guns in each wing) or four 20mm (0.79-inch) Hispano cannons (with two cannons in each wing).
My 'What if ...?' builds on these two possibilities. I assume that removing the turret and replacing it with a single rear-facing machine gun would reduce the aircraft's overall weight, and that this could be used to offset the weight of adding a 20mm (0.79-inch) Hispano cannon in each wing and two underwing bomb racks capable of carrying 250-pound bombs.
The resulting aircraft would have looked something like this:
The aircraft's characteristics would have been something like this:
- Crew: two: pilot, gunner
- Length: 35ft 4in (10.77m)
- Wingspan: 39ft 4in (11.99m)
- Height: 11ft 4in (3.45m)
- Powerplant: 1 × Rolls-Royce Merlin III liquid-cooled V12 engine
- Propeller: 3-bladed
- Maximum speed: 300 mph
- Cruise speed: 175 mph
- Range: 465 miles
- Armament: 2 x 20mm Hispano cannons; 1 × 0.303mm machine gun; 2 x 250-pound bombs
Interestingly, the end result looks somewhat like a scaled-down Ilyushin Il-2 Sturmovik ground attack aircraft.
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BOB,
ReplyDeleteWhat makes you think that United Kingdoms Air Defenses arn't up to scratch for 2025 ? Regards. KEV.
Kev Robertson (Kev),
DeleteFrankly, it’s not good. The AEW aircraft are better than they were in 1985, but our fighter interceptors are a twenty-year-old design, and of the 160 that were bought, only 53 are in front-line service. Furthermore, they operate out of two air bases (Coningsby in Lincolnshire and Lossiemouth in Moray, Scotland) and if they are knocked out, there’s no proper infrastructure in place for them to operate elsewhere.
The RAF regiment still operates the Rapier air defence missile system … which has been in service since 1971!
The Command and Control systems have been improved as has the ground-based radar systems … but coverage could be better.
All the best,
Bob
My father was an air-gunner in Defiant JT-J (the old Airfix kit was JT-J). During the Invasion scare the Defiants were tested in ground attack by traversing the turret through 90 degrees to port (usually). The aircraft could then fly along beaches strafing them or circle over barges and shoot inside the vessel.
DeleteIncidentally the Boulton Paul P94 Is very similar in concept to your project. https://airpages.ru/eng/uk/p94.shtml
Ops - correction the old Airfix kit was JT-T
DeleteSorry
Alan
Dadlamassu,
DeleteWow! That is a fantastic story … and I hope that you had (or have) a model of that aircraft.
I’d never heard that the RAF had experimented with that tactic, but it makes a lot of sense. They trialled quite a lot of anti-invasion tactics, including arming Tiger Moth trainers with mustard gas dispensers.
Thank you for the link to the P94 prototype photograph and data. It sounds as if the idea might have been worth pursuing if there sources had been available.
All the best,
Bob
Dadlamassu (Alan),
DeleteClose enough to still make it a great story.
All the best,
Bob
Bob -
ReplyDeleteI've been hearing noises along the lines of most countries' armed forces' kit these days date from when Methuselah was a lad. Russia and China have flash (literally!) new kit - especially in aircraft, missilery and drones, but I have an idea neither is inclined to throw old kit away, at least if Victor Suvorov's comments on Soviet practices were and remain accurate ('Inside the Soviet Army', 1982). And both have had reason to look to their own military, in the light of the US continually throwing its excessive weight about the planet.
The UK did have a cutting edge project, the TSR2, back in the '60s, but was cancelled - for reasons mainly of cost, I think. There's some hardware that might be good for a 'what if' campaign.
It is my belief that the (external) 'threats' we hear about are more imagined than real; and where real, more commercial than military (or economic). My own country's Tory government is starting to make puerile noises along the lines of producing non-productive junk (for all the world as though, starting years behind everyone else, we can develop the expertise and resources to be technologically competitive) at the expense of doing some serious work upon infrastructure and socio-economic deficiencies that have been allowed over the last 50 years to get out of hand.
One forms the impression from the UK that, pointing a trembling finger at Russia, successive governments (Tory and Tory 2.0 = the one that stopped masquerading as a 'Labour' Party decades ago) have tried to distract themselves and the long-suffering electorate from some very serious socio-economic problems. I daresay the Reform Party will simply be Tory 3.0...
We are living in very interesting times, are we not? I just hope they don't get interestinger. They are really knocking holes in my enthusiasm for war gaming.
Cheers,
Ion
Archduke Piccolo (Ion),
DeleteThe British Army still operates upgraded FV432s which has been in service since the 1960s. Some of the surplus chassis of the FV432 have been used as the basis for vismod Pzkpfw III and StuG III tanks for use be re-enactors and the film industry. Other armies - including the Russians - have kept obsolete vehicles in storage ‘just in case’.
The TSR2 should have been put into production, but for political reasons it was scrapped in favour of buying the American F-111 … which never entered service with the RAF! I suspect that had it entered service, the TSR2 would have enjoyed significant overseas sales.
The leadership of most armed forces seem to need a real (or potential) enemy to justify the spending requests they make to their treasury departments … and politicians like to use defence contracts to ‘reward’ supporters. In the UK we seem to have regular ‘defence reviews’ that never seem to bear much relationship to the UK’s actual needs.
Reform does seem to be attracting the sort of support the right-wing of the Tory party used to rely on as well as white working class people who feel increasingly marginalised. As to the current government … well, I make a point of trying to avoid making political comments on my blog … but in my opinion, they are no better than the preceding Tory government and whoever replaces them will no doubt make lots of unfulfilled promises and prove just as useless.
I totally agree with the last paragraph of your comment … and hope that things are not going to get much more ‘interesting ’.
All the best,
Bob