Talk:Boulton Paul Defiant

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Video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tJBuCm2wy5Y 81.86.144.210 07:18, 7 September 2006 (UTC)

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 The history of its history seems to have swung from lamenting its failure as a day fighter for being an outdated concept, to praising its worth as a night fighter, to lamenting its failure as a night fighter, and now to a position whereby its failure as a day fighter is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 ppreciate 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)

[edit] 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).