Turreted Fighters

[Maverick]

Greg,

Obviously two that come to mind from an 'unturreted' point of view in the real world are the Prototype aircraft, which had a very 'Hurricane' look to it and the Target Tug.  Both of these are a unique look to be sure, but it is quite surprising how much the type looks sans turret like the early Il-2s..

Regards,

Mav

[Weaver]

On my "to do" list is a Defiant with Whirlwind wings and engines and 4 x .303s in the nose, the latter being able to elevate, but not rotate. The idea is that it's a pre-war "improvement" of the Defiant, using the two smaller engines because they're regarded as a "split single", in order to facilitate nose guns, rather than a true (larger) twin-engined design. The guns elevate primarily so that the aircraft can use one of two new attack profiles:

1. Formate on the target in it's blind spot, below and behind, and then fire all eight guns upwards and forwards,

2. Head-on pass. The problem with doing this with fixed guns is that the firing opportunity, between maximum effective range and minimum safe break-away range, is too short to get many round on target. With the elevated nose guns, plus the turret firing forwards and upwards, however, the Super-Defiant pilot can aim his aircraft to fly under the target, and then "strafe" the length of it at point-blank range.

Obviously bigger guns would be better, but using the pop-guns keeps to the 8 x .303 ethos that dominated RAF thinking pre-war. Essentially, it's an "eight gun fighter" with re-arranged guns.

[kitnut617]

but it is quite surprising how much the type looks sans turret like the early Il-2s..
Regards,
Mav

My thoughts too ----

[sequoiaranger]

Weaver/GTX--- NOW yer talkin my kind of whif!! A true inspiration!

Of course, what you NOW need is a ball turret for a super-Avatar!

Or....one of my pre-Avatar ideas--make the glass-nose version a prone-pilot position so that the top turret has full 360 coverage...(see pic below)--maybe with a Blenheim-type gun pack under the fuselage.

OR.... put a ball-turret on it so that both turrets COULD fire forward for the 8-gun barrage. OK, OK.....I'm letting my imagination run away---Hey! COME BACK HERE!

Its' just POSSIBLE that I might take an old Frog DH Hornet kit and combine it with an old Defiant kit and.....!

[Weaver]

Sequoiaranger - nice one  It strikes me that you could approach the same solution from the other direction, as it were, by making a "Beaufighterised" Blenheim, i.e. narrowing the fuselage, eliminating the bomb bay and adding a gun pack...

What gave me the idea for the Defiant nose guns was the fact that BP had "form" in this respect. Their twin-engined Bittern night fighter of 1927 vintage had two elevating Lewis guns in fuselage side blisters.

[GTX]

Cool!

Regards,

Greg

[cthulhu77]

Scale-o-rama that one, and make it a twin engined large bomber.

[Sisko]

On my "to do" list is a Defiant with Whirlwind wings and engines and 4 x .303s in the nose, the latter being able to elevate, but not rotate.

That was one of my projects from some time back but it got shelved. It's not an easy conversion.

I have a BF-110 which I plan to put a turret from a B-26 onto, making it into a turreted fighter. For some reason that aircraft screams put a turret on me

[Mossie]

I guess the Me-110 did evolve into a turret fighter in some sense, the Me-410 & was armed with remote turrets on the fuselage sides.

[jcf]

I guess the Me-110 did evolve into a turret fighter in some sense, the Me-410 & was armed with remote turrets on the fuselage sides.

There was a 110 tested with remote control dorsal and ventral turrets.

Jon

[GTX]

There already is a turret armed Bf110 on Pg 2 of this thread.

Regards.

Greg

[GTX]

An Anti-tank variant of the Super Defiant (based upon pyro-manic's suggestion here):



Regards,

Greg

[Madoc]

Greg,

Damn!  That nose gun equipped Defiant is PERFECT!  Nicely rendered!  Great suggestion there Pyro!

Madoc

[pyro-manic]

Cool.

[waynos]

I guess it's the same old interwar RAF (& others) story of fighting WWI all over again.  I wonder how things would have looked had they had some more 'modern thinkers' instead of Great War retreads in positions of responsibility?

Germany was an excellent example of throwing out the antiquated ideas from that conflict and forming a modern, effective force that stood as a blueprint for others (and yeah, I know the Panzer divs weren't numerical & they still had horses, etc, etc).

Mav

Sorry for being 6 monthsd late and all but I've just read this thread and I'm very disappointed that nobody challenged this post Maverick.

The RAF had, for just one example,  Hugh Dowding, who dedicated himself to championing the radar system and fighter control set up that successfully defended Britain in 1940 and was subsequently copied by, ooh, everybody. He did have to fight like hell to get it, but there is one modern thinker in a position of responsibility for you, nobody else in the world was organising their fighter defences on this pattern - until after the Battle of Britain.

Although they had radar themselves the Germans only thought it useful for ships (Graf Spee had it for instance) and it didn't occur to them it might be used in the way the British were using it and it took them a while to figure out why the fighters were always there to meet them. Even when they did grasp its function they seemed not to grasp its importance as attacks on the network were sporadic and more like nuisance raids than any concerted attempt to knock the system out.

Just one example, there are more, but the view of the 'backwards thinking' British against the 'with it' Germans is a complete myth. You will see many examples of 'forward thinkers' and 'WW1 retreads' on both sides.

Similarly the reality of the two air forces is the opposite of the myth as the RAF was a well organised professional organisation while the Luftwaffe was run like a flying club, relatively speaking.