Boulton Paul Defiant

[Stargazer]

The bubble-top version looks fantastic, but way too handsome for a Boulton-Paul product!!! 

[PR19_Kit]

The bubble-top version looks fantastic, but way too handsome for a Boulton-Paul product!!! 

I'm with you there Stephane!

With leading edge radiators and the aerial farm above the fuselage it would look almost sleek!   

[Sauragnmon]

So I had a wild thought roll through my skull just a little bit ago... of mating the rear section of a Defiant, with the forward section of a Tiffy - Engine and wings from, say, a 1B Tiffy, with the turret and tail from a Defiant, or similar, so in essence it becomes a heavy fighter of a style.  I figure the Tiffy's got the power to pull the weight, since they had a massive payload capacity outside the guns.  I don't know how it would scale, though...

Thoughts?

[NARSES2]

Well Hawkers did do a turret fighter - the Hotspur - so you could say it was a latter development. Use the wings from a Tiffy ? Maybe with small bomb bays in them for AP bombs ?

Go on you know you want to 

[PR19_Kit]

The Hotspur was hardly a thing of beauty though, was it? Almost ANYTHING would improve its looks, with or without the turret.

[NARSES2]

I've always found the Defiant an attractive looking aeroplane. Often toyed with the idea of a FAA single seat fighter one, maybe one day that old Airfix kit will find a use 

[kitnut617]

So I had a wild thought roll through my skull just a little bit ago... of mating the rear section of a Defiant, with the forward section of a Tiffy - Engine and wings from, say, a 1B Tiffy, with the turret and tail from a Defiant, or similar, so in essence it becomes a heavy fighter of a style.  I figure the Tiffy's got the power to pull the weight, since they had a massive payload capacity outside the guns.  I don't know how it would scale, though...

Thoughts?

You're describing a Hawker Henley ----

[jcf]

So I had a wild thought roll through my skull just a little bit ago... of mating the rear section of a Defiant, with the forward section of a Tiffy - Engine and wings from, say, a 1B Tiffy, with the turret and tail from a Defiant, or similar, so in essence it becomes a heavy fighter of a style.  I figure the Tiffy's got the power to pull the weight, since they had a massive payload capacity outside the guns.  I don't know how it would scale, though...

Thoughts?

See post 59 on page 4 of the thread, B-P P.96 enlarged Defiant projects, among the proposals was one with a Sabre engine.

[Mossie]

P.85 Naval Defiant, deeper fuselage and new vertical tail.  P.85A was drawn up with a Hercules, P.85B with a Merlin.  It was passed over in favour of the Blackburn Roc, a much slower aircraft.

Original images here:
http://crimso.msk.ru/Site/Arts/Art3537.htm

P.85B three view, with a side view of the P.85A


P.85A with it's boots on:


P.85A details

[KJ_Lesnick]

A variant of the GTX twin Defiant

Now that's dakka

[Weaver]

The Times published this today:



Posted on Twitter by Alan Allport here: https://twitter.com/Alan_Allport/status/1265247429802237953?s=20

[tigercat]

read that today .very interesting .

[Weaver]

I follow quite a few WWII/Aviation historians on Twitter: they're not very impressed with it. They seem to think the statistics are cherry-picked.

[tigercat]

It's been making waves ?  It's probably slightly  better  than we thought but not as good as he claimed?

[Weaver]

Just read some informed opinion to the effect that it wasn't a flawed concept per se, the problem was that it didn't get the kind of war it was planned for. It was a bomber-destroyer, and seemed to be quite good at it in the absence of enemy fighters escorting the bombers. Before May 1940, German fighters didn't have the range to reach the UK, so had France and the Low Countries not fallen, German bombers would have been unescorted and Defiants could have made quite a mess of them. It was the ability of the Luftwaffe to fly escort missions over the UK from France that put the Defiant on the back foot.

In hindsight, the best policy might have been, rather than withdrawing the Defiant entirely, to instead deploy the Defiant squadrons to the north of the UK where bomber attacks were generally unescorted, either due to being launched from Norway or to their French-based escorts reaching bingo fuel and having to go home. That would have allowed the Defiant to fight in the situation it was designed for, while freeing up Spitfire and Hurricane squadrons from the defense of the south.