The Turret Fighters.pdf

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Defiant and Roc

Alec Brew

I~~cl

The Crowood Press

First published in 2002 by

The Crowood Press Ltd

Ramsbury, Marlborough

Wiltshire N82HR

Acknowledgements

As archivist for th Boulton Paul As ociation's West Midlands Aviation Archive, which

contains the surviving Boulton Paul archives, I have been lucky to have the surviving

company records and photographs at my disposal. I have also to thank the many mem-

bers of the association who have h.elped me over the years, but in particular fonner Defi-

ant quadron personn I: Wg Cdr Eric Barwell, Wg Cdr hristopher Deanesley, Fg Off

Fred Barker, Fg Off Fred Ga h, Fit Lt John Lauder, Fit Lt Fred Pelham, FIt Lt Frank Lan-

ning, FIt Lt Bryan Wild, qn Ldr Edward Wolfe, gt Le Allen, pi Phil Dimsdale and

gt id Walker.

Other former Boulton Paul employees who have been an immense help include Jack

Chamber, Cyril Plimmer, Brian and Jack Holmes, Denis Bolderstone, Harry Law and

Bill Pauling.

Les Whitehouse has always been helpful in providing information and illustrations

from his own extensive and unique archive of Boulton Paul Aircraft, particularly with

regard

the unbuilt turret fighters.

As historian for his former squadron, No.

141,

Don Aris has been a continual help,

allowing me to borrow many photographs from hi very detailed personal history of o.

141,

and answering my many questions. Geoff Faulkner has performed the same role as

secretary of the o.

264

quadron Association. Stephen King and Betty Clement

allowed me the fruits of their researches into o.

307

quadron. Rus ell Brown of the

Lancashire Aircraft Investigation Team provided much information about Defiant oper-

ations at Blackpool by o.

307

and o.

256

squadrons, and loaned me many pho-

tographs. Hywell Evans loaned me the photograph of the

0.456

quadron Defiant

RAF Valley, which he had used in his own history of aviation on Anglesey.

Ray turtivant has provided much information and many photographs of the Roc and

of naval Defiants. Del Holyland of Martin Baker Aircraft provided prompt replies to my

queries and requests for photographs. Jan Jolie provided much information, and pho-

tographs of Defiant operations over the Netherland. Geoff Hill, restorer of one of the

few surviving type A gun turrets, loaned me several photographs, some of which he had

acquired from Frank Lanning.

Jenny Woodall loaned me the logbooks of her father, Robin Lind ay eale, Boulton

Paul test pilot, which turned up several previously un uspected fact.

In the ten years or more that I have pent researching the history of the Defiant and

the Roc, there have been many people who have upplied information or photographs,

and I am sure I must have missed some from the e acknowledgements. Even if, regret-

fully, I have not included their name, they do also have my thanks.

Contents

Introduction

THE TURRET FIGHTER CONCEPT

Alec Brew 2002

part of this publication

may be reproduced or transmitted in any form

or by any means, electronic or mechani ai,

including photocopy, recording, or any infor-

mation storage and retrieval system, without

permission in writing from the publishers.

British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication

Data

A catalogue record for this book i available

from the British Library.

ISB

61264976

IN SERVICE

SPECIFI ATIO

F.9/35

THE BLA KBURN RO

108

121

127

130

135

142

145

151

153

156

157

158

THE DEFIA T DAY FIGHTER

NIGHT FIGHTING

NEW TURRET FIGHTER

FURTHER NIGHT FIGHTING

RADAR COUNTERMEASURES

AIR- EA RE CUE DEFIANTS

TRAI I GO

DEFIANT

DEFIA T TARGET TUG

EXPERIME TAL DEFIANT

LATE URVIVING DEFIANTS AND ROCS

CO CLUSIONS

Appendix

Defiant Construction

Defiants Lost in Aerial Combat

Defiant Victories in Aerial Combat

Appendix III

Index

Typeset by Naomi Lunn

Printed and bound in Great Britain by

Bookcraft Ltd

CHAPTER ONE

Introduction

The Boulton Paul Defiant and the Black-

burn Roc represent the only operational

aircraft

be produced to a novel form of

fighting aircraft concept, the turret fight-

er. The Roc was only used briefly by oper-

ational quadrons, and saw very little

action, and the much longer career of the

Defiant has been surrounded by many

myths almost since it first fired its guns in

anger. Many of the stories about how the

Defiant came about, and how it performed

in action, are spurious, but the aircraft

undoubtedly carved its own novel niche in

British aviation history.

The turret fighter was rather more than

just a fighter with a gun turret: it sprang

from a fairly simple concept relating to the

division of responsibilities in a fighting

aeroplane. To put it in simple terms, the

pilot should point the aircraft, and a gun-

ner should point the guns. On the face of

it there was a great deal of commonsense

in this idea, since a pilot could really not

be expected to fly his aircraft and aim his

guns at the same time, unless the guns

were fixed to fire in the direction he wa

flying. This meant that he could only fire

when the target was directly ahead, and it

also meant that against a ground target or

a slow-moving aircraft he could only fire

for a few seconds, and would himself pre-

sent a no-deflection target for return fire.

If, on the other hand, the guns were fitted

a movable mounting, to be aimed by a

separate gunner, they could be brought to

bear on the target for a far greater period of

time. A gunner would also find it easier to

clear stoppages and to reload the guns.

This was the thinking when guns were

first attached to aircraft before World War

1, and every gun-carrying aircraft that was

produced until just after the tart of the

war featured a two-man crew, pilot and

gunner. The main two to enter service in

an offensive role with the Royal Flying

Corps were the FE 2 and the Vickers Cun-

bus; these were single-engined pushers in

which the pilot sat just behind a gunner in

a nose 'turret', the gunner being armed

with one or more machine guns that he

could aim through the whole of the foward

hemisphere.

This first flowering of the turret fighter

concept was superseded by the single- eat,

fixed-gun fighter. These single-seat

'scouts' were faster and more manoeu-

vrable, ami made 'hort work of the lum-

bering two-'eaters. Only at night, where

speed and agility were not so important,

were the two-seaters just as useful as the

single-seaters.

After the end of the war there was still

a feeling in certain quarters that the sin-

gle-seat fighter had not proved itself

again t the threat of a large close forma-

tion of heavy bombers. Many influential

people were convinced that the concen-

trated defensive fire from the many

machine guns in such a formation would

prove too much for single-seaters attack-

ing one by one, and presenting a no-

deflection target as they aimed their own

puny armament of two machine guns. The

only answer would be for the fighters to

attack in formation, and as the fighter

pilots could not be expected to maintain

formation and aim their guns at the same

time, these responsibilities would have to

be divided.

Fourteen years were then to elapse, from

the time when the idea of dividing respon-

sibility fir t emerged, until its realization,

when first orders were received for the

Boulton Paul Defiant and the Blackburn

Roc 'turret fighters' (these were in fact the

only ones to go into production). During

that time many specifications were issued,

several featuring novel armament arrange-

ments, and some prototypes were built,

before the definitive turret fighter specifi-

cation was decided upon.

New generations of turret fighter were

planned to follow on the Defiant and Roc,

but none wa' ever built, and the concept

died more quickly than the period of time

it took to come to fruition.

The Turret Fighter Concept

During the 1930s, aircraft construction

underwent a radical change. The fabric-

covered biplane finally gave way

the all-

metal monoplane, incorporating innova-

tions such as flaps, variable-pitch

propellers and retractable undercarriages.

It was the airliner that led the way, in the

search for increased speed, first with the

Boeing 247 and then with the Douglas

DC-2; but newall-metal bombers were

also soon to emerge, such as the Martin B-

10 and the Tupolev A T-4.

It was clear that the traditional fighter

armament of just two rifle-calibre machine

guns would be insufficient to destroy these

new bombers as firing passes became short-

er, and there ensued intense debate as to

how a new generation offighters should be

armed. This led to two basic line or

thought: to some it was simply a case of

increasing the number of guns from two to

four, ix or eight so that the weight of fire

on each firing pass would be correspond-

ingly increased; others proposed adding

cannon to the fighter's arsenal.

Yet other experts believed that a single

fighter attacking a formation of bombers

would be unlikely to survive their com-

bined defensive firepower, and fighters

would therefore have to attack in forma-

tion. However, since from the pilot's point

of view aiming and keeping formation

were not compatible, fighters would have

to be equipped with guns on movable

mountings, and these would have to be

operated by a second crew member.

The Lewis gun wa promoted in Creat

Britain by the Belgian F company, and

Horatio Barber, formerly of the Aeronau-

tical yndicate, Hendon, was assigned to

design a movable mounting for it. The task

of fitting it to a Crahame-White Boxkite

for trials was given to twenty-one-year-old

John Dudley North, newly employed

Crahame-White Aircraft on the recom-

mendation of Barber, for whom he had

formerly worked. North devi ed a gunner's

seat beneath the lower wing, and the air-

craft was demonstrated to the British

Army at Bisley, with Marcus Manton as

pilot, and a Belgian officer, Lt tilling-

worth, firing the gun at a 25sq ft (2.3sq m)

ground target. Despite 280 hits from 470

rounds fired from an altitude of 400-500ft

(12 -150m), the Army decided that the

Lewis gun was a waste of time.

The first military aircraft that North

designed for Crahame-White also featured

a machine gun on a movable mounting,

but a Colt-Browning in the nose of a two-

seat pusher, the Crahame-White Type 6.

The design of this was in response to an

Admiralty requirement for an aircraft car-

rying a gun for offensive purposes, possibly

the first such official requirement. Several

manufacturers were interested in the pos-

sible order that would re ult, and all the

designs they produced featured the same

basic layout, namely a single-engined

pusher, with a pilot and a gunner in the

nacelle in front of the wing, with the gun-

ner operating a machine gun on a movable

mounting. The pusher arrangement

seemed the only one that could give the

gunner a free field of fire in the forward

hemisphere.

orth's Crahame-White Type 6 was nor

like the others: it had the engine in the

forward nacelle, in front of the wings, with

the gunner and pilot in tandem behind it,

and the 90hp Austro-Daimler engine's

drive shaft ran under the cockpits, and

drove the reduction gear to turn the pro-

peller that revolved on the upper longeron

of the triangular girder structure holding

the tail. A Colt machine gun was sited

above the fully enclosed engine on a

mounting that allowed it to be moved 180

degrees horizontally and 5 degrees in ele-

vation. The Type 6 appeared at the 1913

Olympia Aero Show, and drew much com-

ment because of the gun; but the aircraft

proved to be seriou'!y underpowered. On

its only attempt at flight it took several

men, who had been holding the aircraft

back while Louis oel ran up the engine,

Early Gun Carriers

In the early day of arming military air-

craft, movable mountings and separate

gunners were the only system considered.

The first time a machine gun was fired

from an aircraft was on 7 June 1912, the

aircraft being a Wright Model B of the

United States Army; the gunner was Cap-

tain Charles de

Chamdler, and he sat

,llongside the pilot cradling the Lewis gun

on his lap.

The Grahame-White Type 6 gun carrier designed by J.D. North in

1913.

armed with a Colt-Browning

machine gun on a movable mount in the gunner's forward cockpit.

THE T RRET FIGHTER COl CEPT

THE TURRET FIGHTER CO CEPT

to reverse their effort into pushing, to get

the aircraft

moving.

It accelerated

very

slowly, and Louis Noel nearly ran out of

airfield; he just managed to haul it into the

air a the boundary hedge approached, but

the Type 6 flopped into the next field, and

flight was never attempted again.

Later the same year

A.v.

Roc built his

Type 508 to the same requirement, but

with a more conventional engine arrange-

ment. The Ohp Gnome rotary was placed

at the rear of the fu elage nacelle, with the

two crewmen in the nose. The aircraft wa

displayed on the Avro tand at the 1914

Olympia how, but it was also clearly

underpowered and there is no evidence

that it

ever

flew, or had a machine gun fit-

ted.

J. D. North' second attempt to fulfil the

requirement was the Grahame-White

Type 11 warplane; it u ed the same layout,

and was also on display at the 1914

Olympia Aero Show, where it drew much

praise for its excellent workmanship. It

was fitted with a 100hp Gnome at the rear

of the nacelle, like the

Avro

50 . Howev-

er, once again it i doubtful that a gun wa

ever

actually fitted, and when flight was

attempted the Type II was shown

very unstable, probably due

the short

tail moment, and it was abandoned.

Slightly more successful was the Sop-

with Gunbus,

evolved

from a seaplane

ordered by Greece. It appearance resulted

Technical Information for Early Gun Carriers

Grahame-White

Type

RAF

FE2a

Avro

508

Sopwith

Gunbus

Vickers

EF81

Engine

Gun

Span

Length

Top weight

A-Daimler

90hp

Colt

42ft 6in

(12.95m)

33ft 9in

(1029m)

2.9501b

(1.338kgl

70mph

1113kph)

340ft/min

(104m/min)

8min 10sec

Green

100hp

Lewis

47ft lOin

(14.57ml

32ft 3.5in

(9.83m)

2.6801b

(1.216kg)

80.3mph

(129kph)

Gnome

80hp

Lewis

44ft

(13.41m)

26ft 9in

(8.15m)

1.6801b

(762kg)

65mph

(105kph)

Sunbeam

150hp

Lewis

50ft

(1524m)

32ft 6in

(9.91m)

Wolseley

80hp

Maxim

40ft

(12.19m)

27.5ft

(l1.4m)

2.6601b

(1.207kg)

70mph

(113kph)

450ft/min

(137m/min)

Top speed

Climb

to 3.000ft

(914m)

80mph

1129kph)

in a follow-up order for ix landplane ver-

sions powered by a IOOhp

nome

Monosoupape and fitted with a single

Lewis gun for the gunner in the nose of the

nacelle; however, these had not been

delivered when World War I brake out.

The six aircraft were taken

over

by the

Royal

aval Air

Service,

and a further

thirty were ordered to be fitted with the

150hp Sunbeam Crusader engine; but only

seventeen were completed, and few of

these

ever

had their engine fitted. A few

saw

service

briefly at Dunkirk.

An alternative layout to the single-

engined pusher was thought to be a

twin-engined aircraft, in which the nose

would be free to carry the gunner. Thi

design had the added advantage of dou-

bling the power, an important considera-

tion for lifting a gun and its ammunition as

well as two crew-members, and it also

made possible the fitment of a heavier

weapon than a single machine gun. Vick-

ers began the construction of thei r FB.7

after the war began, an unr markabl

twin-engined biplane, except for the fa t

that the gunner in the nose was armed

with a Vicker quick-firing one-pounder.

A dozen were ordered immediat Iy after

the fl igh t of the prototype inA ugu t 1915,

be built by Darracq; but the 100hp

Gnome Monosoupape engines were in

short supply, and no others were available

with sufficient power. The two 80hp

Renault fitted to the first aircraft were

madequate, and the aircraft could not

meet its pecification. Vicker asked for

the remainder to be cancelled, and this

was agreed by the War Office.

The next Vickers twin-engined fighter

was far more compact, though powered by

the ame 100hp Gnome Monosoupape

engines as the first FB. 7. Furthermore the

FB. was armed, not with the one-pounder

cannon, but with only a single Lewis gun

in the nose, and the appearance of single-

cngined fighters with interrupter gear per-

mitting forward fire, rather superseded the

design. At around the same time, Bristol

built their ITA, a much larger twin with

two 120hp Beardmore engines and a much

heavier armament. The nose gunner had

two Lewi guns, and there was a second

gunner with a single gun in the dorsal posi-

tion for rear defence.

World War I Turret Fighters

Only two of the early gun carriers can be

considered a success, namely the Royal

Aircraft Factory FE.2 and the Vickers

Gunbus, and both had long gestation peri-

ods.

the 120hp Beardmore. The aircraft was re-

designated the FE.2a, and twelve were

ordered at the outbreak of war, the fir t fly-

ing in January 1915. They all saw service

in France, and were amongst the few effec-

tive

gun-carrying aircraft that the RF

had. When it became clear to the military

mind that a gun-carrying aeroplane was an

essential ingredient of mod rn warfare, the

FE.2 was ordered in large numbers. light

change were made to the design as a result

of experiences with the FE.2a, and also to

ease manufacture; the new

version

became

the FE.2b.

On 4 October 1915 the first FE.2b,

520 I , flew for the first time at Mousehold

Airfield, Norwich, where it had been built

by Boulton

Paul Ltd. The FE.2b was the

first effe

tive

'turret fighter', and in fact for

a while, official instructions were that it

should be referred to a the 'Fighter Mark

1'; but this wa rarely done, and it was

more widely known, and with some affec-

tion, as the 'Fee'. 5201 joined

o. 16

Squadron in France on 30 October 1915.

The first squadron to be fully equipped

with FE.2bs was 0.20, and many units of

the new fighter were to operate

over

the

Western Front, providing protection for

reconnaissance machines, and partially

redressing the imbalance created by the

appearance of the Fokker E.lll mono-

plane. The gunner in the nose was usually

equipped with two Lewis machine gun

that could be fitted on a variety of

mountings, ometimes being

moved

from

one to another, to face the immediate

threat.

The main disadvantage was that the

FE.2b was defenceless to the rear, and

inevitably the Germans quickly found this

out; to counter this threat, a pillar mount

was

devised

so that th gunner could fire

back

over

the top wing. But to do this he

had to tand on the box containing spare

ammunition drum, and was totally

exposed to the slipstream; because of the

precariousne s of this position he was later

provided with a safety cable, one end

attached to the floor of h is 'turret' and the

other to his stout leather belt. More than

one wounded gunner is known to have

fallen out of his cockpit during combat

manoeuvre: for instance, on one ortie

the o. 1

quadran FE.2b flown by Lt

Frank Barnar I had been attacked by a

number of German fighters, and his gun-

ner, Lt ES. Rankin, had been hit and had

fallen from his cockpit. Barnard had

climbed into the forward cockpit, leaving

the Fee to fly itself, and had somehow

hauled Rankin back on board; he had then

climbed back into his own cockpit and

flown back to base. He tore his arm mus-

cle hauling his gunner ba k on board, and

had to be admitted to hospital; but unfor-

tunately his efforts were in vain, as Rankin

later died of hi wound.

The Royal Aircraft Factory FE.2

At the Factory the chief designer, Geoffrey

de Havilland, did not design a brand-new

aircraft as a gun carrier, but instead adapt-

ed the FE.2 that had been around in vari-

ous forms since 1911. It was fitted with a

70hp Renault engine, its undercarriage

was strengthened, and it wa fitted with a

movable mounting on the nose of the

nacelle so it could carry a belt-fed Maxim

machine gun. By 1914 a new

version

of the

FE.2 was produced with a much more sub-

stantial structure, with a redesigned

nacelle in which the gunner had a Lewis

gun, and the pilot sat I in (45cm) higher

behind him. The aircraft was intended to

be powered by the 100hp Green engine,

but this heavy unit was later replaced by

The Grahame-

White Type 11

Warplane

J.D.

North in 1914

with the same

layout as his

Type

but

initially the pilot

occupied the

front seat.

gun

was never fitted

because of the

aircraft's

unsatisfactory

flying

characteristics.

The first production FE.2b, serial 5201, built by Boulton

Paul Ltd at Norwich, and flown for the first time

on 4 October 1915.

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