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  1. #51
    Did they actually make such a Dud in such numbers????? --Defiants__
    " The innovative but heavy Boulton-Paul Defiant was withdrawn from daylight operations following the tragedy of 141 Squadron on 19 July 1940, when six out of its nine Defiants were shot down in fighter-vs-fighter combat. Dowding was very well aware about combat experiences with this aircraft and supported the decision of its removal from first-line strength."
    --" The Defiant, after some striking initial successes, proved to be too expensive in use against fighters and was relegated to night work and to the attack of unescorted bombers. It had two serious disabilities; firstly, the brain flying the aeroplane was not the brain firing the guns: the guns could not fire within 16 degrees of the line of flight of the aeroplane and the gunner was distracted from his task by having to direct the pilot through the communication set. Secondly, the guns could not be fired below the horizontal, and it was therefore necessary to keep below the enemy. When beset by superior numbers of fighters the best course to pursue was to form a descending spiral, so that one or more Defiants should always be in a position to bring effective fire to bear. Such tactics were, however, essentially defensive, and the formation sometimes got broken up before they could be adopted. In practice, the Defiants suffered such heavy losses that it was necessary to relegate them to night fighting, or to the attack of unescorted bombers.

    Read somewhere that "night fighters" were mostly a name, at night at this stage of the war most were just flying blindly and hardly ever saw or shot a target....

  2. #52
    Retired SOH Administrator Henry's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by gera View Post
    Did they actually make such a Dud in such numbers????? --Defiants__:isadizzy:

    what????
    Yup!
    and after their big failure and re designated
    they were actually successful
    H

  3. #53
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    The Defiant was nowhere near as much of a dud as history makes it out to be, that's the thing.

    It failed totally as a day fighter, being too heavy, too limited in manoeuvrability, too slow and not having forward-firing weapons. Two squadrons were decimated during the Battle of Britain and the type was withdrawn from the front line, but as a stable platform with two crew and the four gun turret, it was a very capable night fighter. They were not ultimately replaced until radar-equipped aircraft came along. It actually paid a far greater role in the war than it is remembered for.

  4. #54
    Quote Originally Posted by IanP View Post
    The Defiant was nowhere near as much of a dud as history makes it out to be, that's the thing.

    It failed totally as a day fighter, being too heavy, too limited in manoeuvrability, too slow and not having forward-firing weapons. Two squadrons were decimated during the Battle of Britain and the type was withdrawn from the front line, but as a stable platform with two crew and the four gun turret, it was a very capable night fighter. They were not ultimately replaced until radar-equipped aircraft came along. It actually paid a far greater role in the war than it is remembered for.
    hummmm, hummmm,.......I take that with a grain of salt.:mixedsmi:

  5. #55
    Retired SOH Administrator Henry's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by gera View Post
    hummmm, hummmm,.......I take that with a grain of salt.:mixedsmi:
    Ya want fries with that?


    During the winter Blitz on London of 1940–41, the Defiant equipped four squadrons, shooting down more enemy aircraft than any other type.<sup id="cite_ref-6" class="reference"></sup> The turret-fighter concept was not immediately discarded and the fitting of Defiant-style turrets to Beaufighter and Mosquito night fighters was trialled to enable these aircraft to duplicate these methods, but the effect on performance proved drastic, and the idea was abandoned.The Defiant Mk II model was fitted with the AI Mk IV airborne interception radar and a Merlin XX engine. A total of 207 Mk II Defiants were built. After trials in 1940 with the School of Army Co-operation to assess its capabilities in that role, the Defiant was re-evaluated as a high-speed gunnery trainer, with the Air Ministry agreeing to keep the production lines open. The Defiant was removed from combat duties in 1942 and, thereafter, used for training, target towing, ECM and air sea rescue. The Defiant was used to carry the Mandrel noise jammer to combat the German Freya early warning radar.<sup id="cite_ref-Pricep124-52_8-0" class="reference"></sup> In the air-sea rescue role, the Defiant was equipped with a pair of under-wing pods that contained dinghies. A further 140 Defiant Mk III aircraft were built; this model lacked the dorsal turret and was used as a target tug. Many of the surviving Mk I and Mk II Defiants also had their turrets removed.
    In this final target towing variant, the Defiant ended up with a number of overseas assignments with both the RAF and Fleet Air Arm in the Middle East, Africa and India.<sup id="cite_ref-Bowyer_p.270_0-1" class="reference"></sup>Further deployments occurred to Canada where the Defiant fulfilled a role as both a target tug and trainer with the British Commonwealth Air Training Plan.
    Defiants were also utilized for "special" work including tactical evaluations with the RAF Gunnery Research Unit and Air Fighter Development Unit (AFDU) at Farnborough. On 11 May 1945, Martin-Baker used a Defiant, DR944, to test their first ejection seat with dummy launches.<sup id="cite_ref-Bowyer_p.270_0-2" class="reference"></sup>
    The last operational use of Defiants was in India, where they were used as target tugs.<sup id="cite_ref-bharat-rakshak_9-0" class="reference"></sup>
    H
    <sup id="cite_ref-bharat-rakshak_9-0" class="reference"></sup>

  6. #56
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    Early in the war, "night fighters" were basically Spitfires and Hurricanes sent off into the darkness to find and shoot down an intruder. They rarely if ever found them and even if they did, kills were phenomenally rare. Large parts of the problem were two big issues:

    1) Simply flying at night requires full concentration.
    2) The glare of the exhaust stacks did a pretty good job of masking enemy aircraft (especially when what you were normally looking for was the glow from their exhaust, and yours was brighter!)

    The Defiant got around this in two ways; having the second set of eyes to search, freeing up the pilot to actually fly the thing, and also he faced backwards, so wasn't seeing the exhaust stacks.

    Another aircraft used, for exactly the same reasons, was the Bristol Blenheim light bomber. Obsolete as a bomber, but with lots of eyes to find night intruders and a turret to shoot at them, removing the necessity for flying maneouvres that lost sight of the target. This also freed up the (primarily) black Hurricanes and (far fewer) black Spitfires to be painted brown and green and redeployed to far more appropriate daytime use.

  7. #57
    Retired SOH Administrator Henry's Avatar
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    here's the Narfuk deal
    i knew there was one!
    Boulton Pauls aircraft were flown out of Mousehold Heath in Norwich - an area which became the first Norwich Airport
    The main reason they were hopeful is the enemy
    thought they were hurricanes and would sneak up behind them bad idea!
    if they had forward firing guns in the wings and the turret
    i believe they would have been more successful
    anyone up to do one?
    beers on me
    H

  8. #58
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    Give me many, many, years to learn gmax and then I'll have to learn an entirely new package to do one for whatever sim we're flying by then.

    As anyone who glanced at my latest scenery thread might have noticed ([plug]
    http://www.sim-outhouse.com/sohforum...ad.php?t=16924 [/plug]), Defiants as night fighters were based in quite a few places around the country during their time in service.

  9. #59
    Quote Originally Posted by IanP View Post
    Give me many, many, years to learn gmax and then I'll have to learn an entirely new package to do one for whatever sim we're flying by then.

    As anyone who glanced at my latest scenery thread might have noticed ([plug]
    http://www.sim-outhouse.com/sohforum...ad.php?t=16924 [/plug]), Defiants as night fighters were based in quite a few places around the country during their time in service.
    I think there was one in FS9..

  10. #60
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    There was one in CFS2, but it doesn't seem to have been ported (yet) into FS9.

    http://www.pavaservices.com/cfs/P82.htm

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