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Aviation History
1943
1943 - 0505.PDF
FEBRUARY 25TH, 1943 heir Characteristics BOULTON PAUL DEFIANT Top speed : About 300 m.p.h. INCREASING TAPER DIMENSIONS OF Span Length Height .. .. Wing area DEFIANT . 39ft. Sin . 35ft. Oin . 12ft. Oin 2SOsq.ft tWHEN the Boulton Paul Dehant first went into operational service it carried with it a very useful but short-lived weapon of war—that of surprise. One day, near Dunkirk, a squadron of these, then new, two-seater fighters met a large number of Huns and pro- ceeded to shoot down no fewer than 37 of them with their four-gun power-operated Boulton Paul turrets. But after that initial massacre the Hun knew the impor- tant difference between a Spitfire or a Hurricane which, like their own single-engined fighters, had to aim itself in order to get an adversary in its gun sights, and a Defiant which could shoot to kill from almost any angle. They also discovered that the Defiant was not so fast, by a telling margin, as their own Me 109 and He 113 single-seater fighters so that, having used up its surprise value, the Defiants no longer held any advantage, at any rate in daylight. They were found useful, however, as night fighters where top speed is not always so important, until . subsequent developments in the technique of night-fighting outmoded them. When it first appeared, the Defiant was powered by a Rolls Royce Merlin II with a maximum output of 1,030 h.p. at 3,000 r.p.m. at 16,250ft. and a cruising output of 990 h.p. at 2,600 r.p.m. at 12,000ft. At this time the performance figures were not released for publication, but later versions of the Defiant were fitted with the increas- ingly powerful editions of the famous Merlin so that in its final form it was capable of something in the region of 300 m.p.h.—perhaps a shade over. But no two-seater, carrying the added weight and incurring the additional drag of a gun turret can compete with a modern single- seater fighter in the matter of that vital top speed factor; with the same engine it is bound to be many miles per hour slower in spite of retractable turret fairings. Structurally the Defiant is all-metal with a flush-riveted stressed-skin covering. Its wings have an unusually wide centre-section of constant thickness but tapering slightly in chord. The fin and rudder are triangular and the leading- edge of the tailplane sharply backswept. An additional recognition feature is the position of the radiator under the fuselage amidships. Retractable wireless masts extend below the fuselage when in flight.
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