Brand:
Corgi
Model: AA39306, Boulton Paul Defiant Mk.I N1801 / PS-Y Nightfighter 'Coimbatore
II' RAF No.264 (Madras Presidency) Squadron, Colerne, Wiltshire, Nightfighter
Aces, Pilot – Flying Officer F.D Hughes, Gunner – Sergeant F Gash
Material: Die-cast
Type: Military Aircraft
Scale: 1/72
Length: 14.9cm, Wingspan:16.6cm, Height:4.7cm
[Stock Available. Brand new and unused]
Features:
- Detailed Crew Figures
- Optional Undercarriage Down
- Rotatable Propeller(s)/Rotor(s)
- Rotatable
Turret(s)
Background:
Although the Boulton Paul Defiant fought alongside Spitfires and Hurricanes
during the air battles above the Dunkirk evacuation beaches and the Battle of
Britain which followed, it enjoys nothing of the widespread public recognition
its two contemporaries could boast. Surprisingly, the Defiant actually made its
first flight and RAF squadron introduction quite some time after both the
Hurricane and Spitfire, something which may explain its limited success when
used in the day fighter role during WWII. The idea behind the Defiant’s unusual
design came from inter-war thinking that future air combat would be fought by
fast, heavily armed bomber formations, which would not need the protection of
dedicated fighter cover.
In order to combat this, the Defiant, equipped with its quad dorsal turret
mounted machine gun armament, could engage these bombers with a beam attack,
similar to how battleships might engage, or from below, where the bomber was
most vulnerable and where the fighter could concentrate the firepower of its
four .303 in Browning machine guns. This same thinking also dictated that this
new bomber defence fighter would not need forward firing armament, as the high
closing speed of modern monoplane fighters would render frontal attacks
useless, so the Defiant incredibly ended up being a fighter aircraft with no
forward firing armament at all.
Having a similar profile to the Hawker Hurricane which preceded it into
service, the Defiant initially scored some significant combat successes against
Luftwaffe aircraft, even the much vaunted Messerschmitt Bf 109 fighter.
Attacking the Defiant as they would a Hurricane, Messerschmitt pilots soon
realised their mistake, as they lined up to press home their flank attacks,
only to be met by a hail of bullets. The shock of this misidentification was
soon relayed to other pilots and the Defiant would soon become easy prey for
the highly manoeuvrable Messerschmitts, which would attack the turret fighter
from the front or from below, where the British aircraft simply could not
defend itself.Withdrawn from the day fighter role during the Battle of Britain,
the Defiant would go on to prove itself a more than capable nightfighter, where
its crews helped to establish Britain’s fledgling nightfighter force, claiming
many Luftwaffe victims in the process. Nocturnal Defiants were later equipped
with airborne interception radar equipment to increase their effectiveness and
later still, used to carry powerful electronic countermeasures equipment, as
the air war took something of a clandestine turn. Ultimately though, continued
development of the Luftwaffe’s bomber force saw the Defiant becoming
increasingly ineffective, with the type finally being withdrawn to secondary
roles from 1942 onwards. Despite this, the Boulton Paul Defiant definitely
remains one of the more interesting aircraft of the Second World War.
For a crew to attain the coveted status of air ‘Ace’ whilst operating the
Boulton Paul Defiant turret fighter, they must have been an incredibly cohesive
team, something which Flying Officer Frederick Desmond ‘Hawkeye’ Hughes and his
gunner Sergeant F Gash most definitely were. During the height of the Battle of
Britain, the pair claimed two Dornier Do17 bombers destroyed during the same
sortie, however, these would prove to be their only successes during daylight
operations. With the Defiant becoming increasingly vulnerable to enemy fighter
attack, the type was transferred to night defence duties, where it was to prove
much more successful. Searching for targets in the dark, an extra pair of eyes
and the flexible firing positions afforded by the powered turret soon began to
pay dividends, as German night raiders were intercepted and destroyed with
increasing regularity.
Boulton Paul Defiant N1801 was the first aircraft specifically allocated to
pilot Desmond Hughes and as such, he was allowed to embellish it with his own
personal markings. A son of the small coastal town of Donaghadee in County
Down, Northern Ireland, Hughes painted the Red Hand of Ulster in a white shield
on his aircraft’s port-side engine cowling, which also sported five victory
markings painted under the canopy. As one of the five RAF squadrons funded by
India’s Madras Presidency, N1801 proudly marked this association by also
carrying the name ‘Coimbatore II’ on the engine cowling, making this a highly
distinctive nightfighter. From the memoirs of Desmond Hughes, he describes how
he used this aircraft until the squadron upgraded to the more powerful Defiant
Mk.II, but how N1801 was extremely reliable, with its Merlin engine never so
much as coughing at him during operation.
Frederick Desmond Hughes would go on to post further success in the night air
war flying Beaufighters and Mosquitos, eventually ending the war as one of the
RAF’s most decorated airmen and able to boast a victory tally of 18.5 enemy
aircraft destroyed. Adding further interest to the exploits of this exceptional
airman, another story associated with Hughes is that he was one of the first
WWII airmen to take his pet dog on an operational sortie with him. His beloved
mongrel ‘Scruffy’ was dressed in flying overalls for warmth during his unusual
trip and is thought to have enjoyed at least one night sortie in an RAF
Beaufighter.
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