The new acquisition is painted in the colours of 264 Squadron, who were the first to take the new fighter in 1939. "So the Defiant wasn’t as bad as people make out," he points out. The gun turret, which had proved to be lethal when attacking bombers from beneath or the side, also led to increased drag and hindered maneuverability.īrocklehurst, however, points to a training exercise in which 264 Squadron Leader Philip Hunter flew a Defiant that out maneuvered by the then Flying Officer (later Wing Commander) Stanford Tuck in a Spitfire. (In reality and not often mentioned, the turret could be rotated into the forward position and the guns could then be fired by the pilot via an electrical gun button on his control column).
There seems to be consensus on the idea that the Defiant, which had no fixed forward firing machine guns, was ill-suited to daylight fighter-to-fighter combat. “There were Hurricane and Spitfire Squadrons that took off to the east and west of Hawkinge that were hit on the climb and had heavy losses too. Any Squadron doing that would have had heavy losses. “A lot of people have blamed the Defiant but 141 Squadron took off south over the channel, climbing as they headed towards Calais. “There are a lot of facts that have never been properly written about that day and I think we can redress the balance,” he adds. “They call it ‘the slaughter of the innocents’,” he says of the infamous incident on July 19 1940, when the Defiants of 141 Squadron at Hawkinge were effectively wiped out by Messerschmitt Bf109 fighters. Yet Brocklehurst, whose dedication to telling the story of the Battle of Britain saw him receive his MBE in 2013 (backed by personal letters from eleven Battle of Britain veterans), says he is looking forward to telling its story. “It means we can properly tell the story of the Defiant, which is much maligned – often unfairly.”ĭebate still rages about the merits of a two-man fighter originally designed as a “bomber destroyer” and of the tactics used by Fighter Command in its brief deployment. “It will be the only display of its kind anywhere in the world,” says Brocklehurst. One of the Spitfires will be moving outside to join the static display of three Hurricanes to leave space for a line-up of the Defiant, the Hurricane and the Spitfire in Battle of Britain colours. The collection at the Kent Battle of Britain Museum is a treasure trove of period artefacts and aircraft © Kent Battle of Britain MuseumThe museum has had a “bit of juggling” to do to accommodate the new arrival, which is due to arrive in early February 2015. The faithful recreation of the Boulton Paul Defiant turreted fighter is one of several historic aircraft built by volunteers of the Boulton Paul Association, which had a workshop and museum at the company’s site near Wolverhampton until the factory was put up for sale by its new owners.įollowing months of uncertainty which could have seen the Defiant and other aircraft in the collection scrapped, the iconic fighter is going to be displayed at the Kent museum on the former RAF base at Hawkinge, where Defiants of 141 Squadron flew one of the last fateful missions of the fighter during the Battle of Britain.Ĭhairman of the Museum, Dave Brocklehurst MBE, who has volunteered there for nearly 40 years, says he is “delighted” with the permanent acquisition, which he expects will allow the museum to commemorate the two fighter squadrons that flew operationally with the Defiant in the Battle of Britain.īoth 264 and 141 Squadrons flew Defiants during the early stages of the Battle of Britain. The Boulton Paul Defiant was lovingly built by the Boulton Paul Association © Photo Mark Ansell 2013 Courtesy Kent Battle of Britain Museum / The Boulton Paul AssociationA World War Two fighter that played a small but often misunderstood part in the Battle of Britain has been saved from the scrap heap by the Kent Battle of Britain Trust at Hawkinge in Kent.
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