A Boulton Paul Defiant NF I night fighter at the RAF Museum, Cosford, Shropshire, 8 July 2020. Designed as a day fighter, the whole concept of the specification the Defiant was intended to meet was seriously flawed whereby all the aircraft’s (rather puny) armament of four light machine guns was located in a rear turret with no forward facing guns at all. The Defiant’s pilot simply could not aim his aircraft at an enemy - the antithesis of what a fighter should do. All the Defiant could do was wait to be attacked.

Nonetheless, early sorties proved encouraging as Bf109’s would launch a conventional attack on a Defiant formation from the tail, only to be met by a hail of (admittedly lightweight) bullets and several were shot down as a result – although subsequently it has been revealed that the Defiant’s kill claims were wildly over-optimistic: Defiants flew in a diamond five formation so when attacked by a Bf109, if it were shot down, each pilot would claim the kill as his own, convinced he had been the only pilot to shoot at it! Once Luftwaffe pilots realised the Defiant had no forward-firing armament they would attack it from ahead with the result that the Defiants were slaughtered.

In particular, the aircraft was a death trap for the gunners as there was no realistic chance of them escaping from the rear turret if an aircraft was seriously hit. There is the tale of one Defiant gunner, when posted to Bomber Command as a tail gunner, was over-joyed because he now had a 40% chance of survival!