The Night Fighter That Couldn’t Catch Its Prey | Boulton Paul P.31 Bittern [Aircraft Overview #62] 

Another fine video from Rex's Hangar....This 80 year old Navy flying Shoe🇺🇸 thanks you once again 👍‍

Play the first got here said the P61 couldn’t catch its pray either and it’s a night fighter by the way up here in Reading Pennsylvania at the Reading Airport they’re restoring one to flying condition

@Kirk Wolfe you forgot one category construction Material

Please do the Boulton Paul P 92, twin lawn mower engined , turreted with 4 cannons, fixed under carriage bomber .. ?? ... interceptor ? or do the P96 , replacement for the Defiant.

It wasn't a "saying" in the raf, but a direct quote from a speech Stanley Baldwin delivered in the House, which in turn was based on the theories published by Italian general Giulio Douhet, and was commonly shared all over the world in these years. (1928- 1936) Just after that fightes like the I- 15, Hawker Hurricane, D520, and Bf 109 were able to outrun and outgun bombers like the Do- 17. Together with RADAR and ballistic calculators for the FlaK introduced in 1938, small fleets of bombers lost their potential to perform precision bombing in daylight. Night bombing was assumed ineffective anyway. (navigation, not night fighters)

Well Boulton Paul did up it to four on the defiant and that did make a decent night fighter until the Beaufighter turned up.

@@bigblue6917 The Defiant was an excellent night fighter Well once they got the radar right

Machine guns and ammunition weigh quite a lot. The engines available at the time had their work cut out overcoming drag and gravity.

@@loveofmangos001 The main problem was the Defiant's single Merlin engine struggled with the extra weight of the early radar along with all the drag from the turret. The Beaufighter with it's twin Hercules engines had plenty of power, more speed and a lot more firepower (4 x 20mm cannons). Although the idea of angling the cannons upwards in a "Schraege Musik" arrangement as on later German nightfighters was never exploited.

At least the Defiant had one thing that the germans or several prewar British prototypes lacked: the ability to fire not just upwards, but sideways, backwards & diagonally. Until it was realized she had no head on firepower, the Luftwaffe were genuinely alarmed by the Defiant.

That would have led to a disaster for Britain in WW2. Every twin engine fighter except for the Lighting failed against single engine fighters. Nations like France, Germany, the Netherlands, Italy and Japan burned a lot of resources in twin engine fighters, substancially reducing the overall number of fighters built for their air forces. The USA was the only country with the resources to maintain large scale production and service of a twin fighter as expensive as the Lighting side by side with a large fleet of single engine fighters. Without these resources it would have weakend the US air force too, even though it was a true high performance machine.

It wasn't a very good design, it doesn't matter how much horsepower you poured in.

@@Itsjustme-Justme Mosquito, Beaufighter, Black Widow...

@@Caseytify Multi role aircraft, not air superiority fighters. Every nation's primary fighters were single engines. Those aircraft you mentioned are superb with the Mossie being tied for #1 on my favs and the Beaufighter one of those great attackers.

Of the big 4-engine bombers the Stirling was the worst by a country mile. I suppose we can cut it some slack because it was the first.

@@himoffthequakeroatbox4320 The Stirling was hampered by the Air Ministry demanding that it's wingspan be reduced to fit the RAF hangars of the time. If it had been produced in accordance with the original specifications, it would undoubtedly have been more successful. During the early days of WW2 a Super Stirling was designed with a ceiling height of over 30000 feet, but it never got off the drawing board. Oh well, what might have been.

There were multiple variations of the Stirling proposed by Shorts. They not only wanted to increase the wingspan - but even had the wings ready, as they proposed to use the wings from the Sunderland. The modification would therefore have been quick and cheap. The air ministry insisted on sticking to the spec, hampering the performance fatally. Shorts knew exactly how to make the Stirling better, but were not allowed to do so. When the Manchester failed and Avro proposed the four engine Lancaster, the air ministry dropped the 100ft limit. Hmmm…. Pragmatism due the the pressure of War? Or did someone have better lobbying contacts? The Stirling was in some ways an excellent aircraft, it had less vices and aerodynamic problems than the Halifax or Lancaster and was much easier to bail out of, it made a great glider tug - but it was basically hamstrung by the air ministry.

That will be AWESOME! One of the ugliest planes ever built.. yet beautiful. Go figure

@@guaporeturns9472 I love it. It's a rare oddball.

@@Ocrilat absolutely. I used to volunteer at WAAAM and helped in some aircraft restorations.

@@guaporeturns9472 The local air museum is restoring it. So during their 'WW2 Weekend' I can throw them a couple bucks and see how far they've gotten, plus enjoy the show. I've been bringing my niece since she was 6...and she's a WW2 nut now lol. Passing the torch. The show is a lot of fun...Mid-Atlantic Air Museum World War 2 Weekend in Reading Pennsylvania.

@@Ocrilat sweet

i see what u did there !! rascal ;-)

*I'm limited by the technology of my time*

Duralumin is a few years in the future. Aircraft advancement is arguably more about metallurgy than design. There is a subject for you Rex. I only know enough about it to know that I know nothing about it. You know a metalugist is the type of person who can look at a platinum blonde and tell if she is a virgin metal or a common ore... 🤔

So many of the problems at this time were due to a lack of engine power. Why is it slow? No power. Why is it weak? Not enough power to lift a stronger and heavier airframe. Why does it only have two 303 guns - Lewis guns at that, which had small ammo capacity? Because more or bigger guns would be too heavy. Why make a complicated moveable barbette system rather than a simple fixed Schraege Musik mounting? Because it doesn't have the power to carry forward-firing guns as well.

@@kellybreen5526nice 😂🎉👏🏼

And later on when deployed when escort fighters were absent. i.e as a night fighter, it performed quite well.

Same concept as the German Schräge Musik system but 15 years earlier. Credit where it's due!

Oblique anti bomber guns go back to WW1 with top wing mounted guns on biplanes which could be swiveled upwards, nothing is new under the sun. Rise of Flight has them for several models.

Appears that it's mostly self inflicted 😁

Just another British company churning out stodgy, sub-standard aircraft. The trend continued after the War and was also reflected in the British car industry.

Thinking the same

And sadly this isn't the only design dead-end that doctrine created.

@@obsidianjane4413 Didn’t stop the Mosquito.

@@thethirdman225 They almost did. Besides was the Mossie a dead end? Blind squirrells, broken clocks, etc.

@@obsidianjane4413 No they didn’t. They couldn’t. The RAF wanted a night fighter and they got one. Come to that, they had one with the Beaufighter.

@@thethirdman225 Go read up on the history of the Mosquito.

Why is it obvious? Constant chord, constant section wing, aielerons in the usual place. A perfectly reasonable shape for a lightweight wing.

A German trope too, when considering the drivetrain and engine of the Panther tank were designed for something 10 tons lighter. The Tiger I also, was the victim of 10+ tons of Weight Creep during the design process. The Meteor engine would likely have saved the Black Prince, as the engine did very well in the exceptionally heavy A39 Tortoise.

That is 'love' not 'live' can't type.

Clearly even the RAF were hedging their bets there XD

I read somewhere that it was because they where stuck in the last war. A smaller light gun means more bullets means more chance of hitting something important, and it only took 1 or 2 rifle rounds to down a plane. They never planned on metal aircraft, self sealing fuel tanks, and armored areas in planes.

@@mattbrocklehurst7980 Well in the 1920's such details as the latter had yet to become the norm', chiefly because engine power wasn't high enough yet.

I don't like them, they wet their nests. #obscurejoke

Yes but Twin Vipers and ugly as sin..... Brilliant!

It might be 'Drachinfell', but that wouldn't be 'Drachinifel'

There are various questions that have to be answered. Is my engine powerful enough that the extra weight of .50 wont casue performance problems? Is the performance of .50 so much better than .303 that its worth losing speed and agility? Do i have a working .50 available? Is the .50 as reliable as .303? Does my plane have actual space in the wings or turret i can fit a .50 in? Is my nation willing to invest in a new .50 gun when we have hundreds of .303 guns in stock or is the money better spent on newer more powerful engines or radios or pilot training or radar? Even the Ameicans didnt think the .50 was worthwhile, the .50 was only accepted as a stopgap becasue the couldnt get their copy of the 20mm Hispano-Suiza cannon to work reliably. Most countries up till 1940 decided the weight penalty of carrying a .50 wasnt worth the meagre performance upgrades from their current .303 (or 30.06) and the early Messershmits were also using 7.92mm so its not like they were outgunned. the allies didnt rally get a reliable 20mm till towards the middle of the war.

done partially well* I'd say, as it was a 1920's design. The Mossie had far better engines [and weapons] to choose from, and thus could be of heavier duty construction.

The notion pre-dated the development of radar, which meant defending fighters would get little warning of an approaching bomber force and would have to be kept airborne all the time to have any chance of intercepting before the bombers reached their target. It was impractical to provide continuous standing patrols covering a country's entire frontier, so some bombers would always slip through.