| Thanks for this - I was going to ask if anyone knew about the circumstances of Philip Barwell's death. Friendly Fire has always been a hazard of the battlefield (though I think the rather crass terminology is quite recent.
As to the Defiant: another type, like the Buffalo, that wasn't quite as useless as some accounts suggest; it accounted for a fair number of EA initially. I wonder why they didn't provide forward firing armament as well; even four guns if it couldn't manage the weight of eight? Then it would have followed in the concept of the two-seat fighter such as the WW1 Bristol F2B "Fighter", and more recently the Hawker Demon which managed the weight of the first hydraulic turret as well ads forward-firing guns. Perhaps the Defiant came from the theory that German fighters would not appear over the UK because France would not collapse and provide bases, which theory very nearly led to the cancellation of the Spitfire in favour of the Whirlwind. |