Boulton Paul Defiant
The Boulton Paul Defiant was a British two-seat turret fighter of the Second World War. Designed in the mid-1930s to destroy unescorted bombers, it carried all four of its machine guns in a powered turret behind the pilot and had no forward-firing armament. Its squadrons claimed heavily over Dunkirk in May 1940, but the claims far exceeded the actual losses, and once German fighters learned to attack where the turret could not bear, the type was withdrawn from daylight operations. It then served as a night fighter during the Blitz, and later in gunnery training, target towing, electronic countermeasures and air-sea rescue. Of 1,064 built, one complete aircraft survives, at the RAF Museum Cosford.