Defiant: The Untold Story of the Battle of Britain

by Robert Verkaik

' Defiant is both a stirring testament to the courage of the men who flew them and a welcome new examination of one of the Second World War's most famous conflicts'
Alexander Larman, Observer

In this startling new perspective on the Battle of Britain, Robert Verkaik reveals the surprising truth about the battle's forgotten fighter, the Boulton Paul Defiant.

The crucial role played by the Spitfire and the Hurricane has been exhaustively recorded, but, to date, next to nothing has been written about the third British fighter which took part in the battle. By writing from the unique perspective of the pilots who flew the Defiant and their air-gunners, Verkaik helps to set the record straight.

The Air Staff regarded the Defiant as a state-of-the-art bomber destroyer and wanted to equip a third of all Fighter Command squadrons with this new plane. But the head of Fighter Command, Hugh Dowding, had other ideas and went to war with Whitehall over its plan to saddle him with hundreds of 'obsolete' turret fighters. Then at Dunkirk, a Defiant squadron scored a huge success against the Luftwaffe by shooting down more German planes in one day than any other RAF unit before or since. Fighter Command, enthusiastically urged on by the Air Ministry, now committed its third fighter to the coming air battle over southern England. In the desperate dogfights of the battle, Defiants shot down both German bombers and fighters but suffered heavy losses too - one squadron was almost wiped out when it was ambushed by a superior force of Messerschmitt 109s. On 30 August 1940 all Defiant squadrons were withdrawn from the front line.

The families of the Defiant air crews believed that their husbands, brothers and sons had died in vain, but the truth is that their vital contribution to the battle over Dunkirk and their role in the Battle of Britain has been all but erased from the official history. The story of the Defiant has not been allowed to mar the glorious victory won by the Spitfire and the Hurricane.

But Verkaik has uncovered new records, including top-secret memos written by Hugh Dowding and his deputy Keith Park as well as correspondence with the Air Staff, combat and squadron reports, pilot logs and recordings of the last interviews with Defiant crews. He has also succeeded in tracing relatives of Defiant pilots and gunners to tell the story of the Battle of Britain as it has never been told before. He reveals how the myths which have grown up around the Defiant mask some inconvenient truths.

Genres: Aviation, Military History, History

371 pages, Kindle Edition

Published June 4, 2020

Reviews

[JD · Rating 4 out of 5]

The Defiant has always been a very interesting, yet controversial airplane for me that I did not know a lot about. This book however has been very informative and has shown that the Defiant was actually a very successful combat plane for the role it was intended for as a bomber destroyer, and was only led to slaughter by the Luftwaffe when it was employed in the wrong role as a frontline fighter.

The fighters' controversy in fact lies with its development and production, where the politics behind it was backhanded and nasty with politicians and RAF officers mostly wanting to settle personal scores, and this continued well after the Defiant was taken out of frontline service. It is also shocking to see how close the RAF came to fielding more of these planes in the place of both Hurricanes and Spitfires, and one can only imagine what the outcome of the Battle of Britain would have been if this became a reality.

The Defiant had good successes during both the Dunkirk evacuation and the Battle of Britain with 264 Squadron when working in conjunction with Hurricanes and Spitfires, and was well lead with the right tactics employed by the crews, who were some of the bravest in my opinion. So the Defiant was not overly obsolete during the Battle as history would make one believe, but was a very dangerous plane for Luftwaffe bombers and took quite a toll on them for the small numbers employed. Highly recommended addition to any Battle of Britain shelf as it takes an in-depth look at the third fighter of the RAF and its almost secret history.

[Jonny · Rating 2 out of 5]

Mr Verkaik's book on the Battle of Britain's "ginger stepkid" is, sadly, something of a mixed bag. I'd agree that the type tends to be relegated to a paragraph or so in most histories of the Battle of Britain, due mainly to its rough handling in a single day of combat.

I think it's fair to say that Mr Verkaik is on something of a crusade, where the Defiant is concerned, and from this most of the problems with the book arise.

We start with an examination of the reasons why the RAF considered the employment of a turret fighter, stretching back beyond the highly successful Bristol F.2B of World War One to the earlier pusher types (mainly because Mr Verkaik's grandfather - or maybe great grandfather? - served on one (so you can be sure you'll hear about him at random and inappropriate times in the narrative), which is on the whole well done, although Boulton Paul's production issues and management problems are somewhat skated over. Maybe they should have just stuck to what they were good at, and just made the gun turrets?

After this, you get a protracted, long winded and biased account of the political machinations behind the adoption and deployment of the Defiant, and its here that things get tedious. The authors journalistic background asserts itself as anyone championing the type becomes a forward thinking mental heavyweight while anyone voicing misgivings or wanting to have the Defiant go through testing is a knuckle dragging moron. Especially Dowding. Dowding has horns and a forked tail, because he likes things like Hurricanes and Spitfires but mainly because he's sceptical about the Defiant, what with Germany's bombers being able to be escorted meaning that he'll have to dilute his proven fighter strength to provide cover for the Defiants. What an idiot.

We then get onto slightly better ground with some combat history. The Defiant had a pretty good showing over the Low Countries and Dunkirk, due mainly to some good leadership and well thought out combat doctorine. Where it was able to paste l operate as conceived, as an interceptor of unescorted bombers it worked fine. Even when attacked by enemy fighters it could hold its own, so long as those attacks came in from above, behind or from either side (the Defiant wasn't fitted, and according to Verkaik didn't need, forward firing armament), but once the Luftwaffe got wise to this new fighter they were able to play to its underpowered, restricted fire arc weaknesses. Once deployed during the Battle of Britain, the type faired badly; admittedly this was down to the second squadron of the type, less well led and without the doctrinal abilities of 264. However I'm unable to agree with the authors theory that the type was willingly sacrificed by Dowding, and his comparison of the Defiant with the Messerschmitt 110 only stacks up if you're wholly unfamiliar with the '110 and accept that it was, to all intents and purposes, there to use is rear gun (kindly ignore those inconvenient machine guns and cannon in the nose).

And there, with the types withdrawal from the Battle of Britain, the book to all intents and purposes ends. Never mind the Defiant's second life as a night fighter, or training role, or use by Coastal Command as a Search and Rescue aircraft. What a disappointment.

Is originally given this 3 stars (the combat history section is OK, if limited and a bit baffling) but as I've written this I've had a good old teeth grid about the inability of the author and his obvious bias, so down to 2 it goes. It's not terrible, but it's not complete and not a good tribute to the brave men who tried to get the best out of this aircraft.

[KOMET · Rating 5 out of 5]

DEFIANT: The Untold Story of the Battle of Britain goes a long way towards redressing the long established reputation of the Boulton Paul Defiant 2-seater fighter plane as an aircraft that, when tested in battle against the Luftwaffe, failed to live up to its promise as a "bomber destroyer."

The inspiration for the Defiant came from the Bristol Brisfit 2-seater fighter/reconnaissance plane, which built a reputation during its deployment in World War I as an exceptional aircraft. Indeed, the Brisfit could tangle with the best of the German fighters over the Western Front and came to be highly regarded by the British as "a fighter with a stinger in its tail."

The book explores the interwar development of the Defiant, its supporters and detractors within the leadership of RAF Fighter Command, the ongoing manufacturing problems at Boulton Paul Aircraft that delayed the production of Defiants, the Defiant's combat history with 264 and 141 Squadrons, and the factors that led to the Defiant's withdrawal from daytime combat in August 1940 when the Battle of Britain was at its height. (The Defiant would go on to be used as a night fighter until well into 1941.)

Through reading this book, I gained a greater appreciation for the strengths the Defiant did have and the crews who flew them in combat. I was deeply impressed by 264 Squadron's commander, Squadron Leader Philip A. Hunter. He embodied the best qualities of leadership, was inspirational to the men under his command, always led from the front, and was an innovative and brilliant tactician. Indeed, under Hunter's leadership, 264 Squadron set the record for the highest number of enemy aircraft destroyed in aerial combat when it was credited with shooting down 38 German planes in one day of combat over Dunkirk on May 29, 1940.

DEFIANT is an absolutely first-rate aviation book containing 2 sets of photos featuring the Defiant, its crews, and some of the civilian and military leadership responsible for its development and deployment by RAF Fighter Command.

[Paul Gross · Rating 5 out of 5]

Excellent , enjoyed it from start to finish,

Excellent , enjoyed it from start to finish,couldn't out it down.Gives a new insight into the early part of world war 2 and the air war in particular.The heroism and belief of the Defiant crews was immense, and ,although in some ways understandable, the miss use of the Defiant by Fighter Command is astonishing.Had they listened to the advise if the people actually fighting in the thing it might have had more impact.

[Nicholas West · Rating 2 out of 5]

WW2 aviation is not my specialised subject but this book overstretches in trying to correct the record and in its criticism of various personalities within the RAF and the Air Ministry. The reality is that the role for which the Defiant was designed, and may well have been very successful, was rendered redundant before it came into service. That is no disgrace, the same could be said of many other aircraft that were operational near to the start of the War on all sides. The Defiant was designed as a pure 'bomber destroyer', not with a duel role as a dogfighting fighter, as it was envisaged it would be taking on unescorted German bomber flying from German airfields. Downing and Park, the experts on the ground, always suspected it would struggle once France fell and German fighters would be operating with their bombers and they were broadly proved correct.

A "fighter" squadron that was going to need fighter cover itself was the last complication they needed in a Battle for which their resources were to be stretched to the limit. They correctly backed simplicity where they had the choice, encouraging Beaverbrook to prioritise the delivery of Spits and Hurricanes over the Defiant, which were anyway plagued with production problems and delays, both in manufacture and in re-equipment with constant speed rotors and bullet proof cockpit glass. The Defiant was a decent aircraft when used correctly, but with only two squadrons in service it was never going to be the tail that wagged Fighter Command's dog. Oddly enough, if a third of Downing's force had been equipped with Defiant squadrons, as was planned by the Air Ministry, then they may have been successful as tactics and operations would have had to have been developed to revolve around them as the bomber destroyer role that the Hurricane ended up being used for, with the Hurricane and Spitfires indeed protecting them.

For that to happen multiple supply, development and training challenges would have had to have been resolved. In the end the Defiant arrives far too late for any of that to have happened before it was thrown into combat. To give just one example, the key problem that was still unresolved when they were withdrawn from the Battle of Britain, was that their in-flight radios did not easily communicate with aircraft other than other Defiants; meaning they could not communicate let alone coordinate with their supposedly protective fighters, even when they were provided.

It's a decent read but littered with proof reading, spelling and factual mistakes. It has some nice photographs, and despite the many flaws listed above I did enjoy it as a quick read but I cannot recommend it as a serious history book.

[Peter Grant · Rating 4 out of 5]

This was an interesting read about the ugly duckling British fighter of the Battle of Britain. The author's contention is that the Bolton Paul Defiant with its machine gun turret behind the pilot has been unfairly treated by history as a failure which was rapidly withdrawn out of the front line. Instead, he presents the philosophy of the plane dating back to WW1 when British fighters often had a pilot and a separate gunner - a system that worked well in the slow planes of the time. Essentially, the Defiant was seen as a bomber destroyer with the gunner able to use his range of fire to catch bombers in crossfire. This predicated on the Spitfires and Hurricanes keeping the enemy fighters occupied. He gives the example of their deployment during the Dunkirk evacuation where the Defiants had great success taking out enemy bombers. However, later in the Battle of Britain they were used from frontline airfields where the Me 109s effectively annihilated them. He states that operating them from the frontline without forward firing fighters was a betrayal of the bomber destroyer philosophy and this led to the unfair judgement of history. What struck me was that, as with the Spitfire, the Defiant was plagued by production problems but on a larger scale which meant that only a handful were ready by the start of the Battle of Britain and so could never be used in numbers. Also, personnel losses were always nearly double the rate given that the double crew. What occurred to me was just how many more Hurricanes and Spitfires could have been made if the Defiant factories had been turning them out instead. Yes, he had a point the Dowding and Park were never enthusiastic - and by incorrect deployment contributed to their failure - but I can understand their lack of enthusiasm for such an ungainly plane. What can't be disputed is the astonishing courage of the pilots and gunners who flew these planes and numerous examples of this bravery are described along with descriptions of the people at the heart of this.

[clive kerr · Rating 5 out of 5]

Defiant : Not a good idea

It seems bewildering that anyone could imagine a scenario where Défiants would pull along side formations of German bombers who would simply stay put as one after another was hacked down by the 4 guns of its turret, Suppose the rotters had gunners who shot back, or they manoeuvred out of harms way ? It must have been frustrating for Dowding who understood it was Hurricanes and Spitfires that were what was needed to win the battle.
At night it needed on board radar to be successful, though, again another aircraft type, the Beaufighter really had the complete package that outshone the Defiant.
I think it would have been better had the Defiant never left the drawing board.

[Eion Hewson · Rating 4 out of 5]

very informative and doesn't downplay the tragedy of all the lives lost