What was the worst military aircraft of the Second World War? Given the sheer number of designs fielded by all sides throughout the conflict there is no shortage of candidates - many of which we have already covered on this channel. There was the Messerschmitt Me-163 Komet, a German rocket-powered fighter whose engine had a nasty habit of blowing up or dissolving the pilots alive. And the Messerschmitt Me-132 Gigant, a giant assault glider designed for an abortive German invasion of the British isles but pressed into service as a ponderously slow and horrendously vulnerable cargo transport. On the Allied side there was the Brewster F2A Buffalo and Douglas TBD Devastator, hopelessly outdated U.S. Naval aircraft that were brutally cut down by superior Japanese fighters the moment they first saw combat. And then there was the Fisher P-75 Eagle, a Frankenstein’s monster of a fighter cobbled together from parts of existing aircraft and deliberately designed to save its manufacturer from taking on more wartime production contracts. But when it comes to questionable design concepts, few aircraft can compete with the Boulton-Paul Defiant, a British fighter aircraft that sported a powered, four-gun turret like a bomber but no forward-firing armament. Designed around combat doctrines dating from the First World War, the Defiant enjoyed some early successes before suffering horrendous losses at the hands of more modern German fighters. As a result, it was swiftly withdrawn from day fighter duties, serving with greater success as a night fighter before being relegated to training and rescue duties and quietly retired. Yet while the flawed Defiant never earned the glory of its more illustrious stablemates, the Supermarine Spitfire and Hawker Hurricane, it nonetheless played a small but important role in the war and deserves to be better remembered. This is the story of Britain’s strange and forgotten WWII “turret fighter.”

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