1939-1942 FAA: Better aircraft or more aircraft?

EwenS said:

Easy to say with the benefit of hindsight and from someone whose country was not suffering nightly attacks on its towns and cities, with significant civilian casualties and several hundred thousand people forced from their destroyed and bomb damaged homes as well as the disruption to industry and the overall war effort! And the Blitz did have an effect on civilian morale in certain areas which did concern the Govt of the day greatly.

Not just London, which attracts the greatest attention, but Plymouth, Portsmouth and surrounding towns, Southampton, Liverpool and surrounding towns, Coventry, Birmingham, Newcastle-Upon-Tyne, Sunderland, Hull, Swansea, Clydebank (virtually all the housing stock damaged or destroyed), Greenock, Belfast. They even managed to bomb Dublin in Eire! While the last of the big raids were in May 1941 when the Luftwaffe was switched to the Eastern Front, the perceived threat of a return of the Luftwaffe and of invasion did not begin to dissipate until about Sept when it was beginning to become clear that the USSR wouldn't collapse.

So while the Defiant as a night fighter might not have achieved much in the way of success at night, its presence was something to show the population that the Govt and the RAF had not simply given up hope of being able to stop the Blitz.

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Not trying to discount the suffering of the British people whatsoever. Or the Morale problem.

However from what I have read the actual contribution of the Defiant is not as great as it is often credited with. And the time line seems to get skewed. The radar equipped Defiants don't start to show up until Aug-Sept of 1941. Actual kills by radar equipped Defiants may be in the single digits. Maybe low single digits.
Of course bragging about the success of the Defiants hides the fiascos of Turbine-light scheme (one kill? unfortunately the plane was British) and the Long Aerial Mine ( which scored one kill? May of 1942?).
What people tried to do in 1940 and early 1941 is one thing, Continuing some of these schemes through the fall of 1941 and well into 1942 and this included the night fighting Defiant, in face of evidence to contrary, is right up there with the US's Admiral King.

Now I have seen passages in books like " During the night Blitz of 1940-41 the Defiants, painted black and with flame-damping exhausts, shot down more enemy aircraft than any other type, They also had more kills per interception and more interceptions per 100 sorties."
Which is pretty remarkable, if true. Problem is finding the actual records. It may require some very selective editing on when the night Blitz was?
Same book in a different chapter, says that ALL British night fighters shot down 8 Germans in the first two months of the night Blitz. (first radar aided kill by an Blenheim was July 2/3 1940 and may not count as the night Blitz?), says the next 3 months were even worse ( another source says no kill at all in one of those 3 months).
Now it gets confusing, 22 kills in March by all night fighters (Beaufighters mainly), April saw 48 Germans shot down and the first 2 weeks of May saw 96. Types not singled out.
There is also some confusion in different sources as operations by intruders attacking German planes over/near their own airfields may not count in the night fighter totals?
from another source it seems like the Beaufighters were the planes that scored about 1/2 of the kills in April and May. The Blenheims, which never shot down very many at all (single digits? low?) had pretty much disappeared buy April/May. There were Hurricanes flying around as night fighters during the night Blitz and they got some kills.
The Beaufighters trickled in starting in Sept, one or two planes at a time into Blenheim squadrons but by the end of Dec perhaps 100 planes (some operational losses) and production had hit about 200 by May ? not all in service. Just about all with Radar. And yet the Defiants with NO radar, got more interceptions than per 100 sorties, more kills per inception and more kills than another type?
Answer to the British problem is obvious. Cancel Beaufighter production, give the radar sets to the navy and build more Defiants as obviously the four .303 gun Defiants are much better killers than the four 20mm gun Beaufighters.

Shortround6 said:

Not trying to discount the suffering of the British people whatsoever. Or the Morale problem.

However from what I have read the actual contribution of the Defiant is not as great as it is often credited with. And the time line seems to get skewed. The radar equipped Defiants don't start to show up until Aug-Sept of 1941. Actual kills by radar equipped Defiants may be in the single digits. Maybe low single digits.
Of course bragging about the success of the Defiants hides the fiascos of Turbine-light scheme (one kill? unfortunately the plane was British) and the Long Aerial Mine ( which scored one kill? May of 1942?).
What people tried to do in 1940 and early 1941 is one thing, Continuing some of these schemes through the fall of 1941 and well into 1942 and this included the night fighting Defiant, in face of evidence to contrary, is right up there with the US's Admiral King.

Now I have seen passages in books like " During the night Blitz of 1940-41 the Defiants, painted black and with flame-damping exhausts, shot down more enemy aircraft than any other type, They also had more kills per interception and more interceptions per 100 sorties."
Which is pretty remarkable, if true. Problem is finding the actual records. It may require some very selective editing on when the night Blitz was?
Same book in a different chapter, says that ALL British night fighters shot down 8 Germans in the first two months of the night Blitz. (first radar aided kill by an Blenheim was July 2/3 1940 and may not count as the night Blitz?), says the next 3 months were even worse ( another source says no kill at all in one of those 3 months).
Now it gets confusing, 22 kills in March by all night fighters (Beaufighters mainly), April saw 48 Germans shot down and the first 2 weeks of May saw 96. Types not singled out.
There is also some confusion in different sources as operations by intruders attacking German planes over/near their own airfields may not count in the night fighter totals?
from another source it seems like the Beaufighters were the planes that scored about 1/2 of the kills in April and May. The Blenheims, which never shot down very many at all (single digits? low?) had pretty much disappeared buy April/May. There were Hurricanes flying around as night fighters during the night Blitz and they got some kills.
The Beaufighters trickled in starting in Sept, one or two planes at a time into Blenheim squadrons but by the end of Dec perhaps 100 planes (some operational losses) and production had hit about 200 by May ? not all in service. Just about all with Radar. And yet the Defiants with NO radar, got more interceptions than per 100 sorties, more kills per inception and more kills than another type?
Answer to the British problem is obvious. Cancel Beaufighter production, give the radar sets to the navy and build more Defiants as obviously the four .303 gun Defiants are much better killers than the four 20mm gun Beaufighters.

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So your solution is scrap the Defiant NF squadrons and reduce the overall NF effort because the chances of an intercept are minimal. But minimal is still not zero. And when faced with a nightly Blitz something is still better than nothing.

I also think that you have an exagerrated idea of just how many Defiant NF squadrons there were. From the RAF Narrative:-

7 Sept 1940 - 2 (the two Defiant day fighter units switched to night work).
14 Nov 1940 - 2
16 Feb 1941 - 3 + 2 more flying Hurricanes & Defiants.
11 May 1941 - 4 + 3 others flying a mix of Hurricanes & Defiants
25 Dec 1941 - 4 (incl 2 in process of re-equipping with Beaus) + 3 flying a mix of Hurricanes & Defiants.

Production Beau If delivered from 9/40 from Bristol factory, 2/41 from Fairey, Stockport. Hence the ramp in numbers becoming available in the early half of 1941.
Production IIf from 9/41
Havoc I & II conversions available from 4/41 but numbers limited and some as Intruders

Mosquito NF.II deliveries began in early 1942

Ok, so how many Defiants were attached to the FAA?

GrauGeist said:

Ok, so how many Defiants were attached to the FAA?

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Pedantry aside, the point is obviously about freeing up Merlins for FAA aircraft.

Admiral Beez said:

Pedantry aside, the point is obviously about freeing up Merlins for FAA aircraft.

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Of course, however, the turret fighter concept only.showed it's flaws after it was tried in combat.

I thought we were trying to prepare the FAA with suitable equipment before war broke out?

GrauGeist said:

Of course, however, the turret fighter concept only.showed it's flaws after it was tried in combat.

I thought we were trying to prepare the FAA with suitable equipment before war broke out?

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And the truth is there weren't very many spare Merlins around before the war broke out and even swiping them from The Henley, Defiant and Battle is not going to free up that many in 1939, or even much of 1940.
Henley was produced from around the middle of 1939 to the middle of 1940. So when do you cancel it and when can you get even 1/2 the engines?
Cancel the Battles when? and what do you replace them with? They were, for better or worse, a large part of the British 'striking force' in 1939 and early 1940. Canceling the trainer versions after the BoB doesn't do much for the Fleet in 1940.
Same for the Defiant. Unless it is killed in the cradle the next opportunity is the summer of 1941.

At least the Skua/Roc used the Perseus.

IOTL there was no shortage of Merlin engines for the RN because the RN had no airframes to use them other than the Fulmar.

If we are to use Merlins then we need an airframe to carry them. Merlins at the time were going into Spitfires, Hurricanes, Whitleys, Wellingtons, Beaufighters, Defiants, Henley's, Fulmars and Battles. If the RN had a Sea Hurricane or Sea Spitfire, as they actually wanted, there would have been enough new Merlin's to satisfy the number of airframes the RN could deploy without a major disruption to anything else. Compared to the RAF the RN requirements were tiny, if not trivial.

mack8 said:

And they can be had without significantly affecting what RAF gets, the classic Peter/Paul connundrum would have them get more Skuas instead of the useless Rocs, some Merlin airframes (Fulmars, Sea Hurricanes, even Seafires, whatever it is) rather than Henleys, whatever carrier types built instead of the equally useless Bothas and so on. And speaking of Merlins, just think of how many invaluable Merlins were used to pull around target tugs (on Battles, aforementioned Henleys, Defiants etc.), a waste only the british can "accomplish". Better have even a fraction of those Merlins actually do something useful to the war effort, be it on Fulmars, Sea Hurricanes, even Seafires.

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How many FAA aircraft, real or proposed, were held up in production by the unavailability of merlin engines?

... and if the Battles, Henleys and Defiants performing second line duties from target towing to air-sea rescue, radar calibration and were 'wasted and not useful to the war effort', why did the RAF assign equally expensive to acquire pilots to perform these presumably wasted duties?

GrauGeist said:

Ok, so how many Defiants were attached to the FAA?

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At least 267 Defiants saw service with the FAA from mid-1942 onwards. Transfers from the RAF continued into mid-1945. These were TT.I and TT.III target tugs. They served the world over, from UK to Malta, Egypt, West Africa, India and Ceylon.

In mid-1943 (if I recall the date correctly) there was an Admiralty paper setting out some 40 different aircraft types that the FAA was then using, with the vast majority being in secondary roles.

Rolls Royce figures measured production at a different stage to the official figures, it says 1939 production was Merlin II 10, III 2,143, VIII 24, X 391, XII 4. (with 135 Merlin III delivered in January 1939) all up 7,576 Merlin III January 1939 to May 1941. Official total production 1,218 Merlin I/II, 8,242 Merlin III, 73 Merlin IV, which would mean around 1,200 Merlin I/II and 650 Merlin III to end 1938, compared with 462 Battle, 10 Henley, 201 Hurricane, 46 Spitfire total 719 to end 1938 plus 16 Defiant, 171 Henley, 586 Hurricane, 435 Spitfire, 1,039 Battle, total 2,247 in 1939. All up nearly 3,000 aircraft versus 4,000 engines to end 1939 but note the close match of engine and airframe production in 1939.

There were 184 Merlin VII built for the 150 Fulmar I. The airframes were built April to December 1940, the engines were 4 March/April 1939 then November 1939 to December 1940, by end March 1940 a total of 59 engines delivered.

For future what ifs, first production deliveries, Vulture II December 1939 then from March 1940, Peregrine I February 1940, Merlin XII September 1939 (5 to end February 1940, then 9 in both April and May, 11 in June, 35 in July, for any Castle Bromwich earlier ideas), Merlin XX July 1940, Merlin 45 in January 1941.

The British figures for engine conversions only start being reported in May 1944 and then mostly for reasonably current engines. Cumulative totals, The 30 April 1944 figures for Merlin 27 to 25 and 67 to 66 are actually as of end May 1944.

For the engine enthusiasts the May 1944 figures include 3 groups of Gipsy Major I conversions, from Magister to Auster, Magister to Moth and Civil to Moth.

As of 29 July 1944 in Britain there were 11,471 engines in the repair system, during July 4,963 engines had entered the system and 3,570 repaired engines had been delivered. For Bristol engine types 1,298 had been repaired against the planned total of 1,577.

RAF Night, dusk and dawn defensive effort from Air 16/1037, searchlights gave another 10 AI and 6 cats eye visuals. AI=radar, Cats=Cats Eye, Vis=Visual, Cont=Contact, Comb=Combat, Des=Destroyed, Prob=Probable, Dam=Damaged. February 10 to 28 1941 weekly figures say 385 AI and 470 Cats Eye sorties. Air 16/1036 says 1941 monthly night only sortie totals were 584, 589, 1027, 1697, 2357, 1650, 1365, 1092, 710, 1137, 770, 650 but probably include mining etc.

Defiant etc. number is average daily availability for month.

Fighter Command War Losses has 12 Defiant losses October 1940 to December 1941, 6 listed as crashed, 3 destroyed in ground, 1 each enemy aircraft, bomber, unknown. While Air 16/1037 has 4 Defiant lost not due to enemy action October to December 1940, 3 lost to enemy action and 16 lost not due to enemy action January to May 1941, no further losses for rest of year to week ending 26 October. AIR 16/1036 has Defiant losses as 1 in January and 1 in May

Aerial mine sorties started 24 October 1940 and finished 1 November 1941, last mine fired on 15 October 1941, claims 3 destroyed, 3 probable. Free balloon releases done on 4 nights 27 December 1940, 11 January and 9 and 11 March 1941.

Defiant squadron claims/losses in 1941
5/0 for 96 squadron (422 flight), Hurricane to May, Defiant from March
7/0 for 141 squadron, Defiant to September, Beaufighter from June
25.5/1 for 151 squadron also Hurricane from June
8/0 for 255 squadron, Defiant to September, Hurricane March to July, Beaufighter from July
7/1 for 256 squadron also Hurricane May to October
11/0 for 264 squadron
10/5 for 307 squadron, to Beaufighter in August.

Admiralty 25 September 1943 aircraft census, 3,758 on strength, comprising 718 first line, 768 in training squadrons and 2,272 reserves, types identified were, Albacore, Barracuda, Beaufighter, Chesapeake, Corsair, Defiant, Firebrand, Firefly, Fulmar, Gladiator, Goose, Havoc, Hellcat, Hurricane, Kingfisher, Lysander, Martinet, Martlet, Master, Oxford, Proctor, Reliant, Roc, Sea Otter, Seafire, Seafox, Seamew, Shark, Skua, Swordfish, Tarpon, Tiger Moth, Walrus, (33 named types) plus 118 of other "miscellaneous" types.

GrauGeist said:

At least the Skua/Roc used the Perseus.

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It's too bad the Perseus wasn't available for its intended Gloster F5/34. It would have been good to see if there was any potential for the Perseus as a single seat fighter engine.

Admiral Beez said:

It's too bad the Perseus wasn't available for its intended Gloster F5/34. It would have been good to see if there was any potential for the Perseus as a single seat fighter engine.

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It has been considered in assorted other threads. Extra Perseus would have to come at the expense of Lysanders and Bothas, which may be no bad thing, Sunderlands excepted. Even if they would take a touch more boost with 100 octane fuel we are still on the Fiat A-74/Nakajima Sakae class so need to be trim in weight which will limit armour, fuel, gun numbers and rounds carried etc. However, the task of a single seat RN fighter was to protect the fleet so endurance may not be as important if the climb rate is good. It releases the Fulmars to replace Skuas in role and to escort TBRs and undertake recce jobs etc. where range/endurance are more relevant. Single seat fighters were not roled for TBR escort with their short ranges. Some sort of meld between the Perseus and Vickers Venom would fit the bill. The Perseus was lighter than its direct contemporaries if wider, as a single row and not twin row, by @ 25cm. Obviously not a Perseus engined Venom but a slightly bigger Venom perhaps.

BTW who was to get the 300 Reggiane 2000 fighters being sought from Italy in 1939 by Britain?

yulzari said:

BTW who was to get the 300 Reggiane 2000 fighters being sought from Italy in 1939 by Britain?

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My vote, RAF Malaya Command. Please, please.....

Admiral Beez said:

Pedantry aside, the point is obviously about freeing up Merlins for FAA aircraft.

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With the obvious benefit of hindsight, they had a war winning engine in the Merlin, so focus on scaling up Merlin production instead of settling for various second-best options? Now obviously setting up yet another engine factory doesn't happen overnight, but maybe they could have started another such project a bit earlier when the war clouds were gathering?

The British iinterest in the Re2000 ran from Dec 1939 to the outbreak of war with Italy in June 1940.

In late 1939 / early 1940 the British Purchasing Commission set about looking for a fighter for use in secondary theatres where the aerial opposition was not expected to be on the level of the Luftwaffe, with the Far East in mind. The contenders were the P35 and the Brewster Buffalo. A contract for 170 was quickly placed with Brewster for the Buffalo as Seversky were believed to have too much work on hand to meet the delivery requirements. Some sources date the contract to late 1939 others to early 1940.

So Malaya for the Re2000 seems unlikely.

EwenS said:

Malaya for the Re2000 seems unlikely

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What about politics and dealing with facist italy? Axis, and prognoses to war.
Was that an argument in the discussion,?

z42 said:

With the obvious benefit of hindsight, they had a war winning engine in the Merlin, so focus on scaling up Merlin production instead of settling for various second-best options? Now obviously setting up yet another engine factory doesn't happen overnight, but maybe they could have started another such project a bit earlier when the war clouds were gathering?

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Rolls Royce were stretched in the run up to WW2. Scaling up production at the Derby factory (floor space was increased by 25% 1935-1939) and then setting up TWO brand new shadow factories on greenfield sites:-

RR Crewe - work began in May 1938 with Merlin production starting in 1939
RR Hillington, Glasgow - work began in Aug 1939 and was completed in May 1940. It occupied 150 acres and employed 25,000 at its peak in WW2.

Think of the management resource needed to do that. Then the recruiting and training effort required (while the sites were chosen due to the engineering skills available in the local area, a substantial proportion of these new RR workforces had never seen an engine).

Add to that the assistance required to get Ford's Trafford Park, Manchester plant producing Merlins (first Merlin produced June 1941) and to Packard in the USA in 1940/41.

It's a big ask adding yet another new factory, or even someone else's engine factory, to that burden.

EwenS said:

The contenders were the P35 and the Brewster Buffalo. A contract for 170 was quickly placed with Brewster for the Buffalo as Seversky were believed to have too much work on hand to meet the delivery requirements.

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With some (British requested) US diplomacy targeting Rome and some trickery on paperwork and paintwork we can make those Re2000s pass a bureaucrat's cursory scrutiny as the otherwise unobtanium P35s. By the time they're in Malaya it's troppo tardi.

Looks close enough to me.

z42 said:

With the obvious benefit of hindsight, they had a war winning engine in the Merlin, so focus on scaling up Merlin production instead of settling for various second-best options? Now obviously setting up yet another engine factory doesn't happen overnight, but maybe they could have started another such project a bit earlier when the war clouds were gathering?

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They had set up a shadow factory to make Bristol Mercury's for the Bristol Blenheim's (Austin/Rootes ?)
There were either shadow factories or major subcontractors for Hercules engines.
Some of this is rather time dependent. Wait too long for "best" and you don't have enough anything to go around. Jan 1 1940 there were 11 squadrons of Blenheim I bombers scattered through the Mid-east and India-Asia. There were still a few Squadrons in France and home bases. They were trying to change the Blenheim I Squadrons to Blenheim IV squadrons as fast as they could at home/France with the idea of shipping the Blenheim I's out to replace Wellesley Squadrons or simply add more squadrons in the east.
A Merlin powered light bomber would have been great, if they had the ability to actually make it. Merlin powered Botha anyone?