I always wondered why they adopted such an unwieldy design. Imagine being the pilot, facing a vertical glass plate hardly one foot in front of your nose...while in flight! Vintovka here jokingly suggests it may have helped in braking the plane while diving on the target. I'm afraid it might not be a joke. I can't imagine another plausible reason.
Watching all of Ed Nash's videos about forgotten aircraft has taught me many things about the lead-up to WWII : 1) The war itself fueled a massive growth in military knowledge with the maturing weapons such as planes, tanks and carriers 2) Pre-war technology and thinking were not that far off from the best of WWI, which means they had not been given too much a chance to evolve in twenty years 3) It's easy to forget how peace time can cause one's army to stagnate in its thinking, since ideas can only be put out there in theory and it's hard to convince leaders at the time to make sweeping changes to their military assets without having a proof of concept, which usually requires a war. Awesome videos.
I read about encounters in the Mediterranean in which the Rocs would finally catch up to the bombers they were pursuing and try to bring their guns to bear. The added drag would then slow them down and they would lose their target...
@@samhunt9380 I think Sir Arthur Harris said something similar regarding the earlier versions of the Halifax as he pressured Handley Page to improve it (which they did). The Roc was beyond redemption.
A good in-depth look at the Blackburn Roc. Thanks! It is easy to criticise the poor old Roc as it had very little to recommend it. To me it demonstrates how difficult it was for the aircraft designers of the day to achieve reasonable carrier/marine aircraft which combined the strength for carrier conditions, the power for a decent performance, the armament for a decent punch and still keep the weight down. The upright windscreen may have been for visibility for carrier landings and take-offs. The Royal Navy and Fleet Air Arm at that point had not cracked the problem but then no one else had either. US designs were probably better at that time as US engineering tradition tended to go for tougher designs better suited to carrier conditions. To my mind it wasn't till the Corsaur F4U came along in 1940 that the balance was right. But with power more than twice that available for the Roc. To me the puzzle of the Roc is why they built so many - not that far off the Skua numbers - when it must have been obvious the added weight of the turret moved it from the fair-to-middling class of the Skua down to lemon class. Anyway - interesting video.
the UK couldn't build good naval aircraft because 1) Fleet Air Arm was organised under the RAF, not the Royal Navy and 2) didn't have powerful engines like the radials powering the American Wildcat, Hellcat and Corsair. The Americans simply out-engineered the UK when it came to naval aircraft and that's why the FAA ended up flying American planes.
German 1: Vat is that back there? German 2: Observation aircraft. Zey are here to record our glorious victory. Sheesh, 136 built. They should have known with the first couple of these. They were in a hurry, weren't they.
The defensive mindset which led to the Roc, Skua and Fulmar reflected the RN's faulty thinking on carrier warfare. They saw the aircraft as assets which needed to be sheltered by the ships instead of the other way around: use the aircraft offensively to protect the fleet from submarine and surface threats as well as air threats. This is why they lost carriers like the Courageous and Glorious early on in the war.
@@spawnof200 yes thats why the FAA was in the short end of the stick when comes to procurement unlike the US navy have dedicated procurement inside by the name of BurAir.
One thing - AFAIK Schraege Musik ( the late-war German installation of upwards-firing guns into their night fighters) wasn't done to allow "no-allowance shooting," but to allow the night fighters to engage bombers from an angle that shielded them from the bombers' observation much less defensive fire. So it wasn't really connected to the interwar British mania for turret fighters at all.
The tactic of formating on a bomber from below by the Luftwaffe does sort of overlap the use of the overhead shooting machine gun. British four engined heavies typically had only a remotely operated twin gun position in the case of early marks of the Lancaster. Or one manually operated single gun, in the case of the Halifax. After the installation of the H2S radar. These gun positions were deleted. (H2S or hydrogen sulphide has nothing to do with radar. The installation of this ground mapping radar was identified as a bad idea and was termed a stinking idea. By either Professor Smith or Jones. Hence, it's H2S or rotten egg smell. )The German air defenses could identify RAF bombers still over England when they turned them on! Much worse was Monica. A tail warning radar fitted to the heavies. The German interceptor could pick up on it and home onto the bombers before the tail gunner picked up the fighter on his screen. When the fighter slipped under the bomber, it was invisible and had a clear shot at the intruder. The Jspanese also had fighters with armament in this configuration. The Kawanishi Toryu had twin oblique firing 20mm firing both upwards and downwards. This version having only this armament and nothing firing directly ahead or astern.
You forget the WW1 Bristol F2 two seater fighter. An entirely successful (once flown as a scout not a normal twoseater) twoseater in combat against single seater scouts. The rear lewis on a scarf ring was an unpleasant experience for any hun mixing it with a brisfit. The secret was the thumping great 275 hp engine in the nose giving it performance comparable to a single seater with 120-160hp, and a vickers fixed firing forward. Had the Roc and defiant been given 1300hp+ engines and a couple of forward firing guns (maybe even a single 20mm cannon?) they may have been more successful. They certainly would have better reflected the WW1 experience with the Bristol...
No insult to the F2b, but it gave the RAF the silly notion that a two-seater fighter was a viable concept. The Brisfit was an outlier. Since the Brisfit, the only two-seater fighter that worked for air-to-air combat was the F4 Phantom.
@@hlynnkeith9334 Mosquito has been used as fighter sometimes, and it's a 2-seater, Bf-110 as well... The main problem was not concept but performance and combat duty at a time when GB was lacking of everything (especially powerfull engines)...
@@hlynnkeith9334 The US Army tried it as well with the P-16 and PB-2. I will point out that the USN tried out the Grumman F1F1 and for a time, it was the fastest naval fighter in the world- two seater as well.
The one of the draw backs with the Blackburn ROC is no forward firing machine guns. An attacking fighter could come in from the front and face no return fire.
Same thing with the Defiant. Lots of posts on the subject. Weight saving basically...even two . 303s wouldn't do much anyway. The Germans sussed that soon enough!
The same plane with a real engine, might have been useful. But as it was a good 120km/h slower than the Ju 88 bomber, and even slower than the lumbering Do 17 and He 111... It really was just a slightly mobile machine gun nest.
Poor pilots being told...no...not hurricanes...you get....“The Roc“ 😲😫😟😔 Great video though 👏👏👏👏👏👏👏👏👍👍 I had no idea there were so many dud aircraft designs...thank God the Spitfires and Hurricanes made it through.
It’s interesting that a plane developed to meet outdated ideas failed spectacularly while its contemporary, slow flying short take off Fairy Swordfish was in service throughout WW2.
But not in the Pacific. If the TBD was DOA there I can imagine the fate of the Swordfish. The Pacific theater was a whole other league as far as air defense went.
The greatest achievement of the Swordfish was in crippling the Bismark. The Bismark's advanced AA fire control system was not designed to track such slow aircraft!
@@ThatsMrPencilneck2U The Swordfish could get off and on a carrier deck in dreadful conditions that no other aircraft could. Their use at Taranto was probably their greatest single attacking achievement. Their achievements at protecting Atlantic and Artic convoys from U-boats using ASV radar hundreds of miles ahead of tiny carriers, in all weathers, was just as great an achievement as any other famous action. No other aircraft could have done it. They also carried out torpedo, mine, depth-charge and rocket attacks on shipping, sinking just as much shipping as any other allied naval aircraft, and served in the Indian Ocean. Best of all their crews liked them. I think the fire control thing is a bit of a myth.
@Blowing Free I've always loved the swordfish since I was a kid and had a little balsa model. I didn't know its career was so storied beyond damaging the Bismarck. Speaking of the Bismarck, I always heard that the aa couldn't depress low enough to hit the swordfish after they committed to their run.
There were a number of reasons. Weight was an issue, especially given the weight of the turret. The extra weight of forward machine guns would have made the plane even slower.
@@garycleveland6410 In hindsight everyone agrees that the turret did the aircraft no favors. At the time however, it made sense to at least consider it. The turret weighed too much given the engine it had and it is easy to see why it was bad IN HINDSIGHT. Keep in mind all that the video mentioned and you can see why it was there in the first place. At the same time, the turret is a different issue than the forward firing machine guns. If it had forward firing machine guns and no turret, then it would have been the Skua, the plane it was derived from, and still not a great plane. It is interesting to note that the Grumman Avenger also had a turret and no one calls it a dog. On the other hand, its Wright Cyclone engine had almost twice the power. The big difference however was that the U.S. Navy had air parity at worst, and eventually air supremacy. If we didn't have that, it too would have been looked down upon.
Great video mate! I've a question though I haven't been able to find an answer to; any idea why they went *all in* on turret fighters? As in, equipping these aircraft solely with turrets, with no wing-mounted machine-guns. I get that MGs in the wings would increase the weight, but surely not much more than the heavy turret? Were there any proposals for compromises you are aware of? Surely with the inspiration of First World War doctrine, having both forward-firing and flexible weapons - just as they did - would be the natural choice? I feel there must be something I am missing. Even just a battery of two .303s in either wing would seriously increase both the Roc's and the Defiant's usefulness as interceptors, or even chances in a dogfight, no?
I wonder the same myself. I can only guess that performance was so marginal already it was an attempt to save weight, as you say. I suppose they thought "if the turret cant get the enemy, wing guns wont either," but I'm speculating there.
Not originally but pilots such as Albert Ball quickly discovered that you could use the gun pointed at an angle and creep up underneath the enemy craft.
@@palco22 & Sheep lord - I know, that is why I used the word 'made' rather than designed. just a very very poor attempt to give Blackburn some credit! Still, all can be forgiven for the Buccaneer!
Very interesting. Less interesting is the fact that I got the Airfix model of the Boulton Paul Defiant (in BLACK plastic - ooh!) for my birthday in 1968 - I thought it looked fab, as we were wont to say then. I notice that, on the Roc, there is an articulated piece of fuselage rises and falls behind the turret as it rotates. Stupid question maybe, but was this to give the gunner added protection?
its to stop the gunner shooting off his own tail,if the electric control of the guns fails. Cams on the turret race would make contact with the mechanism of the articulated fairing which would rise and fall as the guns passed by. The turret alone weighed 500 lbs and the rest of the hydraulics and fairings a few hundred pounds more. If they'd given them the Defiant with just two manually handled guns and some forward firing guns,then they'd have had a useful aircraft.
This shows that the photo dates from around mid 1940 as there were several changes to the regulations in a short period of time regarding the type of roundels used and FAA squadrons were a bit slow to repaint all their aircraft. You do see that in some pictures of RAF aircraft from the same time as well though.
Sorry to contradict you but neither the Roc or the Defiant were fitted with Frazer-Nash turrets. They were equipped with Boulton Paul Type A Mk. II turrets based on the French SAMM AB.7,for which BP had bought the rights. For further information I recommend "The Defiant File" by Alec Brew (Air Britain). As the old Leninists used to say "read yer 'istry books". Cheers & Good luck
When The Blackburn Roc and Fairey Fulmar were built the expected enemy was expected to be Cruiser or Battleship spotter aircraft and seaplane operating from land bases. The idea was the Roc could use its turret to shoot down enemy aircraft while the pilot maneuvered to positions where the enemy aircraft could not return fire. The biggest problem with the ROC and the Boulton Paul Defiant was a complete lack of forward firing guns. Ironically one of my favorite Brit aircraft is the Fairey Firefly, but the one without the chin radiator.
Governments are not sentimental about equipment of any type. They will sell anything for scrap. The B-17 Memphis Belle the first B-17 to complete twenty-five missions with the crew intact was set to be cut up for scrap until the people of Memphis got the money together and saved it. At the end of World War II the US Navy beached PT boats, stripped them of anything usable and set frit to them.
USN tired the same idea during Korea with auto turrets in the front of their strait wing jets who had poor turn so they could lead the enemy in a turn the couldnt keep up with that didn't really work either but even today most auto cannons are tilted slightly up off bore sight to lead in a turn or for range.
Not sure what you are talking about. The only two seat jet fighter deployed by the Navy (actually by the Marines) during the conflict was the Douglas F3D and it had a fixed four gun 20mm cannon armament in the belly of the aircraft.
I don't see why a more modern version of a turret fighter with a stronger engine wouldn't have worked, imagine a fighter plane a little less manoeuvrable and a little slower than a spitfire in a dogfight, it may not be able to get its nose onto target easily, but that is where the turret allows it to fire at the enemy aircraft without the plane itself even winning the dogfight! Even if the enemy plane can get onto the tail of this plane, it could still shoot back, giving it a chance to win, or scare off the opponent.
Love your videos, poor old ROC, could you please do the Boulton Paul Defiant ? 264 Sqn proved it's worth but novice 141 Sqn was massacred, sending the Defiant to night fighting.
The Defiant was actually a very successful night fighter, with aviation author John Taylor noted that during the Blitz on London of 1940-41, the four Defiant-equipped squadrons were responsible for shooting down more enemy aircraft than any other type in the theatre; because it was being used as a bomber destroyer which was its intended role, it suffered such appalling casualties in previous engagements because it was sent against fighters when it was designed to take on bombers
Well they did have a brief period when, painted all black, they intercepted many Lone wolf bombers /stragglers at night with success, but were replaced by Beaufighters as they had a decent radar set fitted.
The Defiant was quite successful, shooting down more German bombers than any other type in the winter of 1940-41. Some of this was luck because interception techniques were very primitive in that period.
The successes of concept either need guided weapons (off boresight cueing) or large non-maneuvering targets that can't see you (the shrage musik-type installation in night fighters). The "escort" concept is reinventing the B-17 gunship, which was a total failure. Problem was, you paid a huge weight penalty and in exchange you got weapons that were harder to hit with. Maybe with a proper fire control system it wouldn't have been quite as bad, the defensive armament on B-29s seemed to work pretty well, but that was well in the future.
Geat video's, but please improve the sound quality and speak more clearly. I still don't know what the second type of shooting (besides deflection shooting) is called
"No allowance" shooting. I had to search for it. Here's a good link that I broke so the post wouldn't be blocked. www DOT dingeraviation DOT net/noallowance/nodeflect DOT htm I turned on subtitles after seeing your comment and got lucky.
Wish you would have told the story about Sq. LDR. D.H. Clark in his Roc , with the "Saint" insignia on it's side, battling a HE-59, twin engine biplane /flotplane, at wave top height, firing broadsides at each other like battleships. Neither was able to shoot the other down, but Clark claimed a damaged because one engine on the HE-59 was smoking. Clarke's ROC made it home, but was pretty shot up, and was scrapped. Surely the most bazaar dogfight of the war.
Blackburn: Look what we built! RNAS: What did you use to built that thing? Blackburn: Entirely constructed using an ugly stick! Very economical... RNAS: ...........................................right.
@@Peoples_Republic_of_Devonshire Too slow and too heavy with the drag from the turret ,the lack of forward firing guns put it at a grave disadvantage against single seat fighters , it was an outmoded concept from an earlier era .
@@jeffparker9622 it was never meant for taking on fighters. It was designed to be a bomber destroyer, it was meant to sit in the blind spots of the gunners and blast it to kingdom come. When used against bombers it did superbly, and had a good record as a night fighter
@@Peoples_Republic_of_Devonshire unfortunately things never quite pan out in the way that they should in war ....like Battle Cruisers were not meant to take on Battle Ships ...but they did like Hood vs Bismarck , with the results that we saw .If you could guarantee formations of bombers flying overhead without fighter escort then the idea of the Defiant intercepting and destroying them seems perfectly sound , as was seen during 1940 this scenario rarely took place , a fighter / interceptor must be able to defend itself adequately , the Defiant could not and so it became a death trap for its crews .Similar to the concept of the light bomber operating in daylight without fighter protection ( I’m talking Fairey Battle here ) completely butchered by 109s in France with almost wholesale losses in a lot of cases .
@@jeffparker9622 mixed squadrons of fighters and Defiants did have some success. But once the blitz began then bombers were largely unprotected and the Defiants could prowl unmolested until they were superceded by far superior aircraft such as the Beaufighter
Somewhere back in the mists of time(1960s)I recall seeing in I think Flight Magazine either prototype drawings, or indeed a prototype high wing twin engine heavy fighter with a wide almost flush turret where the wing and fuselage joined. Armament would have been 4 x 20mm cannon. Boulton Paul maybe? Any ideas?
I've often wondered if a two man fighter might have worked. I don't see why they needed to be as big as the Fairey Fulmar. Maybe the man in the back could have a couple of guns and no turret to keep the weight down.
It is amazing that the Blackburn designers who thought that a vertical windscreen was a good aerodynamic solution which contributed to a true flying dog with fleas and then in later years produced the incredibly successful and long lived Buccaneer. Learning from their mistakes perhaps.
The Buccaneer S Mk 1 was an underpowered dog of an aircraft. It was only the fitting of the Spey engine that saved it, plus the Cancellation of TSR-2 and the F-111K.
I have never understood that a country could have ever thought up one "turret fighter", let alone several. The Blacburn Roc, the Boulton-Paul Defiant, and the Westland Wendover, a variation on the Lysander liaison aircraft. After they found that the first one sucked at its job, they tried again, and again. Why? Either try with larger engines, to perhaps gain more speed, at least, or just cancel them for more fighters.
Painted black like Defiant it might have made a handy night fighter sneaking up on the under bellie of German bombers and blasting away with that turret! Snag here is its lack of speed to keep up with those big BMW radial s!
It was too slow to make it to a typical interception point. Also, radar vectoring of fighter interceptors was fairly crude in the early years. A Hurricane or Spitfire had about 100 mph speed advantage over a poor Blackburn Roc. That meant the faster fighters could make up for a not great vector with their considerable speed advantage over the German twin engine bombers. No such luck for a Roc(k).
The Air Ministry must have been a strange place. On the one hand it turns down the Mosquito a bomber faster then any fighter the Germans have because the Germans might one day develop a faster fighter on the other it approves a fighter slower then the existing German bombers. Was it that important to cover every military plane with ball turrets ?
I think what should have made the top brass stop and think about the Rocs being in service is that technique of "no allowance shooting". Which relied upon the following aircraft in a dogfight KEEPING UP with the lead aircraft. They should have twigged immediately (I think) when they realised that the Roc could only do 220mph, which was never enough to keep up with the enemy. So that technique was rendered effectively useless, even at the time! But then, as you pointed out; 1940 - "we'll have everything we can get our hands on. We're desperate!!!" was undoubtable the motto.
Consider the turret fighter as a precision ground attack aircraft in the same vein as the AC-130. Now it has some validity, but, as you pointed out, only if the owning side has Air Superiority.
Can you imagine being some fresh-faced new FAA pilot in 1939? He gets to his first squadron out of training, and he asks, "So what do we fly??? Hurricanes? Those shit-hot new Spitfires I've heard about?!"....and they say, "Naw, mate. Here's your kite," and show him a Roc.
Not mentioned is that it is too hard for the pilot and gunner to coordinate an attack specially since the pilot was the superior airman to the gunner who couldn't give orders to the pilot to maneuver their aircraft so he could get a shot in. Like the Defiant the Roc couldn't fire straight ahead.
But when the Roc was conceived there was little chance of the Fleet Air Arm encountering high-performance fighters at sea. Neither the Germans nor Italians ever got a carrier to sea, and the Japanese weren't really considered, so it was assumed that the Roc would be taking on long-range reconnaissance aircraft or maybe flying boats.
A couple of things I wonder about British logic. 1) Recognizing in advance that the aircraft would be a failure, they continued production so as not to hold up the production line. Wait, what? Knowing you are building something you don't want, you keep building it because you don't want to stop the line that is building it? Da faaq? 2) Such a loser that it ends up as a static AA gun with the engine removed. ???? Why remove the engine? What were they going to do; put it in some other plane? It sucked. It was too weak to power a plane, so why not leave it in an airframe that was useless anyway? If they were going to commit the manpower to remove a major component of the plane, then why not remove the turret and set it on a frame or little trailer to use as an AA mount, and scrap the plane for recycling during a time of acute metal shortage?
1 ..its design was however inadequate its R&D turned out to become, was ready for production, had some similarities to existing in service aircraft, and when Britain was striving to get aircraft built for the upcoming WW2, another, new war, no-one knew what woulc or could yet work or fail within the brewing combat to come.... 2 ..yes, engines could be used for more worthier arframes. True, using a modified trailer set up, would likely have worked much better, but then, why even waste more resources, production/industrial time, facilities & manpower in designing that, when for a static role, you could utilise existing obselete set up, sandbagged/bolstered-up on level its belly, gears up (if their not removed), and the upper cockpit canopy structure cut off (to clear the gun arcs,) with just say a small capacity Villers, BSA or Triumph etc generator for electrical needs for a small battery of reutilised & thus unwasted gun platforms. Small savings in reusing obsolete things, can be a great aid in war, in a national stategic scale of things - some logical choices made during a developing dire need or needs, force seemingly illogical results at first seeing/sight. Should they have spent time deconstructing the aircraft to only the turret system? or scrapped them ASAP? when some uses was still servicable? ..and if a service man suggested an ad-hoc usage of additional AA platforms to reinforce the a naval airfileds firepower that were otherwise mothballed or unused, would that be a 'fail' reason in your opinion?
One thing about wars - is that there are a lot of _theories_ that people come up with before them, only to find when they actually try and do these things - that the theories ... didn't work out ... . The problem is - that it isn't until they are being used on a massive scale over an extended time - that some of the flaws in the theory come out. .
One of the other theories involved here that has not gotten a lot of mention - was the theory that the Air Force - should have control over ALL aircraft. Thus - the RAF having control over the aircraft to be put on the RN's ships ... I am under the impression that while the RAF fitted itself out with some fairly good aircraft - the aircraft assigned to the RN were execrable. Thankfully this bit of stupidity was corrected but not before it had done it's damage. There were excellent aircraft designed and produced in the UK during the war for the RN but ... the development time on them restricted their arrival to late if not post war. Fortunately, the RN's cousin across the pond had some excellent carrier aircraft and was happy to lend some to the RN. .
You missed the point. The “theory” behind this was the spectacular success of the Bristol Fighter in WWI. Who could say for sure the same tactics would not work?
@@thethirdman225 I didn't miss that point at all. All of your Air Power Theories - of the Interwar Years - were based on what happened in WWI. Mitchell and Douhet were both very, very wrong about what they thought Air Power could do and turret fighters such as the Defiant were also an idea that failed. Then you have such as the British Tactical Formations which were not as good as those used by the Germans. Where you are absolutely right - is in your question and that was my point. They couldn't know which of these things would really work until they tried to do it. These weren't stupid people - they were just wrong. The problem is - that you have unknown variables that you don't find out about - until you actually try to do it. People just aren't omniscient. They can't foresee everything that could possibly happen. So - they get an idea and they try it out ... and maybe they can fix the unanticipated problems - and maybe they can't. Sometimes - things that are absolute road blocks at one time - are later solved - but by then the technology has been back shelved and getting it revived is hard. There are simply far to many ideas for them to all be pursued with the resources at hand. Then you have "things change" and something that was once a brilliant idea - becomes stupid to keep doing. .
@@BobSmith-dk8nw What do you mean _my_ theories? They weren’t _my_ theories. Your criticisms are just hindsight. Unless you had a crystal ball, there was no way of knowing what would work in a new war and what wouldn’t.
The Beverly was out of date by the time it entered service no other country bought it , it took an age to reach a few thousand feet . The Herculeas came out at roughly the same time every air force bought it and it is flying still to day,The Buccaneer was a fine aircraft but by then Blackburn was part of BEA Systems
Há varias coisas que não gosto nesse avião: o trem de pouso alto e voltado para trás, o que da impressão de que ele vai saltar como uma rã, outra coisa que arruinou seu desenpenho era sua pesada torre. Podiam ter usado as .303 nas asas, e uma coisa que me chamou atenção e que deixou a aparencia desse avião mais bizarra e seu para-brisa reto,ao invés de em ângulo.
I do wonder, looking at Blackburn's generally poor products (apart from what they built under license from others) whether they had high placed influence or contacts on the old boy network who enabled them to get the contracts they did? If so it would be such shameful behaviour at a time when our backs were against the wall...
The UK kept having naval fighters made with 2 seats and slower speeds after the Roc. No one else wanted them, the US and Japanese didn't. Why did the UK keep asking for them rather than a good single seat fighter like a Hellcat, Zero (early on) etc.
What about if it was used as a small gunship, like a mini AC-130. Guess you would only possibly use it for close air support when you wouldn't want to use bombs but still.
Glad to see someone flesh out the design philosophy behind an aircraft that for decades has been dismissed with a single paragraph by disinterested historians.
I should imagine they were all stripped for spares then the airframes were towed to the end of firing ranges & used for target practice/ munitions testing.
LIke the Boulton-Paul Defiant, the plane's underpowered engine really hurt its potential. The Defiant, had it gotten a later mark Merlin like the Merlin 61, would have become a surprisingly potent bomber interceptor.
Take a TWO seater aircraft, give it NO forward firing armament, saddle it with an underpowered engine... and call it a fighter??? All aspects of it seem to point to its having been designed to be sub-par! Sounds rather familiar... hmmm... oh yes... the Boulton Paul Defiant for the RAF (it at least had some passing nods to aerodynamics and a Merlin engine but still another terrible windshield design!). In practical theory, a WWII day fighter flew more or less behind its quarry and ambushed it (i.e. it hunted its prey). Fighters, particularly single seat, had the armament facing forwards. Heavier German and Italian aircraft never had particularly effective rearward facing armament. This thing was designed to wait until it was attacked before it could defend itself. Therein lies the rub, as it were. The best defense is a strong offense, something that this aircraft simply could not provide.
I could see that turret on something with a better engine and more guns in the nose or wings, a kind of heavy/maritime patrol fighter, but just the turret? Not on something that isn't a bomber.
I'm sorry, but the concept of the turreted fighter the way the British designed them was idiotic. Putting a power turret into an aircraft with an underpowered engine was sheer madness. Add to that that the aircraft lacked forward firing guns, makes me wonder why the designers even bothered. The only single seat U.S. aircraft that featured a power turret was the Grumman Avenger, which was powered by aWright R-2600-20 Twin Cyclone engine producing 1,900 horsepower, twice that of the Skua. Why didn't the Navy (or in the case of the RAF with the Defiant) require a significantly more powerful engine to handle the extra weight?
You'd have thought that it would have made an ok dive bomber for use in the Western Desert, if only the British Army / RAF had been interested in such things.
I would use this thing like a small AC-130, just turn around a spot and let the gunner fire on ground troops. I might get shot down by AA guns however.
The Defiant was a flawed design with the turret idea, same as the Roc - but it was actually a fine aircraft. A failure against other fighters, but it was quite a successful night fighter for a while.
This front windshield was undoubtedly the most aerodynamic windshield of aviation history.....
:-D C'te bonne blague ...
Like a Flying bill board Flat On? How on God's green Earth could this get past?
The stupid thing had dive brakes since it was initially designed as a dive bomber. Was that windshield also designed as a dive brake?
I always wondered why they adopted such an unwieldy design. Imagine being the pilot, facing a vertical glass plate hardly one foot in front of your nose...while in flight! Vintovka here jokingly suggests it may have helped in braking the plane while diving on the target. I'm afraid it might not be a joke. I can't imagine another plausible reason.
That's an effing Roman shield...
Watching all of Ed Nash's videos about forgotten aircraft has taught me many things about the lead-up to WWII :
1) The war itself fueled a massive growth in military knowledge with the maturing weapons such as planes, tanks and carriers
2) Pre-war technology and thinking were not that far off from the best of WWI, which means they had not been given too much a chance to evolve in twenty years
3) It's easy to forget how peace time can cause one's army to stagnate in its thinking, since ideas can only be put out there in theory and it's hard to convince leaders at the time to make sweeping changes to their military assets without having a proof of concept, which usually requires a war.
Awesome videos.
The aerodynamics team was on vacation that week.
Permanent vacation...
I read about encounters in the Mediterranean in which the Rocs would finally catch up to the bombers they were pursuing and try to bring their guns to bear. The added drag would then slow them down and they would lose their target...
The only way I can realistically see the Roc's catching their targets is if they follow them all the way home and wait for them to land.
@@FallenPhoenix86 and then jump on the bombers. . .
If this is a "sad" aircraft spare a thought for the poor, brave souls who had to fly them into combat.
So true, same goes for the BP Defiant.
Yes, the designers should have been told to fly them in combat.....
@@samhunt9380 I think Sir Arthur Harris said something similar regarding the earlier versions of the Halifax as he pressured Handley Page to improve it (which they did). The Roc was beyond redemption.
@@iclaudius148 the Defiant was faster and More maneuverable than The Roc
@@jamesricker3997 Intended for different operating venues.
A good in-depth look at the Blackburn Roc. Thanks!
It is easy to criticise the poor old Roc as it had very little to recommend it. To me it demonstrates how difficult it was for the aircraft designers of the day to achieve reasonable carrier/marine aircraft which combined the strength for carrier conditions, the power for a decent performance, the armament for a decent punch and still keep the weight down. The upright windscreen may have been for visibility for carrier landings and take-offs.
The Royal Navy and Fleet Air Arm at that point had not cracked the problem but then no one else had either. US designs were probably better at that time as US engineering tradition tended to go for tougher designs better suited to carrier conditions. To my mind it wasn't till the Corsaur F4U came along in 1940 that the balance was right. But with power more than twice that available for the Roc.
To me the puzzle of the Roc is why they built so many - not that far off the Skua numbers - when it must have been obvious the added weight of the turret moved it from the fair-to-middling class of the Skua down to lemon class.
Anyway - interesting video.
the UK couldn't build good naval aircraft because 1) Fleet Air Arm was organised under the RAF, not the Royal Navy and 2) didn't have powerful engines like the radials powering the American Wildcat, Hellcat and Corsair. The Americans simply out-engineered the UK when it came to naval aircraft and that's why the FAA ended up flying American planes.
German 1: Vat is that back there?
German 2: Observation aircraft. Zey are here to record our glorious victory.
Sheesh, 136 built. They should have known with the first couple of these. They were in a hurry, weren't they.
The defensive mindset which led to the Roc, Skua and Fulmar reflected the RN's faulty thinking on carrier warfare. They saw the aircraft as assets which needed to be sheltered by the ships instead of the other way around: use the aircraft offensively to protect the fleet from submarine and surface threats as well as air threats. This is why they lost carriers like the Courageous and Glorious early on in the war.
wasnt FAA procurement managed by the RAF?
@@spawnof200 yes thats why the FAA was in the short end of the stick when comes to procurement unlike the US navy have dedicated procurement inside by the name of BurAir.
One thing - AFAIK Schraege Musik ( the late-war German installation of upwards-firing guns into their night fighters) wasn't done to allow "no-allowance shooting," but to allow the night fighters to engage bombers from an angle that shielded them from the bombers' observation much less defensive fire. So it wasn't really connected to the interwar British mania for turret fighters at all.
The tactic of formating on a bomber from below by the Luftwaffe does sort of overlap the use of the overhead shooting machine gun. British four engined heavies typically had only a remotely operated twin gun position in the case of early marks of the Lancaster. Or one manually operated single gun, in the case of the Halifax. After the installation of the H2S radar. These gun positions were deleted. (H2S or hydrogen sulphide has nothing to do with radar. The installation of this ground mapping radar was identified as a bad idea and was termed a stinking idea. By either Professor Smith or Jones. Hence, it's H2S or rotten egg smell. )The German air defenses could identify RAF bombers still over England when they turned them on! Much worse was Monica. A tail warning radar fitted to the heavies. The German interceptor could pick up on it and home onto the bombers before the tail gunner picked up the fighter on his screen. When the fighter slipped under the bomber, it was invisible and had a clear shot at the intruder. The Jspanese also had fighters with armament in this configuration. The Kawanishi Toryu had twin oblique firing 20mm firing both upwards and downwards. This version having only this armament and nothing firing directly ahead or astern.
I like seeing and hearing about these different and odd aircraft. Keep on doing it please.
You forget the WW1 Bristol F2 two seater fighter.
An entirely successful (once flown as a scout not a normal twoseater) twoseater in combat against single seater scouts. The rear lewis on a scarf ring was an unpleasant experience for any hun mixing it with a brisfit. The secret was the thumping great 275 hp engine in the nose giving it performance comparable to a single seater with 120-160hp, and a vickers fixed firing forward.
Had the Roc and defiant been given 1300hp+ engines and a couple of forward firing guns (maybe even a single 20mm cannon?) they may have been more successful. They certainly would have better reflected the WW1 experience with the Bristol...
No insult to the F2b, but it gave the RAF the silly notion that a two-seater fighter was a viable concept. The Brisfit was an outlier. Since the Brisfit, the only two-seater fighter that worked for air-to-air combat was the F4 Phantom.
@@hlynnkeith9334 Mosquito has been used as fighter sometimes, and it's a 2-seater, Bf-110 as well... The main problem was not concept but performance and combat duty at a time when GB was lacking of everything (especially powerfull engines)...
@@hlynnkeith9334 The US Army tried it as well with the P-16 and PB-2. I will point out that the USN tried out the Grumman F1F1 and for a time, it was the fastest naval fighter in the world- two seater as well.
@@hlynnkeith9334 A.W. Meteor, Gloster Javelin, DH Venom, DH Sea Vixen, Yak-25, Avro CF-100 among others.
@@hlynnkeith9334 There was allso the gruman f-14 tom cat.
It looks as though it was designed by Homer Simpson.
Blackburn give you 'The Homer!' :)
@ Gary Coogan 😂 awesome comment
No, it was designed by Grandpa Simpson.
Doh!
No doubt the original design was drawn on a napkin at Moe's.
Very informative with balanced opinions on this a/c - thank you for this video.
The one of the draw backs with the Blackburn ROC is no forward firing machine guns. An attacking fighter could come in from the front and face no return fire.
Same thing with the Defiant. Lots of posts on the subject. Weight saving basically...even two . 303s wouldn't do much anyway. The Germans sussed that soon enough!
@@johncotter9356 It is no fun to be under attack and not be able to shoot back.
Good vid with interesting & informative commentary.
The best summing up of the turret fighter I have seen for a long time... nicely balanced.
Most of these failed aircraft look to be a flying collection of "bits".
Kinda like F-35.
The same plane with a real engine, might have been useful.
But as it was a good 120km/h slower than the Ju 88 bomber, and even slower than the lumbering Do 17 and He 111...
It really was just a slightly mobile machine gun nest.
It shot down a JU-88 over Norway.
@@johnkelinske1449 Yep. It had *ample* firepower, just no ability to chase down the faster bombers.
A smart Bolton Paul turret wearing a threadbare donkey jacket.
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@@johnkelinske1449 Ahh, one Ju-88 does not a summer make.
Excellent video thank you for sharing.
Poor pilots being told...no...not hurricanes...you get....“The Roc“ 😲😫😟😔 Great video though 👏👏👏👏👏👏👏👏👍👍 I had no idea there were so many dud aircraft designs...thank God the Spitfires and Hurricanes made it through.
It’s interesting that a plane developed to meet outdated ideas failed spectacularly while its contemporary, slow flying short take off Fairy Swordfish was in service throughout WW2.
But not in the Pacific. If the TBD was DOA there I can imagine the fate of the Swordfish. The Pacific theater was a whole other league as far as air defense went.
@@kurttate9446 That is true- The Bismarck, for example didn't have a lot of air cover.
The greatest achievement of the Swordfish was in crippling the Bismark. The Bismark's advanced AA fire control system was not designed to track such slow aircraft!
@@ThatsMrPencilneck2U The Swordfish could get off and on a carrier deck in dreadful conditions that no other aircraft could. Their use at Taranto was probably their greatest single attacking achievement. Their achievements at protecting Atlantic and Artic convoys from U-boats using ASV radar hundreds of miles ahead of tiny carriers, in all weathers, was just as great an achievement as any other famous action. No other aircraft could have done it. They also carried out torpedo, mine, depth-charge and rocket attacks on shipping, sinking just as much shipping as any other allied naval aircraft, and served in the Indian Ocean. Best of all their crews liked them. I think the fire control thing is a bit of a myth.
@Blowing Free I've always loved the swordfish since I was a kid and had a little balsa model. I didn't know its career was so storied beyond damaging the Bismarck. Speaking of the Bismarck, I always heard that the aa couldn't depress low enough to hit the swordfish after they committed to their run.
2:43 Dunkirks not a good time to ask personal questions but I'd have to ask the soldier being dragged aboard " What happened to your trousers mate?"
"Ugh... don't ask, matey. Don't. 's not my best memory.:
"Donald where's your trousers"
what always got me is WHY the insistence on no forward firing guns ? Just help those guys out a little
A pair of wing mounted .303 machine guns could have changed some things about this plane.
There were a number of reasons. Weight was an issue, especially given the weight of the turret. The extra weight of forward machine guns would have made the plane even slower.
@@PanzerDave The turret was a horrible idea. It literally made the plane a flying target.
@@garycleveland6410 In hindsight everyone agrees that the turret did the aircraft no favors. At the time however, it made sense to at least consider it. The turret weighed too much given the engine it had and it is easy to see why it was bad IN HINDSIGHT. Keep in mind all that the video mentioned and you can see why it was there in the first place. At the same time, the turret is a different issue than the forward firing machine guns. If it had forward firing machine guns and no turret, then it would have been the Skua, the plane it was derived from, and still not a great plane.
It is interesting to note that the Grumman Avenger also had a turret and no one calls it a dog. On the other hand, its Wright Cyclone engine had almost twice the power. The big difference however was that the U.S. Navy had air parity at worst, and eventually air supremacy. If we didn't have that, it too would have been looked down upon.
@@PanzerDave The Grumman Avenger was a different aircraft. It had forward firing weapons as well.
Great video mate! I've a question though I haven't been able to find an answer to; any idea why they went *all in* on turret fighters? As in, equipping these aircraft solely with turrets, with no wing-mounted machine-guns. I get that MGs in the wings would increase the weight, but surely not much more than the heavy turret? Were there any proposals for compromises you are aware of? Surely with the inspiration of First World War doctrine, having both forward-firing and flexible weapons - just as they did - would be the natural choice? I feel there must be something I am missing. Even just a battery of two .303s in either wing would seriously increase both the Roc's and the Defiant's usefulness as interceptors, or even chances in a dogfight, no?
I wonder the same myself. I can only guess that performance was so marginal already it was an attempt to save weight, as you say. I suppose they thought "if the turret cant get the enemy, wing guns wont either," but I'm speculating there.
Imagine being the JU88 pilot that was this lemon's sole confirmed kill ever.....
The Lewis gun above the SE-5’s top wing was not for firing at an angle. It was only at an angle when pulled back for loading a fresh ammo drum.
Not originally but pilots such as Albert Ball quickly discovered that you could use the gun pointed at an angle and creep up underneath the enemy craft.
Short Seamew, Blackburn Botha, Blackburn Beverley, Blackburn Roc, Bristol Brabazon, when will the nightmare and horror end ?
When they designed the buccaneer apparently. Their first decent aircraft followed soon after by bankruptcy.
Blackburn did make the Swordfish, a massively successful aircraft.
@@blowingfree6928 no, that was Fairey. Blackburn was hired on to increase production.
@@blowingfree6928 That would be the Fairey Aviation Company !
@@palco22 & Sheep lord - I know, that is why I used the word 'made' rather than designed. just a very very poor attempt to give Blackburn some credit! Still, all can be forgiven for the Buccaneer!
Very interesting. Less interesting is the fact that I got the Airfix model of the Boulton Paul Defiant (in BLACK plastic - ooh!) for my birthday in 1968 - I thought it looked fab, as we were wont to say then. I notice that, on the Roc, there is an articulated piece of fuselage rises and falls behind the turret as it rotates. Stupid question maybe, but was this to give the gunner added protection?
its to stop the gunner shooting off his own tail,if the electric control of the guns fails. Cams on the turret race would make contact with the mechanism of the articulated fairing which would rise and fall as the guns passed by. The turret alone weighed 500 lbs and the rest of the hydraulics and fairings a few hundred pounds more. If they'd given them the Defiant with just two manually handled guns and some forward firing guns,then they'd have had a useful aircraft.
@@michaelbevan3285 Thanks for taking my dumb question seriously Michael, and for providing such a full and interesting reply - much appreciated!
Very interesting variation in markings (particularly the fuselage roundels) among the different aircraft in a formation. Too bad they're not in color.
You're in a Roc. You're going to get shot down. Painting big targets on the fuselage just gets it over with quicker.
This shows that the photo dates from around mid 1940 as there were several changes to the regulations in a short period of time regarding the type of roundels used and FAA squadrons were a bit slow to repaint all their aircraft. You do see that in some pictures of RAF aircraft from the same time as well though.
It is always interesting how reality meshes up with theory. In this case not so much.
Sorry to contradict you but neither the Roc or the Defiant were fitted with Frazer-Nash turrets. They were equipped with Boulton Paul Type A Mk. II turrets based on the French SAMM AB.7,for which BP had bought the rights.
For further information I recommend "The Defiant File" by Alec Brew (Air Britain). As the old Leninists used to say "read yer 'istry books".
Cheers & Good luck
Thanks; I wondered about that.
Damned interesting, sir. I can see the logic. But a spitfire or a hurricane had 8 guns, not 4... And only 1 potential martyr.
Depends on variant tbh
@@triyanto6594 Not really. All variants of the Spitfire and Hurricane carried at least double the armament of the Roc. And half the personnel.
When The Blackburn Roc and Fairey Fulmar were built the expected enemy was expected to be Cruiser or Battleship spotter aircraft and seaplane operating from land bases. The idea was the Roc could use its turret to shoot down enemy aircraft while the pilot maneuvered to positions where the enemy aircraft could not return fire.
The biggest problem with the ROC and the Boulton Paul Defiant was a complete lack of forward firing guns.
Ironically one of my favorite Brit aircraft is the Fairey Firefly, but the one without the chin radiator.
Well, yes, i checked your other videos and i must say that i actually found something else of interest: everything! 👍🏻 Thank you Ed!
You're very welcome.
If it looks right, it generally is right. These Blackburn aircraft look wrong.
Such a shame that none of these amazing designs of aircraft were kept as museum exhibits
Governments are not sentimental about equipment of any type. They will sell anything for scrap. The B-17 Memphis Belle the first B-17 to complete twenty-five missions with the crew intact was set to be cut up for scrap until the people of Memphis got the money together and saved it.
At the end of World War II the US Navy beached PT boats, stripped them of anything usable and set frit to them.
There’s a Defiant at Hendon.
i just noticed how most of the pictures of the roc around have the canopy open (or removed) i wonder if there was some reason for this?
USN tired the same idea during Korea with auto turrets in the front of their strait wing jets who had poor turn so they could lead the enemy in a turn the couldnt keep up with that didn't really work either but even today most auto cannons are tilted slightly up off bore sight to lead in a turn or for range.
Not sure what you are talking about. The only two seat jet fighter deployed by the Navy (actually by the Marines) during the conflict was the Douglas F3D and it had a fixed four gun 20mm cannon armament in the belly of the aircraft.
I don't see why a more modern version of a turret fighter with a stronger engine wouldn't have worked, imagine a fighter plane a little less manoeuvrable and a little slower than a spitfire in a dogfight, it may not be able to get its nose onto target easily, but that is where the turret allows it to fire at the enemy aircraft without the plane itself even winning the dogfight! Even if the enemy plane can get onto the tail of this plane, it could still shoot back, giving it a chance to win, or scare off the opponent.
Love your videos, poor old ROC, could you please do the Boulton Paul Defiant ? 264 Sqn proved it's worth but novice 141 Sqn was massacred, sending the Defiant to night fighting.
I really enjoy your videos. Could you make one on the Fairey Barracuda? The Vickers Wildebeast?
Ahhhh...the vildebeest should be soon! Prob next week.
A similar configuration to the Bolton Paul Defiant, which didn’t fair too well, they tried as a night fighter without much success.
The Defiant was actually a very successful night fighter, with aviation author John Taylor noted that during the Blitz on London of 1940-41, the four Defiant-equipped squadrons were responsible for shooting down more enemy aircraft than any other type in the theatre; because it was being used as a bomber destroyer which was its intended role, it suffered such appalling casualties in previous engagements because it was sent against fighters when it was designed to take on bombers
Well they did have a brief period when, painted all black, they intercepted many Lone wolf bombers /stragglers at night with success, but were replaced by Beaufighters as they had a decent radar set fitted.
@@johncotter9356 plus the Beaufighter was a fucking awesome airframe
The Defiant was quite successful, shooting down more German bombers than any other type in the winter of 1940-41. Some of this was luck because interception techniques were very primitive in that period.
The last Blackburn Rocs were used to defend Bermuda from air attack & submarine attacks.
The successes of concept either need guided weapons (off boresight cueing) or large non-maneuvering targets that can't see you (the shrage musik-type installation in night fighters).
The "escort" concept is reinventing the B-17 gunship, which was a total failure.
Problem was, you paid a huge weight penalty and in exchange you got weapons that were harder to hit with. Maybe with a proper fire control system it wouldn't have been quite as bad, the defensive armament on B-29s seemed to work pretty well, but that was well in the future.
Geat video's, but please improve the sound quality and speak more clearly. I still don't know what the second type of shooting (besides deflection shooting) is called
"No allowance" shooting. I had to search for it. Here's a good link that I broke so the post wouldn't be blocked.
www DOT dingeraviation DOT net/noallowance/nodeflect DOT htm
I turned on subtitles after seeing your comment and got lucky.
Wish you would have told the story about Sq. LDR. D.H. Clark in his Roc , with the "Saint" insignia on it's side, battling a HE-59, twin engine biplane /flotplane, at wave top height, firing broadsides at each other like battleships. Neither was able to shoot the other down, but Clark claimed a damaged because one engine on the HE-59 was smoking. Clarke's ROC made it home, but was pretty shot up, and was scrapped. Surely the most bazaar dogfight of the war.
Blackburn: Look what we built!
RNAS: What did you use to built that thing?
Blackburn: Entirely constructed using an ugly stick! Very economical...
RNAS: ...........................................right.
Subjective Opinion No. 1 - If it looks like a dog, if flies like a dog.
4:48
"He must fall,
remember Ball !"
Developed from the Skua dive bomber ...it makes the Defiant look like a world beater
The Defiant was a good plane but it was criminally misused
@@Peoples_Republic_of_Devonshire Too slow and too heavy with the drag from the turret ,the lack of forward firing guns put it at a grave disadvantage against single seat fighters , it was an outmoded concept from an earlier era .
@@jeffparker9622 it was never meant for taking on fighters. It was designed to be a bomber destroyer, it was meant to sit in the blind spots of the gunners and blast it to kingdom come. When used against bombers it did superbly, and had a good record as a night fighter
@@Peoples_Republic_of_Devonshire unfortunately things never quite pan out in the way that they should in war ....like Battle Cruisers were not meant to take on Battle Ships ...but they did like Hood vs Bismarck , with the results that we saw .If you could guarantee formations of bombers flying overhead without fighter escort then the idea of the Defiant intercepting and destroying them seems perfectly sound , as was seen during 1940 this scenario rarely took place , a fighter / interceptor must be able to defend itself adequately , the Defiant could not and so it became a death trap for its crews .Similar to the concept of the light bomber operating in daylight without fighter protection ( I’m talking Fairey Battle here ) completely butchered by 109s in France with almost wholesale losses in a lot of cases .
@@jeffparker9622 mixed squadrons of fighters and Defiants did have some success.
But once the blitz began then bombers were largely unprotected and the Defiants could prowl unmolested until they were superceded by far superior aircraft such as the Beaufighter
Somewhere back in the mists of time(1960s)I recall seeing in I think Flight Magazine either prototype drawings, or indeed a prototype high wing twin engine heavy fighter with a wide almost flush turret where the wing and fuselage joined. Armament would have been 4 x 20mm cannon. Boulton Paul maybe? Any ideas?
Thanks Ed. Well nothing to add really . I wonder how much those turrets cost ? 😨😨😨
What was the best dive bomber in WW2, Dauntless, Val, Stuka, or the Blackburn Suka?
I think it looks cool.
I've often wondered if a two man fighter might have worked. I don't see why they needed to be as big as the Fairey Fulmar. Maybe the man in the back could have a couple of guns and no turret to keep the weight down.
It is amazing that the Blackburn designers who thought that a vertical windscreen was a good aerodynamic solution which contributed to a true flying dog with fleas and then in later years produced the incredibly successful and long lived Buccaneer. Learning from their mistakes perhaps.
The Buccaneer S Mk 1 was an underpowered dog of an aircraft. It was only the fitting of the Spey engine that saved it, plus the Cancellation of TSR-2 and the F-111K.
I have never understood that a country could have ever thought up one "turret fighter", let alone several. The Blacburn Roc, the Boulton-Paul Defiant, and the Westland Wendover, a variation on the Lysander liaison aircraft. After they found that the first one sucked at its job, they tried again, and again. Why? Either try with larger engines, to perhaps gain more speed, at least, or just cancel them for more fighters.
Painted black like Defiant it might have made a handy night fighter sneaking up on the under bellie of German bombers and blasting away with that turret! Snag here is its lack of speed to keep up with those big BMW radial s!
Actually shot down a Ju-88 over Norway.
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It was too slow to make it to a typical interception point. Also, radar vectoring of fighter interceptors was fairly crude in the early years. A Hurricane or Spitfire had about 100 mph speed advantage over a poor Blackburn Roc. That meant the faster fighters could make up for a not great vector with their considerable speed advantage over the German twin engine bombers. No such luck for a Roc(k).
The Air Ministry must have been a strange place. On the one hand it turns down the Mosquito a bomber faster then any fighter the Germans have because the Germans might one day develop a faster fighter on the other it approves a fighter slower then the existing German bombers. Was it that important to cover every military plane with ball turrets ?
Covers your arse as you run away..
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There doesn't appear to be any protection for the crewman anywhere.
Great video
I think what should have made the top brass stop and think about the Rocs being in service is that technique of "no allowance shooting". Which relied upon the following aircraft in a dogfight KEEPING UP with the lead aircraft. They should have twigged immediately (I think) when they realised that the Roc could only do 220mph, which was never enough to keep up with the enemy. So that technique was rendered effectively useless, even at the time! But then, as you pointed out; 1940 - "we'll have everything we can get our hands on. We're desperate!!!" was undoubtable the motto.
Would have been better just building more skuas.... or just ordering some hurricanes
Consider the turret fighter as a precision ground attack aircraft in the same vein as the AC-130. Now it has some validity, but, as you pointed out, only if the owning side has Air Superiority.
Can you imagine being some fresh-faced new FAA pilot in 1939? He gets to his first squadron out of training, and he asks, "So what do we fly??? Hurricanes? Those shit-hot new Spitfires I've heard about?!"....and they say, "Naw, mate. Here's your kite," and show him a Roc.
Interesting video.
Not mentioned is that it is too hard for the pilot and gunner to coordinate an attack specially since the pilot was the superior airman to the gunner who couldn't give orders to the pilot to maneuver their aircraft so he could get a shot in. Like the Defiant the Roc couldn't fire straight ahead.
No but it could fire over the prop.
Ju88 being shot down by a Roc is like Rocky Balboa being beaten by Helen Keller.
What if they towed these behind Lancaster bombers as an extra little gun
Just watched your video on the Skua and was wondering if you did a video on the Roc or not. Lol 😂 got my answer. Good video
It is a great idea, when there are no enemy fighters!
But when the Roc was conceived there was little chance of the Fleet Air Arm encountering high-performance fighters at sea. Neither the Germans nor Italians ever got a carrier to sea, and the Japanese weren't really considered, so it was assumed that the Roc would be taking on long-range reconnaissance aircraft or maybe flying boats.
Another 500 more horsepower and she might have had a chance
no aerodynamically the blackburn rock sucked. A stronger engine would be wasted on it.
Yes another 500 hp would have helped.
Stick the same horsepower on a brick and my money is on the brick.
Lower drag. Ha ha
A couple of things I wonder about British logic.
1) Recognizing in advance that the aircraft would be a failure, they continued production so as not to hold up the production line. Wait, what? Knowing you are building something you don't want, you keep building it because you don't want to stop the line that is building it? Da faaq?
2) Such a loser that it ends up as a static AA gun with the engine removed. ???? Why remove the engine? What were they going to do; put it in some other plane? It sucked. It was too weak to power a plane, so why not leave it in an airframe that was useless anyway? If they were going to commit the manpower to remove a major component of the plane, then why not remove the turret and set it on a frame or little trailer to use as an AA mount, and scrap the plane for recycling during a time of acute metal shortage?
1 ..its design was however inadequate its R&D turned out to become, was ready for production, had some similarities to existing in service aircraft, and when Britain was striving to get aircraft built for the upcoming WW2, another, new war, no-one knew what woulc or could yet work or fail within the brewing combat to come....
2 ..yes, engines could be used for more worthier arframes.
True, using a modified trailer set up, would likely have worked much better, but then, why even waste more resources, production/industrial time, facilities & manpower in designing that, when for a static role, you could utilise existing obselete set up, sandbagged/bolstered-up on level its belly, gears up (if their not removed), and the upper cockpit canopy structure cut off (to clear the gun arcs,) with just say a small capacity Villers, BSA or Triumph etc generator for electrical needs for a small battery of reutilised & thus unwasted gun platforms.
Small savings in reusing obsolete things, can be a great aid in war, in a national stategic scale of things - some logical choices made during a developing dire need or needs, force seemingly illogical results at first seeing/sight.
Should they have spent time deconstructing the aircraft to only the turret system? or scrapped them ASAP? when some uses was still servicable? ..and if a service man suggested an ad-hoc usage of additional AA platforms to reinforce the a naval airfileds firepower that were otherwise mothballed or unused, would that be a 'fail' reason in your opinion?
One thing about wars - is that there are a lot of _theories_ that people come up with before them, only to find when they actually try and do these things - that the theories ... didn't work out ... . The problem is - that it isn't until they are being used on a massive scale over an extended time - that some of the flaws in the theory come out.
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It should have been pulled from the drawing-board.
One of the other theories involved here that has not gotten a lot of mention - was the theory that the Air Force - should have control over ALL aircraft. Thus - the RAF having control over the aircraft to be put on the RN's ships ... I am under the impression that while the RAF fitted itself out with some fairly good aircraft - the aircraft assigned to the RN were execrable. Thankfully this bit of stupidity was corrected but not before it had done it's damage. There were excellent aircraft designed and produced in the UK during the war for the RN but ... the development time on them restricted their arrival to late if not post war.
Fortunately, the RN's cousin across the pond had some excellent carrier aircraft and was happy to lend some to the RN.
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You missed the point. The “theory” behind this was the spectacular success of the Bristol Fighter in WWI. Who could say for sure the same tactics would not work?
@@thethirdman225 I didn't miss that point at all. All of your Air Power Theories - of the Interwar Years - were based on what happened in WWI.
Mitchell and Douhet were both very, very wrong about what they thought Air Power could do and turret fighters such as the Defiant were also an idea that failed. Then you have such as the British Tactical Formations which were not as good as those used by the Germans.
Where you are absolutely right - is in your question and that was my point. They couldn't know which of these things would really work until they tried to do it. These weren't stupid people - they were just wrong.
The problem is - that you have unknown variables that you don't find out about - until you actually try to do it. People just aren't omniscient. They can't foresee everything that could possibly happen. So - they get an idea and they try it out ... and maybe they can fix the unanticipated problems - and maybe they can't. Sometimes - things that are absolute road blocks at one time - are later solved - but by then the technology has been back shelved and getting it revived is hard. There are simply far to many ideas for them to all be pursued with the resources at hand.
Then you have "things change" and something that was once a brilliant idea - becomes stupid to keep doing.
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@@BobSmith-dk8nw What do you mean _my_ theories? They weren’t _my_ theories. Your criticisms are just hindsight. Unless you had a crystal ball, there was no way of knowing what would work in a new war and what wouldn’t.
The Beverly was out of date by the time it entered service no other country bought it , it took an age to reach a few thousand feet . The Herculeas came out at roughly the same time every air force bought it and it is flying still to day,The Buccaneer was a fine aircraft but by then Blackburn was part of BEA Systems
a fine example of using something that was meant to be an R&D test craft in service.
i wonder if it could have been used for infantry support, firing its four machine guns to the side as the plane did a banking turn over the soldiers.
No. Better to drop a single 500lb bomb and blow up a building vs pattering it with inaccurate machine gun fire in a vulnerable maneuver.
@@sheeplord4976 I meant fireing at troops on the ground, as was done in Vietnam with older transport aircraft.
@@rogertulk8607 not enough firepower, the powered Turret would be too slow, and there would be too much enemy air-cover. Not a good idea.
Talking of dodgy aircraft designs with a bolted on turrets have you considered the Westland P12 Wendover?
Already done it 😉
Há varias coisas que não gosto nesse avião: o trem de pouso alto e voltado para trás, o que da impressão de que ele vai saltar como uma rã, outra coisa que arruinou seu desenpenho era sua pesada torre. Podiam ter usado as .303 nas asas, e uma coisa que me chamou atenção e que deixou a aparencia desse avião mais bizarra e seu para-brisa reto,ao invés de em ângulo.
That’s why they called it the Roc(k)!
The flying characteristic s aside, its no worse an idea than the Handley Page Hampton. Similar idea. Bad for a bomber but good as An interceptor?
I do wonder, looking at Blackburn's generally poor products (apart from what they built under license from others) whether they had high placed influence or contacts on the old boy network who enabled them to get the contracts they did? If so it would be such shameful behaviour at a time when our backs were against the wall...
Tories
Not the worst British airplane, but the Fairey Battle needed competition
Did you have a cold when you recorded this, Nedash?
I hope you're better now. You sound about as dynamic as a Blackburn Roc in this one.
LOL one of my very first videos when I was making them as a hobby 😄
The UK kept having naval fighters made with 2 seats and slower speeds after the Roc. No one else wanted them, the US and Japanese didn't.
Why did the UK keep asking for them rather than a good single seat fighter like a Hellcat, Zero (early on) etc.
Blackburn must of been bunging someone at the admiralty, they never built a decent aircraft yet sold a fair few🤔😉
Similar to my "The Producers" plot theory. First thing they design that looks and flies like a plane (The Buccaneer) and they go bust.
What about if it was used as a small gunship, like a mini AC-130. Guess you would only possibly use it for close air support when you wouldn't want to use bombs but still.
Curiosity. Are you related to Mr. Nash from Frazer&Nash Co.?
Glad to see someone flesh out the design philosophy behind an aircraft that for decades has been dismissed with a single paragraph by disinterested historians.
Not a single one in a museum anywhere?
I should imagine they were all stripped for spares then the airframes were towed to the end of firing ranges & used for target practice/ munitions testing.
I'm sure there is a wreck of one, somewhere - I've seen it, but can't remember where? Possibly the fleet air arm museum in Yoevil?
@@SAHBfan I agree but I can’t remember where I saw it either.
LIke the Boulton-Paul Defiant, the plane's underpowered engine really hurt its potential. The Defiant, had it gotten a later mark Merlin like the Merlin 61, would have become a surprisingly potent bomber interceptor.
Nope. Without radar, its career was going to be short.
@@thethirdman225 I believe that a small number of Defiants were fitted with early AI radar.
Take a TWO seater aircraft, give it NO forward firing armament, saddle it with an underpowered engine... and call it a fighter??? All aspects of it seem to point to its having been designed to be sub-par! Sounds rather familiar... hmmm... oh yes... the Boulton Paul Defiant for the RAF (it at least had some passing nods to aerodynamics and a Merlin engine but still another terrible windshield design!). In practical theory, a WWII day fighter flew more or less behind its quarry and ambushed it (i.e. it hunted its prey). Fighters, particularly single seat, had the armament facing forwards. Heavier German and Italian aircraft never had particularly effective rearward facing armament. This thing was designed to wait until it was attacked before it could defend itself. Therein lies the rub, as it were. The best defense is a strong offense, something that this aircraft simply could not provide.
Imagine how embarrassed the JU-88 crew felt knowing they were shot down by a ROC!
I could see that turret on something with a better engine and more guns in the nose or wings, a kind of heavy/maritime patrol fighter, but just the turret? Not on something that isn't a bomber.
I think the single props with bomb rectiles were really cool
I'm sorry, but the concept of the turreted fighter the way the British designed them was idiotic. Putting a power turret into an aircraft with an underpowered engine was sheer madness. Add to that that the aircraft lacked forward firing guns, makes me wonder why the designers even bothered. The only single seat U.S. aircraft that featured a power turret was the Grumman Avenger, which was powered by aWright R-2600-20 Twin Cyclone engine producing 1,900 horsepower, twice that of the Skua. Why didn't the Navy (or in the case of the RAF with the Defiant) require a significantly more powerful engine to handle the extra weight?
You'd have thought that it would have made an ok dive bomber for use in the Western Desert, if only the British Army / RAF had been interested in such things.
This vs. the Blackburn Blackburn, who wins? Also Gaijin please.
I would use this thing like a small AC-130, just turn around a spot and let the gunner fire on ground troops. I might get shot down by AA guns however.
Was the Roc even worse than the Bolton Paul Defiant? .
The Defiant was a flawed design with the turret idea, same as the Roc - but it was actually a fine aircraft. A failure against other fighters, but it was quite a successful night fighter for a while.