The Boulton Paul Bittern was a 1920s
British night-fighter
A night fighter (also known as all-weather fighter or all-weather interceptor for a period of time after the Second World War) is a fighter aircraft adapted for use at night or in other times of bad visibility. Night fighters began to be used i ...
aircraft built by
Boulton Paul Limited
Boulton & Paul Ltd was a British general manufacturer from Norwich, England that became involved in aircraft manufacture.
Jeld Wen Inc. bought Boulton & Paul (along with another joinery company John Carr) from the Rugby Group plc in 1999 to ...
of
Norwich, named after the
marsh bird of the same name.
Design and development
Designed to
Air Ministry Specification 27/24, which called for a single-seat night fighter for use against enemy
bomber aircraft, the Bittern design was unusual for its time in that it was a twin-
engined shoulder wing
monoplane rather than a single-engine
biplane
A biplane is a fixed-wing aircraft with two main wings stacked one above the other. The first powered, controlled aeroplane to fly, the Wright Flyer, used a biplane wing arrangement, as did many aircraft in the early years of aviation. While ...
.
Two prototypes were built. The first was a cantilever wing design with the engines - 214 hp Armstrong-Siddeley Lynx - on the leading edge of the wing. However initial trials showed that the wing was too flexible and so wing struts were added fixed between the bottom of the fuselage and the engine installations. However this added weight and drag with a commensurate effect on performance. The second prototype had the engines suspended from the wings on the struts.
The first prototype had two fixed
.303 in (7.7 mm) Vickers machine guns mounted on the fuselage sides. In the second the guns were changed from Vickers to
Lewis guns mounted in swiveling barbettes on fuselage. These could be angled from 0-45° upwards so the fighter could attack bombers from below without having to put the aircraft into a climb. The wingspan of the second prototype was increased by about 5 ft (1.5 m).
Both were finished in dark green with "night black" undersides for their role as "Anti-Bomber Formation Fighters". The first prototype carried out full performance and armament trials at Martlesham Heath from March 1927; the second went through the same tests in April 1928. The A&AEE reports were favourable except that the top speed - 145 mph - was rather slow.
[Kinsey p52] More trials were carried out before they were returned to Boulton & Paul. They were flown by the manufacturer for a while longer before being broken up.
During testing performance was so poor that further development was abandoned.
Specifications (P.31 Bittern J7936)
See also
References
;Notes
;Bibliography
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{{Boulton Paul aircraft
Bittern
1920s British fighter aircraft
High-wing aircraft
Aircraft first flown in 1927
Twin piston-engined tractor aircraft