Page "Boulton Paul Aircraft" Paragraph 8

In 1934, Boulton & Paul sold their " Aircraft Department " which became Boulton Paul Aircraft Ltd. Over the next couple of years a new factory site was built up in Wolverhampton.

This gave access to a large skilled workforce on top of the 600 or so employees that left Norwich for Wolverhampton.

Even so Boulton Paul would later set up a training centre in Scotland to bring in extra workers.

The first " turret " fighter to be built was the Hawker Demon.

This was followed by Boulton Paul's most famous aircraft, the Defiant, ( left ) which was a revolutionary but flawed concept — a " fast " fighter with no fixed forward armament but a powerful four-gun dorsal turret.

The same concept was used for the Defiant's naval equivalent, the Blackburn Roc, which while a design by Blackburn, the detail design was done in BP's drawing office and the aircraft was built wholly by Boulton Paul.