From ironmongery to Camels

Boulton Paul began as an ironmonger’s shop in Norwich in 1797. By the early 1900s Boulton & Paul was a large general engineering firm, and in 1915 it began building aircraft under contract: 550 FE.2bs and, during the First World War, more Sopwith Camels than any other manufacturer. A design office under John Dudley North followed, producing a string of bombers and experimental types between the wars. In 1934, at a low point for aviation, the aircraft department was sold off as Boulton Paul Aircraft Ltd, and in 1936 it moved to a new factory at Wolverhampton, about 600 Norwich workers moving with it.

The turret makers

The company’s speciality was the gun turret. Its Overstrand bomber of 1933 carried the world’s first enclosed, power-operated turret, driven by compressed air. Boulton Paul then licensed a French electro-hydraulic four-gun design, and its turrets went on to arm the Halifax, Hudson, Ventura, Lincoln and some Liberators. It also built 136 Blackburn Rocs, 692 Fairey Barracudas and conversions of the Wellington.

The Defiant gamble

The Air Ministry asked for a fighter with no fixed forward guns, only a four-gun turret behind the pilot. The Defiant first flew on 11 August 1937 and over Dunkirk 264 Squadron claimed 48 kills in eight days, though actual German losses were perhaps 12 to 15. Once the Germans understood it, the slaughter began: on 19 July 1940 seven of nine 141 Squadron Defiants were shot down off Folkestone. Reborn as a radar night fighter and target tug, about 1,070 were built. The Balliol trainer followed, and its turboprop prototype of 1948 was the world’s first single-engined turboprop to fly. In 1961 Dowty took over the company.

Fabrieken

• Norwich works · Norwich — Aircraft built here 1915–1936
• Wolverhampton works · Wolverhampton — New factory from 1936

Mensen

• John Dudley North · chief designer — 1893–1968; joined from Austin
• Cecil Feather · chief test pilot — Flew the first Defiant

Records en primeurs

• World’s first enclosed power-operated gun turret, Overstrand, 1933
• World’s first single-engined turboprop aircraft to fly, Balliol prototype, 17 May 1948