Boulton Paul P.92

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Contents

Type Description

• P.92
• Two-seat turret-armed day/night fighter to Specification F.11/37. It was to be of stressed-skin construction and have main undercarriage wheels that retracted backwards into the engine nacelles and wings (the wheels would rotate through 90 degrees to lie within the wing behind the nacelles). The engines would have underslung radiators. The Air Ministry recommended that leading-edge slots be fitted. The wing and Boulton Paul Type L conformal gun turret were designed as a single aerodynamic unit, the turret housing four 20 mm Hispano cannons in slots and had an all-around traverse. The turret was later redesigned to take an additional four belt-fed .303 Browning machine guns, fitted in two pairs outboard of the cannon, each pair in a single slot. The gunner's head protruded inside a small perspex blister set slightly back from the middle of the turret. The pilot sat in the nose with an excellent view forward but the view sideways was somewhat blocked off by the engines. The pilot and gunner were provided with separate hatches in the floor to bale out of in an emergency, the gunner could also jettison his blister and escape that way. The pilot's seat could be made to tip back and automatically release the bottom hatch so that he could slide down, head-first, out of the aircraft. Two prototypes were to be fitted with two 1,760 h.p. Rolls Royce Vulture II powerplants while the third would have the 2055 h.p. Napier Sabre I.

• P.92/2
• Single seat half scale aerodynamic test model for the P.92. To speed construction, it was to be made of wood and featured a fixed undercarriage with the two main wheels housed in streamlined "trouser" fairings. To better accommodate a normal-sized pilot, the cockpit and nose were made slightly larger and more bulbous in scale than the P92. Small windows were placed on either side of the fuselage, below the main cockpit canopy, to improve the view of the ground. Two 135 h.p. de Havilland Gipsy Major II powerplants.

Production Details

Production References

1. Boulton Paul Aircraft Since 1915,, Alec Brew (Putnam, 1993)
2. https://dingeraviation.net/bpp100/bpp92.html