Hawker Hotspur

The Hawker Hotspur was a British two-seat turret fighter designed in the late 1930s to Air Ministry Specification F.9/35, which asked for a day and night fighter whose main armament of four machine guns sat in a power-operated turret. Hawker based its entry on the Hawker Henley, reusing standard Hawker Hurricane outer wing panels and fitting a Boulton Paul dorsal turret. A single prototype, K8309, was built and first flew at Brooklands on 14 June 1938, powered by a Rolls-Royce Merlin II. The rival Boulton Paul Defiant had already flown and won the orders, and with Hawker committed to Hurricane production no series Hotspur was built. The prototype, without its turret, was used at Farnborough to test flaps and dive brakes until it was scrapped in 1942 after a belly landing.