The Plane With The Most Bizzare Killing Technique
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The Blackburn B-25 Roc is a carrier-based fighter plane that was based off and developed alongside the Blackburn Skua carrier dive bomber.
The Design
Despite controversies surrounding the Blackburn Roc’s design, there were logical principles as to why it was made that way. The plane is an example of a turret fighter, with one or more machine guns mounted on a flexible turret, as opposed to having fixed weapons that can only fire frontwards.
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The advantage was twofold- not only did it allow the fighter to defend itself from attack from different angles, but it also provided an aiming technique known as “no allowance shooting.” A fighter with front-firing guns would not only have to position itself in a way that it could aim not where the enemy plane was at the moment but where it would be by the time bullets reached it.
Deflection Shooting
Known as “deflection shooting,” this would become even more complicated if the plane was pulling hard turns because the angle requires the attacking fighter to pull its nose and shoot at a target it couldn’t even see.
In contrast, using a gun that could be angled upwards, a turret fighter could aim directly at a turning target, making it easy to achieve a hit.
The Roc
Just like the Blackburn Skua, the Roc would be a low-wing cantilever monoplane that featured an all-metal construction and a two-seater configuration.
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It had a retractable tailwheel undercarriage, giving it good ground handling, decreasing drag during flight, and folding wings for easy storage on aircraft carriers.
It also kept the Skua’s wing-mounted dive brakes for additional maneuverability, accuracy, and safety.
Meanwhile, the hydraulically-powered Frazier-Nash turret can rotate in any direction and its four electronically fired .303-inch Browning machine guns would allow the gunner to blast into enemy aircraft at angles as high as 85 degrees above the horizon.
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The Roc’s underwing racks were loaded with two 250-pound bombs and eight 30-pound bombs. Crucially, however, it didn’t have any front-firing guns, so it had to rely entirely on its turret in a dogfight.
Later Roles
After the Battle of Dunkirk, the Roc was relegated to auxiliary roles such as target tug and search and rescue aircraft. It was ultimately removed from service in 1943 because of a lack of spare parts, and not one example survives today.
