The second in my not-so-great aircraft series. The Fairey Battle. The battle could have, would have and should have been an acceptable aircraft had circumstance not provided otherwise. After all, it had the fabled merlin engine what could have possibly gone wrong? Quite a bit as it turns out. The aforementioned merlin was all good and well but add 3 crew and a bomb load, performance started to lack. For mid 30s it was deemed an improvement on the preceding biplanes, however come the phoney war of 1939-1940 the Me 109 or even a 110, could and would cut them up quite badly. Surely they had enough firepower to defend themselves with, yes? In short, no. 2x .303s. That's not 2x in each wing, that was the complete defensive compliment. One vickers rearward facing and a solitary .303 in the starboard wing for 'offensive (but must likely defensive) firing.' It was not unheard of sorties in the early days of the Second World War suffering 50 percent losses attacking bridges etc to stem the German advance and in daylight too! Clearly the lessons from the First World War were quickly forgotten by the allies in the early days of the war. It is to those brave men in this particular aircraft, that regularly attacked those well defended targets, that I have the upmost respect for and take my hat off to. Lions led by donkeys as is often the folly of war. Such losses (even to donkeys) could not be maintained and it was completely withdrawn from all active service. On the plus side; the old battle scored the first victory for the RAF in downing another aircraft, was such a stable aircraft to fly it was an engine test bed/trainer aircraft, and earned a number of Victoria crosses in those fraught early days of war. Sorry I've gone too far into this once again! AG1+VTOL down for landing gear, AG2+VTOL down for flaps. Performance, rather aptly, is lacking I'm afraid. My apologies but I had to 'smuggle' in a jet engine to give it somewhat speed above 120mph.