Fragment of WW2 aerial gunnery target.

[Flying10uk]

My father watched this towed aerial gunnery practice target being shot down over Essex during WW2. He had to run across several fields to "claim it" before any other souvenir hunters beat him to it. The towing aircraft in the picture is a Hawker Henley according to the caption but this is not an aircraft which I am familiar with. According to my father, if enemy aircraft made an appearance during aerial gunnery practice with a towed target, the target was normally dropped and it was the close of play. This was because the towed target slowed the towing aircraft down by a significant amount, the last thing you want if you have Jerry on your tail.

N.B. The target fragment is behind plastic and the netting part doesn't show up too well against the hardboard and so I have posted 2 pics of it.

Information

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[RCS]

The Hawker Henley was designed as a light bomber in the mid 1930's but became a high speed target -tug as of 1937. It has a resemblance to the Hurricane fighter.
Henley's were withdrawn from service in mid 1942 as Boulton Paul Defiants were adopted as target tugs

[CINDERS]

About all the Defiants were good for no wing mounted forward firing MG's and a death trap of a turret for the gunner, when 109's encountered them they got a nasty surprise and a few 109's coming in for a stern attack were shot down however it did not take the German fighter pilots long to realize there were no forward firing MG's so from they then attacked from dead ahead as the 4 gun turret could not fire through the propeller arc.
The extra weight of the 4 gun turret plus gunner hampered performance markedly so they could not really jink around the sky as much as the standard Hurricane.
They were shot down in droves eventually moved to a night fighter role then phased out as better types came on stream.

[Paul S.]

As memory serves, the Henley was based upon the Hurricane, hence the similar empennage and wing plan. It was grossly under-powered and did not perform to expectations which is why it was relegated to target towing. The Bolton Paul Defiant also did not perform to expectations as well as not having the armament it needed as a day fighter and was very quickly pushed on to a night fighter role. it too was pushed on to target towing once better performing aircraft, Beaufighters and Mosquitos, became available as night fighters.

[Brit plumber]

It's must have been bad enough being shot at by the enemy but that banner is awfully close to the tug and a pilot with a poor aim could easily make a fatal mistake!!

[Peter Laidler]

I went on an air gunners course at Manorbier in Wales in late 1970 where we fired zillions and zillions of rounds from GPMG's from hovering helicopters at drone sleeves pulled by slow moving civilian (?) Meteor fighters. The down side was that nobody shot down the towing fighter because there were taboo stops on the door openings that didn't allow the guns to open up until the Meteor had passed a stop point. The idea was that in the event of war in Europe the enemy jets would be off guard driving home and the helicopters could whack them on the way home. I don't even think that the drones were holed but I remember that you had to shoot 47 'apparent' lengths ahead of it. Ear defenders......... Nope.......