Driftless
Donor
Another way to look at this is to see what other aircraft were on offer that could have replaced the Hurricane if they had been given the deign go ahead at the same time as Hawkers were given the contract to develop their high speed monoplane which led to the Hurricane OTL. None of the fighters actually submitted to the AM in response to the F5/34 specification is an improvement on the Hurricane. Most of the Radial engine fighter were performance limited by the available engines and the Bristol Aircraft company though designing a Hercules powered contender were very busy with other projects and the Hercules was not really viable as a massed produced engine in time for the BoB. If it had been specified for a frontline fighter then the Hercules might have been development priority but it is still debatable how much earlier it could have been made reliable and what other projects would have been slowed by the diversion of resources. If we wish to speculate a bit then if instead if Hawkers, Boulton and Paul are asked to develop a high speed monoplane and John Dudley North is given the task he might have come up with an aircraft similar to the Defiant but built from the ground up as an eight gun single engine fighter. That is the only viable option I can think of as an alternative which would be good enough to replace the Hurricane and could be built in the required numbers. Also maybe that would butterfly away the turreted Defiant but I hate to think what the AM would have had in its place.
(snip)
You've just given new legs to the alt Defiant threads....