[FONT="]Westlands’s chief designer, Arthur Davenport, knew a solution to better protect the Lysander was to place a rear gun turret on the aircraft and to counter the too-far-aft shift of weight he compensated by shortening the fuselage as well as adding a rear wing — á lá the designs he knew of by France’s Maurice Henri Delanne. Refreshingly, the results of the July 1941 maiden flight by Harald Penrose were more than acceptable and was topped off with a loop! He reported the aircraft was stable and did not fly appreciably differently than the Lysander though the rudders required more airspeed before becoming effective.[/FONT]
[FONT="]June 1944 was the end of the Delanne’s service — though successful in its own right, aviation aircraft design had evolved away from rear turret defenses in all but the largest of aircraft.[/FONT]