What nickname did the Germans give the Sunderland?

The Germans are said to have nicknamed the Sunderland Fliegendes Stachelschwein, "flying porcupine", because of its defensive firepower. Much later a two-gun turret was fitted in a dorsal position, on top of the fuselage and roughly level with the trailing edge of the wing, bringing the total defensive armament to 16 machine guns. The ASV Mk II radar added eight transmitting antennas on each side of the hull, four dorsal dipole receiving masts and Yagi homing arrays in the centre and under the wing, so that the aircraft was truly bristling with spikes.

On 3 April 1940, a Sunderland operating off Norway was attacked by six German Junkers Ju 88C fighters: it shot one down, damaged another enough that it withdrew and ended up making a forced landing, and scared off the rest.

In November 1933 the British Air Ministry issued specification R.2/33, which called for a new-generation long-range multi-purpose flying boat for ocean reconnaissance missions. The prototype (K4774) made its first flight on 16 October 1937 with Bristol Pegasus X radial engines rated at 950 hp (710 kW) each. It was flown by Shorts' chief test pilot, John Lankester Parker, and Harold Piper, on an initial flight of about 45 minutes; a second flight of similar length was made the same day. The chief designer, Arthur Gouge, had planned a 37 mm COW gun in the nose, accompanied by a single Lewis gun in the tail. That cannon was dropped at the prototype stage and replaced by a Nash & Thompson FN-11 nose turret with a single .303 (7.7 mm) Vickers GO gun. During Sunderland II production, the two side guns gave way to an F.N.7 two-gun turret, the same one used by the Blackburn Botha.