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You really know your stuff, but can I bring up a point of less than perfect presentation that you do a lot? I had to rerun the upload and be on my toes because you started on a point and then you were suddenly down another path like, "Hey. where is he now? Oh, he's there. Ok. What? Now we're back in the other issue. What just happened here?" And you do a lot of that in the presentation, including going back and forth between all 3 main issues that you want to present to us, so that there is no clear and defined point of you being on one topic or the other or the third. And that forces us to be very focused and concentrated on the issue to the point of having to know a good deal of the stuff ourselves beforehand. That is not the best way to catch new viewers who want to learn something new. Just a piece of advice.
Did you ever wonder why games like War Thunder, etc are advertising on all these channels, even though they are free ? Its because they are not really free.
I’m biased towards this beautiful aircraft . My disabled grandfather worked on the Mosquito in Hatfield during the war. He couldn’t fight but he poured his heart and soul into this.
Your Gf had a noble calling. My mother and father both worked for DeHavillands during the war, at Stag Lane, in fact they met there, so if you like, I can thank DH for bringing them together!
My father-in-law flew it later in the war. Before that he flew Wellingtons. He must have been a lucky guy to survive them, IMO. He said the Mozzy was like a sports car and easy to fly, and once he had landed on a single engine in a farmer's field in moonlight. Romantic, even . . . PS. I watched one being set on fire and burnt to a crisp as part of a fire-fighting demonstration at RAF Jurby, Isle-of-Man, er, in 1952.
During WW2 my mother worked shifts at the De Havilland Canada factory in Downsview, Ontario, Canada (near Toronto) assisting in the manufacture of around 1100 Mosquitoes which were then shipped over the North Sea to Britain. She was extremely proud of her service, as are we.
Fun fact: some of the first Commonwealth "soldiers" (yes, those're sarcasm quotes) sent to aid Britain in the early days were Aussie and Kiwi timber-getters and Canadian lumberjacks. The sarcasm quotes is that they were given just a token amount of military training so they could be sent over to work harvest the Sitka spruce plantations in Scotland that went into the Mossie. There's a great story of Kiwi "sergeant" who was a milling foreman in civvie life barging into the office of a dignified British colonel and yelling at him that the site the Colonel picked was incredibly bloody stupid because it was nowhere near water, and rattling off exactly how many sawblades they'd lose a day from heat damage if they weren't cooled.
@@hoilst265 In WWI there were whole Canadian work battalions in Scotland & France just for timber work to supply lumber for trench works and the small gauge railways used just behind the lines to supply the Front. Chinese Canadian battalions built the railways.
@@hoilst265 thanks for the reply. Here's another fun fact for you: my mother and the other "girls" carried little pieces of chalk with them and marked little hearts or initials on the airframes. It was tolerated as being good for morale in the plant and later in operations.
Coldlakealta .....God Bless your mother and all the other Canadians who were there when we needed you. Mossies were just the tip of a Canadian Iceberg of assistance. Everything from aircraft, Merlin engines, training of pilots and not least those brave troops who fought so tenaciously alongside ours ! Canada may have had a relatively small population but it had a massive heart and balls of steel. Thank you seems hopelessly inadequate ! Hitler thought Great Britain stood alone .......we knew we were not !!! ❤ 🇨🇦🇬🇧
@@garymoore2535 on behalf of my departed dad, you're more than welcome. He spoke rarely about his time in the war, but when he did it was always with great fondness towards the people of the UK. He came home wounded in body and soul, but never expressed any regret for having served.
My Uncle was a decorated Australian Mosquito ( RAAF 456 Squadron and RAF 108 Squadron ) and Beaufighter Pilot flying Night Intruder missions over Germany in the Mozzie and missions over North Africa, Greece and Crete in the Beaufighter ( 46 Squadron ME and MAAF ) ... aka whispering death from 1942 to 1944.
12:19 It has been noted that when the Mosquito was being made, the UK had a host of craftsmen who worked with wood, be they cabinet makers, furniture makers or carpenters who were fully able to turn their skills to making the wooden elements of the Mosquito, meaning that they could make a direct contribution to production of aircraft for war effort whereas they had been not fully involved up to that point.
Not only that it was extremely dispersed production. There were twelve-man cabinet makers in country towns and boatbuilders in fishing villages cranking out parts. You couldn't bomb out the supply chain. Not even Goering was stupid enough to order a Ju-88 raid on a Gloucester chair workshop. This is, of course, Germany tried doing at the end of the war but by then it was too little, too late.
@@hoilst265 I started my Apprenticeship at deHavillands, and at the end of the first week they showed us a film about the developement of the Mossie and how they had trouble with the Goverment who wanted them to just make the Tiger Moth as a trainer. The film showed all the veriants building up the the one with a cannon in the nose. Testing the gun, while on the ground it had tethered chocks. Still remember a pair flying around where I lived in Eastcote to land at Northolt. Best Dave
@@dave20thmay That's cool! Yeah, the Ministry really tried to dissuade Jeffrey - they had open tenders where ever aircraft maker in Britain could make whatever bomber they liked and the Ministry give it a go. IIRC, officially ministry only funded engines, but there was a sort of verbal agreement that the makers could bill the Ministry for all sorts of stuff (like radios, landing gear parts, etc.) and the Ministry would pay. They did that for every maker...except De Havilland, where they only went strictly by what was written on the contract - they really didn't want the silly wooden toy and were hoping De Havilland would give up. De Havilland really scrounged parts (it's why the main landing has only 32 parts, and no hydraulic shock absorbers.) But then, they got a prototype up and running, and they dropped everyone's jaw when the thing tore past all the brass and bureaucrats at 400mph - which would've been the fastest man-carrying machine ever built at the time. And then they said "That's nice. Now put it away, and go back to making Tiger Moths." De Havilland ignored them, and kept working on the prototype in secret - rather alarmingly, it nearly got taken out by a lost Ju-88, who get detached from their main German bomber force, wandered around, saw the De Havilland airfield and thought they might as well bomb it (De Havilland's assigned AA crews shot it down, and they got to ask the pilot why they were bombed before the MPs took them away.) Then, Dunkirk happened, and suddenly the Ministry was ringing them up asking about, oh, do they still have the plans for that cheap little wooden aircraft they told them to stop working on...? My absolute favourite plane of the war.
@@lllordllloyd British built 25,000 aircraft out of mainly wood between 1939 and 1945 which were not Mosquitos!!! The majority of the 2nd Line aircraft in British service were made mostly of wood! Trainers Miles Magister (Primary Trainer) Miles Master (Advanced Trainer) Miles Martinet (Target Tug) Airspeed Oxford (Multi engine trainer and other roles) DH Dominie (Navigation and radio training) DH Tiger Moth (Primary Trainer) Percival Proctor (Radio Operator Training) A lot of these aircraft were also used for communications duties. Assault Gliders GAL Hotspur (planned as an operational Aircraft, used as a trainer) Airspeed Horsa GAL Hamilcar plus 604 Albemarle's mostly made of wood, ordered as a bomber / transport, ended up as a Para dropper and glider tug.
As a young man in my early 20s i joined the mosquito aircraft museum, I think it is now called the DE Haviland, that was the first time i saw a mossie close up, l, One day in the hangar where i worked i sneaked outside to watch a mossie start and taxi out it was going to the confederate air force museum, The hangar foreman saw me go, and followed me asking me what i thought i was doing so i told him, and with that he said follow me lad we'll get a better view from behind the carpark. At his age he must have been involved with the real thing. Many years passed and one mossie came into the airport where i then worked, I went over and looked over it, even poked my head up into the cockpit and there was sat the pilot, looking down at me he said " I'm going as far as Chester you can come along ," What to do ???????? i had one 737 on the ground with another 6 heading my way, i would have lost my job if i had accepted , Now as a 73yeaar old i realise it was a once in a lifetime opportunity and i should have signed out and gone flying. AND ignored the hanging judges in the personnel dept. ! Working with those older pilots when refuelling aircraft many would ask for a bit for mum, how much is a bit today ?? try 1500kgs. I guess returning from Germany short on fuel left a mark on them. Its the old saying the only time you have too much fuel is when your on fire ! Working with older engineers you heard a few stories, one mentioned getting a lift back in the bomb bay of a Mossie and went on to say the C/O of the squadron had a personalised Me 109, this was 1946 the hangar doors would open and this bright red Me109 would roar out of the hangar tail already up with the squadron leader at the controls, , My older friend wore his martin baker pin with pride, as their parachute had saved his life following an engine fire on a Hastings, the pilot casually said looks like we have to get out and walk, my friend told me he sat by the open hatch, then he felt a boot in his back and out he went landing on German soil he was dragged through bushes etc, Some 40 years after that i was with him on the flight deck of a 737 and the capt turned around to say something and saw my friends pin, with that he then showed his lapel pin, both had been save by Martin Baker and they both laughed out loud it must be a brotherhood i thought a very lucky brotherhood. Finally another old timer told me as we drove through London heading to Gatwick he went on an air test with a Mossie, off they went into the sky, the pilot took a radio message both engines had been replaced and were of a suspect batch, and with that number two engine stopped ,the pilot said we have trouble ,my friend replied I'm too young to die ( 18 years old) just put your parachute on kid , and with that they headed home landing on one engine. Such are the memories of men who are now up above with the big chief engineer no messing with that man is there. , they may be gone but not forgotten. best wishes Sisaket Thailand.
I'm sure many here would join me in this impassioned plea - I *_beg_* of you to write all this stuff down, in as much detail as you can remember. Doesn't matter if it seems a bit uneven, or disjointed in places. These are truly fantastic stories. I know I'm itching to hear more, and I doubt I'm alone in that.
Goebbels, mentioned the Mosquito often in his diaries. Mosquito bombers flew missions over Berlin every night for months in a row. Though the damage was often minimal, the "nuisance" raids forced Berliners out of their beds and into bomb shelters night after night. The morale effect on workers was great. Eventually the Mosquito raids got big enough to approach what a main force raid would be. Well done, Chris.
The reason it specifically affected workers so badly is that the RAF pursued a policy of "bomb the workers" as opposed to "bomb the factories" from their very first raid throughout the entire war.
@@gratefulguy4130 Not quite day one. The main reason for the switch being that analysis of the raid on Coventry showed that the factories affected were restoring output in days or even hours but the damage to civilian infrastructure, houses and workers took months to repair. Mossies not only flew faster they took more direct routes, reducing their time over enemy territory even more, so the Germans couldn't always use the same defences they used against bomber streams and by 1943, they were carrying Cookies, single 4000lb bombs. Single machines could make two trips to the same destination in one night and hit as hard as a B17.
@@gratefulguy4130 Totally not True!!!! The RAF Area Bombing directive wasn't issued until February 1942. Before that with the exception of one raid in November 1940, the RAF bombers were supposed to target Oil plants, Marshalling yards, ports and Arms Factories like Krupps in Essan. The area raid in 1940 was revenge for Coventry.
I used to have a friend (FLt Cooper rtd) who flew Mosquitoes in WWII. He loved the aircraft, and one thing he said that saved him a few times, was not just the speed, but the wooden structure often meant that armoured piercing rounds passed straight through the frame without causing top much damage. He had this happen when on a low level ground attack and he was bounced by a FW190E. He survived, but on landing, found nearly 30 AP rounds had passed through the aircraft.
it was not just wood It was built using stressed skin composite with wood . Two thin skins of ply held apart by end grain balsa . Very stiff, very strong, surprising resilient to damage and light . Modern aircraft have just starting to use the same technology but with foam core and carbon fiber skins .
Many of us know that - if we're engineers. Birch ply sheets were cut NOT QUITE parallel to the grain, so that the end grains adsorbed a superior Aerolite/Cascamite adhesive which the Axis powers had no knowledge of. Strength/Weight is equal to steel, aluminium.
@@tonyduncan9852 To truly appreciate the significance of Cascamite’s revival, we must journey back in time to its beginnings. It all started in the early 19th century, by an American gentleman named Gail Borden.
As a Dane with German ancestry and an English mother - I'm always gonna have confused and mixed feelings about our "moments in history" but it's a joy to see the different perspectives of people who know what they're talking about [here], with facts and research that I'm too lazy to do myself, as opposed to fanboy vids. You know when the Germans make their own Moskito, that the Brits did something right.
Fun fact: it was a BOAC-marked Mosquito (soooo...technically a civilian aircraft) that got Niels Bohr out of Sweden and into Britain, where they promptly put him on the Tube Alloys program.
@@rickybuhl3176 Unfortunately, they didn't count on the size of his brain. The flight helmet they provided him with - with the communications headset in it - didn't fit his Nobel-prize winning noggin, so he didn't wear it. The reason behind using a Mossie was because it was the only aircraft that could fly higher and fast over occupied Norway to get to and from Britain and avoid fighters - Bohr was to be laid down on a mattress in the bomb bay. But because he didn't wear the headset, he didn't hear the pilot's instructions to switch to oxygen, and passed out. Luckily, the pilot figured out what had happened when Bohr wasn't responding and descend to a mask-off altitude, and Bohr woke up.
An addition to the Mosquito story: In war, it's often not the actual destruction caused which makes a big or small impact, but the FACT that the action took place in the first place, and the effect of that on enemy command psyche, and the psychological effect on the enemy population! Goering (and his ginormous ego) was particularly susceptible to this effect, and the British capitalised on this BIG TIME! The so-called nuisance raids were in fact psychological warfare at its very best, as it increasingly got under the skin of German thinking ( and the fear that went with it!). This video validates this aspect, in my opinion, and I don't think the Mossie got nearly enough credit for this massive contribution. Thanks for a brilliant video, packed with highly relevant data.
I well remember reading a Luftwaffe ace's autobiography where, even with the Me109's radiator closed to decrease drag, he couldn't catch a Mosquito. His frustration was clear as he wondered how a twin-engined bomber could out-run his fighter.
The phrase "stupidly overpowered" did not even come close to describing the Mossie. It was perfectly flyable on a single engine - the demo flight of the prototype involved it doing loops on only one engine. The post-war follow-up, the Hornet, was even more overpowered still.
@@reaganharder1480 Colin Chapman: "Simplify, then add lightness." Geoffrey de Havilland: "Simplify, then add lightness. And then add a whacking great engine. And then add another one."
Ironically the Mossie was wood because in 1940 De Havilland had very little experience in stressed metal construction. It took a long time for DH to interest the Air Ministry not only in an unarmed bomber but one that was made of wood which was seen as 1920s or early 30s technology
@@whitewittock another reason that's been given for using wood is that alclad was in short supply and the air ministry could not spare any for private projects...it was not built to an air ministry specification. It was a completely private effort by dehaviland. Also wooden construction usually meant ribs and stringers and fabric or ply covering. Mosquito was more like a modern composit foam sandwich construction being 2 layers of thin ply separated by a layer of balsa wood. The fuselage was formed on a concrete plugin halves....just like composite construction. Ahead of its time. The dehaviland meuseum at Hatfield near london is worth a visit if you can. They have the first and the last one built on display plus much more. Thanks for an interesting video
@@andrewcox4386 yes but I'm going to flip that around by saying if metal would have been better they would have produced some metal prototypes after it was officially adopted?
My uncle was a Mossie Nav, he said that it had the lowest death rate/highest survivability of ANY WW2 Aircraft. And most versatile aircraft. He hunted U-boats.
I was a young stupid airman in the mid seventies. We had an old Flight Sergeant pilot in the tower with us. He had a set of gold wings above his normal pilot’s wings. One night I asked him what they were, and he almost apologetically said that he was on Pathfinders when he was younger, and flew the mosquito. My respect for him instantly skyrocketed as I realised what he was and had done. I learned there and then that old people were young once, and many had a hidden past.
About the only thing it was worse at than other aircraft when it came to safety was ditching, as it tended to flip over. That's about it, because it was so front-heavy. What's telling about the design is that went through the war with zero airframe changes even as its roles changed. Sure, there were fighters that had the bomb glued shut and perspex window in the nose removed for cannon, but the surfaces and fuselage - the bits that make it fly - underwent no real change from the start of the war to the end. They'd got it right.
My Grandfather from New Zealand flew with Stirlings & Lancasters. 622 Main force & 7th Pathfinders. 64 operations, two complete tours. Master deputy bomber on most of their ops. The Lucky Crew, elite Pathfinder crew of 8.
the biggest reason for the mosquitos speed is the smoothness of its skin. having no rivets or the girder construction of aluminium planes but plywood covered in fabric it had very low drag compared to most other planes.
More likely the biggest reason the mosquito was so fast was that it had something like 3,400 horsepower to play with and an empty weight barely over 14,000 pounds. When compared to the P-38 lightning, a more conventionally built metal plane, the Mossie is only slightly disadvantaged in power-to-weight ratio, and has functionally no advantage in listed max speed. The amount of drag created by skin friction is far from the largest component of drag on an airframe and the difference that having rivets or not will make is even smaller yet. The mosquito was built from wood because De Haviland had no experience making planes from anything else, and it was fast because the engines were enormous compared to the weight of the plane.
Thank you for this piece of insight from the German perspective. Two of my uncles flew Mosquitoes, one didn't come home, the other crashed three times and survived each time. This means a surprising amount, so thank you for the research and the time you have taken. Greatly appreciated.
I think with hindsight the way to characterize the Mosquito is not as the last of the wooden aircraft, a throwback to pre-war construction, but as the first of the composite aircraft and 40 years ahead of its time. It is not made of spars, stringers and fabric, it is made in moulds with 2 part resins. The components are installed in the fuselage halves before they are glued together. Its genesis is in the work De-Havilland did with the Comet racer, wood forming and gluing, not in the SE5A. When the Mosquito was offered to the US manufacturers they could only see wood as a pre-war technology, now 80 years on we can look back and see Burt Rutan as the heir to the Mosquito.
A friend of my father flew the Mosquito. They met prewar at de Havilland Aeronautical Technical school. My father's friend was John "Cats Eyes" Cunningham. They stayed friends until their end.
The mossie has got to be the best aircraft of the war when considering its impact, its superiority over contemporaries, and its versatility. Not to mention they were doing what's essentially modern composite construction techniques with wood. I love the Mosquito!
@@flare2000x I totally agree. It was the world’s first true multi-role aircraft. It could carry an anti-tank gun and sink submarines. It was very definitely the top nightfighter of the war, with far more “kills” than any other, and it carried out the most precise bombing raid of the war on Amiens prison. Amongst the allied fleet it was the safest combat aircraft to crew with the lowest crew losses per man mission of all allied aircraft. Add to that, have you ever heard one going overhead at 100ft and 350+ knots? I did, aged about 8, at an air show in Lincolnshire (can’t remember the name of the RAF station) and I decided there and then that it was the (very,very,very a million times and NO returns!) bestest aeroplane of all time! Here I am, 72 years later, and I’ll defend the Mossie against all others of its era for its versatility, its survivability, its parallel production genius and its primal, rib shaking roar like an enraged dragon as its terrifying bulk flashed overhead. Mind you, that 8 year old certitude only lasted a short while. It may even have been on the same visit that a little DH Vampire came whistling down the runway going about a hundred knots faster than the Mosquito. It had felt to me that the pilot of the Mossie must have been SUPERMAN, but the Vampire looked like a toy that I could fly, PLUS it was a LOT faster. So now, when I lifted my arms up straight out from my shoulders and ran round with my friends, banking with our arms as we swooped right and left and making what we thought of as machine gun noises, occasionally allowing ourselves to be “shot down” for the sheer fun of “crashing” as spectacularly as our imagination and daring would take us, now I became a Vampire, immune to mere propellor planes. After all, De Havilland were pioneering the jet airliner with the Comet. The world was bright for British aviat… TL/DR Old man rambles on and on, but you might learn something you don’t know. 😉
What's really telling is that there were no significant airframe modifications of it for the duration of the war...even when adapting it for different roles. De Havilland got it right the first time around.
Keith Miller, the greatest Australian to ever live was a Mosquito pilot. In an interesting perspective, when asked by Michael Parkinson about the pressure of international Test cricket, Miller replied "Pressure is a Messerschmitt up your arse, Playing cricket was not." So not only could he swing a Test with either the bat or ball in a session, as a Mosquito pilot he was the OG Han Solo: Handsome swashbuckling rogue of a pilot that effed a princess.
Keith Miller would've been the world's greatest cricketer if he ever could've been bothered to give a shit - instead, he had to settle for being merely *one* of the greatest. "I was in bed. I am now going out."
That was it, I was so confused. I swore I saw a thumbnail passing by with Bomber/fighter v Fighter / bomber. I love Greg's video's, but I do need to be able to make time and really sit for them, and that is getting a lot more difficult now Greg has a lot of free time on hand. His video on Jet engines was eyeopening. The first time it really got clear to me why even the first generation of unrealiable jet engines had undeniable advantages over even the most highest performance piston engines because of physics.
My grandpa was a Luftwaffe Night Fighter (ME-110), and he was probably shot down by one of these, lol. He survived it tho. Would be cool to see some content on the whole Nachtjagd scenario and the race for better radar and other modifications. I think the 110 was already a pretty old horse at this point. My grandpa also flew minesweeping operations in the Ju-52, with the big magnet on it. He told me that it was super dangerous, because the water fountains sometimes sucked the planes into the sea. I have to check out the Luftwaffen archive one day and investigate his entire aviation history.
Fascinating , I'm High Wycombe boy born in the late fifties, my paternal Grandmother was a 'Skull' Wycombe furniture manufacturers who sold their business to 'Ecolarnis' in the early 20th century!!....
Fascinating , I'm High Wycombe boy born in the late fifties, my paternal Grandmother was a 'Skull' Wycombe furniture manufacturers who sold their business to 'Ecolarnis' in the early 20th century!!....
You might say that wood is not a very good material, but when aluminum is scarce and you have a wooden design with higher speed, longer range, and heavier payload than any similar sized aircraft, wood is a huge advantage.
My husband's mother & father both worked on Mosquitos during the war at the Bankstown, Australia De Havilland factory. His uncle collected many Mosquito parts including a nearly complete cockpit & canopy plus 2 Merlin engines.
The advantage of building in wood is it can be built by carpenters. Britain had a number of small furniture makers in WWII who could help with distributed mass-production. It allowed for an extra class of aircraft that stretched the German aircraft design/building program just when it didn’t need more to do.
I saw a static once but can remember where (ups) it was the number of bomb tons needed to take a V1 launch site. And the mosquito came out if I remember correct, with a figure that was about half of that a B17 or a Lancaster needed. It was why more efficient in hitting its targets - and the survival rate of the crew was also near double of the b17 or Lancaster crews. What you can do with wood and skill
It really was prescient. It was the aircraft that really developed and proved that precision, not area, bombing was the way forward. They tried taking out the V1 site for months with area bombing, then the Mossies took them out with a single sortie - including throwing a bomb right down the mouth of a bunker where the V1s were stored and prepared.
The statement which I read somewhere and can't remember where is probably true. It's low level accuracy meant that one Mosquito with its 2000 pounds of bombs could inflict more telling damage than a whole squadron of heavies with load of up to 14000 pounds each.
@hoilst265 Yes certainly. It probably helped that you only got to fly a Mossie after you'd done a tour 60 trips in a heavy bomber. That's from a couple of memoirs from Sq Ldr Jack Currie. Mosquito Victory and Lancaster Target. Worth a read.
This is interesting to see the Luftwaffe perspective . Many trolls accuse Mosquito enthusiasts as being fanboys but it was simply the best multi role aircraft in service for most of the war . Of course it wasn't a single seat air superiority fighter as say the Spitfire or FW 190 and it wasn't a heavy bomber either .
A B-17 carried 8,000 lbs of bombs, but on long range flights that dropped to 4,000 lbs. The Mosquito carried 4,000 lbs with fewer losses and higher accuracy.
@@Sherwoody there is an interesting discussion on that very topic on another channel . OF COURSE THE B17 WASN'T AVAILABLE TO THE USAAF in large numbers .
@@johnculver2519 yes against German nightfighters , probably the Mosquito was the best night aircraft in bombing and any night fighting but as Chris was saying maybe not in dog fighting with say the FW 190 , or even the Me109 in daylight .
@@Sherwoody "The Mosquito carried 4,000 lbs with fewer losses and higher accuracy." Fewer than 500 mosquitos were modified to carry one 4,000 ib dust bin bomb. Please list just one time this combination was more accurate at hitting a city size target.
My father helped to build the very first Mosquito at De Havilland, Hatfield. The secret here was a clean aircraft that was also VERY light. It was also stiff and strong, being a laminate structure of sandwiched ply/balsa/ply with the ply mostly only 1/16" (1.5mm) thick.. it was 3 play birch wood with marine grade glue. Many sub-assemblies were made in small furniture factories all over Britain... very clever. The laminate idea is used today with synthetic materials like foam and carbon fibre in modern fighters like the F16..... There is an outfit here in NZ where I live now that builds Mosquitos to order, and they have made a number of them for clients with the considerable amount of money to pay for them. I saw one such a few years ago at our local airfield....
Your comments on wood are correct. It is not a miracle material, but IF you have a large functional wood industry [especially WOOD AIRCRAFT industry] it does allow a nation to use wood and reduce demand for alloy metals. Germany discovered that building wood planes was harder than thought, the aircraft industry lost the know-how of building wood planes.
I've a background in building bicycles out of wood and my comments would be that there is less design flexibility with wood. For example it would be relatively easy to build a lightweight strong frame, but then you have to attach stuff like engines too it, and wood doesn't like point loading. So if you don't design around this from the start then you'll double the weight with all the attachment points. A few other points are that production with wood is slow as it relies of glue, which takes time to dry and needs to dry before going onto the next stage. As opposed to welding or riveting which once done is instant. So production might not have been scaleable. A minor point but the construction style isn't 'modern', which would sheave the wood in fibreglass, which takes all the tension loads and the wood compression. I believe the mozzie used ply construction which has the main advantage of getting around the issue of wood being fibrous and so only strong in certain axis, and along avoids natural defects in the wood. These are the main reasons I moved away from wood in my projects, not because it was inferior, but more because i didn't want to work around its limitations anymore. In the case of the mozzie in likely came around at a unique time when it was not superior or inferior for that particular set of circumstances.
I think the Germans were fully capable to create excellent wooden planes. The problem was that once they decided to go that route, the allies had bombed the main glue factories into the stone age; the Germans simply had no longer access to the high quality glue required to create a sturdy airframe. They tried alternative - more acidic - wood glues, but that led to rapid delamination/degradation and many aircraft simply fell apart in flight.
This is history at its best. Specialists study the available documents, then summarize the data and present reasonable conclusions to lay people like me. This was a very informative and enjoyable video.
The Germans and British began WW2 more or less on parity with aircraft performance. However in 1941, the British found themselves unable to match the Fw190, until the introduction of the Spitfire IX. They were very fortunate in having that existing Spitfire platform to build on, otherwise things could have gotten out of hand very quickly. Playing catch-up under wartime conditions is very very difficult.
The mosquito construction was chosen because it was strong and light, meaning it flew very fast and did not need multiple guns to defend itself. The construction technique was advanced and still used to this day in racing cars aircraft and spaceships. It was a composite construction, a thin layer of plywood was laid over a mould, glue applied and then light balsa wood used as a spacer and another layer of plywood glued on. The fuselage was made in two section then loaded with equipment and glued and screwed together, it was then sanded down smooth and a layer of Irish linen doped onto it surface. The fuselage had no rivets, so less drag. The fuselage was so strong no frame was needed just some bulkheads. The wings where also made of wood. The aircraft was based on a race plane called the Comet also built by DE Havilland. If it had been built of Aluminium it would have been heavier and slower. So the advanced construction technique with the use of wood laminates made it a superior aircraft shown by it battle successes. It was so good it was used in Multiple roles. Originally a bomber, it became also a bomber/fighter, night fighter, ground attack, anti shipping and carried a variety of weapons in its different/combined roles. Bombs up to 4000Lbs Airborne artillery with a 57mm Mollins auto cannon, one hit on a sub on the surface could sink it and a number where! 8 x 60Lb rockets “ the equivalent of a Cruiser Broadside”. How many WW I wooden aircraft could fly excess of 400mph?. Mosquito was advanced composite tech a trailblazer no. That tech is still used today!
I think it was used in aerial reconnaissance as well. Thanks for your information,. Truly a fascinating read. Met a fellow who’s uncle was a pilot that flew out of Algeria, at the same time as my great uncle. My relative flew spitfires in photo reconnaissance roles. Mosquitoes were very versatile planes.
For the last few years I have rented a home at the location of the Mosquito's design and construction and become a neighbour, member of and frequent visitor to the DeHavilland Aircraft Museum in Hertfordshire UK. The museum has the prototype and production examples of the Mosquito alongside other DeHavilland models. An amazing story of engineering, persistence and luck generated a remarkable, elegant aircraft.
Visited the Museum 2 times in a 2 week period not that long ago. Had a chat with volunteers there. I loved the place. For a Mosquito lover, it is a little piece of heaven on earth!
Although I was born long after the war had ended I worked for a cabinet maker's firm and in their vault, in the basement there were all sorts of jigs to make parts for not only Mosquitoes but for the Spitfire instrument panels as well.
A very interesting German perspective on the Mosquito. The Heinkel 219 was mentioned as the ultimate piston engined German nightfighter......I find it extraordinary that it's production was curtailled despite it's initial success. It could have been a significant countermeasure to to Mosquito intruder operations.
There have been many multi role combat aircraft over the years, and normally there is a large amount of compromise.... What made the Mosquito unique was the fact that every role it was given, it did brilliantly well.
As an aircraft designer, I disagree with some of your observations. You seem to call into question the benefits of using wood. In doing so, you forget the impact of that decision on the Mosquito program, and the aircraft's impact throughout the war. The Mosquito was only developed BECAUSE Geoffrey deHavilland agreed to minimize his company's use of strategic materials. The use of wood was central to the number aircraft deHavilland and their production partners were able to build. Further, wood significantly lightened the airframe, greatly increasing the Mosquito's cruise performance, compared to German opponents, before German jet aircraft entered service in significant numbers. Ignoring the Mosquito's radar signature, which became increasing irrelevant, as the war progressed, the reality is that using wood enabled both the production volume and exceptional speed the Mosquito used to such good effect. I would also like to mention that the wing design, when combined with two Merlin engines, avoided some of the vulnerabilities of other twin-engined aircraft of that era, including the P-38 (which struggled with poor engine reliability and compressibility problems in the dive). The surplus power produced by the engines allowed deHavilland to use a surprisingly short and thick wing that behaved surprisingly well at higher speeds. As the war progressed, the Luftwaffe tried to develop an impractical number of military jets, while the Allies managed their aircraft development programs and production facilities more efficiently, in my opinion. By the time Germany had developed capable jets, there were multiple issues that restricted output, particularly involving the Me262, which suffered from raw materials shortages, engine metallurgical challenges and political interference during the development program. It took three years for the Me262 to advance from first flight to entry-into-service, compared to one year for the Whittle-powered Gloster Meteor. The Mosquito was the perfect aircraft for it's time and highlighted several vulnerabilities the Luftwaffe were slow to resolve.
Exactly. If you look at it from a purely *engineering* perspective, it's a silly plane. If you look at it in the context of the war, the Mossie is absolutely genius - it's not just the performance of the Mossie that's awesome, it's the *logistics*. If the Mossie had to be build out of metal, it never would've gotten built - De Havilland would've been a subcontractor building Spitfires or Lancs, or, just cranking out Tiger Moths and nothing else.
The irony of the use of non-strategic materials was that thr Brits had to ship plywood from the Missouri Ozarks to match the high grades Mosquitoes needed.
One of the reasons the Me 262 (& other planes) took so long to develop was the Luftwaffe's lack of suitable test pilots. It's one thing having experienced pilots, but another having pilots who can forward their experiences in a way for the designers to get best use from. If you lose a good test pilot (due to death or injury), it can be very difficult to find a suitable replacement. This can have a long delay on projects.
@@eric-wb7gj There's a reason why all the top hundred or so aces of WWII were German. And it was a stupid reason. Germany kept them on the line as long as they liked; the Allies pulled experienced pilots off the line to both train new pilots and help design new aircraft. What that meant was that Allied aircraft and pilots, on the whole, got *better* during the war. German pilots and aircraft got worse.
I don't understand where you think I call the decision to use wood into question when it is exactly one of the things I go on at length as the German's considered it a very important factor.
Humidity, in wet tropical climates, was a problem for all wooden airframes. The Mosquito was no exception. Commonwealth air forces were perhaps fortunate that the Pacific War did not last much longer, because it was planned that Mosquitos built and serviced by De Havilland Australia (and based on Okinawa) would be used for anti-ship sorties over the South China Sea and southern Japan. Both the RAAF and RAF were forming new Mosquito squadrons _in Australia_ for that purpose, when VP/VJ Day happened.
I was going to post a question if Mosquitos served in the Far East/Pacific Theatre. I figured that the heat, rain, humitidy & rain would warp them to being non-flightworthy.
@@douglasstrother6584 Australian Mosquitoes were notably used for long-range reconnaissance against the Japs, but some were also used for ground attack in the final days of World War II. Fantastic aircraft. A few are preserved in Australia and New Zealand, and the Kiwis seem to be making a speciality of restorting them to flight.
The Mosquito is the grandad of most modern multi role combat aircraft, it was very good in every role it was used in. You should visit East KIrby in Lincolnshire where there is a Mosquito which does taxi runs.
You also had musical instruments builders and furniture, cabinet manufacturing building sub components in their shops, making for harder targets. These individuals were also being used by Vosper-Thornycroft to build Fairmiles class boats.
Really enjoyed this detailed and verified account of the Mosquito. It's up there with my other favourites: P51, Spitfire and of course the magnificent Me262. Thankyou for your work on this.
My Gt Uncle flew the Mossie. Not for very long - 3 months. He was with 88 and 107 Sqns operationally. Flying the formentioned and the A20 Boston. All 1943 - 1944. I still have his manuals for these aircraft plus the others he flew. Plus maps, gloves, Irvin, logbooks, photos etc etc. He survived but was not the same. Highly strung and quick to lose his temper. The very opposite of his character before the war. His marriage was an unhappy one. He died in 1974 from a heart attack.
And this regarding the He 219. He 219 was the Luftwaffe's state-of-the-art night-fighter. It actually shot down no Mosquitoes in 1943 and none from late July 1944 to the end in May 1945. The Mosquito losses to the He 219 were 10 in all, all between May 6th /7th and July 18th/19th 1944. Which leads me to think that the Mosquito squadrons adapted their tactics pretty quick. But then, the B.IX and B.XVI fly at greater altitudes. Oh! Just for interest. In return, the Mosquito accounted for 18 1/2 of the much rarer He 219s between April 11th 1944 and April 19th/20th 1945.
The Heinkel He 219 was a large aircraft and it needed a powerful engine. These engines, the Daimler Benz DB603A and Junkers Jumo 213A were not available till the first quarter of 1944 and not mature. For instance, they did not have War Emergency Power or WEP (called Note Leistung in German) from rich mixture injection and so both only produced 1750hp. The Merlin 20 series single stage supercharger engines and the Merlin 60 and 70 series two stage intercooled supercharger engine were producing at least 1700hp by then from a smaller package with a higher full pressure altitude. -The reality was that the He 219 with these engine had nowhere near the performance of the Mosquito and relied on lucky diving ambushes. -The DB603A had a power of 1750hp and a full pressure altitude of 5.7km. 1) takeoff power of the 603A DB 603A rated alt was 5.7 km 2) take-off power of the 603AA was 1670PS and rated alt was 7.3 km achieved by altering supercharger gear ratios of the DB603A 3) take-off power of the 603E was 1800PS and rated alt was 7 km This version never entered service except on test or trials aircraft. 4) Most He 219 A-0 used the 603A, A-2 used 603AA, A-7 had 603E (which never entered service though may have been shipped to the front) Only the He 219A-7 (with DB603E) or the lightened He 219A2 (with the DB603AA) stood a remote chance to get a Mosquito as they were still slower. There was the following engines that would have brought the He 219 on a par with the Mosquito if not faster: 1) DB603EM (a DB603E with 100/130 fuel and MW50 injection) would have more power, around 2250hp but only at low altitude. Cancelled due to 100/130 fuel shortage. 2) DB603LA with two stage supercharger for high altitude power 2250hp. Entered service on Ta 152C 3) DB603L with two stage supercharger and intercooler for high altitude power 2400hp. He 219 had been cancelled by the time this engine was ready.
I'm a fan too. This plane clocked up some incredible achievements, destroyed the V1 facilities in northern France , hit an SS HQ in the centre of France allowing many French prisoners to escape, was the first choice for the Mohnesee dam raid (Dambusters) because of its very agile low flying ability but Barnes-Wallace and his team couldn't make the bouncing bombs small enough, first for nose mounted cannons, first to have wing mounted rockets (missiles) and the list goes on. Loved your video, respectul homage to a superb war machine.
Crossbow was the code name in World War II for Anglo-American operations against the German long range reprisal weapons (V-weapons) programme. The primary V-weapons were the V-1 flying bomb and V-2 rocket, which were launched against Britain from 1944 to 1945 and used against continental European targets as well.[3]
I worked with a fellow history teacher who had a masters in history but was also a Sergeant in the US Air Force Reserves. He was always reading papers on military history and read one that had an interesting idea. Instead of using B-17s to bomb Germany the US would use Mosquitos for bombing. The Idea was that 3 Mosquitos could carry the same bomb load as 2 B-17's and could out run most German fighters. 6 crews compared to 20, no need for fighter escorts and they could come in at tree level making them harder to shoot down.
@@B-A-L There was some use of British built kit by the Americans. I am seem to remember a film clip of someone crashing an American liveried Spitfire. The US Navy also borrowed some Flower class corvettes, but changed the names presumably not having the self confidence to go to war in a ship named after a garden flower. For example HMS Heartsease, a type of small pansy, became USS Courage. Would have been worth offering some US Aircraft carrier pilots the use of a Swordfish just to see their faces....... What about using this advanced maritime multirole combat aircraft, state of the art air to sea radar, short take off and landing, no need to suspend operations if your carrier is taking the sea green over the front of the flight deck, just take advantage of the downhill run up to the ski jump. Attack from so close to the seas surface that the Germans can not depress their AA guns enough to hit you. Because as logical people they never expected aircraft to attack their ships from below. You can even strap your bike to the wings if you are landing ashore, avoiding the need for that tiresome walk to the mess room. 😃
There have been some analysis of this hypothesis but it simply doesn't hold water. The Mossie's ability to carry weight is in one large bomb, while the big bombers could carry multiple bombs, among other things. There are at least two on RUclips IIRC. If anyone intends to debate the conclusion, no use trying to engage with me as I am only reporting and lack expertise.
Excellent video about an extraordinary plane. I particularly enjoyed how you highlighted how the Mossie defied German expectations & so was especially difficult to counter. Given the often near-suicidal nature of Bomber Command missions, the Mossie stands out in a different league for chances of survival compared to all the othet planes crews climbed into...and they knew it. It is striking how aircrew totally fell for the Mossie even after they had become enamoured by flying other bombers like the Lancaster because the performance was so fantastic.
England at that time was a country of cabinet makers, furniture builders, yachtsmen etc etc, A large and well skilled workforce that was able to quickly adapt to producing the Mosquito. They also had well established supply chains at home and abroad from pre-war business in wood products.
This is my favorite type of learning. I’m a big Mosquito fan and knew a bunch of these facts already, but hearing them all together as one piece is transformative to my understanding of them. This is so well done man, the qualitative niche the Mosquito filled is so interesting I love the wood=stealth thing because it ignores the two massive spinning steel discs out front
The props and spinners were NOT steel. The radar signature was much smaller and further confused by the speed at a time when radar was in its relative infancy.
@@duvetofreason16 This was a question I asked after the filming was over. I never went into specifics. Even though they were night fighters I can only imagine they had had experience in the daytime somewhere or it was just general pilot talk about what was causing them the most problems.
@@duvetofreason16 Iirc, in the final months of the war nightfighter crews were sent in broad daylight against enemy bomber formations. Something they were neither used to, nor trained for. They suffered. Badly. Can't remember now what units were involved, but I think they were flying 110Gs. So, fearing the Mustang is understandable. Strafings on lading patterns were a Mosquito thing, for the most part.
A relative of mine, Wing Commander Paul Bingham Elwell (MBE), defeated 5 FW 190s on one occasion over the Cherbourg Peninsula (Northern France), having shot down two and only stopping his attack after running out of ammunition. This success was in part due to his prowess as a pilot, in part to the inexperience of the German pilots, but also due in no small part to the abilities of the Mosquito.
Strong family ties to this mighty bird. In 1943 the War Office greenlit the expansion of the DH factory but the council objected. All the staff built an Aztec temple on the airfield and started sacrificing locals in protest. My grandma was a barmaid in The Docker's Fists next to the factory entrance and was one of the victims. Her skull was the mascot in control tower until the end of the war. Happily the council relented and DH took over all of Devon. Happy days.
I am a boomer but my dad who fought in France and Germany in WW2 did not like to talk to us kids about it, but his open admiration for the mozzie stuck in my mind, he never stopped praising it. So when I grew up I could then appreciate it's unique capabilities. I always had models of the spitfire, simply because it looked so good, and it was 'the one' in those days. We did live near Farnborough, and by the time I was 10 I was watching, Comets, Vulcans, Valiants, hawker hunters etc, but my all-time favorite was the amazing, ridiculous, sexy, shiny, and very loud Lightning, the first plane that could actually 'drift', so much bloody power, my son does drifting a lot on tracks but he will never know what a buzz it must have been for the pilots who flew them in those days. (and for us kids watching them show off, the lucky B.........! ).
My Grandfather was a navigator on the night flying mosquitos. He told me he was amazed at times they came out on target! On a reverse note, he said the German aircraft he feared the most was the 190.
A long time ago, I was able to sit in the Mosquito at the EAA museum. It was quite the thrill for a young boy. I spent a lot of time there when it was in Hales Corners. They had a great model shop inside.
I like that Greg's Airplanes and Automobiles just released a Mozzie video as well, so two of my favorite channels are covering this wonderful aircraft at the same time. In his case, it was a compare/contrast with the P-38. (The conclusion was shocking: The P-38, designed as a fighter, was a better fighter; the Mozzie, designed as a bomber, was a better bomber.)
Chris, vielen Dank für a very interesting perspective on the Mosquito! It's interesting how much impact that it had on the command "thought processes" and the "mind share".... Greg's channel just did a comparison of the p-38 and Mosquito, with an overall performance advantage to the P-38, yet the P-38 did not seem to have any significant impact in the European theatre... It seems that, not till P-51's with Merlin engines did the USA have an effective bomber escort.
Mosquito Missions "On the night of 18th/19th August, 1944, twenty-one Mosquitos attacked Berlin, seven Cologne, two Wanne Eickel and five the airfields at Florennes. By then Mosquitos of eleven squadrons had been used for diversionary attacks on a small but gradually increasing scale since the first thousand-bomber raid on Cologne on 30th/31st May, 1942. From the spring of 1943 until the end of the war 'harassing' raids as they were originally termed were to prove a constant and, from the point of view of the enemy, a most irritating and unpleasant feature of the bomber offensive. Night after night the Mosquitos were over Germany, flying at between 30,000 and 40,000 feet to inflict damage out of all proportion to the weight of bombs they dropped. They were at once of great value as a nuisance, for they caused the sirens to wail and tired workers to spend yet another night in fetid, if bombproof, bunkers, and they created a diversion, thus drawing the enemy fighters away from the main bomber stream." Royal Air Force 1939-1945 Chapter XII Oil and the Climax
Of all the very many aircraft my late Bomber and Coastal Command pilot father flew between 1940-45, the Mossy was his favourite aircraft by a country mile. The power to weight ratio - even when carrying a bomb load - was the crucial factor in his eyes owing to the twin Merlins, enabling a very impressive top speed and flight ceiling. It was always his view that the bombing campaign against the German industrial heartland in the Ruhr would have cost far fewer lives if it had been conducted by Mosquitoes rather than the slower heavy bombers favoured by the hierarchy in the Air Ministry. Remember that it was Bomber Command that sustained THE highest casualty rate of any arm of the UK and Commonwealth armed forces across the entire war. He himself was one of only two from some 105 through his echelon at the Imperial Flying School to survive the war. After two entire tours over Germany and occupied Europe, he was transferred to OCU then into Coastal Command before heading out to the Middle East theatre.
Reminds me of the modern application of the F-16. Probably don't want to have to fight a modern fighter in an aircraft designed in 1974, but as a strike aircraft it is excellent.
IMO the Mosquito was the world’s first, true MRCA. Geoffrey De Havilland never made an ugly ‘plane. Even the Airco DH2 had a sort “fit for purpose” look to it. For over 40 years he was at the cutting edge of aeronautical technology, designing and building aeroplanes, piston engines and some the very first jet engines.
I sat in the Mossi that is in storage at the National Aircraft Museum near Ottawa. It isn't on public display. I just had a heap of good luck, on a day with few visitors and happened to ask the two best people about the Mossie. I asked a very pleasant lady who was on staff about the possibility of seeing the Mossie, and she asked the director who was a Mossie expert, He gave permission for me to look. When looking around, I asked her if I might look in the cockpit. She grinned and said that no one had expressly forbidden that so to go ahead. Mr Reynolds of the Reynolds Museum was a Mossie pilot in WW2. We overheard him talking with some visitors and I really wish that his comments had been recorded.
@@frostyfrost4094 IDK if it is still there, but the privately owned one at Vancouver International Airport was in a private hanger, no access, a few years ago. I've seen the FB Mossie flying at the Paul Allen Museum at Everett, Washington. It's on public display for anyone interested.
Even the Mosquito highlighted the German resource starvation. The balsa core for the wooden laminates came from Ecuador. There’s not a good substitute that I’m aware of. Another comment said the birch came from the Ozarks, but birch is available from lots of places. Maybe the Ozarks had some really good stuff.
7:06 I feel like a widely distributed bombing night run by a limited number of Mosquitoes exacerbates this. Even if the Germans get one, the others are likely too far away and too fast for multiple engagements. And even if the Mosquito can't take on a fighter, it is a small, fast target. High effort/low reward engagement. Running the single engine fighters wide open to catch Mosquitoes saps the Germans of aircraft parts and maintenance time. And don't underestimate the psychological impact either. Minor mistakes by ground control that would be meaningless against larger bombers could erode unit trust and cohesion. As a Minnesotan I'd say the Mosquito is aptly named. Unlikely to kill you, but it can keep you up all night and utterly destroy your morale.
At some point, it would be really cool to get an "Inside The Cockpit" for the mosquito. However if/when you do, it would nice if you could highlight some of the difference between the Bomber and the Fighter-Bomber, if you are planning only doing one episode on the Mosquito. What i was thinking in regards to the difference, is not the obvious, like the FB having guns in the nose, while the bomber have a clear nose, but for example more subtle difference, like "how are they different inside the cockpit with the instrument board". Personally, i would probably want to see the inside of a Mosquito Bomber more than the Fighter Bomber, since i think they are a bit interesting, but that is personal preference. But generally the development of the Mosquito is quite interesting, with it being a suggestion, that went into some development, to its production being stopped and then restarted again, and it ended up being one of the most important planes in the allied air force.
My friend’s father was a navigator in Mosquitoes during WW2 and had to leave the RAF when he lost an eye through flak. He was quite a small man, so my question is whether small body size was an advantage when operating this aircraft?
The Me 262 was at a disadvantage in that the scrap life of the Jumo engine was 10 hours. THis was because of the lack of high temperature alloys such as Chromium and therefore Germany would never have been able to maintain a simmilar number of aircraft to the Mosquito numbers.
That was a very interesting video as we don’t often get to hear the perspective from the other side. Not only did the mosquito not use valuable alloys, it also wasn’t relying on specialist machinery and operators to work those alloys. Suddenly, lots of very skilled furniture makers were building aircraft, although they were already building the Hurricane but this also meant even more involvement of forestry workers, saw mills ect so it’s almost like a whole new workforce was available. I think it’s important to note that once the US entered the war the Allies were able to pour tons of recourses into the fight whereas by 1943 Germany was struggling to get enough of everything. Fuel, pilots, alloys were all becoming scarce and the skilled workers to build the planes were in short supply as well as the allies constantly bombing the factories. They didn’t even need to bomb the aircraft factories because they took out the limited number factories making specialist equipment like rubber and ball bearings. Also by 1943 a lot more of those scarce resources were making it to England from the US as the allies were really getting the threat from u-boats under control. I think Hitler’s biggest mistake was attacking Russia before conquering England. Maybe he saw England as just a thorn in his side that he didn’t need to bother with, but that thorn became a huge festering sore that eventually became his downfall.
He intended to Conquer Britain first. Remember the USSR was his ally at the beginning of the war. His failure to gain air superiority and concerns about the British Navy, then caused him to abandon the invasion plan and make the same mistake as Napoleon did before him.
Yeah most Mosquitos were safely made in Canada and ferried over by Canadian women pilots to the UK. Commonwealth Ferry Command would make a good video. Those women flew everything, bombers, fighters recon planes evrything, mostly solo. Real heroic brave people. And great pilots. Cheers from the Pacific West Coast of Canada.
In my mind the Mosquito was the orgin of the MRCA, I grew up in Leavesden and had alot of the neighbours around me that had worked on the production of Mosquito's and Halifax's at Leavesden. If your are interested there is a very good book titled Leavesden aerodrome Halifax's to Hogwarts.
Can it be that besides the speed advantage. The Mosquito also most often operated in quite small formations or as lone ranger. So that contributed to relatively low loss rate. Also correct me if I am wrong. But the part of the Mosquito tactics was to approach the target in a very low attitude that made the traditional flak guns not very effective. At lest as a bomber. The Mosquito were used in so many roles so you have look at each deployment separately
It's true the Mosquito usually operated in small or solo groups at night which definitely helped it's loss rate. Also the low altitude approach helped with reducing it's radar detection since it's difficult to detect at lower altitudes. Basically they used them in a way that drastically favored them which is reflected in their loss rates
I was informed (decades ago) that AEROLITE/CASCAMITE GLUE was the specific advantage, coupled with a SLANT GRAIN CUT with the wood sheets, allowing glue penetration. This allowed for a superior structural airframe strength/weight ratio. Also allied engines were LIGHTER for the same general output - and weight is all - as it is in rocketry. Cheers. 😎
What I like most about the Mossie is it was so good, when the Germans tried to make their own version they named it Moskito, as if no other name was available but the plane they were most afraid of. Having said that... I noticed the B-17 Flying Fortress was a close second to the Mosquito.
as per a different youtube video I watched, the primary goal of B-17s in Germany was to neutralize the Luftwaffe by any means necessary. When a specific plane is being deployed for the express purpose of removing your branch of the military, it makes sense for you to talk about it...
13:20 I think the most important element of wood as a material is there were many skilled carpenters and businesses in the UK which were otherwise inconsequential to the war effort suddenly making high performance recon/bombers. However, Germany had lots of problems with radar in terms of covering the entire coast of France and I'm sure the speed of the Mosquitoes exacerbated any errors German radar operators made. Rather than being invisible, it probably simply had a wildly different speed and maneuverability compared to other bombers and caused radar operator errors.
To me, that's the most amazing thing about the Mossie: the design logistics. It utilised a workforce that couldn't directly contribute to the war, it used materials that weren't war-criticial, and the dispersal of this work force meant you couldn't take out the supply chain.
The basic problem was the wrong decision in 1937/38 for the "destroyer" Bf 110 and its even worse successors Me210/410. With the FW 187, Focke Wulf had a perfect interceptor for the Mosquito, but it was not wanted in 1938. The primary sources from Dietmar Hermann's book on the FW 187 show that this design was revisited in 1942, but it was too late and it would have taken too long to put it into production. The Mosquito interceptor could have been had from the start, although the FW 187 was certainly capable of multi-role and all with the bread and butter DB 605 engines. The FW 187 was much faster than the Bf 109F and G with the same engines and would have carried 4 x 2cm.
It wasn't just any wood. It was balsa core plywood sandwiched with either birch or sitka spruce outer layers, moulded in two halves. Correct me if I'm wrong, but that makes it pretty much the first laminate 'composite' aircraft.
It wasn't only the Material, England had a large traind work force of Capenters, Cabinet Makers, Joiners and Finishers that could easily just get blue prints and start building Airframes. This is an overlooked advantage they used to start building with no training needed.
It's interesting that the same nation that produced the DeHavilland Mosquito also produced the Boulton Paul Defiant. Both seem to have been (at least to modern eyes) very "out-of-the-box" designs, but one found a niche while the other did not (unless you count target tugs and gunnery training).
Also reminds me of the swordfish. Though it was seen as hopelessly outdated by the war, due to how slow it was, it was very difficult for AA teams to shoot them down, along with the materials it was made from
@@davewolfy2906 im not surprised, with how slow it is i bet it was easier to be more accurate too, before the invasion of norway I remember a swordfish manging to hit and sink a sub, such a small target to get a direct hit on is crazy
@@EpicRenegade777 Being slow and stable was critical to being fully night carrier capable, which is another major reason why the flak and enemy fighter defences were so ineffective against them.
It was the first multi-role fighter bomber. Goering had a love/hate relationship with it. There was the short-lived experimental Mosquito 'Tetse'. It had a British six-pounder(57mm) antitank gun mounted in the nose. It was semi-automatic, with a 24 round magazine. The plane had the punch of a broadside from a light naval cruiser, and it was intended for coastal sub hunting but only 19 were made.
Growing up in the UK with an interest in history I seemed the out one out when it came to WWII war-birds. All my friends went dewy eyed over Spitfires & Focke-Wulf Fw 190 engaged in dogfights. But I had a thing for twin-engined planes. My top three being №1 Mosquito, №2 Beaufighter & №3 Messerschmitt Me 262. The Mosquito is a featherweight boxer, gloves up, fast, high endurance with a wicked punch. The Beaufighter is a tough old heavyweight, hunched over his gloves waiting to lash out with a devastating blow whilst being able to roll with the punishment. The Messerschmitt Me 262... well it looks like a shark, powering along while apparently motionless, waiting to take a chunk out of something. That twin-engine thing has carried forward into more modern planes, the English Electric Lightning F6, flawed, but a beautiful flash of silver in the sky. The the Fairchild Republic A-10 Thunderbolt II (Warthog), the spiritual successor to the Beaufighter for me. Tough & just doles out punishment. I took a bit of stick from my ex father in law over plane choice. He was a Spitfire pilot during WWII & over drinks one night he got a bit miffed when he asked about my fave single engine WWII fighter. That was the Hawker Hurricane closely followed by the Hawker Tempest.
I love the Mossie so much. It has pretty much everything you want. It‘s fast, packs a punch, can take damage and still bring the crew home, can do so many different missions, had a colorfull service history and is just beautifull. I‘m so gratefull that I can fly it in DCS.
My uncle flew over 100 sorties in the MOssie. By the latter half of the war he said he was carrying 4,000 pound bomb loads to Berlin. He also said that the only fighter he really felt threatened by was the FW190. The 109 and flak if n the way home he would go up to 35-40,000 feet to minimize the threats. The 109 could not go that high and the 190 took time to get there. He once said his game was to come in low, drop the load then get high and scoot home.
My grandad worked on these as a mechanic in Rhodesia and then back in England as the war progressed. He swore practically to the day he died at 97 years, that he could have stripped and rebuilt a Merlin Engine blindfolded. He loved the mozzies. And said they were amazing in their durability, flak damage that would have grounded another aircraft were simply patched up with some wooden offcuts and some glue.
The thing with wooden construction is not only the resource itself, it also use skilled workers who otherwise would have just been building pianos to entertain the troops.
The wood worker's in the UK were not sitting on their backsides until the Mosquito came along!!! The British built 25000 wooden aircraft in WWII which were not Mosquitos!!!
Stealth does not exsist, but low observatory does. The Mosquito was not stealth but it did was a lower observative aircraft. This did allow them to get closer to a radar set particulally at that time and with the equipment they did have. The Horton jet fighter even though not operational did prove to be low observative in the USA. As it was possible to get just as close as the Mosquito it was even faster. They accessed that with the extral 100 MPH the British would have been very hard pressed to get airborne to counter it. Being able to get closer before being detected does have some advantages.
Of course the Horten was NEVER available. Whether it would have met its design aims is uncertain. The Horten brothers built a lot of sailp;lanes using the same bell-shaped aerodynamic lift distribution and basic planform, but none of them outperformed conventional sailplanes. It is also noticeable that the US rejected Northrop's Flying wing bomber designs a few years later.
@@petegarnett7731 Yes that is true as it was still in the development stage in 1945. If I am correct that stage would take a couple of years, even though as I believe the Horten and the ME 262 had the same engines and they were not that realiable. But the use of wood in the construction and what speed it could have obtained crossiing the channel, if put into service, the response time would have been shorten so as that it could not be properly countered. Therefore a threat at some level.
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*Jump onboard countless flying machines in War Thunder and teach the tankies the definition of true airpower. Sign up for special rewards via my link* wtplay.link/militaryaviationhistorywt
@@MilitaryAviationHistory can you leave the captions on a tad longer please? Constant pausing to read disrupts the flow. Thank you
You can slow the video speed down, slighty, in the settings.
What is ment@lly wrong with you that you edit like that? Are you not smart enough to speak in consecutive sentences?
You really know your stuff, but can I bring up a point of less than perfect presentation that you do a lot? I had to rerun the upload and be on my toes because you started on a point and then you were suddenly down another path like, "Hey. where is he now? Oh, he's there. Ok. What? Now we're back in the other issue. What just happened here?" And you do a lot of that in the presentation, including going back and forth between all 3 main issues that you want to present to us, so that there is no clear and defined point of you being on one topic or the other or the third. And that forces us to be very focused and concentrated on the issue to the point of having to know a good deal of the stuff ourselves beforehand. That is not the best way to catch new viewers who want to learn something new.
Just a piece of advice.
Did you ever wonder why games like War Thunder, etc are advertising on all these channels, even though they are free ? Its because they are not really free.
I’m biased towards this beautiful aircraft . My disabled grandfather worked on the Mosquito in Hatfield during the war. He couldn’t fight but he poured his heart and soul into this.
One of the best looking aircraft of the period.
A great design.
Your granddad was not able to directly fight, but making Mosquito helped end the war more quickly. What was his job in the factory?
@@bartonstano9327 He was involved with the technical drawing and also the carpentry on the frame.
Your Gf had a noble calling. My mother and father both worked for DeHavillands during the war, at Stag Lane, in fact they met there, so if you like, I can thank DH for bringing them together!
My father-in-law flew it later in the war. Before that he flew Wellingtons. He must have been a lucky guy to survive them, IMO. He said the Mozzy was like a sports car and easy to fly, and once he had landed on a single engine in a farmer's field in moonlight. Romantic, even . . .
PS. I watched one being set on fire and burnt to a crisp as part of a fire-fighting demonstration at RAF Jurby, Isle-of-Man, er, in 1952.
During WW2 my mother worked shifts at the De Havilland Canada factory in Downsview, Ontario, Canada (near Toronto) assisting in the manufacture of around 1100 Mosquitoes which were then shipped over the North Sea to Britain. She was extremely proud of her service, as are we.
Fun fact: some of the first Commonwealth "soldiers" (yes, those're sarcasm quotes) sent to aid Britain in the early days were Aussie and Kiwi timber-getters and Canadian lumberjacks.
The sarcasm quotes is that they were given just a token amount of military training so they could be sent over to work harvest the Sitka spruce plantations in Scotland that went into the Mossie.
There's a great story of Kiwi "sergeant" who was a milling foreman in civvie life barging into the office of a dignified British colonel and yelling at him that the site the Colonel picked was incredibly bloody stupid because it was nowhere near water, and rattling off exactly how many sawblades they'd lose a day from heat damage if they weren't cooled.
@@hoilst265 In WWI there were whole Canadian work battalions in Scotland & France just for timber work to supply lumber for trench works and the small gauge railways used just behind the lines to supply the Front. Chinese Canadian battalions built the railways.
@@hoilst265 thanks for the reply. Here's another fun fact for you: my mother and the other "girls" carried little pieces of chalk with them and marked little hearts or initials on the airframes. It was tolerated as being good for morale in the plant and later in operations.
Coldlakealta .....God Bless your mother and all the other Canadians who were there when we needed you. Mossies were just the tip of a Canadian Iceberg of assistance. Everything from aircraft, Merlin engines, training of pilots and not least those brave troops who fought so tenaciously alongside ours ! Canada may have had a relatively small population but it had a massive heart and balls of steel. Thank you seems hopelessly inadequate ! Hitler thought Great Britain stood alone .......we knew we were not !!!
❤ 🇨🇦🇬🇧
@@garymoore2535 on behalf of my departed dad, you're more than welcome. He spoke rarely about his time in the war, but when he did it was always with great fondness towards the people of the UK. He came home wounded in body and soul, but never expressed any regret for having served.
My Uncle was a decorated Australian Mosquito ( RAAF 456 Squadron and RAF 108 Squadron ) and Beaufighter Pilot flying Night Intruder missions over Germany in the Mozzie and missions over North Africa, Greece and Crete in the Beaufighter ( 46 Squadron ME and MAAF ) ... aka whispering death from 1942 to 1944.
@@thevelointhevale1132 my father was 1 Squadron RAAF, he flew mosquitoes against the Japanese
12:19 It has been noted that when the Mosquito was being made, the UK had a host of craftsmen who worked with wood, be they cabinet makers, furniture makers or carpenters who were fully able to turn their skills to making the wooden elements of the Mosquito, meaning that they could make a direct contribution to production of aircraft for war effort whereas they had been not fully involved up to that point.
Not only that it was extremely dispersed production. There were twelve-man cabinet makers in country towns and boatbuilders in fishing villages cranking out parts. You couldn't bomb out the supply chain. Not even Goering was stupid enough to order a Ju-88 raid on a Gloucester chair workshop.
This is, of course, Germany tried doing at the end of the war but by then it was too little, too late.
@@hoilst265 I started my Apprenticeship at deHavillands, and at the end of the first week they showed us a film about the developement of the Mossie and how they had trouble with the Goverment who wanted them to just make the Tiger Moth as a trainer. The film showed all the veriants building up the the one with a cannon in the nose. Testing the gun, while on the ground it had tethered chocks. Still remember a pair flying around where I lived in Eastcote to land at Northolt. Best Dave
@@dave20thmay That's cool! Yeah, the Ministry really tried to dissuade Jeffrey - they had open tenders where ever aircraft maker in Britain could make whatever bomber they liked and the Ministry give it a go.
IIRC, officially ministry only funded engines, but there was a sort of verbal agreement that the makers could bill the Ministry for all sorts of stuff (like radios, landing gear parts, etc.) and the Ministry would pay. They did that for every maker...except De Havilland, where they only went strictly by what was written on the contract - they really didn't want the silly wooden toy and were hoping De Havilland would give up. De Havilland really scrounged parts (it's why the main landing has only 32 parts, and no hydraulic shock absorbers.)
But then, they got a prototype up and running, and they dropped everyone's jaw when the thing tore past all the brass and bureaucrats at 400mph - which would've been the fastest man-carrying machine ever built at the time.
And then they said "That's nice. Now put it away, and go back to making Tiger Moths."
De Havilland ignored them, and kept working on the prototype in secret - rather alarmingly, it nearly got taken out by a lost Ju-88, who get detached from their main German bomber force, wandered around, saw the De Havilland airfield and thought they might as well bomb it (De Havilland's assigned AA crews shot it down, and they got to ask the pilot why they were bombed before the MPs took them away.)
Then, Dunkirk happened, and suddenly the Ministry was ringing them up asking about, oh, do they still have the plans for that cheap little wooden aircraft they told them to stop working on...?
My absolute favourite plane of the war.
Yes, they key strategic 'material' saved by a wooden plane was the labour force.
@@lllordllloyd British built 25,000 aircraft out of mainly wood between 1939 and 1945 which were not Mosquitos!!! The majority of the 2nd Line aircraft in British service were made mostly of wood!
Trainers
Miles Magister (Primary Trainer)
Miles Master (Advanced Trainer)
Miles Martinet (Target Tug)
Airspeed Oxford (Multi engine trainer and other roles)
DH Dominie (Navigation and radio training)
DH Tiger Moth (Primary Trainer)
Percival Proctor (Radio Operator Training)
A lot of these aircraft were also used for communications duties.
Assault Gliders
GAL Hotspur (planned as an operational Aircraft, used as a trainer)
Airspeed Horsa
GAL Hamilcar
plus 604 Albemarle's mostly made of wood, ordered as a bomber / transport, ended up as a Para dropper and glider tug.
As a young man in my early 20s i joined the mosquito aircraft museum, I think it is now called the DE Haviland, that was the first time i saw a mossie close up, l, One day in the hangar where i worked i sneaked outside to watch a mossie start and taxi out it was going to the confederate air force museum, The hangar foreman saw me go, and followed me asking me what i thought i was doing so i told him, and with that he said follow me lad we'll get a better view from behind the carpark. At his age he must have been involved with the real thing.
Many years passed and one mossie came into the airport where i then worked, I went over and looked over it, even poked my head up into the cockpit and there was sat the pilot, looking down at me he said " I'm going as far as Chester you can come along ," What to do ???????? i had one 737 on the ground with another 6 heading my way, i would have lost my job if i had accepted ,
Now as a 73yeaar old i realise it was a once in a lifetime opportunity and i should have signed out and gone flying. AND ignored the hanging judges in the personnel dept. !
Working with those older pilots when refuelling aircraft many would ask for a bit for mum, how much is a bit today ?? try 1500kgs.
I guess returning from Germany short on fuel left a mark on them. Its the old saying the only time you have too much fuel is when your on fire !
Working with older engineers you heard a few stories, one mentioned getting a lift back in the bomb bay of a Mossie and went on to say the C/O of the squadron had a personalised Me 109, this was 1946 the hangar doors would open and this bright red Me109 would roar out of the hangar tail already up with the squadron leader at the controls, ,
My older friend wore his martin baker pin with pride, as their parachute had saved his life following an engine fire on a Hastings, the pilot casually said looks like we have to get out and walk, my friend told me he sat by the open hatch, then he felt a boot in his back and out he went landing on German soil he was dragged through bushes etc, Some 40 years after that i was with him on the flight deck of a 737 and the capt turned around to say something and saw my friends pin, with that he then showed his lapel pin, both had been save by Martin Baker and they both laughed out loud it must be a brotherhood i thought a very lucky brotherhood.
Finally another old timer told me as we drove through London heading to Gatwick he went on an air test with a Mossie, off they went into the sky, the pilot took a radio message both engines had been replaced and were of a suspect batch, and with that number two engine stopped ,the pilot said we have trouble ,my friend replied I'm too young to die ( 18 years old) just put your parachute on kid , and with that they headed home landing on one engine.
Such are the memories of men who are now up above with the big chief engineer no messing with that man is there. , they may be gone but not forgotten.
best wishes Sisaket Thailand.
Nils Bohr was a high value cargo in a Mosquito bomb bay. Nearly died when the oxygen supply malfunctioned.
@@colinmacdonald5732 So I believe!! Talk about high value!
Thanks for making thye effort to share that before the memories can be lost forever
I'm sure many here would join me in this impassioned plea - I *_beg_* of you to write all this stuff down, in as much detail as you can remember. Doesn't matter if it seems a bit uneven, or disjointed in places. These are truly fantastic stories.
I know I'm itching to hear more, and I doubt I'm alone in that.
@@williamkennedy5492 it's all to easy to regret missed opportunities as we both know now.
Goebbels, mentioned the Mosquito often in his diaries. Mosquito bombers flew missions over Berlin every night for months in a row. Though the damage was often minimal, the "nuisance" raids forced Berliners out of their beds and into bomb shelters night after night. The morale effect on workers was great. Eventually the Mosquito raids got big enough to approach what a main force raid would be. Well done, Chris.
The reason it specifically affected workers so badly is that the RAF pursued a policy of "bomb the workers" as opposed to "bomb the factories" from their very first raid throughout the entire war.
@@gratefulguy4130 Not quite day one. The main reason for the switch being that analysis of the raid on Coventry showed that the factories affected were restoring output in days or even hours but the damage to civilian infrastructure, houses and workers took months to repair.
Mossies not only flew faster they took more direct routes, reducing their time over enemy territory even more, so the Germans couldn't always use the same defences they used against bomber streams and by 1943, they were carrying Cookies, single 4000lb bombs. Single machines could make two trips to the same destination in one night and hit as hard as a B17.
The evolution of the type is also quite astounding - later versions of the Mosquito carried the same bomb load as the early Lancaster bomber.
@@gratefulguy4130 Totally not True!!!! The RAF Area Bombing directive wasn't issued until February 1942. Before that with the exception of one raid in November 1940, the RAF bombers were supposed to target Oil plants, Marshalling yards, ports and Arms Factories like Krupps in Essan. The area raid in 1940 was revenge for Coventry.
@@PlayerFalcon4 Absolute Rubbish I'm Afraid!! All of the RAF Heavies were designed to carry at least 8000lb.
I used to have a friend (FLt Cooper rtd) who flew Mosquitoes in WWII. He loved the aircraft, and one thing he said that saved him a few times, was not just the speed, but the wooden structure often meant that armoured piercing rounds passed straight through the frame without causing top much damage. He had this happen when on a low level ground attack and he was bounced by a FW190E. He survived, but on landing, found nearly 30 AP rounds had passed through the aircraft.
it was not just wood
It was built using stressed skin composite with wood .
Two thin skins of ply held apart by end grain balsa .
Very stiff, very strong, surprising resilient to damage and light .
Modern aircraft have just starting to use the same technology but with foam core and carbon fiber skins .
And instead of rivets, smooth, shiny, surfaces with significantly faster airflow.
Many of us know that - if we're engineers. Birch ply sheets were cut NOT QUITE parallel to the grain, so that the end grains adsorbed a superior Aerolite/Cascamite adhesive which the Axis powers had no knowledge of. Strength/Weight is equal to steel, aluminium.
Worth noting that the skill level needed to produce Mosquitoes was far higher than manufacturing an aluminium aircraft.
@@tonyduncan9852 To truly appreciate the significance of Cascamite’s revival, we must journey back in time to its beginnings. It all started in the early 19th century, by an American gentleman named Gail Borden.
Very true … wood doesn’t mean a raw piece of timber … in the case of DeHavilland.
As a Dane with German ancestry and an English mother - I'm always gonna have confused and mixed feelings about our "moments in history" but it's a joy to see the different perspectives of people who know what they're talking about [here], with facts and research that I'm too lazy to do myself, as opposed to fanboy vids. You know when the Germans make their own Moskito, that the Brits did something right.
Fun fact: it was a BOAC-marked Mosquito (soooo...technically a civilian aircraft) that got Niels Bohr out of Sweden and into Britain, where they promptly put him on the Tube Alloys program.
@@hoilst265 ok now that's a proper "Fun fact". Noice!
@@rickybuhl3176 Unfortunately, they didn't count on the size of his brain. The flight helmet they provided him with - with the communications headset in it - didn't fit his Nobel-prize winning noggin, so he didn't wear it.
The reason behind using a Mossie was because it was the only aircraft that could fly higher and fast over occupied Norway to get to and from Britain and avoid fighters - Bohr was to be laid down on a mattress in the bomb bay. But because he didn't wear the headset, he didn't hear the pilot's instructions to switch to oxygen, and passed out.
Luckily, the pilot figured out what had happened when Bohr wasn't responding and descend to a mask-off altitude, and Bohr woke up.
An addition to the Mosquito story:
In war, it's often not the actual destruction caused which makes a big or small impact, but the FACT that the action took place in the first place, and the effect of that on enemy command psyche, and the psychological effect on the enemy population! Goering (and his ginormous ego) was particularly susceptible to this effect, and the British capitalised on this BIG TIME! The so-called nuisance raids were in fact psychological warfare at its very best, as it increasingly got under the skin of German thinking ( and the fear that went with it!).
This video validates this aspect, in my opinion, and I don't think the Mossie got nearly enough credit for this massive contribution.
Thanks for a brilliant video, packed with highly relevant data.
as the name implies zippy elusive & very irritating
I well remember reading a Luftwaffe ace's autobiography where, even with the Me109's radiator closed to decrease drag, he couldn't catch a Mosquito. His frustration was clear as he wondered how a twin-engined bomber could out-run his fighter.
The phrase "stupidly overpowered" did not even come close to describing the Mossie. It was perfectly flyable on a single engine - the demo flight of the prototype involved it doing loops on only one engine. The post-war follow-up, the Hornet, was even more overpowered still.
@@hoilst265 I mean, just looking at all the visuals of the plane in this video, that thing was like, 50% engine by volume.
@@reaganharder1480 Colin Chapman: "Simplify, then add lightness."
Geoffrey de Havilland: "Simplify, then add lightness. And then add a whacking great engine. And then add another one."
@@hoilst265 I AM THE FAST
*AGGRESSIVE BUZZING*
Doppler effect of initial D music fading into the distance
Ironically the Mossie was wood because in 1940 De Havilland had very little experience in stressed metal construction. It took a long time for DH to interest the Air Ministry not only in an unarmed bomber but one that was made of wood which was seen as 1920s or early 30s technology
I wonder if it could have been any better with metal construction? Probably wood is the lightest apart from materials that hadn't been invented yet
@@whitewittock another reason that's been given for using wood is that alclad was in short supply and the air ministry could not spare any for private projects...it was not built to an air ministry specification. It was a completely private effort by dehaviland.
Also wooden construction usually meant ribs and stringers and fabric or ply covering. Mosquito was more like a modern composit foam sandwich construction being 2 layers of thin ply separated by a layer of balsa wood. The fuselage was formed on a concrete plugin halves....just like composite construction. Ahead of its time. The dehaviland meuseum at Hatfield near london is worth a visit if you can. They have the first and the last one built on display plus much more. Thanks for an interesting video
@whitewittock If wood had been lighter then all of the other companies wouldn't have gone to metal.
@@andrewcox4386 yes but I'm going to flip that around by saying if metal would have been better they would have produced some metal prototypes after it was officially adopted?
@@johnp3937 it's very near me and I've been meaning to go thanks for the reminder!
My uncle was a Mossie Nav, he said that it had the lowest death rate/highest survivability of ANY WW2 Aircraft. And most versatile aircraft. He hunted U-boats.
I was a young stupid airman in the mid seventies. We had an old Flight Sergeant pilot in the tower with us. He had a set of gold wings above his normal pilot’s wings. One night I asked him what they were, and he almost apologetically said that he was on Pathfinders when he was younger, and flew the mosquito. My respect for him instantly skyrocketed as I realised what he was and had done. I learned there and then that old people were young once, and many had a hidden past.
About the only thing it was worse at than other aircraft when it came to safety was ditching, as it tended to flip over. That's about it, because it was so front-heavy.
What's telling about the design is that went through the war with zero airframe changes even as its roles changed. Sure, there were fighters that had the bomb glued shut and perspex window in the nose removed for cannon, but the surfaces and fuselage - the bits that make it fly - underwent no real change from the start of the war to the end. They'd got it right.
My Grandfather from New Zealand flew with Stirlings & Lancasters. 622 Main force & 7th Pathfinders. 64 operations, two complete tours. Master deputy bomber on most of their ops. The Lucky Crew, elite Pathfinder crew of 8.
the biggest reason for the mosquitos speed is the smoothness of its skin. having no rivets or the girder construction of aluminium planes but plywood covered in fabric it had very low drag compared to most other planes.
More likely the biggest reason the mosquito was so fast was that it had something like 3,400 horsepower to play with and an empty weight barely over 14,000 pounds. When compared to the P-38 lightning, a more conventionally built metal plane, the Mossie is only slightly disadvantaged in power-to-weight ratio, and has functionally no advantage in listed max speed. The amount of drag created by skin friction is far from the largest component of drag on an airframe and the difference that having rivets or not will make is even smaller yet. The mosquito was built from wood because De Haviland had no experience making planes from anything else, and it was fast because the engines were enormous compared to the weight of the plane.
Thank you for this piece of insight from the German perspective. Two of my uncles flew Mosquitoes, one didn't come home, the other crashed three times and survived each time. This means a surprising amount, so thank you for the research and the time you have taken. Greatly appreciated.
I think with hindsight the way to characterize the Mosquito is not as the last of the wooden aircraft, a throwback to pre-war construction, but as the first of the composite aircraft and 40 years ahead of its time. It is not made of spars, stringers and fabric, it is made in moulds with 2 part resins. The components are installed in the fuselage halves before they are glued together. Its genesis is in the work De-Havilland did with the Comet racer, wood forming and gluing, not in the SE5A. When the Mosquito was offered to the US manufacturers they could only see wood as a pre-war technology, now 80 years on we can look back and see Burt Rutan as the heir to the Mosquito.
Good point. I've never thought of it this way before.
Never thought of it like that. Excellent analysis
A friend of my father flew the Mosquito. They met prewar at de Havilland Aeronautical Technical school. My father's friend was John "Cats Eyes" Cunningham. They stayed friends until their end.
The mossie has got to be the best aircraft of the war when considering its impact, its superiority over contemporaries, and its versatility. Not to mention they were doing what's essentially modern composite construction techniques with wood. I love the Mosquito!
@@flare2000x
I totally agree. It was the world’s first true multi-role aircraft. It could carry an anti-tank gun and sink submarines. It was very definitely the top nightfighter of the war, with far more “kills” than any other, and it carried out the most precise bombing raid of the war on Amiens prison.
Amongst the allied fleet it was the safest combat aircraft to crew with the lowest crew losses per man mission of all allied aircraft.
Add to that, have you ever heard one going overhead at 100ft and 350+ knots? I did, aged about 8, at an air show in Lincolnshire (can’t remember the name of the RAF station) and I decided there and then that it was the (very,very,very a million times and NO returns!) bestest aeroplane of all time!
Here I am, 72 years later, and I’ll defend the Mossie against all others of its era for its versatility, its survivability, its parallel production genius and its primal, rib shaking roar like an enraged dragon as its terrifying bulk flashed overhead.
Mind you, that 8 year old certitude only lasted a short while. It may even have been on the same visit that a little DH Vampire came whistling down the runway going about a hundred knots faster than the Mosquito. It had felt to me that the pilot of the Mossie must have been SUPERMAN, but the Vampire looked like a toy that I could fly, PLUS it was a LOT faster. So now, when I lifted my arms up straight out from my shoulders and ran round with my friends, banking with our arms as we swooped right and left and making what we thought of as machine gun noises, occasionally allowing ourselves to be “shot down” for the sheer fun of “crashing” as spectacularly as our imagination and daring would take us, now I became a Vampire, immune to mere propellor planes. After all, De Havilland were pioneering the jet airliner with the Comet. The world was bright for British aviat…
TL/DR Old man rambles on and on, but you might learn something you don’t know.
😉
What's really telling is that there were no significant airframe modifications of it for the duration of the war...even when adapting it for different roles. De Havilland got it right the first time around.
Keith Miller, the greatest Australian to ever live was a Mosquito pilot. In an interesting perspective, when asked by Michael Parkinson about the pressure of international Test cricket, Miller replied "Pressure is a Messerschmitt up your arse, Playing cricket was not." So not only could he swing a Test with either the bat or ball in a session, as a Mosquito pilot he was the OG Han Solo: Handsome swashbuckling rogue of a pilot that effed a princess.
Keith Miller would've been the world's greatest cricketer if he ever could've been bothered to give a shit - instead, he had to settle for being merely *one* of the greatest.
"I was in bed. I am now going out."
@@hoilst265 I had crickets on my grass, they are very pesky. Can't understand why people like them?
@@CallsignEskimo-l3o everyone knows it's Richie benuad
Kinda funny Greg's Airplanes dropped a video about the Mossie (and P-38) the same day you did. Love this plane
That was it, I was so confused. I swore I saw a thumbnail passing by with Bomber/fighter v Fighter / bomber. I love Greg's video's, but I do need to be able to make time and really sit for them, and that is getting a lot more difficult now Greg has a lot of free time on hand. His video on Jet engines was eyeopening. The first time it really got clear to me why even the first generation of unrealiable jet engines had undeniable advantages over even the most highest performance piston engines because of physics.
Stranger still, he essentially concludes that they're equally good. Which is a bit of a stretch.
Thought it was the other way round....about the P38 with a bit of mosquito thrown in
@@paulnutter1713He made a Compare and Contrast video in my view.
@@Tuning3434Having fewer moving parts usually helps efficiency of fuel to output energy conversion,
My grandpa was a Luftwaffe Night Fighter (ME-110), and he was probably shot down by one of these, lol. He survived it tho. Would be cool to see some content on the whole Nachtjagd scenario and the race for better radar and other modifications. I think the 110 was already a pretty old horse at this point. My grandpa also flew minesweeping operations in the Ju-52, with the big magnet on it. He told me that it was super dangerous, because the water fountains sometimes sucked the planes into the sea. I have to check out the Luftwaffen archive one day and investigate his entire aviation history.
My then sixteen year old uncle, worked on Mosquito wings and the fuselages at Ercols furniture factory in High Wycombe during WW2.
Fascinating , I'm High Wycombe boy born in the late fifties, my paternal Grandmother was a 'Skull' Wycombe furniture manufacturers who sold their business to 'Ecolarnis' in the early 20th century!!....
Fascinating , I'm High Wycombe boy born in the late fifties, my paternal Grandmother was a 'Skull' Wycombe furniture manufacturers who sold their business to 'Ecolarnis' in the early 20th century!!....
You might say that wood is not a very good material, but when aluminum is scarce and you have a wooden design with higher speed, longer range, and heavier payload than any similar sized aircraft, wood is a huge advantage.
My husband's mother & father both worked on Mosquitos during the war at the Bankstown, Australia De Havilland factory. His uncle collected many Mosquito parts including a nearly complete cockpit & canopy plus 2 Merlin engines.
The advantage of building in wood is it can be built by carpenters. Britain had a number of small furniture makers in WWII who could help with distributed mass-production. It allowed for an extra class of aircraft that stretched the German aircraft design/building program just when it didn’t need more to do.
Carpenter in the word. It was attached to some RAF slang for the Mossie.
And it gave them a break from building coffins.
This was one of _many_ advantages.
The Mosquito was built in an area renowned for its furniture making. There was a ready supply of skilled woodworking labour.
@@Matt_The_Hugenot It was also built in Canada.
I saw a static once but can remember where (ups) it was the number of bomb tons needed to take a V1 launch site.
And the mosquito came out if I remember correct, with a figure that was about half of that a B17 or a Lancaster needed.
It was why more efficient in hitting its targets - and the survival rate of the crew was also near double of the b17 or Lancaster crews.
What you can do with wood and skill
It really was prescient. It was the aircraft that really developed and proved that precision, not area, bombing was the way forward. They tried taking out the V1 site for months with area bombing, then the Mossies took them out with a single sortie - including throwing a bomb right down the mouth of a bunker where the V1s were stored and prepared.
The statement which I read somewhere and can't remember where is probably true. It's low level accuracy meant that one Mosquito with its 2000 pounds of bombs could inflict more telling damage than a whole squadron of heavies with load of up to 14000 pounds each.
And bravery
@hoilst265 Yes certainly. It probably helped that you only got to fly a Mossie after you'd done a tour 60 trips in a heavy bomber. That's from a couple of memoirs from Sq Ldr Jack Currie. Mosquito Victory and Lancaster Target. Worth a read.
@@mothmagic1mosquitoes carried upto 4,000lb, bomb load 😮
I have been waiting for you to do a film about the mossy, I have been obsessed with this beautiful plane since I was a boy. Thank You!
This is interesting to see the Luftwaffe perspective . Many trolls accuse Mosquito enthusiasts as being fanboys but it was simply the best multi role aircraft in service for most of the war . Of course it wasn't a single seat air superiority fighter as say the Spitfire or FW 190 and it wasn't a heavy bomber either .
A B-17 carried 8,000 lbs of bombs, but on long range flights that dropped to 4,000 lbs. The Mosquito carried 4,000 lbs with fewer losses and higher accuracy.
@@Sherwoody there is an interesting discussion on that very topic on another channel . OF COURSE THE B17 WASN'T AVAILABLE TO THE USAAF in large numbers .
In their intruder role the night fighter variants were filling an air superiority role, escorting the bomber streams.
@@johnculver2519 yes against German nightfighters , probably the Mosquito was the best night aircraft in bombing and any night fighting but as Chris was saying maybe not in dog fighting with say the FW 190 , or even the Me109 in daylight .
@@Sherwoody "The Mosquito carried 4,000 lbs with fewer losses and higher accuracy."
Fewer than 500 mosquitos were modified to carry one 4,000 ib dust bin bomb. Please list just one time this combination was more accurate at hitting a city size target.
My father helped to build the very first Mosquito at De Havilland, Hatfield. The secret here was a clean aircraft that was also VERY light. It was also stiff and strong, being a laminate structure of sandwiched ply/balsa/ply with the ply mostly only 1/16" (1.5mm) thick.. it was 3 play birch wood with marine grade glue. Many sub-assemblies were made in small furniture factories all over Britain... very clever. The laminate idea is used today with synthetic materials like foam and carbon fibre in modern fighters like the F16..... There is an outfit here in NZ where I live now that builds Mosquitos to order, and they have made a number of them for clients with the considerable amount of money to pay for them. I saw one such a few years ago at our local airfield....
Your comments on wood are correct. It is not a miracle material, but IF you have a large functional wood industry [especially WOOD AIRCRAFT industry] it does allow a nation to use wood and reduce demand for alloy metals. Germany discovered that building wood planes was harder than thought, the aircraft industry lost the know-how of building wood planes.
Two large problems the germans had were the availability of types of wood and low quality glue
Didn't help that the Allies leveled the Tego Film factory (twice!) in early 1943.
@@gherkinisgreat Yep using glue that was acidic, not a good idea.
I've a background in building bicycles out of wood and my comments would be that there is less design flexibility with wood. For example it would be relatively easy to build a lightweight strong frame, but then you have to attach stuff like engines too it, and wood doesn't like point loading. So if you don't design around this from the start then you'll double the weight with all the attachment points.
A few other points are that production with wood is slow as it relies of glue, which takes time to dry and needs to dry before going onto the next stage. As opposed to welding or riveting which once done is instant. So production might not have been scaleable.
A minor point but the construction style isn't 'modern', which would sheave the wood in fibreglass, which takes all the tension loads and the wood compression. I believe the mozzie used ply construction which has the main advantage of getting around the issue of wood being fibrous and so only strong in certain axis, and along avoids natural defects in the wood.
These are the main reasons I moved away from wood in my projects, not because it was inferior, but more because i didn't want to work around its limitations anymore. In the case of the mozzie in likely came around at a unique time when it was not superior or inferior for that particular set of circumstances.
I think the Germans were fully capable to create excellent wooden planes. The problem was that once they decided to go that route, the allies had bombed the main glue factories into the stone age; the Germans simply had no longer access to the high quality glue required to create a sturdy airframe. They tried alternative - more acidic - wood glues, but that led to rapid delamination/degradation and many aircraft simply fell apart in flight.
This is history at its best. Specialists study the available documents, then summarize the data and present reasonable conclusions to lay people like me. This was a very informative and enjoyable video.
The Germans and British began WW2 more or less on parity with aircraft performance. However in 1941, the British found themselves unable to match the Fw190, until the introduction of the Spitfire IX. They were very fortunate in having that existing Spitfire platform to build on, otherwise things could have gotten out of hand very quickly. Playing catch-up under wartime conditions is very very difficult.
The mosquito construction was chosen because it was strong and light, meaning it flew very fast and did not need multiple guns to defend itself. The construction technique was advanced and still used to this day in racing cars aircraft and spaceships. It was a composite construction, a thin layer of plywood was laid over a mould, glue applied and then light balsa wood used as a spacer and another layer of plywood glued on. The fuselage was made in two section then loaded with equipment and glued and screwed together, it was then sanded down smooth and a layer of Irish linen doped onto it surface. The fuselage had no rivets, so less drag. The fuselage was so strong no frame was needed just some bulkheads. The wings where also made of wood. The aircraft was based on a race plane called the Comet also built by DE Havilland. If it had been built of Aluminium it would have been heavier and slower. So the advanced construction technique with the use of wood laminates made it a superior aircraft shown by it battle successes. It was so good it was used in Multiple roles. Originally a bomber, it became also a bomber/fighter, night fighter, ground attack, anti shipping and carried a variety of weapons in its different/combined roles. Bombs up to 4000Lbs Airborne artillery with a 57mm Mollins auto cannon, one hit on a sub on the surface could sink it and a number where! 8 x 60Lb rockets “ the equivalent of a Cruiser Broadside”. How many WW I wooden aircraft could fly excess of 400mph?. Mosquito was advanced composite tech a trailblazer no. That tech is still used today!
I think it was used in aerial reconnaissance as well. Thanks for your information,. Truly a fascinating read. Met a fellow who’s uncle was a pilot that flew out of Algeria, at the same time as my great uncle. My relative flew spitfires in photo reconnaissance roles. Mosquitoes were very versatile planes.
For the last few years I have rented a home at the location of the Mosquito's design and construction and become a neighbour, member of and frequent visitor to the DeHavilland Aircraft Museum in Hertfordshire UK. The museum has the prototype and production examples of the Mosquito alongside other DeHavilland models.
An amazing story of engineering, persistence and luck generated a remarkable, elegant aircraft.
Visited the Museum 2 times in a 2 week period not that long ago. Had a chat with volunteers there. I loved the place. For a Mosquito lover, it is a little piece of heaven on earth!
Although I was born long after the war had ended I worked for a cabinet maker's firm and in their vault, in the basement there were all sorts of jigs to make parts for not only Mosquitoes but for the Spitfire instrument panels as well.
A very interesting German perspective on the Mosquito. The Heinkel 219 was mentioned as the ultimate piston engined German nightfighter......I find it extraordinary that it's production was curtailled despite it's initial success. It could have been a significant countermeasure to to Mosquito intruder operations.
There have been many multi role combat aircraft over the years, and normally there is a large amount of compromise....
What made the Mosquito unique was the fact that every role it was given, it did brilliantly well.
Including landing on an Aircraft Carrier
As an aircraft designer, I disagree with some of your observations. You seem to call into question the benefits of using wood. In doing so, you forget the impact of that decision on the Mosquito program, and the aircraft's impact throughout the war. The Mosquito was only developed BECAUSE Geoffrey deHavilland agreed to minimize his company's use of strategic materials. The use of wood was central to the number aircraft deHavilland and their production partners were able to build. Further, wood significantly lightened the airframe, greatly increasing the Mosquito's cruise performance, compared to German opponents, before German jet aircraft entered service in significant numbers. Ignoring the Mosquito's radar signature, which became increasing irrelevant, as the war progressed, the reality is that using wood enabled both the production volume and exceptional speed the Mosquito used to such good effect. I would also like to mention that the wing design, when combined with two Merlin engines, avoided some of the vulnerabilities of other twin-engined aircraft of that era, including the P-38 (which struggled with poor engine reliability and compressibility problems in the dive). The surplus power produced by the engines allowed deHavilland to use a surprisingly short and thick wing that behaved surprisingly well at higher speeds.
As the war progressed, the Luftwaffe tried to develop an impractical number of military jets, while the Allies managed their aircraft development programs and production facilities more efficiently, in my opinion. By the time Germany had developed capable jets, there were multiple issues that restricted output, particularly involving the Me262, which suffered from raw materials shortages, engine metallurgical challenges and political interference during the development program. It took three years for the Me262 to advance from first flight to entry-into-service, compared to one year for the Whittle-powered Gloster Meteor.
The Mosquito was the perfect aircraft for it's time and highlighted several vulnerabilities the Luftwaffe were slow to resolve.
Exactly. If you look at it from a purely *engineering* perspective, it's a silly plane.
If you look at it in the context of the war, the Mossie is absolutely genius - it's not just the performance of the Mossie that's awesome, it's the *logistics*.
If the Mossie had to be build out of metal, it never would've gotten built - De Havilland would've been a subcontractor building Spitfires or Lancs, or, just cranking out Tiger Moths and nothing else.
The irony of the use of non-strategic materials was that thr Brits had to ship plywood from the Missouri Ozarks to match the high grades Mosquitoes needed.
One of the reasons the Me 262 (& other planes) took so long to develop was the Luftwaffe's lack of suitable test pilots. It's one thing having experienced pilots, but another having pilots who can forward their experiences in a way for the designers to get best use from. If you lose a good test pilot (due to death or injury), it can be very difficult to find a suitable replacement. This can have a long delay on projects.
@@eric-wb7gj There's a reason why all the top hundred or so aces of WWII were German. And it was a stupid reason. Germany kept them on the line as long as they liked; the Allies pulled experienced pilots off the line to both train new pilots and help design new aircraft.
What that meant was that Allied aircraft and pilots, on the whole, got *better* during the war. German pilots and aircraft got worse.
I don't understand where you think I call the decision to use wood into question when it is exactly one of the things I go on at length as the German's considered it a very important factor.
Humidity, in wet tropical climates, was a problem for all wooden airframes. The Mosquito was no exception. Commonwealth air forces were perhaps fortunate that the Pacific War did not last much longer, because it was planned that Mosquitos built and serviced by De Havilland Australia (and based on Okinawa) would be used for anti-ship sorties over the South China Sea and southern Japan. Both the RAAF and RAF were forming new Mosquito squadrons _in Australia_ for that purpose, when VP/VJ Day happened.
I was going to post a question if Mosquitos served in the Far East/Pacific Theatre. I figured that the heat, rain, humitidy & rain would warp them to being non-flightworthy.
@@douglasstrother6584 Australian Mosquitoes were notably used for long-range reconnaissance against the Japs, but some were also used for ground attack in the final days of World War II. Fantastic aircraft. A few are preserved in Australia and New Zealand, and the Kiwis seem to be making a speciality of restorting them to flight.
The Mosquito was always one of my most favorite aircraft of WW2. The more I learn about it the more amazed I am. Thanks!
The Mosquito is the grandad of most modern multi role combat aircraft, it was very good in every role it was used in. You should visit East KIrby in Lincolnshire where there is a Mosquito which does taxi runs.
You also had musical instruments builders and furniture, cabinet manufacturing building sub components in their shops, making for harder targets. These individuals were also being used by Vosper-Thornycroft to build Fairmiles class boats.
Really enjoyed this detailed and verified account of the Mosquito. It's up there with my other favourites: P51, Spitfire and of course the magnificent Me262. Thankyou for your work on this.
My Gt Uncle flew the Mossie. Not for very long - 3 months.
He was with 88 and 107 Sqns operationally. Flying the formentioned and the A20 Boston. All 1943 - 1944.
I still have his manuals for these aircraft plus the others he flew. Plus maps, gloves, Irvin, logbooks, photos etc etc.
He survived but was not the same. Highly strung and quick to lose his temper. The very opposite of his character before the war.
His marriage was an unhappy one. He died in 1974 from a heart attack.
I guess PTSD wasn't a thing so he didn't get the help that he deserved.
Sounds like an interesting archive so I hope you can look after it..
And this regarding the He 219.
He 219 was the Luftwaffe's state-of-the-art night-fighter. It actually shot down no Mosquitoes in 1943 and none from late July 1944 to the end in May 1945. The Mosquito losses to the He 219 were 10 in all, all between May 6th /7th and July 18th/19th 1944. Which leads me to think that the Mosquito squadrons adapted their tactics pretty quick. But then, the B.IX and B.XVI fly at greater altitudes.
Oh! Just for interest. In return, the Mosquito accounted for 18 1/2 of the much rarer He 219s between April 11th 1944 and April 19th/20th 1945.
The Heinkel He 219 was a large aircraft and it needed a powerful engine. These engines, the Daimler Benz DB603A and Junkers Jumo 213A were not available till the first quarter of 1944 and not mature. For instance, they did not have War Emergency Power or WEP (called Note Leistung in German) from rich mixture injection and so both only produced 1750hp. The Merlin 20 series single stage supercharger engines and the Merlin 60 and 70 series two stage intercooled supercharger engine were producing at least 1700hp by then from a smaller package with a higher full pressure altitude.
-The reality was that the He 219 with these engine had nowhere near the performance of the Mosquito and relied on lucky diving ambushes.
-The DB603A had a power of 1750hp and a full pressure altitude of 5.7km.
1) takeoff power of the 603A DB 603A rated alt was 5.7 km
2) take-off power of the 603AA was 1670PS and rated alt was 7.3 km achieved by altering supercharger gear ratios of the DB603A
3) take-off power of the 603E was 1800PS and rated alt was 7 km This version never entered service except on test or trials aircraft.
4) Most He 219 A-0 used the 603A, A-2 used 603AA, A-7 had 603E (which never entered service though may have been shipped to the front)
Only the He 219A-7 (with DB603E) or the lightened He 219A2 (with the DB603AA) stood a remote chance to get a Mosquito as they were still slower.
There was the following engines that would have brought the He 219 on a par with the Mosquito if not faster:
1) DB603EM (a DB603E with 100/130 fuel and MW50 injection) would have more power, around 2250hp but only at low altitude. Cancelled due to 100/130 fuel shortage.
2) DB603LA with two stage supercharger for high altitude power 2250hp. Entered service on Ta 152C
3) DB603L with two stage supercharger and intercooler for high altitude power 2400hp. He 219 had been cancelled by the time this engine was ready.
I'm a fan too. This plane clocked up some incredible achievements, destroyed the V1 facilities in northern France , hit an SS HQ in the centre of France allowing many French prisoners to escape, was the first choice for the Mohnesee dam raid (Dambusters) because of its very agile low flying ability but Barnes-Wallace and his team couldn't make the bouncing bombs small enough, first for nose mounted cannons, first to have wing mounted rockets (missiles) and the list goes on. Loved your video, respectul homage to a superb war machine.
Crossbow was the code name in World War II for Anglo-American operations against the German long range reprisal weapons (V-weapons) programme. The primary V-weapons were the V-1 flying bomb and V-2 rocket, which were launched against Britain from 1944 to 1945 and used against continental European targets as well.[3]
I worked with a fellow history teacher who had a masters in history but was also a Sergeant in the US Air Force Reserves. He was always reading papers on military history and read one that had an interesting idea. Instead of using B-17s to bomb Germany the US would use Mosquitos for bombing. The Idea was that 3 Mosquitos could carry the same bomb load as 2 B-17's and could out run most German fighters. 6 crews compared to 20, no need for fighter escorts and they could come in at tree level making them harder to shoot down.
But they weren't American....
@@B-A-L There was some use of British built kit by the Americans. I am seem to remember a film clip of someone crashing an American liveried Spitfire.
The US Navy also borrowed some Flower class corvettes, but changed the names presumably not having the self confidence to go to war in a ship named after a garden flower. For example HMS Heartsease, a type of small pansy, became USS Courage.
Would have been worth offering some US Aircraft carrier pilots the use of a Swordfish just to see their faces....... What about using this advanced maritime multirole combat aircraft, state of the art air to sea radar, short take off and landing, no need to suspend operations if your carrier is taking the sea green over the front of the flight deck, just take advantage of the downhill run up to the ski jump. Attack from so close to the seas surface that the Germans can not depress their AA guns enough to hit you. Because as logical people they never expected aircraft to attack their ships from below. You can even strap your bike to the wings if you are landing ashore, avoiding the need for that tiresome walk to the mess room. 😃
There have been some analysis of this hypothesis but it simply doesn't hold water. The Mossie's ability to carry weight is in one large bomb, while the big bombers could carry multiple bombs, among other things. There are at least two on RUclips IIRC. If anyone intends to debate the conclusion, no use trying to engage with me as I am only reporting and lack expertise.
Excellent video about an extraordinary plane. I particularly enjoyed how you highlighted how the Mossie defied German expectations & so was especially difficult to counter. Given the often near-suicidal nature of Bomber Command missions, the Mossie stands out in a different league for chances of survival compared to all the othet planes crews climbed into...and they knew it. It is striking how aircrew totally fell for the Mossie even after they had become enamoured by flying other bombers like the Lancaster because the performance was so fantastic.
England at that time was a country of cabinet makers, furniture builders, yachtsmen etc etc, A large and well skilled workforce that was able to quickly adapt to producing the Mosquito.
They also had well established supply chains at home and abroad from pre-war business in wood products.
I think you ment to say Britain
This is my favorite type of learning. I’m a big Mosquito fan and knew a bunch of these facts already, but hearing them all together as one piece is transformative to my understanding of them. This is so well done man, the qualitative niche the Mosquito filled is so interesting
I love the wood=stealth thing because it ignores the two massive spinning steel discs out front
Stealth had and has nothing to do with it.
The props and spinners were NOT steel. The radar signature was much smaller and further confused by the speed at a time when radar was in its relative infancy.
I worked on a documentary about German night fighters way back. I asked what frightened them the most, and they said Mustangs and Mosquitoes.
@operator6471 why mustangs? Strafing their airfields when they were landing?
@@duvetofreason16 This was a question I asked after the filming was over. I never went into specifics. Even though they were night fighters I can only imagine they had had experience in the daytime somewhere or it was just general pilot talk about what was causing them the most problems.
@@duvetofreason16 Iirc, in the final months of the war nightfighter crews were sent in broad daylight against enemy bomber formations. Something they were neither used to, nor trained for. They suffered. Badly. Can't remember now what units were involved, but I think they were flying 110Gs. So, fearing the Mustang is understandable. Strafings on lading patterns were a Mosquito thing, for the most part.
A relative of mine, Wing Commander Paul Bingham Elwell (MBE), defeated 5 FW 190s on one occasion over the Cherbourg Peninsula (Northern France), having shot down two and only stopping his attack after running out of ammunition. This success was in part due to his prowess as a pilot, in part to the inexperience of the German pilots, but also due in no small part to the abilities of the Mosquito.
GC Braham also would fight Fw190 in his Mosquito, so good pilots had confidence in taking them on, but Braham eventually lost out to some Fw190's.
My favorite aircraft of WW2. Some good footage of Kermit Weeks' Mosquito in Oshkosh!
Strong family ties to this mighty bird. In 1943 the War Office greenlit the expansion of the DH factory but the council objected. All the staff built an Aztec temple on the airfield and started sacrificing locals in protest. My grandma was a barmaid in The Docker's Fists next to the factory entrance and was one of the victims. Her skull was the mascot in control tower until the end of the war. Happily the council relented and DH took over all of Devon. Happy days.
My Dad was a navigator, flew with a pilot called Brookbank out of RAF Wyton. Later they were in Pathfinder group 8.
I am a boomer but my dad who fought in France and Germany in WW2 did not like to talk to us kids about it, but his open admiration for the mozzie stuck in my mind, he never stopped praising it. So when I grew up I could then appreciate it's unique capabilities. I always had models of the spitfire, simply because it looked so good, and it was 'the one' in those days. We did live near Farnborough, and by the time I was 10 I was watching, Comets, Vulcans, Valiants, hawker hunters etc, but my all-time favorite was the amazing, ridiculous, sexy, shiny, and very loud Lightning, the first plane that could actually 'drift', so much bloody power, my son does drifting a lot on tracks but he will never know what a buzz it must have been for the pilots who flew them in those days. (and for us kids watching them show off, the lucky B.........! ).
Drift?🤥🤔 Sideslips are a common flying maneuver. Is that the same thing?
My Grandfather was a navigator on the night flying mosquitos. He told me he was amazed at times they came out on target! On a reverse note, he said the German aircraft he feared the most was the 190.
Mosquito. The most unlikely powerhouse. Love 'em!
Thank you. An excellent analysis, from my perspective.
A long time ago, I was able to sit in the Mosquito at the EAA museum. It was quite the thrill for a young boy. I spent a lot of time there when it was in Hales Corners. They had a great model shop inside.
I like that Greg's Airplanes and Automobiles just released a Mozzie video as well, so two of my favorite channels are covering this wonderful aircraft at the same time. In his case, it was a compare/contrast with the P-38. (The conclusion was shocking: The P-38, designed as a fighter, was a better fighter; the Mozzie, designed as a bomber, was a better bomber.)
The Luftwaffe did not fear the P38, but they were scared of the Hawker Tempest, P51 Mustang, and of course the Mosquito.
Chris, vielen Dank für a very interesting perspective on the Mosquito! It's interesting how much impact that it had on the command "thought processes" and the "mind share".... Greg's channel just did a comparison of the p-38 and Mosquito, with an overall performance advantage to the P-38, yet the P-38 did not seem to have any significant impact in the European theatre... It seems that, not till P-51's with Merlin engines did the USA have an effective bomber escort.
Mosquito Missions "On the night of 18th/19th August, 1944, twenty-one Mosquitos attacked Berlin, seven Cologne, two Wanne Eickel and five the airfields at Florennes. By then Mosquitos of eleven squadrons had been used for diversionary attacks on a small but gradually increasing scale since the first thousand-bomber raid on Cologne on 30th/31st May, 1942. From the spring of 1943 until the end of the war 'harassing' raids as they were originally termed were to prove a constant and, from the point of view of the enemy, a most irritating and unpleasant feature of the bomber offensive. Night after night the Mosquitos were over Germany, flying at between 30,000 and 40,000 feet to inflict damage out of all proportion to the weight of bombs they dropped. They were at once of great value as a nuisance, for they caused the sirens to wail and tired workers to spend yet another night in fetid, if bombproof, bunkers, and they created a diversion, thus drawing the enemy fighters away from the main bomber stream."
Royal Air Force 1939-1945 Chapter XII Oil and the Climax
Of all the very many aircraft my late Bomber and Coastal Command pilot father flew between 1940-45, the Mossy was his favourite aircraft by a country mile. The power to weight ratio - even when carrying a bomb load - was the crucial factor in his eyes owing to the twin Merlins, enabling a very impressive top speed and flight ceiling. It was always his view that the bombing campaign against the German industrial heartland in the Ruhr would have cost far fewer lives if it had been conducted by Mosquitoes rather than the slower heavy bombers favoured by the hierarchy in the Air Ministry. Remember that it was Bomber Command that sustained THE highest casualty rate of any arm of the UK and Commonwealth armed forces across the entire war. He himself was one of only two from some 105 through his echelon at the Imperial Flying School to survive the war.
After two entire tours over Germany and occupied Europe, he was transferred to OCU then into Coastal Command before heading out to the Middle East theatre.
Brilliant post, thanks. We must never forget..
The term you are looking for at 4:18 is strike aircraft.
Reminds me of the modern application of the F-16. Probably don't want to have to fight a modern fighter in an aircraft designed in 1974, but as a strike aircraft it is excellent.
IMO the Mosquito was the world’s first, true MRCA.
Geoffrey De Havilland never made an ugly ‘plane. Even the Airco DH2 had a sort “fit for purpose” look to it. For over 40 years he was at the cutting edge of aeronautical technology, designing and building aeroplanes, piston engines and some the very first jet engines.
I had to rewind and pause to catch the "This checks out..." graphic. Absolutely worth the effort!
City of Edmonton has one in the Alberta Aviation Museum. What a magnificent aircraft.
Have you a Mossie flying in Canada or is that WIP work in progress
I sat in the Mossi that is in storage at the National Aircraft Museum near Ottawa. It isn't on public display. I just had a heap of good luck, on a day with few visitors and happened to ask the two best people about the Mossie. I asked a very pleasant lady who was on staff about the possibility of seeing the Mossie, and she asked the director who was a Mossie expert, He gave permission for me to look. When looking around, I asked her if I might look in the cockpit. She grinned and said that no one had expressly forbidden that so to go ahead.
Mr Reynolds of the Reynolds Museum was a Mossie pilot in WW2. We overheard him talking with some visitors and I really wish that his comments had been recorded.
@@frostyfrost4094 IDK if it is still there, but the privately owned one at Vancouver International Airport was in a private hanger, no access, a few years ago. I've seen the FB Mossie flying at the Paul Allen Museum at Everett, Washington. It's on public display for anyone interested.
Even the Mosquito highlighted the German resource starvation. The balsa core for the wooden laminates came from Ecuador. There’s not a good substitute that I’m aware of. Another comment said the birch came from the Ozarks, but birch is available from lots of places. Maybe the Ozarks had some really good stuff.
7:06 I feel like a widely distributed bombing night run by a limited number of Mosquitoes exacerbates this. Even if the Germans get one, the others are likely too far away and too fast for multiple engagements. And even if the Mosquito can't take on a fighter, it is a small, fast target. High effort/low reward engagement. Running the single engine fighters wide open to catch Mosquitoes saps the Germans of aircraft parts and maintenance time. And don't underestimate the psychological impact either. Minor mistakes by ground control that would be meaningless against larger bombers could erode unit trust and cohesion. As a Minnesotan I'd say the Mosquito is aptly named. Unlikely to kill you, but it can keep you up all night and utterly destroy your morale.
Enter Zika virus, West Nile virus, Chikungunya virus, dengue, and malaria. and a whole host of other bio hazards they carry !
Nice metaphor and analysis.
Some fascinating quotes & analysis/comparisons, thanks !
At some point, it would be really cool to get an "Inside The Cockpit" for the mosquito.
However if/when you do, it would nice if you could highlight some of the difference between the Bomber and the Fighter-Bomber, if you are planning only doing one episode on the Mosquito.
What i was thinking in regards to the difference, is not the obvious, like the FB having guns in the nose, while the bomber have a clear nose, but for example more subtle difference, like "how are they different inside the cockpit with the instrument board".
Personally, i would probably want to see the inside of a Mosquito Bomber more than the Fighter Bomber, since i think they are a bit interesting, but that is personal preference.
But generally the development of the Mosquito is quite interesting, with it being a suggestion, that went into some development, to its production being stopped and then restarted again, and it ended up being one of the most important planes in the allied air force.
My friend’s father was a navigator in Mosquitoes during WW2 and had to leave the RAF when he lost an eye through flak. He was quite a small man, so my question is whether small body size was an advantage when operating this aircraft?
The Me 262 was at a disadvantage in that the scrap life of the Jumo engine was 10 hours. THis was because of the lack of high temperature alloys such as Chromium and therefore Germany would never have been able to maintain a simmilar number of aircraft to the Mosquito numbers.
That was a very interesting video as we don’t often get to hear the perspective from the other side. Not only did the mosquito not use valuable alloys, it also wasn’t relying on specialist machinery and operators to work those alloys. Suddenly, lots of very skilled furniture makers were building aircraft, although they were already building the Hurricane but this also meant even more involvement of forestry workers, saw mills ect so it’s almost like a whole new workforce was available. I think it’s important to note that once the US entered the war the Allies were able to pour tons of recourses into the fight whereas by 1943 Germany was struggling to get enough of everything. Fuel, pilots, alloys were all becoming scarce and the skilled workers to build the planes were in short supply as well as the allies constantly bombing the factories. They didn’t even need to bomb the aircraft factories because they took out the limited number factories making specialist equipment like rubber and ball bearings. Also by 1943 a lot more of those scarce resources were making it to England from the US as the allies were really getting the threat from u-boats under control. I think Hitler’s biggest mistake was attacking Russia before conquering England. Maybe he saw England as just a thorn in his side that he didn’t need to bother with, but that thorn became a huge festering sore that eventually became his downfall.
He intended to Conquer Britain first. Remember the USSR was his ally at the beginning of the war. His failure to gain air superiority and concerns about the British Navy, then caused him to abandon the invasion plan and make the same mistake as Napoleon did before him.
Yeah most Mosquitos were safely made in Canada and ferried over by Canadian women pilots to the UK. Commonwealth Ferry Command would make a good video. Those women flew everything, bombers, fighters recon planes evrything, mostly solo. Real heroic brave people. And great pilots.
Cheers from the Pacific West Coast of Canada.
In my mind the Mosquito was the orgin of the MRCA, I grew up in Leavesden and had alot of the neighbours around me that had worked on the production of Mosquito's and Halifax's at Leavesden. If your are interested there is a very good book titled Leavesden aerodrome Halifax's to Hogwarts.
Can it be that besides the speed advantage. The Mosquito also most often operated in quite small formations or as lone ranger. So that contributed to relatively low loss rate. Also correct me if I am wrong. But the part of the Mosquito tactics was to approach the target in a very low attitude that made the traditional flak guns not very effective. At lest as a bomber. The Mosquito were used in so many roles so you have look at each deployment separately
It's true the Mosquito usually operated in small or solo groups at night which definitely helped it's loss rate. Also the low altitude approach helped with reducing it's radar detection since it's difficult to detect at lower altitudes. Basically they used them in a way that drastically favored them which is reflected in their loss rates
I was informed (decades ago) that AEROLITE/CASCAMITE GLUE was the specific advantage, coupled with a SLANT GRAIN CUT with the wood sheets, allowing glue penetration. This allowed for a superior structural airframe strength/weight ratio. Also allied engines were LIGHTER for the same general output - and weight is all - as it is in rocketry. Cheers. 😎
The Mosquito was truly the Millennium Falcon of WWII aircraft.
@@RLam-se6em
‘What a piece of junk!’
‘What a piece of junk!’
And from the German view, it might as well have been doing 0.5 past light speed.
What I like most about the Mossie is it was so good, when the Germans tried to make their own version they named it Moskito, as if no other name was available but the plane they were most afraid of. Having said that...
I noticed the B-17 Flying Fortress was a close second to the Mosquito.
as per a different youtube video I watched, the primary goal of B-17s in Germany was to neutralize the Luftwaffe by any means necessary. When a specific plane is being deployed for the express purpose of removing your branch of the military, it makes sense for you to talk about it...
13:20 I think the most important element of wood as a material is there were many skilled carpenters and businesses in the UK which were otherwise inconsequential to the war effort suddenly making high performance recon/bombers. However, Germany had lots of problems with radar in terms of covering the entire coast of France and I'm sure the speed of the Mosquitoes exacerbated any errors German radar operators made. Rather than being invisible, it probably simply had a wildly different speed and maneuverability compared to other bombers and caused radar operator errors.
To me, that's the most amazing thing about the Mossie: the design logistics. It utilised a workforce that couldn't directly contribute to the war, it used materials that weren't war-criticial, and the dispersal of this work force meant you couldn't take out the supply chain.
The basic problem was the wrong decision in 1937/38 for the "destroyer" Bf 110 and its even worse successors Me210/410.
With the FW 187, Focke Wulf had a perfect interceptor for the Mosquito, but it was not wanted in 1938.
The primary sources from Dietmar Hermann's book on the FW 187 show that this design was revisited in 1942, but it was too late and it would have taken too long to put it into production.
The Mosquito interceptor could have been had from the start, although the FW 187 was certainly capable of multi-role and all with the bread and butter DB 605 engines. The FW 187 was much faster than the Bf 109F and G with the same engines and would have carried 4 x 2cm.
The Mosquito was the plane the RAF turned to when they wanted maximum trolling of the Nazis.
It wasn't just any wood. It was balsa core plywood sandwiched with either birch or sitka spruce outer layers, moulded in two halves. Correct me if I'm wrong, but that makes it pretty much the first laminate 'composite' aircraft.
Nope, the de Havilland Albatross airliner was the first aircraft to used the method.
@richardvernon317 Sweet. Thanks for the info!
Anything with a propeller is going to have a huge radar return. It's why it's so difficult to make a low-observable helicopter.
It wasn't only the Material, England had a large traind work force of Capenters, Cabinet Makers, Joiners and Finishers that could easily just get blue prints and start building Airframes. This is an overlooked advantage they used to start building with no training needed.
And lots of additional carpenters in Canada and Australia.
It's interesting that the same nation that produced the DeHavilland Mosquito also produced the Boulton Paul Defiant. Both seem to have been (at least to modern eyes) very "out-of-the-box" designs, but one found a niche while the other did not (unless you count target tugs and gunnery training).
Also reminds me of the swordfish. Though it was seen as hopelessly outdated by the war, due to how slow it was, it was very difficult for AA teams to shoot them down, along with the materials it was made from
@@EpicRenegade777it sank more shipping than any other torpedo bomber
@@davewolfy2906 im not surprised, with how slow it is i bet it was easier to be more accurate too, before the invasion of norway I remember a swordfish manging to hit and sink a sub, such a small target to get a direct hit on is crazy
Bolton Paul defiant found its place as a night fighter
@@EpicRenegade777 Being slow and stable was critical to being fully night carrier capable, which is another major reason why the flak and enemy fighter defences were so ineffective against them.
It was the first multi-role fighter bomber. Goering had a love/hate relationship with it.
There was the short-lived experimental Mosquito 'Tetse'. It had a British six-pounder(57mm) antitank gun mounted in the nose. It was semi-automatic, with a 24 round magazine. The plane had the punch of a broadside from a light naval cruiser, and it was intended for coastal sub hunting but only 19 were made.
And the wood is the reason the Mossie was the only plane with the cigarette gun: the wood could absorb the recoil, whereas metal got fatigue cracks.
Growing up in the UK with an interest in history I seemed the out one out when it came to WWII war-birds. All my friends went dewy eyed over Spitfires & Focke-Wulf Fw 190 engaged in dogfights. But I had a thing for twin-engined planes. My top three being №1 Mosquito, №2 Beaufighter & №3 Messerschmitt Me 262.
The Mosquito is a featherweight boxer, gloves up, fast, high endurance with a wicked punch.
The Beaufighter is a tough old heavyweight, hunched over his gloves waiting to lash out with a devastating blow whilst being able to roll with the punishment.
The Messerschmitt Me 262... well it looks like a shark, powering along while apparently motionless, waiting to take a chunk out of something.
That twin-engine thing has carried forward into more modern planes, the English Electric Lightning F6, flawed, but a beautiful flash of silver in the sky. The the Fairchild Republic A-10 Thunderbolt II (Warthog), the spiritual successor to the Beaufighter for me. Tough & just doles out punishment.
I took a bit of stick from my ex father in law over plane choice. He was a Spitfire pilot during WWII & over drinks one night he got a bit miffed when he asked about my fave single engine WWII fighter. That was the Hawker Hurricane closely followed by the Hawker Tempest.
I love the Mossie so much. It has pretty much everything you want. It‘s fast, packs a punch, can take damage and still bring the crew home, can do so many different missions, had a colorfull service history and is just beautifull.
I‘m so gratefull that I can fly it in DCS.
My uncle flew over 100 sorties in the MOssie. By the latter half of the war he said he was carrying 4,000 pound bomb loads to Berlin. He also said that the only fighter he really felt threatened by was the FW190. The 109 and flak if n the way home he would go up to 35-40,000 feet to minimize the threats. The 109 could not go that high and the 190 took time to get there.
He once said his game was to come in low, drop the load then get high and scoot home.
My grandad worked on these as a mechanic in Rhodesia and then back in England as the war progressed. He swore practically to the day he died at 97 years, that he could have stripped and rebuilt a Merlin Engine blindfolded.
He loved the mozzies. And said they were amazing in their durability, flak damage that would have grounded another aircraft were simply patched up with some wooden offcuts and some glue.
The original Multi Roll Combat Aircraft.
Your English has improved dramatically. I'm talking mainly about intonation. Your grammar was always fine. It's much easier to listen to.
Better than my German
And mine!
I've returned to this particular analysis of the mosquito, maybe five or six times. Thoroughly enlightening. Good one!!
The thing with wooden construction is not only the resource itself, it also use skilled workers who otherwise would have just been building pianos to entertain the troops.
The wood worker's in the UK were not sitting on their backsides until the Mosquito came along!!! The British built 25000 wooden aircraft in WWII which were not Mosquitos!!!
@@richardvernon317 He didn't mention Mosquitos though? He just mention wood construction period.
Stealth does not exsist, but low observatory does. The Mosquito was not stealth but it did was a lower observative aircraft. This did allow them to get closer to a radar set particulally at that time and with the equipment they did have. The Horton jet fighter even though not operational did prove to be low observative in the USA. As it was possible to get just as close as the Mosquito it was even faster. They accessed that with the extral 100 MPH the British would have been very hard pressed to get airborne to counter it.
Being able to get closer before being detected does have some advantages.
Of course the Horten was NEVER available. Whether it would have met its design aims is uncertain. The Horten brothers built a lot of sailp;lanes using the same bell-shaped aerodynamic lift distribution and basic planform, but none of them outperformed conventional sailplanes. It is also noticeable that the US rejected Northrop's Flying wing bomber designs a few years later.
@@petegarnett7731 Yes that is true as it was still in the development stage in 1945. If I am correct that stage would take a couple of years, even though as I believe the Horten and the ME 262 had the same engines and they were not that realiable. But the use of wood in the construction and what speed it could have obtained crossiing the channel, if put into service, the response time would have been shorten so as that it could not be properly countered. Therefore a threat at some level.
My Uncle was a member of the team at De Havilands that developed the Mossie. This was my favourite Aircraft.