Well it was designed in freedom factions so it makes sense you're going to get shit for saying fighter jets instead of fighters. those people can kindly fuck off. We know what he meant.
You know I love that comparison. My favorite is the. And I've played this over and over again. I keep hitting the rewind button One bomb wooden wonders. Are going to low level penetrate. Deep into enemy territory. Deliver payload. Love this!
Can you imagine working in a cabinet shop during the war then one day your boss bust through the door and yells stop making cabinets we are building planes now
That kinda happened with my grandfather. He was a shipwright who then got drafted by De Havilland and ended up with them until he retired. He used to call it the 'Bostik Bomber' though because a lot of it was glued together. He said it was also a suprisingly tough aircraft and a lot would come back full of holes. Rounds would pass right through and often do minimal damage to anything important. He also used to grumble about wasting money on fancy metal birds for CAS like the Tornado, when a modernised Mossie would do the job cheaper, louder and almost as fast.
On a similar but unrelated note, I was looking at old houses in the sf bay area and noticed details in the construction that I'd seen before... In ships. The ship builders would moonlight as house builders and used the same techniques!
The Mosquito is a perfect example of what LazerPig would call Wallace and Grommeting your way out of the problem, and Clarkson's idea that every problem the British ever faced could be fixed by some blokes in a shed. I love it.
Yeah I find it ironic that with all of the red tape and petty (rights-violating) stuff Britain pulls when it comes to firearms ownership; the guys getting the contracts for the good stuff are just like the equivalent of tea-drinking rednecks in a shed who are doing their thing just a _little bit_ less than legal.
My grandfather was a RCAF Navigator who flew in a Mosquito as a *_Pathfinder_* in WWII. He always told my mom "I *never* dropped bombs, _only flares."_ As the Navigator, one of the tasks my grandpa had would be to calculate when to drop the flares so they'd land on the target to signal the bombers where to aim, but the enemy would try and confuse the bombers by lighting up matching colored flares miles away on the ground. My grandpa and the pilot had to STAY IN THE AREA flying around while being shot at, and DROP MORE FLARES of _different colors_ to reestablish the target location for the bombing run. He'd be 100 years old (joined up at 16 and lied about his age) but he passed in 2010.
Honestly, pretty smart of the Germans to do, and the absolute BALLS of him and other pilots to stay behind to do their jobs. Kinda interestingly ironic that those Germans also had to risk lighting those flares and being targeted by those bombers. May he Rest in Peace and may another terrible war like WWII never happen
@@matthewpeterson4305 1 they couldn’t get away with lying about age 2 they might if there was a reason but the time of real external threats for America is over. 3 I know a few people who would but there’s no platform for that type of person these days.
My favorite troll on the Germans during ww2 was when the RAF saw the Germans building a fake airbase and planes out of wood during a recon mission and instead of bombing it that day/night they waited for them to be done the construction, which is when they sent in a plane to drop one wooden bomb. Please never change, Britain.
“Wooden plane”: that thing was the closest thing to composite design available in WW2. Just got its carbon fiber the natural way. This has more in common with a 777 than a balsa plane.
I came here to say that. I love the fat electrician but he missed a lot of the story this time. It was "wood" but not like WWI wood, more of a early composite.
I think your grandfather would be the guy to sit down with and have a beer or three... and let him try to explain just how do you get an eel "in spit???" Maybe nothing important would have been settled but a really good time would have been had by all!! 👍😂🤣
my great grand uncle fount the imperial Japs in Bataan. He flew his p40e and did what he could. he was a victim of the Bataan march and later helped devise the greatest pow escape of ww2. he later testified to congress telling about the Japanese treatment of war prisoners. I imagine since then we went full, amen.
My grandfather was a Mosquito pilot during the war. He was colorblind so he couldn't pass physical for American pilots and joined the Canadian RAF. Ended up in England flying Mosquitos. I have all of his service records and requested replacements for his medals and ribbons, have his certificate of thanks from King George and his logbook. Going to do a shadow box with all of his stuff. Not many photos of wartime service but I might be able to reconstruct some of his missions from his flight logs. I do have a lot of photos from flight school, they were training in biplanes, believe it or not! I never met him, he was killed in a crash post-war about 10 years before I was born.
You didn't mention the "Tsetse" variant of the Mozzie! Naval warfare version, armed with a 57mm cannon autocannon, used to shoot holes in U-boats. It's like giving the navy an A10
Loved playing the Norway missions in "Secret Weapons Over Normandy" because you could fly that version of the Mossie... absolutely annihilated ships and U-boats with the 37mm or 57mm cannons offered as secondary weapons 😊
I forgot who said it but there's this quote which sums up hoe effective it was. "The worst thing about the mosquito is that we never built enough of them"
Yeah I assume he was. He was based over here for a bit, and he took the designs back to the States and gave them to three different companies who all reported that the Mosquitto would basically be a lame duck and they shouldn't waste their time with it. I think Beechcraft was one of those companies. @@heraklesnothercules.
As a retired history teacher, I love your style. As a Brit, it's great to hear someone from the US who has positive things to say about the UK's contribution to WW II.
I’m Mexican and like history, just wanted to voice my opinion: the us won the fight, but you blokes made sure there was still a country worth fighting for, without you, Europe would have been lost, and American help wouldn’t hd been effective, you were the ultimate guards.
I gotta respect the RAF and the Royal Navy, without them the German's might have landed on the isles. RIP HMS Warspite, the Grand Old Lady shouldn't have been scrapped.
@@nashtheneet I second that notion. I actually have a small teak cup from HMS Warspite, but she was a ship that deserved preserving as much as USS Enterprise (CV-6). I hope to visit HMS Belfast in London at some point soon.
My highschool world history teacher was like this. Every friday we had what he called Friday Fun Facts and he would pull random fun facts about the time period we were studying. Usually we wpuld get an influential person, place, event and a wild car which when it was about wars was usually a weapon system. Best part was he was a WWII, Korea and Vietnam vet so he had experienced alot of the history himself.
I knew a man that flew one on WW2, his stories were amazing. He said that bullets just went right through doing very little damage. He would fly in first and drop flares on targets for other bombers to use as a reference point to drop their pay loads. He was shot down 3 times, each time successfully crash landing the plane in friendly territory. He also went on to circumnavigate the globe with his wife in a sail boat where he actually met Jacque Cousteau. They became friends and he had pictures of them on adventures with each other. He had a degree in engineering and we both built a Hot Rod in his garage when I was 17. He was a humble and brilliant man. He died with no family, just me and my mom next to him in a hospital in San Antonio, TX. Through our friendship this man who was an atheist came to know Jesus and was at peace in his final breath which was, "Let's see where this breeze takes me" which is on the Stern of my sailboat today!
You know it's good when the Comet gets brushed aside. The origin of so many great WW2 planes. The Spitfire, Whirlwind and Mosquito all derived from developments of the bright red racer.
@@merrymaker1031 The Spitfire owes most of its ancestry to R.J Mitchel's Supermarine S.5, S.6 and S.6B floatplane racers from 1927-31. The development of these racers also lead to the deveopment of the Rolls Royce R engine (A frankly rediculous engine that had to use diluted fuel to extend the time between overhauls to 5 hours of operation) which would give Rolls Royce valuable experiance that would be used in the development of the Merlin.
@@Mathiasosx1yeah, during the Interwar period, Air Racing was THE best way to field test new ideas for faster airplanes: stronger engines, new cowlings, stressed skin wings, etc. This was a Golden Age of Civil Aviation, and a relatively quiet period for military procurement. Air forces were certainly _interested_ in fast planes, but it wasn't really until the Martin B-10 that a _full-on_ arms race for speed would kick off So, if you're an aircraft company in the 20s and early 30s, and you wanna show how good your designs can be, how do you do that? Air racing
17:40 the german moskito was also abandoned because the glue factory that made the glue to bond the aircraft was destroyed by the raf. they had no other alternate sites.
It gets better, actually: the glue was also being sabotaged by the slave labor used to make it, who would literally piss into the glue to break it down, thus literally and metaphorically taking the piss out of the Luftwaffe Who'd have thought slave labor might not be dedicated to quality manufacturing, huh?
Don’t forget that most of the top brass didn’t like it up until it completely destroyed everything in its path with little issue. Then they brightened up to the idea
Dude, your story telling combined with the production quality of this content legitimately makes this more compelling than anything the History channel has turned out in recent years...
@@greatwhitenumpty9442 I live in the exact area in the south of England where the BoB was fought, and literally 5 minutes down the road we have Goodwood aerodrome which was a fighter base during the war. They still have a few Spitfires that fly almost daily, so I get to sit in my garden with a beer and hear that Rolls-Royce Merlin engine roar above the hills of Sussex. It's magic.
The Mosquito was not suitable in the Pacific theatre due to the wood components delaminating due to humidity. In the pacific theatre the American made P38 Lightning was the plane to beat.
@@scraverXyou…. You do understand it’s an American made plane right? It was made by Lockheed… u do understand that it can be made in America and then sold or manufactured in another country for more production, and the Australians probs wanted it considering the threat of the Japanese.
Love the Mosquitos, they could do just about everything. My favorite variant was the FB MK. XVIII which mounted a 57mm Molins anti-tank gun with an auto loader. It was nicknamed the Tsetse, and it hunted U-boats. The round was solid rather than explosive. This meant that punched right through the hull of surfaced U-boats and bounced around inside with unhealthcare being applied.
Sooner or later, we're going to have to deal with the reality that having a popularity contest between two groups of corrupt, pathological liars is a terrible way to organize a society.
@@MrMagnaniman I don’t know what we would replace that with and you realize that requires The American Revolution MKII. If we keep our Republic then we gotta go back to what was intended initially. Among other things give the communities, regions, and the States the power to make decisions about things that effect them and their area. It’s ridiculous to think anyone living on a ranch in Texas or in the Appalachian Mountain foothills of Northeast Alabama (aka Me) wants or needs the same thing as the people in New York City or California. Usually those politicians from essentially what’s becoming a different culture all together rarely have any ideas my neighbors and I agree with. We can’t continue on with all the corruption and insider trading either. I don’t think people will take it all serious enough and actually vote these career politicians out without a shock to the system of some kind. What that will be I don’t know but know it won’t be pretty. Also our “mainstream media” who is nothing but a joke now and causes nothing but hatred and division needs to go somewhere and die. The Marxist ideology being pumped out at nearly all the Universities and even some of our local School Systems has to be stopped and replaced with teaching things that will help them at life. I could go on but na. Your idea sounds better every keystroke. We are in trouble either way.
@@ben-jam-in6941 With fewer people than it would take to mount a successful armed rebellion, we could much more easily starve the beast through acts of civil disobedience. It also stands a much better chance of success, as acts of violence tend to alienate one from potential supporters and galvanize support for one's opponent. It's also worth noting that system-crashing levels of civil disobedience would take even fewer people than it would take to win an election. The system only works because we allow it to. If a MILLION people simply stopped, say, paying taxes, less than 1% of the population, the IRS would be completely overwhelmed. Mass noncompliance makes laws impossible to enforce.
As a descendant of an RAF Pathfinder...whose aircraft was the wonderous Mossy....I grew up hearing stories that you may not have, my friend. One of the funniest is the RAF's version of "Crying Wolf" Pathfinder carried incendiary bombs to start fires...and then marker flares to signal the main swarms which fire was the Designate. The main Bombers would fly over said fire on a particular course and start bombing....and with perpendicular paths over consecutive nights the center of the Target got lambasted...but here is where the trolling came in... The Pathfinders would come over a city on tbeur way to a target...and get a fire started....occassionally dropping flare. Ofcourse...the German Gun crews were roasted out to man theur guns, searchlights, etc....and would be out for hours...and little or no bombing would happen. Thus sort of thing would go on for a week as the Pathfinders had time and spares....and just like the old story...the Germans...irate at being tricked so often...would stop rushing out their crews man their defenses....and then the actual bombing would commence. Pretty soon...the standing orders were all crews were to man defrnses...regardless if it was a perceived raid or not. Big time morale killer for the German gun crews.
Fun fact, the DH Vampire JET FIGHTER still used wood for parts of it's fuselage. My dad trained at the DH technical college, he describes a lot of what they did as "interesting".
@ardantop132na6 the one the 2 Brothers (sorry, getting old, can't remember names, but towards end of war. The brother flying it was killed when it crashed during testing, a collision? with another plane. Was flown in prone position
I love the Mossie. It's the plane the RAF didn't want but Geoffrey de Havilland knew they would need it. Loved by it's pilots and feared by it's enemies.
It also predate the Horton Ho 229 and actually flew combat missions. It's really the first stealth multirole aircraft. Like an F35 but with tremendously long range.
Neither were stealth. The 229 ended up making craters instead of test data. And the mosquito just had a reduced signature. Paint and wood and windows still reflect. Just less than metal.
I have to say ive studied war for 50+ ( UK /Scottish ) years and you are an outstanding story teller , essentially nailed all the fine detail and a lot of the nuances , your fast pace and full on narration adds a welcome bit of punch and backbone , Plaudits to you sir , well deserved like and sub.
The mossie was an amazing aircraft. Gave the Germans a big headache. On the subject of twin-engined speed freaks, it would be cool to see your take on the P-38 Lightning... especially in Operation Vengeance
As an old Brit, the Mossie is one of my all-time favourite aircraft . I've lost count of all the videos I've seen on it but without doubt, yours is definitely one of the best and most entertaining I've watched. Colour me, subscribed👍
@@richardm6704 a quick google search proves that wrong. The dude was born in England. He was born July 27, 1882 in High Wycombe, Buckinghamshire, England. Even served in the British Army in WW1. His Company was incorporated into another Company (Hawker Siddeley) in 1963, and then that company was absorbed by British Aircraft Company and Scottish Aviation in 1977. The Canadian branch of the company was bought by Boeing in 1985, then another company bought the holdings in 1992. Then another company bought the holdings from that company in the early 2000s. It's only De Havilland in name, with no actual connection to the original.
The de Havilland family originates from Normandy and later moved to the island of Guernsey in the Channel Islands. Two of Sir Geoffrey de Havilland's cousins were actresses Olivia de Havilland and her sister Joan Fontaine.
3 pointer? Nah bro, if you shot this thing down, it was a Hail Mary miracle mixed with a last-second halfcourt shot that only amounted to winning a scrimmage😂😂😂
This is brilliant, thank you. A cousin of mine was a Wing Cdr in the RAF; he briefly commanded 21 Squadron before sadly being killed in his Mosquito, along with his crewman, just 2 months before the end of WW2 in Europe. RIP cousin, Wing Cdr Victor Rundle Oats, also, Flt Sgt Gubbings. Not forgotten.
Hi, I live in New Zealand and am an avid follower of the Mosquito. I have the great luck to, because of my interest in vintage motorcycles have friends working for Avspecs, a firm who are now in the position to build Mosquitos due to a local who has managed to obtain all the drawings needed to perform that feat. DeHavilland Mosquito NZ2308 has just been completed and flew for the first time on my 75 th birthday 18th March 2024. This is the second of the only 3 operational Mozzies in the world and was rebuilt by this company. A little considered fact is that none of the original aircraft can fly any more due to the woodwork delaminating with age and old glues. They were not expected to last very long in combat anyway but 2 pot mixes were not available then also. I have the goodluck to have been able to go into the hanger several times as the aircraft was being built and live on the coast in line with the Ardmore air strip getting to see it assembled and to see it fly its early flights. It will soon be dismantled and sent to its american owners and will probably appear at OshKosh or some similar amazing airshow in the near future. It is decked out in the colours of the New Zealand airforce and we are proud of the contribution of these great engineers in NZ to have them contribute in a small part to the history of flight. I loved this explanation and your intensity. Great job. Terry
A few months back I had the honor of drinks and a meal with a 102 year old WWII Mossie pilot at the RAF club in London. A gentleman and aviator extraordinaire. Great stories and fabulous company all around.
@@DSToNe19and83 a few beers and dinner. We had a small group of aviators. About 6 of us. Despite his age, his whit and storytelling were quite intact. He trained to fly in the US before we joined the war effort and ended up in Mosquitos for the duration.
Something remarkable about the Mosquito not mentioned in this great episode was it's loss per sortie ratio, 0.5% seems to be the generally accepted figure, incredible numbers for any WW2 air craft let alone one that flew such high risk missions, it truly was an amazing machine
Actually, I was surprised by the research on mosquito and how resilient they were, and the loss rate was very low compared to "metal" aircraft. Plus, it had a respectable long life as well. It was a great, fast, reliable, easier-to-fix plane. Hats off to DeHavilland.
The main part of the Mosquito that pinged on radar were the nails and parts of the propeller assembly. Not a whole lot to go off of, especially back then. Also there are accounts that the pilots were so comfortable flying the Mosquitos low, some of them would returned to the air fields with foliage and leaves on their undercarriage.
When my grandfather was in England in December 1943 he said they saw a flight of Mosquitoes come back in and one was dragging the top like 3 feet of a some sort of pine tree and the pilots ended up using it as the Squadron Christmas tree. Only reason he found out what they did with it was he was a medic and made friends with the squadrons medical staff and the invited him for Christmas.
I live 20 miles from where the factory was, it's now a university, which my daughter attended.... Hatfield, they have a DeHaviland campus in memory of this...👍😎
I did my apprenticeship at a dehavilland factory that opened in 1937, so this is very cool to see! Also, favourite quote on ww2 - an old dude at a vet bar being told how dogfights are faster and harder than back in his day (this is 2008ish). Casually drained his pint and replied 'sure, kid, but youre not airborne over your parents house.''
That's a major motivator to not lose. Not only is Mom watching,if your plane takes out the clothesline with a load of laundry still drying,she's going to be VERY irate with you.
Holy shit, that's _cold._ Like... "Props on the new toys, kid. You ain't had to really use 'em, though"... Balls of titanium on that pilot. I salute him, and every RAAF pilot that kept Britain's skies as clear as they could. Per Ardua ad Astra.
@@libertybell8852 don't forget that the average age for a RAF pilot was 20 years old and age of a dead pilot was 22..today folk this age cry when someone say some mean words to them
The mosquito was way ahead of its time, the first composite aircraft put into production, arguably the best plane of the war, certainly the most versatile, easier to make and repair in service, they used these for pretty much every kind of mission, spitfires are great, mosquito's are the twin engined spitfires, awesome!
@rodshoaf you're missing the point. Ww1 planes were wooden framed It was 'composite because it was made from a composite: hardwood ply. The Mosquito 'hot molded' composite ply panels which were incredibly strong and removed the need of stringers. GDH borrowed this tech from British racing boat builders who were building superfast sailing dinghies in the early 30s Uffa Gox being a particular Pioneer of this tech. Although it's base material was indeed wood hardwood ply was a state of the art material in the 1930s, not because it was a new material, plywood had been around since ancient Egypt, but because of the tech in the expox polymers used to bind it. Hotmolding ply had been around for about 50 years previously but due to manufacturing challenges, it was mostly used for furniture and some musical instruments. Fox pioneered its use in boatbuilding when epoxies had advanced sufficiently to allow rapid cooling without compromising strength. Yes, composite laminates were used for strurs, propellers etc in WW1 but self supporting molded ply panels strong enough and large enough for curved plane panels were a new technology in the 30s.
@@HarryFlashmanVC The very first plane... had plywood... The Mosquito was not a composite plane... If you want to call a wooden skinned plane a composite then there were quite a few other planes in front line service around the world before the mosquito.. It was a throwback plane.. using techniques that had been lost by aircraft makers once they switched to all metal aircraft
Haha uz are funny. Look up the company who bulit the mosquito and it destroys OP point as mossie was baaed on the albatros that was built uaing same ply-ballsa-ply monocoque frame. The company also designed and bulit many of moths.
@rodshoaf the Mosqueto is very much a composite built aircraft! You really need to look up the word composite in the Oxford English Dictionary to realise what the word means.
My Grandmother made tail planes for mossies during WWII. She was working at Walter Lawrence's furniture factory, in Sawbridgeworth in Hertfordshire England.
Loving the longer form content, bro. You're a great story-teller, a modern day bard, and taking the extra time really gives these stories the room they need to breathe and flex.
I have been working for 3 weeks to install wood shelving in my bathroom. I am not qualified. All thar college isnt good for the "real" long game. Kudos to the brilliance. If i was an early engineer, we would stay the Stone Age.
The German Ta 154 "Moskito" has a more interesting background even than you mentioned. It was designed by Dr. Kurt Tank, the same genius who was the lead designer on the Focke-Wulf Fw 190. So the design was, as you said, extremely solid and generally a good plane, not quite to the level of the British Mosquito, but capable. And it was being built originally using a good plywood resin adhesive called "Tego-Film." Unfortunately for them, the factory making Tego-Film got bombed, so they found a replacement adhesive and ordered about 150 night-fighter versions of the Ta 154. But there was a problem. They found out after a couple of crashes, that the new glue used in the composite plywood laminate for the skinning was corrosive...TO WOOD. So the glue was actually dissolving the wood it was designed to secure and causing wing failures resulting in crashes. Eventually they stopped the program after producing about 50 planes.
@@labrat810actually, it gets better. You know who happened to have easy access to the glue to put things in it? The slave labor the Nazis were using Yeah, the nazis were so far up their own anuses, they didn't stop to consider that these people might not WANT to do a good job and prolong their enslavement. They might, I don't know, piss in the glue to make it less effective?
The only thing as good as all the new stuff I learn from the "chubby electron guy" is all the new stuff I learn from the people commenting on his videos. He's got the best comment section I've found to date on RUclips.
What do you get when you combine a British madman, an engine too powerful for its own good, and the finest carpenters his Majesty can provide? You get the most deadly mosquito since malaria.
Spitfires duked it out with the fighters. Hurricanes wrecked the bombers. Mosquitos trolled Germany over their own turf relentlessly. And fucking Swordfish biplanes crippled the Bismarck. Brits will fly anything into battle to protect their island and I constantly wonder how they even manage to take off considering the humongous titan balls those aviators must have.
The mosquito probably wasn’t held up by politics as much as it’s always a good idea to keep your technology out of the enemy’s hands. Hence it needed to be laughed off. The mosquito was to the air war what ultra was to intelligence. A game changer
I feel like this was left out of history class on purpose. For years, I wondered how the raf beat the germans, but I had no idea it was because of wooden aircraft.
what he left out was. the anti ship version with a cannon sticking out of the nose and the SOE version which had a radio in the back so the americans/brits could talk to the resistance. i was really happy when i found out about the numerous restoration projects now being done to bring this amazing fighter back to the skys and even watched the youtube vid of the first one going on a flight. no music just the pilot/nav radioman and a gopro so you could year the wonderful sound of those engines.
I to love wooden plains, nothing fills me with more joy than seeing a plain piece of wood (yeah you made a spelling mistake, I may as well have some fun with it)
@@jimspackman8527 thanks for correcting me Though I don't know if knowing that the Bismarck's rudder destroyed by an aircraft made of metal tubes and covered in cloth made it less embarrassing
I've watched quite a few documentaries on WWII and other than a brief mention here and there it seems like very little is ever really said about these amazing aircraft! I've heard of them but thank you for all the awesome background info!
The Bristol Beaufighter was a ships worse nightmare! Nothing in front of one survived! 4x20mm cannons, 6X.303 machine guns or 4x.50cal machine guns. 8x90lb rockets and a torpedo!!? ruclips.net/video/KR2OTc6_3-g/видео.htmlsi=KhMM1KSlVcrZr4Uu
You'd probably love the antics of The Department of Miscellaneous Weapons, AKA The Wheezers and Dodgers, a whole branch of the British military, staffed by eccentric inventors and garden shed crackpots, dedicated to Wallace and Grommit'ing their way to victory with all manner of slightly insane contraptions. One of their number, Jasper "The Amazing" Mescaline, was a stage magician before the war and for his next trick, he made the entire Suez Canal disappear.
@@richardross119 it reminds me how during the Falklands war a handful of British marines casually walked down the hill into an Argentinian base and bluffed that they were totally surrounded and there was no use resisting. They all surrendered!
What about the UK bomb disposal teams, as they were very effective at disarming the German unexploded bombs that Germany specifically created bombs that wouldn't explode on contact as they would then blow up the UK disarmament teams (UXB is a term that comes to my old brain). No matter how complicated the Germans made these UXB team killers, the British developed simple tricks to disarm them. From plasticine and liquid Helium, to using bicycle pumps and fishing rods the British defeated them. In the end, the Germans disbanded the idea and teams, stating 'whatever we do, the British only use simple things like bicycle pumps and fishing rods to overcome them.
I've been obsessed with the plane ever since reading Tintin when I was a kid. Herge loved his military hardware and stuck the Mosquito in wherever he could with fantastic illustrations of the plane kicking ass.
As a brit I really appreciate you making this. Its nice for an American to be respectful of our ww2 planes instead of mocking them and calling them shit ive watched quite a few videos on spitfire hurricanes where Americans slate the hell out of them so 10 out 10 mate 👍
I needed this today, my father died last Thursday. Love your videos, never change your format or style. Words of wisdom to live by: 1. It's not a dad bod, it's a father figure. 2. Never trust a fart.
I lost both my parents within 2 months . It gets better, just prepare yourself for sporadic waves of grief. You can't help it it's okay. Phone a friend. You got this bro. (I love zagnuts BTW)
They were just early to the party in working carbon fiber. They used natural resin too. 😁 And yeah, the first low observability plane ever. Rudimentary radar plus wood construction.. *chef's kiss*
Just the sheer sense of "I told you so" De Havilland must have had when the British procurement office came back to him. Also did he basically just make the world first stealth fighter/bomber?
Just imagine if DeHaviland knew about the early version radar-absorbing paint the Horten Bros. came up with for the Ho-229 prototype...the Mossie would have had the radar cross-section of a house fly :😀
DH also produced a modified Mosquito, the Tsetse, that traded some (not all) of its guns for a 57mm high-velocity cannon. Which they used to hunt warships and submarines. Very few airframes even today can handle the forces involved with firing a literal tank gun, but the glued together wooden Mosquito just happily took it.
Ww2 equivalent of the warthog really. It made submarine commanders very unhappy as a 57mm shell hole in a submarine is a bit of a problem. What they didn't know was that we knew by then where submarines would be either by direction finding based on their transmissions or from breaking their enigma code.
The hard part with fitting a smaller tank gun to a plane isn't actually the structural integrity: since you're mounting it as a fixed installation, you don't need a fancy heavy turret setup, you just need a plane big enough to comfortably fit the gun in the nose and add the proper reinforcement The trickier changes are to making a manually loaded Tank Cannon into an Automatic weapon, and to making sure the plane remains stable after the recoil
My next door neighbour was a mosquito pilot in WW2,when I met moved in he was 80 something,he used to go to the working man's club every Friday and get absolutely piss drunk,to the point I'd have to undo his door for him,he never talked about the war,just"I was in the RAF,flew mosquitos"....that's all you'd get out of him.
You also forgot, they were very survivable. Unlike metal that can twist and tear, the Mosquito was made out of wood and would only splinter on impact with bullets. Ones been known to keep flying after taking so much damage that would of knocked any metal plane out of the sky. I remember reading years ago somewhere that they been known to drain the enemys ammo and still keep flying
Even better. Since the plane is mostly cloth and wood. A lot of explosive rounds meant for planes simply don't detonate and go right through on impact. Also ironically the only plane that would be immune to the proximity AA fuze the allies were using.
My Granddad flew Mossies and he used to carry around this chunk of metal with him. He said it was from when he was flying on a Night Reconnaissance mission over Germany and the flak guns opened up on him. He reacted by immediately squeezing the trigger hard ... except his plane had no guns and the trigger just took loads of photos of flak ammo lighting up the night, lol. He flew straight through it and, when he got back he got out of his plane and this chunk of metal fell out of his lap. The flak guns had gone right through the floor, between his legs, hit his chair and ricocheted out through the roof and he was unharmed. His metal chair, however, had been smashed to pieces and a bit had landed in his lap, lol. It must've almost been like that scene in Pulp Fiction, except however many 1,000 feet up in the sky! He carried that bit of metal around with him for the rest of his life for good luck.
During the Normandy campaign, RAF squadrons committed a monthly average of not quite three hundred Mosquitos. From June through August, seventy were shot down and twenty-eight damaged beyond repair-33 percent of the total available.
I used to work in a nursing home (years ago) and one of our residents had been a mosquito pilot in the war. Apparently they used to come back sometimes with tree branches in the leading edges of their wings from having flown so low, so fast on their way home.
I know I'm a year late to this party. BUT... As a retired local govt IT worker, I absolutely LOVED this video! It speaks to me on a level I cannot express in words. Very well done! 😁
the Mosquito is my favorite plane of WWII. Yeah the Spitfire is gorgeous, the Butcher Bird is intimidating, the Mustang and the Thunderbolt and the Lightning are wonders of engineering, to say nothing of the bombers... But man. Mosquito was something special, she really did it all.
"Acoustic SR-71" is probably the most accurate description of the mosquito possible. "trolling the Germans" describes more of WWII than we'd care to admit.
Yeah, pretty much is the perfect description. Britain can beat an enemy, but bringing America along means beating the enemy will be extremely funny and quicker.
The most infamous example of the UK trolling the Germans is a toss-up, between the RAF spreading rumors that they were feeding their pilots carrots for night vision to cover the fact that they had radar, to the time they dumped a dead body in officer's clothing with "secret plans" that were false of course, into the ocean to wash up and be discovered by German intelligence.
As much as I like your 3-5 minute videos, these recent long-format videos are fantastic! I am a huge history buff and when you cover an item, you do so thoroughly. You do great research and your script writing is superb. Your delivery is spot on and the jokes you toss in make history palatable to younger minds. I have shown a few of your longer videos to my step-kids and they actually learned some history during summer break, and enjoyed the story!
I'm so glad you did a show on the Mossie! My Grandfather joined the Canadian RCAF when he was 17 and shipped out to England to be a pilot. He flew mosquitoes... night reconnaissance, night bombing raids, daytime strikes, and V1 & V2 defense. It's the most underrated plane of WW2 IMO.
Nice! My Granddad flew Night Reconnaissance in Mossies also. He also trained pilots and tested the various Mosquito upgrades. I don't know how much the RAF and the RCAF mixed their squadrons but it is certainly possible they would've known each other and potentially they might've even flown together.
My grandfather was in the RAF during WW2 and he worked with Mosquitos. He wasn't a pilot, he was ground crew and I remember him talking fondly about this plane. Thank you for the video it brought back nice memories.
your storytelling and descriptions make this way more enjoyable than it actually should be. Any plane with 8 forward firing guns is quite the awe inspiring thing to see. The B-25 Mitchell also has an 8 nose gun assault variant with 4 side mounted forward firing cannons. It's like the predecessor to the A-10 but spread out like a shotgun.
@@DSToNe19and83 Yep B-25H variant for anti shippiong with a 75mm M4 cannon from the Sherman and 2 .50 cals in the nose. There was also an antishipping version of the Mosquito (MK. XVIII) with an autoloading 57mm (55 Rounds per minute).
P47s had 8 total .50s on their wings. Two more than the standard 6 .50s American planes were running from basically the start of the war up to and through Korea.
The wood from the Mosquito bomber was all straight grained sitka spruce and most of it was logged in the Queen Charlotte Islands 🇨🇦, now known as Haida Gwaii. Mosquito Lake on Moresby Island was named so because that area in particular was heavily logged to supply wood for the Mosquito bomber. See also ties to the "Spruce Goose".
@@ZACKMAN2007 "The UK was just using us as their suppliers" Yes: We trained 200,000 air crew from all over the Commonwealth, fielded a million Canadian soldiers, built 800,000 trucks and another 50,000 armored vehicles, built and crewed escorts to protect the freighters crossing the ocean, and we fed Britain through the war... both of them actually. Oh yeah, and materiel for the Mosquitos too. Kind of puts the 8 tanks we've sent to Ukraine in perspective.
@@JoshuaNyhus I was referring to how much Britain outsourced to us we basically was their factory I don't blame them we do have a lot of nature resources and is very far away from most of the action geography wise
Many of the Brit built ones used Birch skins rather than spruce. The Aussie built ones used mainly indeigenous woods. The cores were balsa, which we somehow managed to ship from South America throughout the war..
One of grandfather’s favourite aircraft he ever worked on! Also there was a RAF Coastal command version with a six pounder anti tank gun under the nose that they used on German shipping, the gun camera footage of their strikes in Norway are amazing feats of piloting in tight spaces and straight up balls out bravery to get AP rounds on craniums, love the channel dude
This is the first video I've watched on this channel - won't be the last - I really enjoyed this - the Mossie is one of my favourite RAF aircraft. Great presentation too! We don't have any airworthy ones in the UK - we used to have one until it crashed in front of thousands at an airshow due to the pilot doing a manoeuvre that starved an engine of fuel. Guy Gibson VC - the leader of the Dambusters lost his life in a Mosquito. He was returning from a raid on Rheydt when his aircraft crashed in Steenbergen, on the Dutch coast. He and his navigator, Jim Warwick were buried nearby. The cause of the crash isn't fully understood. One eyewitness said he saw a light on in the cockpit before the crash whilst a gunner from one of the bombers that Gibson target-marked for claimed a Ju88 'kill' on that night but records showed there were none anywhere near the area. Could it have been 'friendly fire' - they're both twin engined fighter- bombers.
The mosquito was one of my favorite aircraft for the longest time, not because it’s just a stupidly good plane or it’s history, but because it influenced De Havilland when they made their first jet fighter and my third favorite aircraft of all time: The Vampire. A jet fighter smaller than a Spitfire and made of wood.
I don't know how much less signature they had, a lot of success was from the simple fact they had excellent pilots and flew sometimes below treetop level.
I absolutely love your content and sense of humor. I've learned way more about various military operations and how things actually work than I ever learned in school.
...and, a mere 4 years after WWII, De Havilland becomes the world's pioneer with passenger jets by introducing the DH.106 Comet. So much innovation from that company!
Yeah, sadly the early comets caused so much publicity issue due to the square windows and the punched holes for the fasteners for said windows led to 2 in air catastrophic explosive decompressions that it basically destroyed the company reputation wise.
@@brennanvilcheck9469Except it wasn’t the windows that failed - it was the ADF radio antenna pass through (ie radio “window”) in the cabin roof that failed.
@@allangibson8494 You learn something new every day, thanks for that. I hope it's not a daft question but how did they find this out? Everything I've seen and read puts the blame on the window design.
My grandad was a navigator in Mozzies, he was in one of the Pathfinder squadrons based in Norfolk (England obviously, not Virginia!). He didn't speak much about his time in the RAF, but did talk about dropping the marker bombs / flares over various German cities.
Holy crap I could write the exact same comment, my grandfather flew out of Norfolk in mosquitos as a bomb aimer/navigator for Pathfinder squadron. I've got all his flight books, recon photos and One of the flags from the base. He was RCAF and Grandmother was RAF. My Mom was born in Norwich. After the war grandfather brought his wife and new daughter to Canada.
Very importantly they were used as pathfinder aircraft for bombing raids and they also had an anti submarine version the Tsetse, this replaced the 4 20mm cannon with a single 57 mm (6 pdr) gun with an autoloader with 25rds the added armour as well because german subs often had good anti aicraft defenses, these were very sucessful. After the war they even produced a test aircraft with a 96mm (32 pdr) which apparently worked .
I love how he tells well known stories but makes it exciting and interesting while sharing the obscure facts that make you wonder why you never heard them before. Whew...Long sentence. Great video, brother.
Haha! I love that you (of all people) covered this plane. Hilarious! And perfect! The Germans were terrified of this plane. These crazy pilots would circle German air bases at night, wait for fighters to take off and then swoop in and gun them down as they were attempting to take off or land. And the thing was made of wood - one of the most amazing planes of WW2.
The mosquito was so under rated it had so many different weapons attachments for different roles from rockets to cannons, machineguns and a very effective bomber. It was my favorite WW2 plane extrememly versatile and an excellent all rounder.
17 seconds and you already brightened up my day. I would have loved to seen you recorded on an AAR. “This AAR is about how letting a bunch of E4s with no guidance can lead to the fastest and highest mission accomplishment rate at the cost of the worst PR disaster since Chernobyl.”
![Eminem - Fuel (feat. JID) [Official Lyric Video]](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/t5H_CewqpKA/mqdefault.jpg)
It's easily my favorite none american plane ever.
Yep
Yo
👍
“Shpelling mishtake”-🤓
Well it was designed in freedom factions so it makes sense
you're going to get shit for saying fighter jets instead of fighters. those people can kindly fuck off. We know what he meant.
"Acoustic SR-71" is probably the most accurate description of the mosquito possible
I think we need to make ‘Acoustic SR-71’ a folk band name😂
SR-71 unplugged if you will
You know I love that comparison. My favorite is the. And I've played this over and over again. I keep hitting the rewind button
One bomb wooden wonders.
Are going to low level penetrate.
Deep into enemy territory.
Deliver payload.
Love this!
Well said sir, you beat me to it 😂
Analogue stealth
Can you imagine working in a cabinet shop during the war then one day your boss bust through the door and yells stop making cabinets we are building planes now
Me at the cabinet assembly line~ "SQUEEEEEEE!"
They had excellent acoustics too, piano craftsmen were also used, resulting in each airframe being individually tuned for the different engine types.
90% of the crew yells "FINALLY!!!!!!!!!!!"
That kinda happened with my grandfather. He was a shipwright who then got drafted by De Havilland and ended up with them until he retired. He used to call it the 'Bostik Bomber' though because a lot of it was glued together. He said it was also a suprisingly tough aircraft and a lot would come back full of holes. Rounds would pass right through and often do minimal damage to anything important. He also used to grumble about wasting money on fancy metal birds for CAS like the Tornado, when a modernised Mossie would do the job cheaper, louder and almost as fast.
On a similar but unrelated note, I was looking at old houses in the sf bay area and noticed details in the construction that I'd seen before...
In ships. The ship builders would moonlight as house builders and used the same techniques!
The Mosquito is a perfect example of what LazerPig would call Wallace and Grommeting your way out of the problem, and Clarkson's idea that every problem the British ever faced could be fixed by some blokes in a shed. I love it.
And a hammer
Accuracy International created some of the most baller rifles ever, and started as, you guessed it, three guys in a shed THEY DIDN'T EVEN OWN.
@@tylerhobbs76533 guys in a shed who strategically transfered equipment to an alternative location known as an abandoned warehouse up for lease.
Yeah I find it ironic that with all of the red tape and petty (rights-violating) stuff Britain pulls when it comes to firearms ownership; the guys getting the contracts for the good stuff are just like the equivalent of tea-drinking rednecks in a shed who are doing their thing just a _little bit_ less than legal.
@@tylerhobbs7653 so glad they gave the world the L96. It’s so pretty 😆
My grandfather was a RCAF Navigator who flew in a Mosquito as a *_Pathfinder_* in WWII. He always told my mom "I *never* dropped bombs, _only flares."_ As the Navigator, one of the tasks my grandpa had would be to calculate when to drop the flares so they'd land on the target to signal the bombers where to aim, but the enemy would try and confuse the bombers by lighting up matching colored flares miles away on the ground. My grandpa and the pilot had to STAY IN THE AREA flying around while being shot at, and DROP MORE FLARES of _different colors_ to reestablish the target location for the bombing run. He'd be 100 years old (joined up at 16 and lied about his age) but he passed in 2010.
🫡
Honestly, pretty smart of the Germans to do, and the absolute BALLS of him and other pilots to stay behind to do their jobs.
Kinda interestingly ironic that those Germans also had to risk lighting those flares and being targeted by those bombers.
May he Rest in Peace and may another terrible war like WWII never happen
That's a very cool story. I bet it was great listening to his stories.
I can't imagine current day 16 year olds doing this.
@@matthewpeterson4305 1 they couldn’t get away with lying about age 2 they might if there was a reason but the time of real external threats for America is over. 3 I know a few people who would but there’s no platform for that type of person these days.
My favorite troll on the Germans during ww2 was when the RAF saw the Germans building a fake airbase and planes out of wood during a recon mission and instead of bombing it that day/night they waited for them to be done the construction, which is when they sent in a plane to drop one wooden bomb. Please never change, Britain.
Taking the piss is in our dna, britain is basically the original Edward Khill
that is so fucking hilarious
Pricless, absolutely Pricless, at least people laughed that day on both sides except the idea man
Dude if that's real that's the funniest shit ever 😂😂😂😂
To think that we did the same thing with balloon tanks 😅
“Wooden plane”: that thing was the closest thing to composite design available in WW2. Just got its carbon fiber the natural way. This has more in common with a 777 than a balsa plane.
Sandwich design using plywood and a balsa like spacer. All glued together in modules, very strong and light
wait... so wouldn't that make it also the acoustic b2?
@@ddiazgoand it was stealth for the time😂
@@ddiazgoI’d say more like the acoustic buccaneer/tornado, or for the Americans think of it as an OG B-1 lmao
I came here to say that. I love the fat electrician but he missed a lot of the story this time. It was "wood" but not like WWI wood, more of a early composite.
My late grandfather flew mosquitoes over Borneo for the RAAF, his favourite way of describing the aircraft was "slipperier than an eel in spit".
I think your grandfather would be the guy to sit down with and have a beer or three... and let him try to explain just how do you get an eel "in spit???" Maybe nothing important would have been settled but a really good time would have been had by all!! 👍😂🤣
@@MrGaryGG48😂
@@MrGaryGG48consult the E-4 research and development team. There is a way to achieve anything.
my great grand uncle fount the imperial Japs in Bataan. He flew his p40e and did what he could. he was a victim of the Bataan march and later helped devise the greatest pow escape of ww2. he later testified to congress telling about the Japanese treatment of war prisoners.
I imagine since then we went full, amen.
Was it during WW2 or the Malayan Emergency?
My grandfather was a Mosquito pilot during the war. He was colorblind so he couldn't pass physical for American pilots and joined the Canadian RAF. Ended up in England flying Mosquitos. I have all of his service records and requested replacements for his medals and ribbons, have his certificate of thanks from King George and his logbook. Going to do a shadow box with all of his stuff. Not many photos of wartime service but I might be able to reconstruct some of his missions from his flight logs. I do have a lot of photos from flight school, they were training in biplanes, believe it or not! I never met him, he was killed in a crash post-war about 10 years before I was born.
I have my father's logbook. He was in Tokyo two weeks after VJ day.
Hah! My grandad joined the RAF and got sent to Canada as a Mosquito Prop Mech, served three weeks in the UK and the rest of the war with the RCAF!
You didn't mention the "Tsetse" variant of the Mozzie!
Naval warfare version, armed with a 57mm cannon autocannon, used to shoot holes in U-boats.
It's like giving the navy an A10
i think there was something like 38 or so different versions by the end of the war lol
Loved playing the Norway missions in "Secret Weapons Over Normandy" because you could fly that version of the Mossie... absolutely annihilated ships and U-boats with the 37mm or 57mm cannons offered as secondary weapons 😊
@@billhanson4921sounds like "there's a Blackhawk for that" but British and a plane rather than an American helicopter lol
The mosquito XVIII 'tsetse' was only made in very limited numbers. We are talking about a dozen total
There were also early A-10 variants fitted with various anti-tank guns. Then rockets. It was a very versatile aircraft!
I forgot who said it but there's this quote which sums up hoe effective it was.
"The worst thing about the mosquito is that we never built enough of them"
Hap Arnold.
@@Hriuke Hap Arnold was an American. Was he using "we" in the sense of "we allies"?
Yeah I assume he was. He was based over here for a bit, and he took the designs back to the States and gave them to three different companies who all reported that the Mosquitto would basically be a lame duck and they shouldn't waste their time with it. I think Beechcraft was one of those companies.
@@heraklesnothercules.
@@Hriuke Thank you.
"trolling the Germans" describes more of WWII than we'd care to admit
Stealing their submarines, telling them carrots is how radar works, fake planes, the shit never ends
Don't forget inflatable tanks!
Holy #$%π! Accurate
Yeah but American is the king of trolling. We threw an actual sun at the Rising Sun.
Not to mention the 'window' chaff system to mess with German night fighters.
As a retired history teacher, I love your style. As a Brit, it's great to hear someone from the US who has positive things to say about the UK's contribution to WW II.
We've always loved the U.K. =]
I’m Mexican and like history, just wanted to voice my opinion: the us won the fight, but you blokes made sure there was still a country worth fighting for, without you, Europe would have been lost, and American help wouldn’t hd been effective, you were the ultimate guards.
I gotta respect the RAF and the Royal Navy, without them the German's might have landed on the isles. RIP HMS Warspite, the Grand Old Lady shouldn't have been scrapped.
@@nashtheneet I second that notion. I actually have a small teak cup from HMS Warspite, but she was a ship that deserved preserving as much as USS Enterprise (CV-6). I hope to visit HMS Belfast in London at some point soon.
The Fat Electrician is the funniest history teacher of all time.
Right? I’d have passed with flying colours if my teacher was like this!
It's sad that he teaches more history then schools ever did
My highschool world history teacher was like this. Every friday we had what he called Friday Fun Facts and he would pull random fun facts about the time period we were studying. Usually we wpuld get an influential person, place, event and a wild car which when it was about wars was usually a weapon system. Best part was he was a WWII, Korea and Vietnam vet so he had experienced alot of the history himself.
@@JosephDawson1986 bro that's fucking awesomeee
@@terryterrell7045
I guess it depends which school you went to?
I knew a man that flew one on WW2, his stories were amazing. He said that bullets just went right through doing very little damage. He would fly in first and drop flares on targets for other bombers to use as a reference point to drop their pay loads. He was shot down 3 times, each time successfully crash landing the plane in friendly territory. He also went on to circumnavigate the globe with his wife in a sail boat where he actually met Jacque Cousteau. They became friends and he had pictures of them on adventures with each other. He had a degree in engineering and we both built a Hot Rod in his garage when I was 17. He was a humble and brilliant man. He died with no family, just me and my mom next to him in a hospital in San Antonio, TX. Through our friendship this man who was an atheist came to know Jesus and was at peace in his final breath which was, "Let's see where this breeze takes me" which is on the Stern of my sailboat today!
You met a main character, go forth and carry on the legacy
Most based man ever
Im glad to have heard this mans story. Have a great day
What a beautiful story.
Thank you for sharing, this was like a mini movie. A really beautiful one at that... Maybe it should be made into one .. would you want to do that?
This thing really *bugged* people how well it worked.
The Mosquito really just sucked the enemy morale dry
What you did there was bloody awful.
Damn dude.......
Bruh .. nicely done. You win.
That stung
Ba-dumm-tssss
You know it's good when the Comet gets brushed aside.
The origin of so many great WW2 planes. The Spitfire, Whirlwind and Mosquito all derived from developments of the bright red racer.
lmfao
so what development gave us the spitfire?
@@merrymaker1031 The Spitfire owes most of its ancestry to R.J Mitchel's Supermarine S.5, S.6 and S.6B floatplane racers from 1927-31. The development of these racers also lead to the deveopment of the Rolls Royce R engine (A frankly rediculous engine that had to use diluted fuel to extend the time between overhauls to 5 hours of operation) which would give Rolls Royce valuable experiance that would be used in the development of the Merlin.
@@Mathiasosx1yeah, during the Interwar period, Air Racing was THE best way to field test new ideas for faster airplanes: stronger engines, new cowlings, stressed skin wings, etc. This was a Golden Age of Civil Aviation, and a relatively quiet period for military procurement. Air forces were certainly _interested_ in fast planes, but it wasn't really until the Martin B-10 that a _full-on_ arms race for speed would kick off
So, if you're an aircraft company in the 20s and early 30s, and you wanna show how good your designs can be, how do you do that? Air racing
Shout out to grandma for being a bloody legend in making history
"Its basically an acoustic SR71" is going to be my new favorite way of describing the Mosquito
"Basically a paper aeroplane with a f*cking V8 attached to it" would be mine. XD
@@slavemi3018 Never mind V8, it's packing two V12s.
I felt that "rant" in my soul. Just remember even injured horses are "put down..." Cheers man.
When are THEY?! In office at 80 yrs old. When?!
@@abrahamjohn3665when they start forgetting--I mean when they break a leg. . . . Ah ha. . .
Yup I bought a tee-shirt.
Especially when it's coming from a Veteran... sorry you gotta deal with this BS on top of everything else, Doc.
When you fun military eletrician has a little "we live in a society" moment
17:40 the german moskito was also abandoned because the glue factory that made the glue to bond the aircraft was destroyed by the raf. they had no other alternate sites.
It gets better, actually: the glue was also being sabotaged by the slave labor used to make it, who would literally piss into the glue to break it down, thus literally and metaphorically taking the piss out of the Luftwaffe
Who'd have thought slave labor might not be dedicated to quality manufacturing, huh?
The DH-98 Mosquito is the Jake McNasty of the air. Completely unorthodox and embarrasses everything that opposes it.
Well said.
Don’t forget that most of the top brass didn’t like it up until it completely destroyed everything in its path with little issue. Then they brightened up to the idea
Funniest part is that the germans started copying said idea for their late bombers after meeting it on the Battlefield
Dude, your story telling combined with the production quality of this content legitimately makes this more compelling than anything the History channel has turned out in recent years...
Second! i never heard of this facet of the war - and am spellbound by your enthusiastic narrative!
@@greatwhitenumpty9442 I live in the exact area in the south of England where the BoB was fought, and literally 5 minutes down the road we have Goodwood aerodrome which was a fighter base during the war. They still have a few Spitfires that fly almost daily, so I get to sit in my garden with a beer and hear that Rolls-Royce Merlin engine roar above the hills of Sussex. It's magic.
Totally agree! Dude spits with wit and accuracy.
Damn strait. I got my boss hooked on the channel, and we both wish we'd had history teachers like this.
Have you seen the fucking history channel at 3AM? My fucking DOG is more reliable than the History channel
The really sad part is most of them have deteriorated badly over the years.
As a pilot and lover of old airplanes, that's really painful.
The Mosquito was not suitable in the Pacific theatre due to the wood components delaminating due to humidity. In the pacific theatre the American made P38 Lightning was the plane to beat.
There's one at the museum in my hometown. It's a thing of beauty.
@@AutoCrete And yet, a significant number of them were made in Australia.
@@scraverXyou…. You do understand it’s an American made plane right? It was made by Lockheed… u do understand that it can be made in America and then sold or manufactured in another country for more production, and the Australians probs wanted it considering the threat of the Japanese.
@@Eclipse-lw4vf I think they are referring to the Australians making Mosquitos under license, and being flown by the RAAF.
I love how subsequent pics of Lord mini-paws have smaller and more tiny mitts. The last one made me burst out. Lol
I have watched this episode like 8 times and, I am ashamed to admit it, only noticed that was happening this time...
I have failed at interning...
Love the Mosquitos, they could do just about everything. My favorite variant was the FB MK. XVIII which mounted a 57mm Molins anti-tank gun with an auto loader. It was nicknamed the Tsetse, and it hunted U-boats. The round was solid rather than explosive. This meant that punched right through the hull of surfaced U-boats and bounced around inside with unhealthcare being applied.
U-boat radar operator: "Why is there an artillery piece flying at us at 400 mph?"
"Unhealthcare"
I just sprayed my cellphone.
INTERESTING FACT
The 57mm gun was the same caliber as the 6-pounder gun fitted to the Churchill tank, the Crusader tank and many other anti-tank guns.
@@WOTArtyNoobs"oh boy, I sure do love being a submariner, safe from being attacked by British tanks"
The rant at the end of the video with the ever-increasing absurdity of the "horse to water" analogy was both hilarious and maddeningly accurate.
As soon as he started that rant, I felt it in my soul. 😂
Unfortunately I can only give this comment one like and not one thousand...
Sooner or later, we're going to have to deal with the reality that having a popularity contest between two groups of corrupt, pathological liars is a terrible way to organize a society.
@@MrMagnaniman I don’t know what we would replace that with and you realize that requires The American Revolution MKII. If we keep our Republic then we gotta go back to what was intended initially. Among other things give the communities, regions, and the States the power to make decisions about things that effect them and their area. It’s ridiculous to think anyone living on a ranch in Texas or in the Appalachian Mountain foothills of Northeast Alabama (aka Me) wants or needs the same thing as the people in New York City or California. Usually those politicians from essentially what’s becoming a different culture all together rarely have any ideas my neighbors and I agree with. We can’t continue on with all the corruption and insider trading either. I don’t think people will take it all serious enough and actually vote these career politicians out without a shock to the system of some kind. What that will be I don’t know but know it won’t be pretty. Also our “mainstream media” who is nothing but a joke now and causes nothing but hatred and division needs to go somewhere and die. The Marxist ideology being pumped out at nearly all the Universities and even some of our local School Systems has to be stopped and replaced with teaching things that will help them at life. I could go on but na. Your idea sounds better every keystroke. We are in trouble either way.
@@ben-jam-in6941 With fewer people than it would take to mount a successful armed rebellion, we could much more easily starve the beast through acts of civil disobedience. It also stands a much better chance of success, as acts of violence tend to alienate one from potential supporters and galvanize support for one's opponent.
It's also worth noting that system-crashing levels of civil disobedience would take even fewer people than it would take to win an election. The system only works because we allow it to. If a MILLION people simply stopped, say, paying taxes, less than 1% of the population, the IRS would be completely overwhelmed. Mass noncompliance makes laws impossible to enforce.
So glad you mentioned Wilfred Freeman. He was my great uncle and the main reason the Mosquito was produced. Fascinating story and worth more research.
That is truly a great uncle.
Absolute respect
Ya got an awesome lineage there broseph! Sorry about his brief encounter with Lord Bitchmittens. That's why I trust competency over anything.
W uncle
Ypu should be very very proud of him. He saved Britain
As a descendant of an RAF Pathfinder...whose aircraft was the wonderous Mossy....I grew up hearing stories that you may not have, my friend. One of the funniest is the RAF's version of "Crying Wolf"
Pathfinder carried incendiary bombs to start fires...and then marker flares to signal the main swarms which fire was the Designate. The main Bombers would fly over said fire on a particular course and start bombing....and with perpendicular paths over consecutive nights the center of the Target got lambasted...but here is where the trolling came in...
The Pathfinders would come over a city on tbeur way to a target...and get a fire started....occassionally dropping flare. Ofcourse...the German Gun crews were roasted out to man theur guns, searchlights, etc....and would be out for hours...and little or no bombing would happen.
Thus sort of thing would go on for a week as the Pathfinders had time and spares....and just like the old story...the Germans...irate at being tricked so often...would stop rushing out their crews man their defenses....and then the actual bombing would commence. Pretty soon...the standing orders were all crews were to man defrnses...regardless if it was a perceived raid or not. Big time morale killer for the German gun crews.
Fun fact, the DH Vampire JET FIGHTER still used wood for parts of it's fuselage.
My dad trained at the DH technical college, he describes a lot of what they did as "interesting".
I can only imagine how much sandpaper they went through
The German flying wing with turbines was mostly wood, till it crashed
@AdmiralYeti8042 mostly used "planes" to finalize shape
@@briansharp4388The Ho 229?
@ardantop132na6 the one the 2 Brothers (sorry, getting old, can't remember names, but towards end of war. The brother flying it was killed when it crashed during testing, a collision? with another plane. Was flown in prone position
I love the Mossie. It's the plane the RAF didn't want but Geoffrey de Havilland knew they would need it. Loved by it's pilots and feared by it's enemies.
So no one wants to talk about how it's technically the first stealth aircraft before the concept of radar cancelling technology existed?
It also predate the Horton Ho 229 and actually flew combat missions. It's really the first stealth multirole aircraft. Like an F35 but with tremendously long range.
@@granatmofthe Ho 229 was never even a little stealth tho
Neither were stealth. The 229 ended up making craters instead of test data. And the mosquito just had a reduced signature. Paint and wood and windows still reflect. Just less than metal.
We needed Lazer radar to map the amazon because radar doesn't just pass through wood and leafs and shit. It's just not a mirror of an aluminum shell
And there is no vergiyable data including a full replica built to Horton specs 30 years ago. And it has the radar cross section of a cessna
I have to say ive studied war for 50+ ( UK /Scottish ) years and you are an outstanding story teller , essentially nailed all the fine detail and a lot of the nuances , your fast pace and full on narration adds a welcome bit of punch and backbone , Plaudits to you sir , well deserved like and sub.
Your description of politicians at the end is so on point it should be on billboards everywhere.
Love the fade away and the frustration rant at the end lmfao!!! Back to watching interrogations now
Love history
But the end was the best of anything I've seen or heard in the last 3 years.
The raw truth and so simple an idiot like me understands it.
Ain’t that the damn truth
The mossie was an amazing aircraft. Gave the Germans a big headache. On the subject of twin-engined speed freaks, it would be cool to see your take on the P-38 Lightning... especially in Operation Vengeance
An author by the name of Martin Caidin wrote a book about that plane. Look for the title, The Fork Tailed Devil.
The P-38 is what got me into war planes. I would love to see a video about it.
As an old Brit, the Mossie is one of my all-time favourite aircraft . I've lost count of all the videos I've seen on it but without doubt, yours is definitely one of the best and most entertaining I've watched. Colour me, subscribed👍
Best description of the Mosquito ever: "The best piece of furniture Brits have ever devised"
The fastest wardrobe of WW2.
De Havilland was Canadian, and it's still a Canadian company now producing small electric aircraft.
@@richardm6704 a quick google search proves that wrong. The dude was born in England. He was born July 27, 1882 in
High Wycombe, Buckinghamshire, England. Even served in the British Army in WW1. His Company was incorporated into another Company (Hawker Siddeley) in 1963, and then that company was absorbed by British Aircraft Company and Scottish Aviation in 1977. The Canadian branch of the company was bought by Boeing in 1985, then another company bought the holdings in 1992. Then another company bought the holdings from that company in the early 2000s. It's only De Havilland in name, with no actual connection to the original.
The de Havilland family originates from Normandy and later moved to the island of Guernsey in the Channel Islands. Two of Sir Geoffrey de Havilland's cousins were actresses Olivia de Havilland and her sister Joan Fontaine.
Had a feeling you were going to have this as your favorite. The equivalent of a 3 pointer if a pilot managed to shoot one down.
3 pointer? Nah bro, if you shot this thing down, it was a Hail Mary miracle mixed with a last-second halfcourt shot that only amounted to winning a scrimmage😂😂😂
@@TheCoasterSean well naturally but its still only the bonus one point, so 2 kills for one.
"it's like trying to shoot a bullet with a smaller bullet whilst wearing a blindfold and riding a horse"
@@Zsinj3 ::sees equation for transwarp beaming::
A few were shot down by the Me-262, which was faster, but the Mosquito could out turn it, so a hard bank and that 262 was flying by
This is brilliant, thank you. A cousin of mine was a Wing Cdr in the RAF; he briefly commanded 21 Squadron before sadly being killed in his Mosquito, along with his crewman, just 2 months before the end of WW2 in Europe.
RIP cousin, Wing Cdr Victor Rundle Oats, also, Flt Sgt Gubbings. Not forgotten.
Hi, I live in New Zealand and am an avid follower of the Mosquito. I have the great luck to, because of my interest in vintage motorcycles have friends working for Avspecs, a firm who are now in the position to build Mosquitos due to a local who has managed to obtain all the drawings needed to perform that feat. DeHavilland Mosquito NZ2308 has just been completed and flew for the first time on my 75 th birthday 18th March 2024. This is the second of the only 3 operational Mozzies in the world and was rebuilt by this company. A little considered fact is that none of the original aircraft can fly any more due to the woodwork delaminating with age and old glues. They were not expected to last very long in combat anyway but 2 pot mixes were not available then also. I have the goodluck to have been able to go into the hanger several times as the aircraft was being built and live on the coast in line with the Ardmore air strip getting to see it assembled and to see it fly its early flights. It will soon be dismantled and sent to its american owners and will probably appear at OshKosh or some similar amazing airshow in the near future. It is decked out in the colours of the New Zealand airforce and we are proud of the contribution of these great engineers in NZ to have them contribute in a small part to the history of flight. I loved this explanation and your intensity. Great job. Terry
A few months back I had the honor of drinks and a meal with a 102 year old WWII Mossie pilot at the RAF club in London. A gentleman and aviator extraordinaire. Great stories and fabulous company all around.
What did you guys drink?
I’m a curious mind
@@DSToNe19and83 a few beers and dinner. We had a small group of aviators. About 6 of us. Despite his age, his whit and storytelling were quite intact. He trained to fly in the US before we joined the war effort and ended up in Mosquitos for the duration.
Something remarkable about the Mosquito not mentioned in this great episode was it's loss per sortie ratio, 0.5% seems to be the generally accepted figure, incredible numbers for any WW2 air craft let alone one that flew such high risk missions, it truly was an amazing machine
Unheard number for ww2. Wow.
Insane loss rates especially when u look at what the intruders did to try n stop the night fighters
Unfortunately one of those lost in a mossie was wing commander guy Gibson vc.
That's... Wow. Literally built differrnt
Actually, I was surprised by the research on mosquito and how resilient they were, and the loss rate was very low compared to "metal" aircraft. Plus, it had a respectable long life as well. It was a great, fast, reliable, easier-to-fix plane. Hats off to DeHavilland.
The main part of the Mosquito that pinged on radar were the nails and parts of the propeller assembly. Not a whole lot to go off of, especially back then. Also there are accounts that the pilots were so comfortable flying the Mosquitos low, some of them would returned to the air fields with foliage and leaves on their undercarriage.
It wasnt foliage, they were just flying on hot and humid days, so the plane grew twigs and leafs during the long range missions.
When my grandfather was in England in December 1943 he said they saw a flight of Mosquitoes come back in and one was dragging the top like 3 feet of a some sort of pine tree and the pilots ended up using it as the Squadron Christmas tree. Only reason he found out what they did with it was he was a medic and made friends with the squadrons medical staff and the invited him for Christmas.
@@JosephDawson1986 That is awesome
@@isaacgraff8288 yeah. My Pap pap,as we called him, would talk about WWII and a little about Korea but he NEVER talked about Vietnam.
Being from Oregon, I hope they clipped firs or pines.
I live 20 miles from where the factory was, it's now a university, which my daughter attended.... Hatfield, they have a DeHaviland campus in memory of this...👍😎
So do I , cool name by the way.
I did my apprenticeship at a dehavilland factory that opened in 1937, so this is very cool to see!
Also, favourite quote on ww2 - an old dude at a vet bar being told how dogfights are faster and harder than back in his day (this is 2008ish). Casually drained his pint and replied 'sure, kid, but youre not airborne over your parents house.''
That's a major motivator to not lose.
Not only is Mom watching,if your plane takes out the clothesline with a load of laundry still drying,she's going to be VERY irate with you.
Holy shit, that's _cold._ Like... "Props on the new toys, kid. You ain't had to really use 'em, though"... Balls of titanium on that pilot. I salute him, and every RAAF pilot that kept Britain's skies as clear as they could. Per Ardua ad Astra.
DAMN!! lol. He's not wrong though. Those old pilots and old vets were tough, much tougher than we are today.
@@libertybell8852 To quote Grandpa BUFF, "They didn't hide from the enemy with their 'StEaLtH tEcHnOlOgY', they went it like a goddamn _man!"_
@@libertybell8852 don't forget that the average age for a RAF pilot was 20 years old and age of a dead pilot was 22..today folk this age cry when someone say some mean words to them
“Because they can’t walk and chew bubble gum for office” I fell out of my chair when I heard that 😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂
The horse is somehow your boss... Okay, so we need to switch from passive to active protection of Nic and Mrs Nic. Can’t trust those horses.
The mosquito was way ahead of its time, the first composite aircraft put into production, arguably the best plane of the war, certainly the most versatile, easier to make and repair in service, they used these for pretty much every kind of mission, spitfires are great, mosquito's are the twin engined spitfires, awesome!
No.. it wasn't the first composite plane put into production... It was mainly wood with some metal in key areas... This was being done back in WW1.
@rodshoaf you're missing the point. Ww1 planes were wooden framed
It was 'composite because it was made from a composite: hardwood ply. The Mosquito 'hot molded' composite ply panels which were incredibly strong and removed the need of stringers. GDH borrowed this tech from British racing boat builders who were building superfast sailing dinghies in the early 30s Uffa Gox being a particular Pioneer of this tech.
Although it's base material was indeed wood hardwood ply was a state of the art material in the 1930s, not because it was a new material, plywood had been around since ancient Egypt, but because of the tech in the expox polymers used to bind it.
Hotmolding ply had been around for about 50 years previously but due to manufacturing challenges, it was mostly used for furniture and some musical instruments. Fox pioneered its use in boatbuilding when epoxies had advanced sufficiently to allow rapid cooling without compromising strength.
Yes, composite laminates were used for strurs, propellers etc in WW1 but self supporting molded ply panels strong enough and large enough for curved plane panels were a new technology in the 30s.
@@HarryFlashmanVC The very first plane... had plywood... The Mosquito was not a composite plane... If you want to call a wooden skinned plane a composite then there were quite a few other planes in front line service around the world before the mosquito.. It was a throwback plane.. using techniques that had been lost by aircraft makers once they switched to all metal aircraft
Haha uz are funny. Look up the company who bulit the mosquito and it destroys OP point as mossie was baaed on the albatros that was built uaing same ply-ballsa-ply monocoque frame. The company also designed and bulit many of moths.
@rodshoaf the Mosqueto is very much a composite built aircraft! You really need to look up the word composite in the Oxford English Dictionary to realise what the word means.
My Grandmother made tail planes for mossies during WWII. She was working at Walter Lawrence's furniture factory, in Sawbridgeworth in Hertfordshire England.
Voting for the mosquito on your poll yesterday and seeing it was the lowest percentage makes me so happy to see this video right now😂
haha underdog
Kind of a genius tactic. Take the least known, least popular choice and make it the star.
Yep, put a smile on my face.
Yes I voted for it also!
Always a good day when we get story time with TFE.
"paper plane with a v8" Of course a speed freak would build that.
Loving the longer form content, bro. You're a great story-teller, a modern day bard, and taking the extra time really gives these stories the room they need to breathe and flex.
I have been working for 3 weeks to install wood shelving in my bathroom. I am not qualified. All thar college isnt good for the "real" long game. Kudos to the brilliance. If i was an early engineer, we would stay the Stone Age.
The German Ta 154 "Moskito" has a more interesting background even than you mentioned. It was designed by Dr. Kurt Tank, the same genius who was the lead designer on the Focke-Wulf Fw 190. So the design was, as you said, extremely solid and generally a good plane, not quite to the level of the British Mosquito, but capable. And it was being built originally using a good plywood resin adhesive called "Tego-Film." Unfortunately for them, the factory making Tego-Film got bombed, so they found a replacement adhesive and ordered about 150 night-fighter versions of the Ta 154. But there was a problem. They found out after a couple of crashes, that the new glue used in the composite plywood laminate for the skinning was corrosive...TO WOOD. So the glue was actually dissolving the wood it was designed to secure and causing wing failures resulting in crashes.
Eventually they stopped the program after producing about 50 planes.
Geez, I guess they didn't see that coming, lol.
Ahh, so my presumptions of The Allies having a hand in the 'failure' of the Moskito were not far-fetched.
@@labrat810actually, it gets better. You know who happened to have easy access to the glue to put things in it? The slave labor the Nazis were using
Yeah, the nazis were so far up their own anuses, they didn't stop to consider that these people might not WANT to do a good job and prolong their enslavement. They might, I don't know, piss in the glue to make it less effective?
The only thing as good as all the new stuff I learn from the "chubby electron guy" is all the new stuff I learn from the people commenting on his videos. He's got the best comment section I've found to date on RUclips.
What do you get when you combine a British madman, an engine too powerful for its own good, and the finest carpenters his Majesty can provide?
You get the most deadly mosquito since malaria.
As a brit; people always go on about the spitfire, it's good to see love for the mosquito
The Hurricane needs some love ,, most dont realise IT was the main stay fighter of the Battle of Britain not the Spitfire.
Because the spitfire had 25% more kills than its closest 2nd place the Hurricane…
Spitfires duked it out with the fighters.
Hurricanes wrecked the bombers.
Mosquitos trolled Germany over their own turf relentlessly.
And fucking Swordfish biplanes crippled the Bismarck.
Brits will fly anything into battle to protect their island and I constantly wonder how they even manage to take off considering the humongous titan balls those aviators must have.
@@uberreaktor4836 the RAF squadron with the highest number of kills were the Polish 303 squadron!
The mosquito probably wasn’t held up by politics as much as it’s always a good idea to keep your technology out of the enemy’s hands. Hence it needed to be laughed off. The mosquito was to the air war what ultra was to intelligence. A game changer
Many master wood crafters came together to defend their country. The result was the Mosquito Bomber.
I feel like this was left out of history class on purpose. For years, I wondered how the raf beat the germans, but I had no idea it was because of wooden aircraft.
what he left out was. the anti ship version with a cannon sticking out of the nose and the SOE version which had a radio in the back so the americans/brits could talk to the resistance. i was really happy when i found out about the numerous restoration projects now being done to bring this amazing fighter back to the skys and even watched the youtube vid of the first one going on a flight. no music just the pilot/nav radioman and a gopro so you could year the wonderful sound of those engines.
I to love wooden plains, nothing fills me with more joy than seeing a plain piece of wood (yeah you made a spelling mistake, I may as well have some fun with it)
Fun fact : the Swordfish torpedo bombers, the ones that aided in the sinking of KMS Bismarck was also a wooden plane
Nope, it was made of metal tubes covered with cloth. Maybe the dashboard was wood but nothing else was!
@@jimspackman8527 thanks for correcting me
Though I don't know if knowing that the Bismarck's rudder destroyed by an aircraft made of metal tubes and covered in cloth made it less embarrassing
I've watched quite a few documentaries on WWII and other than a brief mention here and there it seems like very little is ever really said about these amazing aircraft! I've heard of them but thank you for all the awesome background info!
I'm glad you liked them!
You are a great storyteller. The British involvement in WW2 is so under-told. We want more crazy British WW2 antics please!
The Bristol Beaufighter was a ships worse nightmare! Nothing in front of one survived! 4x20mm cannons, 6X.303 machine guns or 4x.50cal machine guns. 8x90lb rockets and a torpedo!!? ruclips.net/video/KR2OTc6_3-g/видео.htmlsi=KhMM1KSlVcrZr4Uu
You'd probably love the antics of The Department of Miscellaneous Weapons, AKA The Wheezers and Dodgers, a whole branch of the British military, staffed by eccentric inventors and garden shed crackpots, dedicated to Wallace and Grommit'ing their way to victory with all manner of slightly insane contraptions. One of their number, Jasper "The Amazing" Mescaline, was a stage magician before the war and for his next trick, he made the entire Suez Canal disappear.
I have a fever and the only prescription is more Churchill . Mad Jack Churchill that is!!!
@@richardross119 it reminds me how during the Falklands war a handful of British marines casually walked down the hill into an Argentinian base and bluffed that they were totally surrounded and there was no use resisting. They all surrendered!
What about the UK bomb disposal teams, as they were very effective at disarming the German unexploded bombs that Germany specifically created bombs that wouldn't explode on contact as they would then blow up the UK disarmament teams (UXB is a term that comes to my old brain). No matter how complicated the Germans made these UXB team killers, the British developed simple tricks to disarm them. From plasticine and liquid Helium, to using bicycle pumps and fishing rods the British defeated them. In the end, the Germans disbanded the idea and teams, stating 'whatever we do, the British only use simple things like bicycle pumps and fishing rods to overcome them.
I've been obsessed with the plane ever since reading Tintin when I was a kid. Herge loved his military hardware and stuck the Mosquito in wherever he could with fantastic illustrations of the plane kicking ass.
#1 quote I can take away from this, "It's basically the acoustic SR-71". That is freaking golden!
As a brit I really appreciate you making this. Its nice for an American to be respectful of our ww2 planes instead of mocking them and calling them shit ive watched quite a few videos on spitfire hurricanes where Americans slate the hell out of them so 10 out 10 mate 👍
As an American I gotta say the spitfire is one of my favorites planes
I don't know why english planes get shit on, they kept up and downed nazis.
English planes were fuckin amazing, the spitfire for example shits on my Bf109 in warthunder
As a kid, I worshipped the Hurricane and anything else Hawker put out
wow, I've always respected the Spitfire, Hurricane and esp. the Mossy. I have a large model of the Mossy.
I needed this today, my father died last Thursday. Love your videos, never change your format or style. Words of wisdom to live by:
1. It's not a dad bod, it's a father figure.
2. Never trust a fart.
Sorry to hear that. Rip your dad...(virtual hug)
I lost both my parents within 2 months . It gets better, just prepare yourself for sporadic waves of grief. You can't help it it's okay. Phone a friend. You got this bro. (I love zagnuts BTW)
sorry for your loss lad!
Glad you could laugh and learn today. Bless you, man. I’m sorry you have to miss him.
Sorry for your loss mate. Wise words indeed.
They were just early to the party in working carbon fiber. They used natural resin too. 😁
And yeah, the first low observability plane ever. Rudimentary radar plus wood construction.. *chef's kiss*
Just the sheer sense of "I told you so" De Havilland must have had when the British procurement office came back to him.
Also did he basically just make the world first stealth fighter/bomber?
Yes. For the time, yes he did.
Dang. Nazis stealing credit for sh!t they didn't do, yet again.
more or less....old Goering was quoted as not believing that cabinet makers could make a bomber that pissed him off so much lol
Just imagine if DeHaviland knew about the early version radar-absorbing paint the Horten Bros. came up with for the Ho-229 prototype...the Mossie would have had the radar cross-section of a house fly :😀
Sort of
DH also produced a modified Mosquito, the Tsetse, that traded some (not all) of its guns for a 57mm high-velocity cannon. Which they used to hunt warships and submarines. Very few airframes even today can handle the forces involved with firing a literal tank gun, but the glued together wooden Mosquito just happily took it.
Firing the normal guns could make them stall, imagine how the 57mm went
@@bloodvuethat's not how momentum works
Ww2 equivalent of the warthog really. It made submarine commanders very unhappy as a 57mm shell hole in a submarine is a bit of a problem. What they didn't know was that we knew by then where submarines would be either by direction finding based on their transmissions or from breaking their enigma code.
The hard part with fitting a smaller tank gun to a plane isn't actually the structural integrity: since you're mounting it as a fixed installation, you don't need a fancy heavy turret setup, you just need a plane big enough to comfortably fit the gun in the nose and add the proper reinforcement
The trickier changes are to making a manually loaded Tank Cannon into an Automatic weapon, and to making sure the plane remains stable after the recoil
Pretty sure you could use it as a load out of battlefield V , was fun partaking in tank skirmishes from the sky!
My next door neighbour was a mosquito pilot in WW2,when I met moved in he was 80 something,he used to go to the working man's club every Friday and get absolutely piss drunk,to the point I'd have to undo his door for him,he never talked about the war,just"I was in the RAF,flew mosquitos"....that's all you'd get out of him.
Pinewood Derby Plane. Excellent analysis!
ply and balsa
You also forgot, they were very survivable. Unlike metal that can twist and tear, the Mosquito was made out of wood and would only splinter on impact with bullets. Ones been known to keep flying after taking so much damage that would of knocked any metal plane out of the sky. I remember reading years ago somewhere that they been known to drain the enemys ammo and still keep flying
🇬🇧 🦟: “nice shots, mate. my turn. 😈”
Even better. Since the plane is mostly cloth and wood. A lot of explosive rounds meant for planes simply don't detonate and go right through on impact.
Also ironically the only plane that would be immune to the proximity AA fuze the allies were using.
My Granddad flew Mossies and he used to carry around this chunk of metal with him. He said it was from when he was flying on a Night Reconnaissance mission over Germany and the flak guns opened up on him. He reacted by immediately squeezing the trigger hard ... except his plane had no guns and the trigger just took loads of photos of flak ammo lighting up the night, lol. He flew straight through it and, when he got back he got out of his plane and this chunk of metal fell out of his lap. The flak guns had gone right through the floor, between his legs, hit his chair and ricocheted out through the roof and he was unharmed. His metal chair, however, had been smashed to pieces and a bit had landed in his lap, lol. It must've almost been like that scene in Pulp Fiction, except however many 1,000 feet up in the sky! He carried that bit of metal around with him for the rest of his life for good luck.
Mosquitos were difficult to bail out of. Below 5000' the crew were not getting out.
During the Normandy campaign, RAF squadrons committed a monthly average of not quite three hundred Mosquitos. From June through August, seventy were shot down and twenty-eight damaged beyond repair-33 percent of the total available.
I used to work in a nursing home (years ago) and one of our residents had been a mosquito pilot in the war. Apparently they used to come back sometimes with tree branches in the leading edges of their wings from having flown so low, so fast on their way home.
Sometimes they came back with some poor woman's washing line and washing draped over the wing.
I know I'm a year late to this party. BUT... As a retired local govt IT worker, I absolutely LOVED this video! It speaks to me on a level I cannot express in words. Very well done! 😁
the Mosquito is my favorite plane of WWII. Yeah the Spitfire is gorgeous, the Butcher Bird is intimidating, the Mustang and the Thunderbolt and the Lightning are wonders of engineering, to say nothing of the bombers... But man. Mosquito was something special, she really did it all.
"Acoustic SR-71" is probably the most accurate description of the mosquito possible. "trolling the Germans" describes more of WWII than we'd care to admit.
Yeah, pretty much is the perfect description. Britain can beat an enemy, but bringing America along means beating the enemy will be extremely funny and quicker.
The most infamous example of the UK trolling the Germans is a toss-up, between the RAF spreading rumors that they were feeding their pilots carrots for night vision to cover the fact that they had radar, to the time they dumped a dead body in officer's clothing with "secret plans" that were false of course, into the ocean to wash up and be discovered by German intelligence.
Holy shit there are so many bots here.
That was an awesome line.
@repentandbelieveinJesusChrist4how about "noo" you zeolot.
this plane was easily one of the coolest things ever... fast, versatile, powerful, and universally neat
I do love the Mozzy - Same bomb load as the B-17 flying fortress, just didn't quite have the range.
As much as I like your 3-5 minute videos, these recent long-format videos are fantastic! I am a huge history buff and when you cover an item, you do so thoroughly. You do great research and your script writing is superb. Your delivery is spot on and the jokes you toss in make history palatable to younger minds. I have shown a few of your longer videos to my step-kids and they actually learned some history during summer break, and enjoyed the story!
I'm so glad you did a show on the Mossie! My Grandfather joined the Canadian RCAF when he was 17 and shipped out to England to be a pilot. He flew mosquitoes... night reconnaissance, night bombing raids, daytime strikes, and V1 & V2 defense. It's the most underrated plane of WW2 IMO.
Nice! My Granddad flew Night Reconnaissance in Mossies also. He also trained pilots and tested the various Mosquito upgrades. I don't know how much the RAF and the RCAF mixed their squadrons but it is certainly possible they would've known each other and potentially they might've even flown together.
@matthewwalker5430 maybe your Grandfather trained mine 😉
@@Desertwolf426 it’s certainly possible!
Love our brave canadian brothers, unsung heroes of the two world wars🇬🇧🇨🇦
My Dad was a navigator in Mossies , first with 85 Squadron and then RCAF 410 Squadron, Hi Desertwolf425, which squadron was your Granda in?
My grandfather was in the RAF during WW2 and he worked with Mosquitos. He wasn't a pilot, he was ground crew and I remember him talking fondly about this plane.
Thank you for the video it brought back nice memories.
You had me rolling with “acoustic SR-71” 🤣🤣🤣
your storytelling and descriptions make this way more enjoyable than it actually should be. Any plane with 8 forward firing guns is quite the awe inspiring thing to see. The B-25 Mitchell also has an 8 nose gun assault variant with 4 side mounted forward firing cannons. It's like the predecessor to the A-10 but spread out like a shotgun.
Didn’t a Mitch have a 75mm mounted in nose?
@@DSToNe19and83 Yep B-25H variant for anti shippiong with a 75mm M4 cannon from the Sherman and 2 .50 cals in the nose. There was also an antishipping version of the Mosquito (MK. XVIII) with an autoloading 57mm (55 Rounds per minute).
P47s had 8 total .50s on their wings. Two more than the standard 6 .50s American planes were running from basically the start of the war up to and through Korea.
The wood from the Mosquito bomber was all straight grained sitka spruce and most of it was logged in the Queen Charlotte Islands 🇨🇦, now known as Haida Gwaii. Mosquito Lake on Moresby Island was named so because that area in particular was heavily logged to supply wood for the Mosquito bomber. See also ties to the "Spruce Goose".
The UK was just using us as their suppliers
Huh, no shit. Awesome little factoid.
@@ZACKMAN2007 "The UK was just using us as their suppliers" Yes: We trained 200,000 air crew from all over the Commonwealth, fielded a million Canadian soldiers, built 800,000 trucks and another 50,000 armored vehicles, built and crewed escorts to protect the freighters crossing the ocean, and we fed Britain through the war... both of them actually. Oh yeah, and materiel for the Mosquitos too.
Kind of puts the 8 tanks we've sent to Ukraine in perspective.
@@JoshuaNyhus I was referring to how much Britain outsourced to us we basically was their factory I don't blame them we do have a lot of nature resources and is very far away from most of the action geography wise
Many of the Brit built ones used Birch skins rather than spruce. The Aussie built ones used mainly indeigenous woods. The cores were balsa, which we somehow managed to ship from South America throughout the war..
One of grandfather’s favourite aircraft he ever worked on! Also there was a RAF Coastal command version with a six pounder anti tank gun under the nose that they used on German shipping, the gun camera footage of their strikes in Norway are amazing feats of piloting in tight spaces and straight up balls out bravery to get AP rounds on craniums, love the channel dude
“Favourite?” What is this lord of the rings Harry Potter whimsical nonsense?
This is the first video I've watched on this channel - won't be the last - I really enjoyed this - the Mossie is one of my favourite RAF aircraft.
Great presentation too! We don't have any airworthy ones in the UK - we used to have one until it crashed in front of thousands at an airshow due to the pilot doing a manoeuvre that starved an engine of fuel.
Guy Gibson VC - the leader of the Dambusters lost his life in a Mosquito. He was returning from a raid on Rheydt when his aircraft crashed in Steenbergen, on the Dutch coast.
He and his navigator, Jim Warwick were buried nearby.
The cause of the crash isn't fully understood. One eyewitness said he saw a light on in the cockpit before the crash whilst a gunner from one of the bombers that Gibson target-marked for claimed a Ju88 'kill' on that night but records showed there were none anywhere near the area. Could it have been 'friendly fire' - they're both twin engined fighter- bombers.
The mosquito was one of my favorite aircraft for the longest time, not because it’s just a stupidly good plane or it’s history, but because it influenced De Havilland when they made their first jet fighter and my third favorite aircraft of all time: The Vampire. A jet fighter smaller than a Spitfire and made of wood.
The Vampire! that's a cool name.
Wouldn't that make the Mosquito the first stealth air craft?
Maybe the little bi planes we used in ww2.
We used swordfish that where canvas and wood for most part
de Havilland also made the first commercial jet airliner
Yes, but it doesn't count because it wasn't designed to be stealthy, that just sort of happened.
I don't know how much less signature they had, a lot of success was from the simple fact they had excellent pilots and flew sometimes below treetop level.
@@sethb3090 Yes, airborne radar wasn't really around much when design of the Mosquito started.
I absolutely love your content and sense of humor. I've learned way more about various military operations and how things actually work than I ever learned in school.
...and, a mere 4 years after WWII, De Havilland becomes the world's pioneer with passenger jets by introducing the DH.106 Comet. So much innovation from that company!
Yeah, sadly the early comets caused so much publicity issue due to the square windows and the punched holes for the fasteners for said windows led to 2 in air catastrophic explosive decompressions that it basically destroyed the company reputation wise.
@@brennanvilcheck9469true. Then the Boeing 707 set the standard partly because of what folks learned from the Comet failures.
They are also like 90% of the floatplane market with beavers & otters (single and twin engine)
@@brennanvilcheck9469Except it wasn’t the windows that failed - it was the ADF radio antenna pass through (ie radio “window”) in the cabin roof that failed.
@@allangibson8494 You learn something new every day, thanks for that. I hope it's not a daft question but how did they find this out? Everything I've seen and read puts the blame on the window design.
I am no fan of reading up on history, but how you portray it I love! You really bring life to this stuff so thank you!
I'm a huge book nerd, but this is more fun, and much more like the voice in my head lol
19:05 "the more I study history, the more positive I am all politicians are morons"
- FatElectrician 2023, wise words
thank you thank you
Not only wise, kind, sir....regrettably so so very true
You know "politics" comes from the Greek: "poli-" meaning "many" and "-tics" meaning "blood-sucking parasites"
I'm going to borrow this for myself, thank you. :)@@mastick5106
Looking at the state of the UK today, I can confirm not much has changed
As someone who grew up in northern Minnesota, I can attest that these planes were *brilliantly* named for how the British used them.
I call Jet-Skis "mosquito boats".
So loved the ending. You Sir, have described humanity to a tee. Keep doing what you do. Obviously, we all love it!
My grandad was a navigator in Mozzies, he was in one of the Pathfinder squadrons based in Norfolk (England obviously, not Virginia!).
He didn't speak much about his time in the RAF, but did talk about dropping the marker bombs / flares over various German cities.
Holy crap I could write the exact same comment, my grandfather flew out of Norfolk in mosquitos as a bomb aimer/navigator for Pathfinder squadron. I've got all his flight books, recon photos and
One of the flags from the base. He was RCAF and Grandmother was RAF. My Mom was born in Norwich. After the war grandfather brought his wife and new daughter to Canada.
Very importantly they were used as pathfinder aircraft for bombing raids and they also had an anti submarine version the Tsetse, this replaced the 4 20mm cannon with a single 57 mm (6 pdr) gun with an autoloader with 25rds the added armour as well because german subs often had good anti aicraft defenses, these were very sucessful. After the war they even produced a test aircraft with a 96mm (32 pdr) which apparently worked .
They developed a version of upkeep (dambuster mine) for it too. But they never used it in the end.
I love how he tells well known stories but makes it exciting and interesting while sharing the obscure facts that make you wonder why you never heard them before. Whew...Long sentence. Great video, brother.
Haha! I love that you (of all people) covered this plane. Hilarious! And perfect! The Germans were terrified of this plane. These crazy pilots would circle German air bases at night, wait for fighters to take off and then swoop in and gun them down as they were attempting to take off or land. And the thing was made of wood - one of the most amazing planes of WW2.
The mosquito was so under rated it had so many different weapons attachments for different roles from rockets to cannons, machineguns and a very effective bomber. It was my favorite WW2 plane extrememly versatile and an excellent all rounder.
This was big fun to watch. I built many models of WWII planes as a kid and a night fighter version of the Mosquito was one of my favorites. Thanks!
So many great lines, but "sent out swarms of Mosquitos" really made me chuckle
17 seconds and you already brightened up my day. I would have loved to seen you recorded on an AAR.
“This AAR is about how letting a bunch of E4s with no guidance can lead to the fastest and highest mission accomplishment rate at the cost of the worst PR disaster since Chernobyl.”