I didn't read this whole thread so forgive me if this was already mentioned.
I didn't think the Germans had a plane that could catch the Mossie until they built the 262. I read that somewhere (I know it doesn't make it true, but is it?)

FAIL

As has already been said, the Mosquito WAS incredibly fast FOR A BOMBER. But there were certainly Luftwaffe fighters which could catch it, especially if they dived from altitude. But you have to remember that most of the Luftwaffe fighters top speed is listed as with boost which they could only use for a short time.


The main reason why it was so hard to shoot down was that by the time it had been spotted, it had usually dropped its load and was racing home at high speed.

The loss rate of Mosquitos was apparantly very very small when compared to other types. Galland states in his book 'The First and the Last', how Goering was so angry at Mosquitos roaming Germany at will, that a dedicated Mosquito killer squadron was set up using 109's with the very latest boost systems in 1944 specially to catch them, however to his knowledge the gruppe never shot down one Mosquito.

It has often been suggested that a huge fleet of Mosquitos would have been a far better proposition than the hundreds of Lancasters bombing every night, but thats another debate.


I dont actually think that Mosquito performance changed that much did it? I thought the top speed always stayed around 404mph and didnt increase that much through the different versions. Possibly the higher boosted Merlins gave better speed below Full throttle height as they did with the Spitfire. But didnt all Mossies have 60 series Merlins?

Better would be replacing the B-17s and B-24s. ;) The Lancaster, and Halifax, were still needed for their heavy lift capacity. Replacing the B-24 in bomber units would have freed up them for anti-sub service.

My late father-in-law was one of the relatively small number of people employed building Mosquito airframes in small factories across the South of England. Discharged on medical grounds after Dunkirk he was put onto war-work and remained in the aircraft industry until 1946. He was a fully-qualified carpenter/joiner with experience in working with sheet-ply and adhesives.

This is a clue to why a "huge fleet" would have been so difficult to produce. The great strength and lightness of the Mossie came about because the airframe was built primarily of wood, mostly sheets of ply steamed and curved over formers. This was then overlaid by further sheets laid diagonal to those preceding, bonded with a strong artificial adhesive. This method afforded remarkable rigidity and durability, but it required the employment of skilled wood-workers to craft them. The length of training required to equip a worker with these skills was far greater than that required to create a semi-skilled worker in the metal aircraft industry.

B

Brando, the Mossie's skin was a sandwich of 2 layers of plywood with balsa between.

Nice link to Mossie construction in Downsview Ontario Canada
http://www.virtualmuseum.ca/pm.php?i...sh&ex=00000192

Notice the number of women involved in the construction of the Mossie.

Hi B

Here's a link to some Mossie construction at 5 mins in.

Use the link at the top of the youtube screen streaming disabled I think !!!

http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=FQ9EJ3b_k1E

See you in the air over the weekend hopefully.

:)

Thanks for that link Alpha!

I read the same thing about the Mossie/Lancaster debate in a quarterly aviation magazine. The thing to consider here is that a Mossie could carry almost as heavy of of a load as a B17 and the Lancaster carried even more ;)

I think the text in the magazine was "the Mosquito was a precision weapon, like a sword, while the Lancaster was a crude area effect weapon like a bludgeon" :grin:

It's an interesting debate but i tend to agree that if enough Mossies could be built they would be a far better alternative to the thousands of 4 engined RAF heavies. They had as much of a carrying capacity as the american daylight bombers, better accuracy in their drops (especially if you add some Oboe equipped Mossie pathfinders in the mix, while 4 engined heavies dropped their bomb loads over empty countryside for much of the early stage of the night bombing campaign due to navigation difficulties), lower chance of interception by the enemy and probably better crew survivability rates in the event of a crash, which the Lancaster was notorious for.

No, it would be better than the 1000s of American heavies. Try to imagine the same number, or more, escorted Mossies fanning out over occupied Europe, cruising at half the speed again as the American heavies. The Germans were hard pressed with the American heavies so think how hard pressed they would be with Mossies.