[Xiola]

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?