De Havilland Mosquito vs. ?

One of the biggest advantages of the Mosquito, it used a whole lot of things we didn't use to build other planes, and didn't use a lot of things we needed to build those other planes, yet still turned out to be a great plane for the war effort....

Un-catchable! Met a WW2 RAF pilot in the 90's who had flown virtually everything during his service. He finish the war flying Photo Recon in "Pressurised Mosquito's" and in those missions had only encountered enemy aircraft once when 6 FW190's "Jumped him " and added a few new holes in his tail. When I ask how did you get away he said "I just opened up the throttles and waved goodbye!" (Would also like to note the the Mosquito's had the lowest lose ratio of any allied aircraft of WW2. By 1945 only 1 aircraft was lost for every 2000 sorties.)

You should mention that DeHavilland continued their plywood fighter plane technology into the early jet age with the largely wood Vampire and Venom jets.. 3300± Vampires and 1400± Venoms were built and they did yeoman's service. The Royal Navy's first jet aircraft carrier landing was performed by a Vampire. Also, the DeHavilland badge lived on in Canada for decades producing their own civilian and military designs (all out of metal!).They eventually became part of Bombardier.

The mosquito was built just down the street from me in fort Erie Canada. Directly across from Buffalo NY. My grandfather worked there during the war. We had one of the first big autoclaves. It was called Fleet aircraft .

I remember sitting in a Mossie cockpit as a child in New Zealand. It was in a dark and dusty old shed and had the wings chopped off. That plane was rebuilt here and is flying now.

My late father once said the the most thrilling and terrifying thing he experienced in the war was racing over Europe and realizing that the chimney pots were higher than he was.

My Dad was RAAF in the Pacific and was in awe of the Beaufighter. Always referred to as "whispering death". Great platform for a range of armaments and missions.

Great piece of research. My uncle was an RCAF nav in Lancasters and actually survived his tour. He was given the option of just going back to Canada to be an instructor, or going to Mosquito's for another tour. He said, "it took me about 1 minute " to decide. His folks weren't overly pleased though...

Thanks for the endpiece about Castle Baldenau! I was stationed at a USAF storage area in Wenigerath in the late 1970's and lived both in Bischofsdhron and in Wenigerath during my tour of duty. The castle was always a nice reminder of the history of the area and made me appreciate how fortunate I was to be able to really explore and learn about Germany.

I consider the Mosquito to be a very 'modern ' aircraft design even though it is constructed of wood. The way they used wood is more in line with the way we now use composites. It is also the first modern fighter bomber as we use the term today. I have also seen somewhere that the loss rate was the lowest of any aircraft in the war. A fitting testament to its design.

I fly RC planes, and I like the old school balsa wood planes over the modern foam planes. I can't say which flies better or which is tougher. But I have found if you perform a sudden stop test using the ground. It doesn't matter what the plane is made of the ground always wins.

Aussie version made of Malle root, red gum and Iron bark. Bullet proof plane from factory. if it catches on fire, that fire will last for days.

Great video about my favourite plane. Had the pleasure of talking to a pilot of a Tetse Mosquito (a mossie armed with a quick firing 6 pounder anti tank gun!) many years ago. He told me he felt that the mosquitos wooden construction helped dampen the recoil of such a big gun.

Another great video. I recently read Sidney Camm's biography and its surprising how much time he spent talking to the man at the Ministry. De Havilland probably did the same. Alfred Prices book on the history of the Spitfire goes into some detail about how the RAF only saw the Spitfire as an interim measure until the Westland Whirlwind, with its 4 centrally mounted cannon was ready, and which itself probably only second reserve to the Hawker Tornado, so when RR pulls production on both the Peregrine and the Vulture engines both these planes are basically dead( indecently, chopping the Vulture kills of the Avro Manchester at this time as well ). Hawker do have a back up plan with the Typhoon, but at that time in 1941 the Sabre is so far from being a reliable engine, so one can imagine the man from the Ministry desperately asking De Havilland 'what can you do quickly for us?' Its interesting but in literature the Camelot fables tells us that in time of need the wizard Merlin will always be there to help us. How true that was in 1941.

Ken Dunaway was my 1st ground instructor when I was hired by American Airlines in 1985. He flew Mosquitos in the RAF before the US entered. He said the German fighters could never catch them when they did photo recon. He loved the plane.

"Greetings, this is Greg"! My computer said - I looked up and saw it was about the Mosquito, my favourite WWII bird. I'm in! Thanks Greg for your great material.

The "Wooden Wonder", looking forward to this one Greg, even more than usual.

Thanks a lot for another interesting docu-video. I remember reading that story too, I can't recall which book now. However there are some facts we can repeat. Hughes was trying to sell USAAC/USAAF his "Wooden" Hughes D-2 up until 1943 so there was no way he'd agree to build Mosquito. Not least he had no production facilities so he'd only get his contract cancelled for nothing. Fairchild, a close friend of Hughes, was also almost obsessed with wood but was probably not at all keen to produce something he didn't invent. These were entrepreneurs and inventors with egos larger than Mt. Everest. To be fair, the wooden construction techniques seemed different with Americans keen to use Duramold plywood while Mosquito had what we call composite layering today. There is another important point to mention. Fairchild Company did not necessarily made an incorrect statement about strength but it was of course misleading. British load factor requirements were less than US requirements. US requirements for load factors were based on years of peace time use which was nothing but useless ballast weight during war for an aircraft that may or may not last a year. For example North American asked USAAF to redesign Mustang with British factors to make it more competitive in climb and were allowed to do so. Resulting P-51-H was about 500 lbs lighter in empty, about a very substantial 6-8% less than P51D. Fairchild clearly honed on this difference without explaining why. Considering Canada quickly tooled up and built over 1,100 Mosquitos alone shows what an opportunity was missed with US built Mosquito. As such I don't think the real reason had anything with P-38, not remotely. They are not even aircraft of similar class.

An excellent and fair appraisal of the Mosquito, as you said it was widely used by the RAF during the war and on many daring and dangerous missions, my favourite being Operation Jericho.

If you think this aircraft is beautiful you should check out the de Havilland Hornet. It was a single seater long range fighter version of the Mosquito, developed towards the end of WW2. It was a brilliant aircraft but the RAF thought the war was won and there was no reason to rush it's development as the Mosquito was doing the job. Same engines as the Mossie - but a slimmed down single seat aircraft, with a better power to weight ratio, and hence faster and more manouverable. Eric Brown loved it. Some squadrons were equipped with this phenomenal aircraft ( including carrier versions) and those used in the far East found it faced a problem unique to its type ....termites !