The de Havilland DH.98 Mosquito

Great Britain's wartime might can easily be summed up with three airplanes, planes that have become so famous that their names invoke images of a battered nation's resolve to fight back against overwhelming odds - Spitfire, Mosquito and Lancaster. Each filled a niche important to the allied victory.

Background

Throughout the 1930s the de Havilland Aircraft Company had emerged as one of Britain's leading aircraft manufactures. Their tube and fabric biplanes served as trainers, business planes, small airliners and pleasure craft. Their famous series of Moth airplanes could be found in almost even country of the Commonwealth.

In February 1934 de Havilland construct three DH.88 Comet high-speed mail planes to compete in the coveted MacRobertson Air Race between Mildenhall, England and Melborne, Australia. Unlike de Havilland's previous designs, the Comet featured all-wood construction; a wooden framework covered with a thin layer of spruce plywood. Close attention was paid to aerodynamics, resulting in a fully cantilevered wing, enclosed cockpit and retractable landing gear.

Grosvenor House reached Melbourne with an official air time of 71 hours 18 seconds - winning the rally. Black Magic was forced to withdraw in India after poor fuel caused serious engine problems. The unnamed G-ACSR, hindered by a serious oil leak, finished in fourth place.

In 1936, de Havilland designed the four-engine DH.91 Albatross to meet a British Air Ministry specification for a trans-Atlantic mail plane. Like the smaller Comet the Albatross featured an aerodynamically clean airframe of wooden construction. Unlike the Comet, the DH.91 employed a monocoque construction technique that saw balsa wood sandwiched between sheets of birch. The wood was then laid inside a concrete mould of one half of the fuselage and pressed to shape. Once the halves were formed, they were glued together and covered with a layer of doped fabric. The resulting fuselage was like an egg - incredibly strong but also very light.

Accidents during World War 2 claimed the six operational Albatrosses, but not before they connected England with parts of Western Europe and Iceland.

Development

Excited by the results of the MacRobertson Air Race, de Havilland approached the Royal Air Force (RAF) to propose a high-speed bomber based on the air racer. The Air Ministry rejected the proposal.

A couple years later the Air Ministry issued specifications for new bombers. This time, de Havilland responded with an adaptation of the Albatross, powered by two of the new Rolls-Royce Merlin engines and armed with three gun turrets. It appeared that with two engines it wouldn't meet the performance specifications, so the design was revised to feature four. When it appeared that the specifications still couldn't be met, the engineers took a drastic change of direction. Instead making their bomber bigger and heavier, they would get their speed by going smaller and lighter.

The DH.98 design that finally emerged was a small, twin-engine airframe made almost exclusively of wood. Powered by two Merlin engines, and crewed by two, it was expected to carry 1,000lbs (454 kgs) of bombs 1,500 miles (2,500 kms). Most impressively, it would do so at 400 miles per hour (650km/h).

Once again, the sceptical Air Ministry rejected de Havilland's proposal, citing its wooden construction and lack of armament and armour. Undeterred, the company continued developing the plane until they were able to secure a contract for 50 examples in March 1940. Arguably the greatest foe to the Mosquito was Arthur 'Bomber' Harris, Air Officer Commanding-In-Chief of RAF Bomber Command. Harris preferred strategic area bombing and fought strongly against any activities that could draw resources away from his fleets of heavy bombers (Handley-Page Halifaxs and Avro Lancasters).

Construction was delayed by the Battle of Britain, the prototype DH.98 Mosquito took to the sky for the first time on November 25, 1940. As the bright yellow prototype began testing it quickly bested the legendary Spitfire. Twice the size and twice as powerful, the Mosquito had a top speed of 392 mph (627km/h) - 32 mph (51km/h) faster than the Spitfire.

Testing also showed that the Mosquito had the capacity and power to carry 4,000lbs (1,816 kgs) of bombs - four times the designer's original estimates. To do so, the tail plane was increased in size, the nacelles lengthened to provide stability and the wingspan increased by 20 inches (0.50 m).

Production

Constructing a Mosquito was a truly international affair, with raw materials being supplied by Canada (birch) and Ecuador (balsa). The thin wooden veneer was prepared in Marshfield, Wisconsin by Roddis Manufacturing In England former furniture makers began assembling the many smaller parts of the airframe. In the town of High Wycombe, Buckinghamshire, where there was an established furniture manufacturing industry, components such as flaps, tails, wing leading edges and bomb bay doors were made. J.B. Heath and Dancer & Hearne assembled the 54 foot (16.4m) long wing spars. Dancer & Hearne also prepared most of the wood used in Mosquito production.

British production of the Mosquito eventually reached 6,435. Overseas production was also accomplished in Canada and Australia with 1,134 and 212 examples respectively. Although Canadian and Australian Mosquitoes had minor variations based on locally available materials and equipment, the basic airframe remained the same as those built in England and unchanged throughout production.

Military Service

Wartime service of the de Havilland Mosquito quite literally fills volumes, and dozens, if not hundreds of books have been published over the last 65 years doing exactly that.

Once in operational service, Mosquitoes crews fell in love with their new planes. Not only were they manoeuvrable but their speed gave the crews an added sense of security, for if the enemy couldn't get close to them, they couldn't be shot down. The Mosquito was quickly adapted to fulfill a variety of rolls. The first major change being the development of an armed fighter-bomber variant. The Perspex bomb-aimer's nose cone was replaced with four 20mm Hispano cannons and four .303 calibre Browning machine guns.

The Mosquito's versatility led it to serve not only as a day and night-time bomber or fighter, but as a radar equipped night fighter, a path finder (marking targets for hundreds of heavy bombers following overhead), anti-shipping (attacking surface vessels with rockets) and as high altitude photo reconnaissance camera ships.

Encouraged by the speed of their mounts, Mosquito crews altered their tactics, specializing in hit-and-run missions.

On January 30, 1943, as Commander-in-Chief of the Luftwaffe, Reichsmarschall Hermann Goring prepared to address a parade commemorating the 10th anniversary of the Nazi party's election to power, three Mosquitoes roared over the rooftops of Berlin and attacked the broadcasting station. Goering's speech was delayed by an hour.

Operation Jericho was an ambitious attack against the Amiens prison in occupied France. Nineteen Mosquitoes participated in the February 18, 1944 raid, which allowed 258 prisoners to escape. Many of the escapees were members of the French resistance facing execution the following day.

Two months later and the Dutch resistance requested a similar attack against the Kunstzaal Kleizkamp Art Gallery in The Hague, where members of the Gestapo were storing the Dutch Central Population Registry. The raid was carried out by six Mosquitoes, dropping high explosives and incendiary bombs, was so precise that civilians waiting in line for bread across the street were unharmed. The bombs however, completely destroyed the registry.

The Dutch resistance requested another raid against the Gestapo in Copenhagen, but it wasn't until March 21, 1945 that it was finally carried out. Originally deemed too dangerous for the RAF, 20 Mosquitoes, escorted by 30 Mustangs struck the Gestapo headquarters in three waves. Once again the pin-point accuracy of these low level raids succeeded in seriously damaging the building, allowing prisoners to escape and hampering the German's activities afterwards. Unfortunately one of the Mosquitoes struck a tall lamp-post and crashed into a nearby school. Some planes in the third wave mistakenly attacked this burning building. This resulted in the deaths of 86 children, 8 teachers, 10 nuns and 21 other civilians.

Post-War Military Service

With the cessation of hostilities all military forces began massive cutbacks in man power and equipment. Most aircraft went immediately into storage to await their fates. High performance fighters and large bombers, were of little use on the civilian market were quickly cut up and melted down. Most combat veteran Mosquitoes were cut up and their wooden airframes burnt.

Some low time airframes were supplied to smaller air forces as governments worked to rebuild or reequip with modern aircraft. Sweden, Belgium, Burma, China, Czechoslovakia, Dominican Republic, France, Israel, Norway, Poland, South Africa, Turkey and Yugoslavia all received Mosquitoes.

Mosquitoes continued to serve with the RAF around the globe until the mid-1950s. Before then, Mosquitoes had been operated primarily as target tugs, although a lesser number of specialized examples saw service.

Reference: Wikipedia

Survivors

The Mosquito's all wood construction was susceptible to extremes in weather, especially when left unprotected for long periods of time. As a result, those Mosquitoes that were left to languish outdoors quickly succumbed to the elements, deteriorating and rotting until finally hauled off to the junk yard, or more commonly, burnt. Most of the Mosquitoes that survive to this day are late-production examples that never saw combat and were quickly acquired by collectors or museums before they could deteriorate.

According to The Mosquito Page (www.mossie.org), there are 36 known survivors in the world; USA (10), UK (8), New Zealand (7), Canada (5), Australia (3), South Africa (1), Belgium (1) and Norway (1). A 37th Mosquito may exist in China, but its identity, condition and whether or not it's even a real Mosquito is unclear. The condition of these aircraft varies widely. Some are beautifully restored and on display in museums, others are being restored, some have been in storage for decades and others are little more than a collection of parts.

Reference: www.mossie.org