Very close to our April Club night, the speaker booked for the evening advised that he could not attend and we were most grateful to Peter Bickers for stepping into the breach.
Peter gave us a talk on the WW2 Mosquito aircraft, and his talk followed our visit to the Mosquito Museum at Salisbury Hall two years ago.
The Mosquito was operational from 1941 and ruled the skies over Europe for the next three years being the fastest operational aircraft until the arrival of the German jet and rocket aircraft.
The aircraft was designed and built by the company founded by Sir Geoffrey de Havilland who built his first biplane and taught himself to fly in 1909, the year Bleriot flew the Channel.
During the 1930’s, De Havilland produced several unique aircraft including the DH88 Comet, an extremely futuristic twin-engine aeroplane that was built for a race from the UK to Australia in 1934 and completed the trip in the then record breaking time of seventy one hours. During that period, De Havilland tried unsuccessfully to interest the Air Ministry in a fast unarmed bomber based on the Comet.
With the onset of WW2, a proposal was submitted to the Ministry for an unarmed photo reconnaissance/unarmed bomber. This was initially rejected out of hand, but by January 1940 and with the assistance of Air Chief Marshal Freeman, an order for a prototype was issued. By March 1940, before the prototype had been built or flown, a production order for fifty aircraft was placed, Two months later, De Havilland were instructed to include a prototype fighter version and given a fifty-aircraft production order.
With the war going badly and Churchill now in charge, priority for aircraft production was placed under Beaverbrook (who was subsequently elevated to the peerage). He decided new aircraft would disrupt production of Spitfires and Hurricanes and instructed all work on the Mosquito to stop. However, by July he was persuaded to change his mind and work restarted with great urgency. The original order for fifty aircraft was changed to thirty fighters and twenty bombers to reflect the urgent need for Night fighters to combat the German night raids. On 3rd November1940, just 11 months after the commencement of the detailed design, the first prototype was completed and, following ground tests, took to the skies on 25th November, 1940. Apparently, the test flights went well and, with minor modifications, the prototype was ready to commence service trials at Boscombe Down within two months.
From the initial flights, the speed was exceptional and, during trials in January, the Mosquito easily outpaced a Spitfire Mk I, and four weeks later outpaced the latest Spitfire Mk II. During 1941, the first prototype was upgraded with the latest Merlin 77 engines and reached a staggering 440 mph, which was faster than any single seater fighter at that time. Indeed, the aircraft was so rapid that the fighter version was in danger of overshooting when coming up behind enemy bombers as it could not slow down rapidly. To overcome this disadvantage, a Heath Robinson-design of air brake was deployed that located peripherally about the fuselage, making the aircraft look something like a frilled lizard. However, it was discarded when tests showed lowering the undercarriage was just as effective.
The fuselage was built in two longitudinal halves and made from a sandwich of outer surfaces of one sixteenth inch plywood glued on each side of a balsa wood inner, making a total thickness of seven sixteenths of an inch. The construction was extremely light and the two halves could be man-handled. Each half was fitted out with cabling, hydraulics, controls and electronics before being glued together. Apertures were then cut for hatches, bomb bay, and the wings. The wings were also of wooden construction and completely fitted out. Two 1,500bhp Merlin engines were used to provide the aircraft with its superb performance. Demand rose quickly as the RAF squadrons realised what a flexible and versatile aircraft this was and production rates reached one hundred and sixty Mosquitos per month. Some eight thousand were built during the war, most in the UK, but also twelve hundred in Canada and some two hundred and twenty in Australia.
The first Mosquitos to enter service were the photo reconnaissance version; these were unarmed and would range all over Europe as far as Poland in the east and the Mediterranean in the south. They would normally fly between 23,000ft. and 28,000ft. and some were fitted with a pressurised cabin and could reach over 38,000ft. Providing pilots were careful to avoid leaving a contrail they were virtually undetectable and certainly very difficult to catch.
The night fighter versions were introduced from January, 1942 and were soon used on intruder missions to support our heavy bombers on missions into Germany. They were equipped with airborne radar to detect and home in on German night fighters. Despite all of the advantages the Mosquito had, it was a deadly and dangerous campaign of hunters and hunted. Even when the pilot had the enemy in his sights, debris or an exploding enemy aircraft could easily damage his aircraft and they were a long way from home. Peter showed some examples of badly scorched and damaged Mosquitos that had flown through an exploding fireball and still made it back to their bases.
As originally conceived by De Havilland, the bomber version was unarmed and could carry a 4,000lb bomb load at high cruising speeds. This was more than a B17 could carry when attacking distant targets such as Berlin. It was not uncommon for Mosquito bombers to fly over two hundred missions which was unheard of in heavy four-engine bomber squadrons. Losses on the first one thousand Mosquito missions were only eleven aircraft. Peter put the loss rate into context by showing that Mosquito bombers flew 397,895 missions with a loss of two hundred and fifty four aircraft and five hundred and eight crew, whereas the Lancaster’s flew 156,192 missions with a loss of 3,340 aircraft and 23,380 crew. For aircrew, the Mosquito was, therefore, the plane of choice!
The Mosquito was the first multi-role aircraft in the RAF and, besides the roles of photo reconnaissance, night fighter and bomber, it was also used as a pathfinder, fighter bomber, coastal attack aircraft, U-boat hunter, carrier-borne torpedo aircraft, and as a top secret courier transport to Sweden. It also was fitted with a mini version of the bouncing dam busting bomb for use against the Tirpitz, This would have been a suicide mission and, fortunately, 617 squadron sunk the ship with tall boy bombs in 1944.
The Mosquito remained in service until the early 1950s when it was superseded by faster jet aircraft. Unfortunately, the last flying example in this country crashed in 1997 and there are only two examples now operational, one in New Zealand and the other in the U.S.A.
Peter's was a most interesting talk, full of facts and figures, and we were most grateful to him for his presentation