At the early part of the Second World War, 1939, '40, '41, a lot of brilliant British
engineers and manufacturers were coming up with their own ideas to win the war.
One of the ideas that was put forward was from Sir Geoffrey de Havilland.
Now a bomber stereotypically is a big aeroplane that carries bombs, obviously
it needs a defence - machine guns in the front of the back - but we were losing young lads in Bomber
Command very very fast indeed. So Geoffrey de Havilland had a very big blue sky think.
He decided he was going to make a bomber but he was going to make it
completely unarmed. The defence of this bomber was going to be its speed.
Mr de Havilland made some ideas, put some drawings down,
and sent them off to the government. The government had a look at him but like so many
other designs at the time Mosquito - as was going to be the name - was chosen to be discontinued.
Mr de Havilland was not happy. He had his manufacturers, had his own factory, had his
own workers, and he wasn't short of a bob or two. So he decided to go ahead with his own project,
he believed in his idea. Now everybody at this time was handing in metal - pots,
pans, railings, and gate posts to get melted down to turn into airplanes like Spitfires.
But Sir Geoffrey de Havilland had his idea that he would make his aeroplane out of wood.
Construction was of wood and this was revolutionary for first-class
British aircraft. But wood was chosen for three main reasons: for quick production,
to use fresh material supplies, and to employ a new group of labor.
Wood construction also gave this plane more buoyancy in the event of coming down on water.
And in place of the clang of metal is the sound of carpentry, in place of sparks there's sawdust.
Nothing strange about a wooden aeroplane a long time ago, but this is the Second World War, we're
in modern times. If this airplane is going to go up against a German fighter like the Messerschmidt
109, a lethal aeroplane, the wood is going to have to be very streamlined and very strong.
He started experimenting with very thin layers of veneer, some balsa wood, pressing them down
with some fish-based glue over some upside down jigs or books, looking like an upside down boat.
He pressed them over and moulded them down, popped them off, and he had two semi-circles,
put the two semi-circles together you have one long tube or fuselage if you will. Just
enough room for one pilot, his navigator and a lot of bombs. He'd got a fuselage.
He decided to try the same with wings but of course if this airplane is going to be
fast you need powerful engines, it's going to be manoeuvrable to get away from the German fighters.
Sticking to the wings, not one but two 27 litre V12 Rolls-Royce Merlin engines, and two as you
can see of the biggest propellers he could possibly fit on the little wooden airplane.
If you follow the trajectory of the propellers down you can see only just misses the nose of
the airplane. And the little wooden bomber ends up with 3,000 horsepower.
It rapidly went into production and they rearranged the production shops to enable
as many Mosquitoes to be built as possible, and that resulted in there being four production lines
and the various parts the shelves of the fuselage and the wing boxes were brought together from
other sites, mostly from places where there had been furniture manufacturers. And at the peak,
one aeroplane would emerge from each line each day - that was the scale of production that was
was achieved, because it was wartime and things were sort of desperate.
Thousands of men whose peacetime job was making beds and chairs are now workers in
aircraft production. Thousands of women too are working all out on the world's fastest warplane.
Now if you were learning to fly in the war time and you were moving on to Bomber Command,
you would need a twin rating. Obviously flying an aeroplane with two engines to get the twin rating
you might learn to fly in the Airspeed Oxford, which we also have here at Imperial War Museum
Duxford, or the Avro Anson down on the floor, aeroplanes that are quite old-fashioned built,
covered in Irish linen, room for two or three guys, perhaps a couple of machine guns,
and with total power output of less than 600 horsepower. The mosquito had 3,000 horsepower,
slick down the fuselage, no pop rivets, no screws, completely aerodynamic.
A prototype was made - W4050 - and one or two other prototypes were sent here to Duxford,
to the air fighting development unit outside of the south side of Hangar Three. Nothing new about
a new aeroplane showing up outside on the grass for Duxford for testing: a little twin-engine
bomber. But this aeroplane - no armament? The test pilots were scratching their heads.
Reading a few of the pilot's notes as best they could they took off to test the Mosquito as it
became known. Not only did the test pilots come back with a wry smile because not only was it the
fastest bomber they had ever flown, it was the fastest aeroplane they had ever known.
And in fact I had the privilege of being asked by the Chief of the Air Staff then to go and fly the
prototype Mosquito. I think it was February 1941 and i was in fact only the third pilot
ever to fly a Mosquito. So i was happy to fly the aircraft and overjoyed at its high performance.
Do you remember that occasion? Yes very well indeed because it was
so much higher performance than the Beaufighters, which was a outstanding war machine,
and the Mosquito was a real joy to fly and of course subsequently proved so to so many pilots.
So eventually they said let's test this thing against our best, let's test it against a
Spitfire. The contemporary Spitfire in 1941 was a Mark V Spitfire. A Mark V Spitfire was
tested against a Mosquito to see if the Mosquito could keep up. It was the other way around. At
no altitude could a Mark V Spitfire stay with a Mosquito. The Mosquito was put into service
with flying colours. The first Mosquitoes off the production line were going into Bomber Command and
with a slightly extended bomb bay as you can see ours has a slightly extended bomb bay a little
bit of a fat bit at the bottom of the fuselage, that Mosquito could carry the same average bomb
load as a B-17 Flying Fortress. A B-17 obviously carrying 13 very heavily armed machine guns 10
very braving American lads. A Mosquito, little aeroplane made out of wood was carrying its pilot,
its navigator and could carry a 4,000 pound bomb load. Initially the Mosquito had the lowest loss
rate of any aeroplane in bomber command such was its performance, even without armament.
What was it about the Mosquito that lent itself particularly? Well it could do anything - it could
carry a four thousand pound bomb we used to carry four or five hundred pounds. We had drop tanks we
could we could fly for six and a half nearly seven hours. So we had quite a good range and speed,
if we wanted to put it on we could go faster than most of their fighters, anyway they'd have
to come down from a height and in the dark they couldn't see us to that extent. And being wood
their radar detection didn't find us very easily because there was no reflection back from it
it was you know. It was a sort of aircraft that you you felt perfectly confident in
and you thought if you were master of all and nothing could could touch you you know.
So Sir Geoffrey de Havilland and the design team decided to say well if it's that fast
let's try it with some guns in the nose, let's see if it doesn't slow it down much. So,
in the nose they placed four 303 British machine guns, Browning machine guns,
but a 303 round is not as powerful as the American 50 caliber a 303 bullet is about
less than half the size of a 50 cal about the size of the end of a little finger so as well as
that to give the Mosquito a little bit more sting they also put four 20 millimeter Hispano cannons
underneath its chin. A fair bit of firepower that Mosquito became the fighter bomber. The FB6
and was found that it only actually slowed the Mosquito down by about 15 knots, so in effect even
the slowest Mosquito was still doing 380 miles an hour with that amount of sting at the front.
Now obviously not painted like ours is, i'll explain that in a minute, the Mosquitoes that
went onto Fighter Command and Fighter Bombers and intruder units with the machine guns and
the cannons in the nose were painted sort of blue grey underneath like a dolphin and with
grey and green camouflage on the top. Painted and armed thus off to Fighter Bomber Command and also
into intruder units, Mosquitoes waged war on the Gestapo attacking Gestapo HQs everywhere,
all over Europe in Copenhagen Mosquitoes attacked the Gestapo HQ, flying literally as our Mosquito
is portrayed about 30 feet from the ground, below the rooftops, and down the streets,
throwing bombs quite literally straight through the front door of the Gestapo HQs. Mosquito
pilots loved their aeroplanes nothing really could catch them. Unfortunately in late 1941
an aeroplane had come about called the Focke Wolf 190, invented by a gentleman called Kurt Tank and
at medium altitude a Focke Wolf could catch a Mosquito and became its nemesis.
But in fact even fitted with the with the 21 Merlin engines the Mosquito at high level was
still very fast it was as fast as a Spitfire with comparable engines and therefore 190 interceptions
were by no means inevitable, but if they if they did take place you were pretty well for it.
However Mosquitoes still were very very uncatchable aeroplanes until
the advent of the Messerschmidt 262 Jet. Mosquitoes were the first MRCA,
multi-role combat aircraft. They could be turned to anything and excelled at everything. They did
later on armed with a huge cannon underneath its chin, a six-pound cannon firing a trajectory about
that big, against anti-shipping, firing one round every other second. Also armed
with rockets just underneath its wings also for anti-shipping. Mosquitoes without any
armament at all and painted sky blue went into photo reconnaissance units, flying up to 35 000
feet and well over 400 miles an hour obviously very uninterceptable at that height and speed.
There were 7,781 mosquitoes made between 1940 and 1950, but they ended their career
painted like this as a target tug from 1950 to 1962 dragging around along windsock so early
cold war jets like F-86 Sabres, Meteors, Vampires and Hunters could fire at it for target practice.
But I prefer to remember the Mosquito painted like a dolphin,
armed to the teeth screaming down streets and scaring the life out of the Gestapo.
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