It was both feared and admired by it enemies but when the design for a fast unarmed bomber
was proposed to the British air ministry it was met with scepticism and the project was
very nearly scrapped before it had started in favour of the existing aircraft of the time.
And yet it became one of the most versatile aircraft of the war doing everything from
Photo reconnaissance to U-boat hunting, night fighter, pathfinder and secret mail courier
to name a few. It became famous for extremely daring low-level precision bombing raids against
individual buildings even in the middle of cities and was the scourge of the German
forces for its low-level high-speed attacks against anything deemed worthy of hitting,
this is the de Haviland Mosquito and its effect on the fight against Nazi Germany.
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The Mosquito was an unusual aircraft in world war 2 because it’s airframe was built almost entirely
of wood, unlike almost all the other fighters and bombers which were made from mostly aluminium.
But the main feature of the Mosquito was that was highly streamlined and had a minimal crew of two
with little in the way of defensive armament apart from the machine guns and cannon in the nose.
This was opposite to the philosophy of the bigger bombers like the B-17’s and Lancasters which had
up 10 crew, tail guns, turrets and side guns on the B-17 all of which made them heavy and slow and
easy targets for fighters and anti-aircraft guns. This was something that would be borne out after
the war as heavily armed bombers were phased out and high-speed unarmed bombers became the norm.
The Mosquitos could carry a similar payload to a B-17 but was as fast or faster then the fighters
sent up to attack them, though it was limited to just a couple bombs types so the B-17 was
more flexible as to what it could carry but the Mosquito went on to have the lowest
losses of any aircraft in bomber command. The reason why it was made from wood was
down to its creator Geoffrey de Havilland who had a history of using wood and making
high-speed streamlined planes. His DH.88 Comet, a twin-engine two-seater was built for the England
to Australia air race in 1934 and used newly developed synthetic bonding resins to create a
lightweight almost entirely wooden aircraft that not only took the air industry by surprise, it
also went on to win the race and over the next few years set many new long-distance speed records.
By 1936 the British air ministry was looking for a twin-engine medium bomber.
de Havilland had already designed a four-engine transatlantic mail plane called the Albatross
which was constructed using wood with the techniques learned from the Comet.
De Haviland proposed a twin-engine bomber powered by Rolls Royce Merlin engines as they promised
greater future development but without armaments and again made from wood. He said that the reduced
weight and highly streamlined fuselage without guns and turrets to create drag would make for
a very fast bomber with good handling that could use its speed and manoeuvrability
for surprise attacks and quick get always. He also reasoned that in a war footing there would
be likely shortages of key metals like aluminium and the skilled metal workers to form it but
there was an adequate supply of wood an abundance of skilled woodworkers, carpenters and cabinet
makers. Although the air ministry was sceptical of the wooden construction at first, seeing it
as step backwards but they were more worried about the lack of armaments than anything. De Havilland
is said to have told them, “it’s the fastest bomber in the world, it must have some use”.
Only after a prototype had been built and tested for reconnaissance and light bombing
and shown to be to faster than the current Spitfire with a top speed of over 400mph
or 643km/h were some of the doubts quelled. Soon after a fast long-range fighter prototype
added four .303 Browning machineguns and four 20mm cannon in the nose
along with Airborne Interception radar. This would keep the drag down and would make it
into a day or night fighter and it was this fighter version that kept the project alive.
Later in the war, they would be equipped with eight wing-mounted 60lb rockets combined with
the four 20mm cannons and two 500lb bombs giving them the equivalent firepower to that
of a broadside from a light naval cruiser. The largest bomb they would carry was the
4000lb or 1800kg blockbuster also known as a cookie. Just one was carried by each aircraft
but was capable of levelling an entire street or medium-sized factory and was very effective at
blowing roof tiles off which allowed small incendiary bombs to enter the buildings.
By June 1941 the Mosquito had become one of the fastest operational planes in the world when
it was demonstrated to several US air force top brass who were very impressed by its performance.
Plans were made to licence production between the UK, Australia and Canada but when manufacturers
drawings were shown to US aircraft companies including Beech, Curtiss-Wright, Fairchild,
Fleetwings, and Hughes the consensus among them was that the wooden construction was a
drawback and “not suitable for the manufacture of efficient aeroplanes”. They also believed that the
twin-engined Lockheed P-38 Lightning could do the same duties with a trusted aluminium
airframe, so no US licenses were pursued. The RAF were much quicker to realize that
even with a wooden airframe the mosquito could be a very valuable weapon in their armoury.
Initially, they were used for secret reconnaissance missions which they
continued throughout the war and making them the most productive photo-reconnaissance aircraft.
Soon they started doing high-speed medium and low-level attacks against
pinpoint targets like factories, infrastructure and individual buildings,
a role which they would become famous for. Flying in below enemy radar at under 50 ft that's
15 meters or less, there were numerous reports of branches and telephone cables wrapped around
the tail wheel when they got back to base. These raids allowed the RAF to do things
they couldn’t with the big high attitude raids with the Lancaster bombers and alike,
that is precision raids in the days long before GPS or laser-guided bombs to attack an individual
building and in some case just part of a building. One of the first precision raids was on the
Philips works in Eindhoven in December 1942. This factory produced radios and Vacuum tubes used in
radar and was a leading research centre for radar which the Germans had taken over and were believed
to be developing electronic countermeasures. The factory was surrounded by housing so to
protect the dutch citizens but cause as much damage as possible to the factory
the raid had to be done in daylight and at a low level. 10 Mosquitos along with
47 Venturas and 36 Bostons bombers were used but the Mosquitos had to be careful because
they were much faster than the others and risked running into them on the approach.
The raid was a success but 9 Venturas, 4 bostons and one Mosquito were lost.
Later, 10 Mostquios returned in March 1943 to slow the repair process but it proved the
value of low-level precision bombing with the aircraft being difficult targets to hit at very
low levels with anti-aircraft guns and fighters. The Mosquito, in particular, showed that surprise
high speed attacks at very low levels at almost rooftop heights was very effective.
This technique would be used many more times including the February 1944 operation
Jerico on the Amion prison camp holding French resistance fighters.
Here 18 Mosquitos took part and attacked in waves to destroy the 11ft or 3.4m exterior prison wall
and then the guard's room to allow the prisoners to escape.
They flew in at down to 10 feet or 3 meters across the open fields dropping 500lb or 230kg bombs
fitted with 11 second time delay fuse to allow the planes to escape before the bomb exploded.
These slid along the ground until they hit the walls and exploded after the time delay.
The following planes would then bomb the guard's room at the side of the
prison to allow the prisoners to escape. The mission was a great success with over
two hundred prisoners escaping but two fighter escorts and two mosquitos including that of the
leader group captain Pickard were lost. Other Mosquito raids included the bombing of the
radio station in Berlin on January 30th 1943 just as Reichsmarschall Herman Goering was about to
address the German people during the celebrations of Hilter’s 10th anniversary of his rise to power
and then a couple of hours later when propaganda minister Goebbels was about to do the same.
The damage wasn’t great but it knocked Goering off the air for over an hour
and Goebbels had a backing track of merlin engines zooming overhead along with bombs exploding.
This was a huge propaganda coup for the allies and sent the message to everyone listening that
virtually nowhere was safe from the RAF. The level of the precision increased
even more with the bombing of the Gestapo headquarters in built-up areas of Copenhagen
and Aarhus in Denmark and Olso in Norway to destroy valuable records held on the
resistance movements of those countries but with minimal damage to surrounding buildings.
The Gestapo held prisoners in the buildings as human shields
but the Mosquitos managed to destroy the Gestapo areas of the building but mostly avoid the
prisoners though some were killed in the attacks. Goering later said to a group of German
aircraft makers that he was green and yellow with envy at how the British who could more
easily afford the aluminium than the Germans but could build a beautiful aircraft out of wood and
make it faster and faster and that after the war he was going to buy a British made
radio he would have something that always worked. In response to the “Political humiliation" caused
by the mosquito, Goering ordered special Luftwaffe units the Jagdgeschwader 50 to be created to
combat them but this proved ineffective as it only had 19 aircraft and gave rise the belief by some
in the Luftwaffe that the wooden frame gave weak radar signal returns though this was never proved.
After many of the low-level raids against their allotted targets and if they had any ammo left,
the Mosquito crews were given a free rein to go after any target
they deemed worthy on the flight back to base. A favourite was to shoot up
any trains the saw as they were virtually all carrying military supplies or troops.
But it wasn’t just low-level bombing, the mosquito carried the 4000lb blockbuster
or cookie that had to be dropped from above 6000ft to avoid the shockwave.
It was also a pathfinder using its speed to go in and ring the target area with flares so the
big bomber formations could aim more accurately. The Light Night Striking Force was an offshoot
of the pathfinder role and went on perform Mosquito only nuisance raids which not only
caused a lot of damage with the blockbuster bombs were also used to divert German
fighters away from the main big bomber raids. Later in the war, there was an increasing number
all mosquito raids of over 100 aircraft on larger german cities and starting 20th
Feb 1945 mosquito only groups attacked berlin for 36 consecutive nights.
Sometimes they would be caught in searchlights, something that for the big slower bombers was
usually fatal but the Mosquito could dive and turn quickly to shake off the lights.
The Mosquitos were among the first to use blind bombing aids like Gee, Oboe which
used radio transponders to accurately measure distances at night and the H2S radar which was
the first airborne ground scanning radar system to identify targets in all weathers and at night.
It also reprised the earlier role of the de Havilland Albatros mail plane becoming
a high-speed courier for secret mail and VIP passengers, one of which could travel
in the converted bomb bay. One notable passenger was Niels Bohr the physicist
who was evacuated from Stockholm in 1943 to England to join the British mission
to work on the Manhatten Project in the US. However, a problem with Bohr’s oxygen supply
meant he nearly died during the flight, the pilot realising he was no longer responding to the
intercom dropped down to a lower altitude and he recovered. Afterwards when asked how he felt, he
said he slept like ababy through the whole flight. In 1944 a photo-reconnaissance Mosquito
was stripped of its cameras and flew from RAF Benson in South Oxfordshire
to Moscow in four hours as a courier plane for the Moscow conference between Churchill and Stalin.
At sea, the Mosquito was also proving itself as a deadly opponent for the
U-boats and smaller surface ships. A modified version called the Mk
17 or Tsetse after the vicious biting insect the tsetse fly replaced the four 20mm canons
with a Molins 6 pounder 57mm canon anti-tank gun with an auto-loader along with extra armour
to protect the crew from heavily armed U-boats. The shells were armour piercing but non-explosive
and aimed to hit the water just at the side of the U-boat. This would make them level out and
go clean through the hull under the waterline, then ricochet inside before bursting out the
other side. Most of these were in coastal waters as the ships were heading in and out
of ports and were responsible for sinking eight U-boats and numerous other smaller vessels.
As the V1 flying bomb offensive started against London in June 1944, mosquitos were
sent in to identify and destroy the launch sites in northern France. They were also one of the few
propeller-driven aircraft that were fast enough to catch up and shoot down the V1’s in-flight.
As a night fighter, it was especially good, some of the Mosquitos of 100 Group RAF using radio
countermeasures to track down the low UHF and VHF signals broadcast by german night fighters
as they tried to merge with Allied bomber streams. Night-time raids were also done against german
airfields but they soon learned to switch off the landing lights until returning aircraft were just
about to land. So the mosquitos would loiter around the near the airfield then when the
landing lights were turned on and the aircraft was touching down they would swoop in to attack.
257 german night fighters were shot down by Mosquitos from December 1943 to April 1945
and 487 german aircraft were destroyed by Mosquitos during the war.
The last raid of the war by the RAF was conducted by 126 mosquitos against the german port of Kiel
and the Keil canal on 2nd May 1945 to stop german forces making their way to Norway
and carrying on the war from there. Here they dropped the last 4000lb blockbuster bombs of
the war devastating the port. Over forty versions of the Mosquito
were built with a total number of over 7700 aircraft which fought in all areas of the war
from Western Europe to the eastern front and in the Pacific and although there were some problems
with the wooden frames and the resins holding them together in the hot and humid tropical fast east,
in the west they were to the pilots that flew them among the very of any combat aircraft of WW2.
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