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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