The story is simply magical, otherwise you cannot call it a miraculous transformation of a miracle into a monster. But in reality for Germany "Mosquito" became a headache that they could not neutralize.
But it all started very, very sad.
In the mid-30s, when tensions were growing by leaps and bounds, the De Hevilland firm began work on a certain project, which it turned out to be realized exactly by 1938. That is, Europe was already divided with might and main by those who could afford it, and before the Second World War there was nothing left. But this was not yet known, but the essence of the matter was completely different.
The most interesting thing is that there was no need to develop De Hevilland at all. On the paper. Great Britain had as many as four twin-engine bombers, theoretically covering absolutely the entire niche in the Royal Air Force. Blenheim, Whitley, Wellington and Hempden.
Here you can throw stones at this four (especially in "Whitley" and "Hampden"), but they were. Proven, capable of performing the assigned tasks (or not very capable). But there were all-metal bomb carriers in Britain.
And here Sir Jeffrey De Hevilland is running around with a project of some kind of wooden structure (fi, last century), and even with Rolls-Royce motors. Motors not driven and very indistinct. It was then that the "Merlin" diamond sparkled with all its facets, and in the beginning they were very worn out with it.
Plus, Sir Jeffrey constantly put pressure on the brains of defense officials, proving that in the event of a war, duralumin in a belligerent country would become 100% scarce, and the woodworking industry, on the contrary, would be unloaded. The veracity of Sir De Havilland's calculations was soon confirmed.
As well as the fact that of the aforementioned four, only Wellington turned out to be more or less a combat aircraft. The rest, sadly to state, turned out to be outright flying junk. This was especially shown by the Japanese, cutting out all the "Blenheims" in Southeast Asia in just a month.
In general, the war for the British bomber aviation began, to put it mildly, not very well. And then there's Sir Geoffrey with his piece of wood …
But Jeffrey De Havilland was a very gifted man. And in 1938 he built the DH.95 Flamingo.
The Flamingo, however, was all-metal. The car was designed to carry 12-17 passengers and had a range of more than 2000 km, and a maximum speed of 390 km / h.
Well, Sir Jeffrey, just in case (well, yes, almost by accident), gave the instruction to carry out approximate calculations for converting the liner into a bomber. Actually, the Germans did this in general easily and naturally, than the British are worse?
Redesigned. With 1,000 kg of bombs, the plane could fly 2,400 km at an average speed of 350 km / h. Plus 5 machine guns for defense. In general, this is how the Albermal turned out, which, although it went into production, turned out to be probably the worst British bomber.
Sir Geoffrey continued with the tenacity of a woodpecker to hammer the idea of a high-speed wooden bomber. Moreover, his plans got a new round thanks to the work on "Albermal", and De Havilland decided to get rid of airborne defensive weapons altogether in favor of speed.
By the way, in addition to saving weight, they also voiced … saving people! Machine guns can protect a bomber from fighters, but anti-aircraft artillery is powerless here. Meanwhile, the development of anti-aircraft guns hinted that there would be no easy walk. And here is a direct calculation: the loss of two crew members of such a bomber or 6-7 crew members of a four-engine bomber.
Meanwhile, facilitated by the removal of defensive rifle installations and their gunners, the bomber will become more high-altitude, high-speed and maneuverable, which will allow it to easily evade both fighter attacks and enemy anti-aircraft fire.
Of course, only practice could confirm the correctness of De Havilland's calculations. That is, war.
And she did not keep herself waiting. And when the German air defense in the person of anti-aircraft batteries and fighters slightly thinned the formation of the British bomber aviation, here in the military department they seriously thought about the proposal of De Havilland. Well, the Messerschmitts turned out to be too fast.
At the end of 1939, the De Havilland firm presented three new projects of a solid-wood unarmed bomber: two with Merlin engines and one with the latest Griffins.
According to calculations, the maximum speed of any of the variants with a load of 454 kg of bombs exceeded 640 km / h. In fact, the only fighter that could somehow oppose the De Havilland plane in terms of speed, oddly enough, in 1940 was the Soviet MiG-1. The rest are doubtful.
In the end, it worked. And the prototype aircraft went into construction with two Rolls-Royce Merlin RM3SM engines with a capacity of 1280 hp. at an altitude of 3700 m and 1215 hp at an altitude of 6150 m.
There was a small trick in the design, simply impossible for designers from other countries. The design of the three-layer upholstery of the wing and fuselage was applied, which made it possible to radically reduce the number of reinforcing stringers, frames and ribs.
The upper and lower skin layers were made of plywood, and the middle layer was made of light balsa with spruce power pads. Balsa is the lightest tree that grows in South America (from which Thor Heyerdahl built his Kon-Tiki raft), and spruce is a Canadian black spruce, whose viscous and resilient wood has long been used in marine business.
Everything was glued together under pressure with formaldehyde glue, the lining of the car was easily putty and vyskurivat before painting, after which it was pasted over with canvas. Since there were practically no seams, hence the excellent aerodynamic qualities.
It came to pass, and in March 1940 the Ministry of Aviation signed a contract with "De Havilland" for the construction of 50 reconnaissance bombers. However, force majeure circumstances intervened in the form of problems in North Africa and Northern Europe and the deafening splash of Dunkirk.
All British efforts focused on the production of Hurricane and Spitfire fighters and Wellington, Whitley and Blenheim bombers.
Mosquito also fell under the distribution. De Havilland actually performed a miracle by persuading Minister Beaverbrook not to stop production of Mosquito. In return, Sir Jeffrey promised to simplify the design of the aircraft so much that nothing could interfere with the construction of the first stage aircraft, plus De Hevilland, as a kind of compensation, promised to organize the repair of Hurricane aircraft and Merlin engines by the firm.
November 25, 1940 was the birthday of the Mosquito. It was on this day that the chief pilot of the firm Jeffrey De Havilland Jr. (all three sons of Sir Jeffrey worked as test pilots of their aircraft, two died during testing) took the plane into the air for 30 minutes.
On February 19, 1941, the aircraft was transferred for state tests at the Boscombe Down Flight Research Center. At first there was a rather frivolous attitude towards the aircraft, the small wooden structure did not command respect. But when it turned out that the Mosquito was flying faster than the Spitfire (by about 30 km / h), the attitude changed dramatically.
During tests at Boscombe Down, the maximum true flight speed of 624 km / h was recorded at an altitude of 6600 m with a flight weight of 7612 kg.
July 23, 1942in one of the flights, an aircraft equipped with Merlin-61 engines reached a maximum speed of 695 km / h at an altitude of 5100 m. In October 1942, the same aircraft with even more advanced Merlin-77 engines managed to reach the highest absolute rate. " Mosquito "- 703 km / h at an altitude of 8800 m. Ordinary production vehicles flew, of course, a little slower, and yet the head production bomber B. IX in factory tests carried out in March-April 1943, demonstrated a speed of 680 km / h at an altitude of 7900 m. Its power plant consisted of two Merlin-72 engines with a capacity of 1650 hp each. No serial fighter in the world flew faster than the Nine at that time.
In general, "Mosquito" can be safely called the first British multipurpose aircraft.
"Mosquito" worked as "clean" bombers, heavy fighters, reconnaissance aircraft, and were involved in providing night flights of four-engine bombers.
"Mosquito" jammed enemy radars, led large groups of aircraft on targets, marked targets with colored orientation-signal bombs. In fact, they combined the functions of reconnaissance aircraft and electronic warfare.
Naturally, the Mosquito also came in handy in the Royal Navy. They quite normally tracked enemy submarines and "treated" them with depth charges.
The locator in the nose of the Mosquito is actually registered.
But the beginning of the Mosquito's combat path as a bomber, contrary to popular belief, can hardly be considered successful. Despite the stunning speed, the planes were still shot down by anti-aircraft artillery. In the first months of combat use, one loss accounted for an average of 9 sorties.
But there were also pleasant moments. It turned out that the FW-190 at low altitude could not catch up with the Mosquito. It should be emphasized here that in all cases German aircraft did not have an advantage in height. When the Germans attacked with superior altitude, the British pilots had a very difficult time. Four FW-190A cannons turned the wooden structure into sawdust.
An interesting fact: the very existence of a new bomber in Britain was hidden not only from the enemy, but also from its public. In the summer of 1942, only vague information about a certain "miracle plane" was leaked to the press.
Information was very scarce, it outlined the appearance of the machine in the most general terms. Moreover, in order to mislead the Germans, the British censorship carefully eliminated any mention of the absence of defensive weapons on the bomber version of the aircraft. On the contrary, in all articles the reader was unobtrusively convinced that any "Mosquito" carries 4 machine guns and 4 cannons. This was true, but only for fighters and fighter-bombers.
The destruction of the Gestapo building in Oslo brought Mosquito success and fame, as well as serious propaganda success. The British claimed that the fire burned more than 12 thousand cases against the Norwegians.
But the operation itself and its execution were complete: out of twelve dropped bombs, seven bombs fell into the building, three pierced it right through and exploded in the basement.
Yes, of course there were also German fighters (all the same FW-190s) that managed to knock out one of the Mosquitoes that fell on the territory of Sweden. The Germans also had losses, in the pursuit one of the Germans lost control and crashed.
On June 1, 1943, the Bomber Command officially ceased to participate in daytime tactical bombing of enemy territory. In this regard, the functions of the "Mosquito" have also changed. The era of night raids harassing the German air defense system began.
Actually, the experience of such actions was available: on the night of April 21, 1943, the nine "Mosquito" demonstratively attacked Berlin, congratulating the Fuhrer on his birthday.
Simultaneously, a large group of heavy bombers raided Stettin. The success was complete: the British recorded radiograms in the air defense control networks containing a refusal to allocate additional fighters for the defense of Stettin, since the capital of the Reich itself was attacked.
This tactic of "pulling away" gave good results and subsequently became stereotyped. For a long time, the Germans could not find effective countermeasures for it, because it was very difficult to come up with them due to the insufficient level of the then technology.
This is a total deception of the German air defense detection system. Several Mosquitoes dropped strips of aluminum foil of a certain width, which, hanging in the air, disrupted the operation of radars and practically ruled out the determination of the scale of the raid.
And so a small group of "Mosquito", which put interference, on the radar screens blurred into a huge illumination, plausibly imitating an armada of four-engine bombers.
To intercept non-existent formations, fighters rose, wasting fuel and motor resources in vain. At the same time, the real Lancaster and Halifaxes were turning a completely different German city into ashes.
The best example is the operation carried out on the night of June 22, 1943. The distracting four "Mosquito", having previously set up a hindrance, bombed Couloni.
Naturally, the interceptors were directed there. Naturally, even the German night fighters armed with Liechtensteins did not find anyone. Firstly, the Mosquito had already escaped, and secondly, the wooden structure with a minimum of metal (only motors) was very difficult for the radars of that time to take.
At this time, the main forces of the bomber command unleashed their attack on the factories in the city of Mulheim.
Sometimes "Mosquito" was involved in the mining of water areas from the air. It was "Mosquito" that managed to block the channel of the port of Kiel with mines. Yes, a small dry cargo ship was blown up on the mines delivered, which received minor damage. But it took a week to clear mines, during which the port did not work. The supply of the German group in Norway and the delivery of alloying materials from Sweden were actually disrupted.
In the fall of 1944, jet interceptors Me-163 and Me-262 appeared in the skies over Germany. The former were not at all scary due to their short flight range, with the latter it was more difficult. But the "Swallow" could not become a real threat to the "Mosquito". It's about the maneuverability of the aircraft. Yes, the 262 was faster and could quite easily catch up with the Mosquito. But the turbines of the Messerschmitt engines did not have the necessary flexibility and the Mosquito easily left precisely due to the maneuver in the horizon.
This is not to say that many of these aircraft were manufactured. In total, 7,700 aircraft of all modifications were produced, which in general is not God knows what indicator.
Mosquito bombers in the European theater of operations performed 26,255 combat sorties. Due to the opposition of the Germans, 108 cars did not return to their airfields, and another 88 were written off due to combat damage.
The only drawback of "Mossi", noted by the leadership of the Bomber Command in the final report for the war years, was the fact that "these aircraft were always too few …"
We got acquainted in detail with "Mosquito" and in our country. In 1944-1945. with the use of "Mosquito" courier communication was established between the governments of the USSR and Great Britain, and scouts regularly made landings at our northern airfields when the hunt for "Tirpitz" was going on.
One copy came to the disposal of the flight test institute (LII) NKAP, where the leading pilot N. S. Rybko, test pilots P. Ya. Fedrovi and A. I. Kabanov and the leading engineer V. S. …
It turned out that in terms of flight performance the Mosquito was actually equal to the Tu-2, with the difference that the latter had good defensive armament, and the British plane was somewhat faster over the entire altitude range. The bomb load was about the same.
"Mosquito" flew quite normally on one engine. It turned out that it can perform deep turns with a roll towards the turned off engine. In general, the controllability of the British aircraft was highly appreciated.
There were also negative moments. It turned out that the bomber was unstable in the longitudinal relation, and its lateral and track stability, by the standards of the LII, was insufficient. Landing was relatively easy, but on the run the car had a tendency to turn energetically.
On the whole, the Mosquito was a very good aircraft, but it required pilots of a high level of training, which in wartime is not an easy task to accomplish.
But from the point of view of operation, the car turned out to be beyond praise. Good access to the main components, ease of replacing the engine, well thought-out and reliable petrol and oil systems, an abundance of automatic devices that facilitate the work of the crew in flight - all this impressed our experts.
It is clear that the purpose of the tests at LII was with implications. The possibility of organizing licensed (or unlicensed, as with the Tu-4) production of "Mosquito" in the USSR was being considered.
Yes, the solid wood construction was captivating. Alas, these dreams were not destined to come true, since the technology for manufacturing the wing and especially the fuselage turned out to be unacceptable for the Soviet aircraft factories.
To top it all off, there was no balsa in our country, and there were no engines like the Merlin. Therefore, the plans had to be abandoned.
Strange, of course, but the wooden plane turned out to be a very good combat vehicle. And despite the archaic nature of the materials, it influenced aircraft builders in other countries.
With a slight stretch, the real multipurpose aircraft Me-210 and Me-410 can be considered German copies of the Mosquito, but what, the Germans themselves wrote that this was a response to the appearance of such a machine by the British. Here Myasishchev also created the Pe-2I project, very similar to the Germans, that is, all-metal.
But only the British Pinocchio "Mossi", which served until 1955, gained such fame.
LTH Mosquito B Mk. IV
Wingspan, m: 16, 51
Length, m: 12, 43
Height, m: 4, 65
Wing area, m2: 42, 18
Weight, kg:
- empty aircraft: 6 080
- normal takeoff: 9 900
- maximum takeoff: 10 152
Engine: 2 x Rolls-Royce Merlin 21 x 1480 hp
Maximum speed, km / h: 619
Cruising speed, km / h: 491
Practical range, km: 2 570
Rate of climb, m / min: 816
Practical ceiling, m: 10 400
Crew, people: 2
Armament:
bomb load up to 908 kg: one 454-kg bomb and two 227-kg bombs or four 227-kg bombs.
