Originally posted by Nashwan
I was just going to point out the difference between east and west front 
Isegrim, the eastern front was a huge area, and the Russians had poor (at best) early warning and raid detection.
As a comparison, the Luftwaffe mounted the "baby blitz" over London Jan - May 1944. They lost 330 aircraft in the process,
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You forget to mention Soviet AA was vast and everywhere, the Red Air Force much more numerous than the RAF, and that sorties were flown in daylight, in large flights, making it easy to find them, and by aircraft that were rather slower in general - unlike as noted lone Mossies slipping through the nightly skies somewhere over continent Europe.. Downplaying the scale of the eastern front air battles, and claiming that lone Mosquitos faced worser conditions, under the night, where only slower twin engined night fighters patroled the sky, is simply ridiculus.
Yet the loss statistics prove that the
0.6% odd loss rate is hardly unique, and were achieved by a large number of aircraft in other theatres, ie. the B-26s had also similiar record in the PTO, so it`s not a sort of wonder as Karnak want to sell about his perfect, flawless aircraft that was 'impossible' to be intercepted.
And you are ASSuming the Mosquito sorties are all by night, they are not. Of the bomber sorties, 12.7% were by day. I don't have a breakdown of the "other" sorties by time of day.[/B]
Every 8th sortie was during the day, so what ? How much is that, 2-3000 bomber sorties over to whole war in daylight? 2-3 major attacks by the RAFBC`s heavies worth, with the fraction of bombload carried. Most of them happening over places there were no LW patrols ? This proves, what :
a, the mosquitos had to hide under the darkness
b, there were only a minimal number of daylight bomber sorties flown. When those started, loss rate was 8% per sortie - TWICE as worse as the heavies during the night operation in the same period..
Doesn`t seems as sorties the Mosquito was so fast daylight sorties were a life insurance.
To put this "nuisance" as you describe it into perspective, the Mosquitos dropped 26,867 tons of bombs. The Germans managed to drop around 21,000 tons of bombs on Britain between June 1941 and May 1945, a much longer period than the Mosquito was in operation (and that INCLUDES the V weapons).[/B]
And to put that 26,867 tons of bombs Mosquitos dropped in total on Germany into context in the entire war, the
Luftwaffe was dropping an avarage 29 726 tons of bombs on the Eastern Front EACH MONTH in the 2nd half of 1942, ie. some 208 000 tons in six months.
While Germany was the primary target of the RAF, seen as the most serious enemy, Britiain wasn`t anywhere near top priority on the LW`s list.the Germans mounted only one, not too serious bombing offensive against Britain after 1940, the baby blitz. Nothing surprising imho, the british simply could not pose a threat to German that they would have to worry about. Much unlike the USSR. So basically you compared a primary and tertiary ToOs of the RAF/LW.
Granted the small numbers of Mosquito bombers were, compared to the huge tonnages the allies were dropping on Germany, just a nuisance, but the value of the recconisance they delivered was invaluable. That was something the Germans could only wish for, as they were unable to make recce flights over Britain for most of 1944. [/B]
Indeed probably the photos they took worth more than all their bombs. As for German recces, you obviously don`t know these very well, though you may have heard about the RAF`s failures intercepting them, FR 109s and Ju 86s. Even more I doubt the Mossie could achieve anything over Britain in 1944, given the number of Allied flights over such a small area as you underlined it.
