Mossquito Mk. XI

[BulletVI]

Yeh but since when will a seasoned Me Bf 109 pilot put his 109 into a dive from 6000 feet to reach 450 + he wouldnt as he would go straight into the ground

[Plazus]

I see K4s hit 450 mph all the time. Elevator trim works wonders if the pilot knows how to handle the plane in a dive.

[BulletVI]

Yeah i know but even with elevator trim when you see a mossi flying above the tree line in real life and you had to dive from 6000 feet to zero feet would you do it for real. it would be easy to get fixated on the mossi thus forgetting your height and smack you are now saying GOTTEN HIMMEL GUTENTAG GROUND.


Sorry if my German is Bad haven't spoke or written it for 13 year's a bit rusty

[Karnak]

Bf109K-4 does about 370mph on the deck without a dive.  The only Mossie that comes close to that is an FB.Mk VI with 150 octane on anti-diver duty.

[bozon]

Yeh but since when will a seasoned Me Bf 109 pilot put his 109 into a dive from 6000 feet to reach 450 + he wouldnt as he would go straight into the ground

He needs only ~350 to match the mossie on the deck. Practically all WWII fighters will be able to do that. The problem is to happen to be close enough to visually see something flying at 20feet when patrolling at 6k - not so easy. WWII fighters have a huge blind cone under them. To see something close and much lower they have to keep dropping a wing and look down. Unless the patrolling aircraft knows that there is a target nearby and is actively looking for it, the pilot is not likely to keep this up the whole patrol time.

Mossie daytime missions were rare and heavily counted on surprise - that means that there will not be a 109/190 patrol looking for them, in particular not the latest models that could outrun them. The K4s/D9s and their late war brothers would not be the typical LW fighters that a daytime ranger mossie will run into until perhaps very late in the war. On top of that, conditions of low cloud cover were favored for such missions, offering an escape into the cloud layer, where the speed difference was small enough to buy the mossie the time to do that. The 400+ mph mossies were high altitude variants that were flying almost exclusively at night. Very few night fighters were fast enough to catch them and in that case, flying 6k higher and making a diving attack is not an option at night.

[MiloMorai]

Bf109K-4 does about 370mph on the deck without a dive.  The only Mossie that comes close to that is an FB.Mk VI with 150 octane on anti-diver duty.

Is that with or without 1.98ata boost?

In the case of 1.80ata boost, is that with MW50?

[Karnak]

Is that with or without 1.98ata boost?

In the case of 1.80ata boost, is that with MW50?

I really couldn't say.  I am not a Bf109 expert by any means.  The one in AH does about 370mph on the deck.  A Mossie VI on 150 octane did about 375mph on the deck. Next fastest Mossie on the deck would be an undampered, clean Mosquito VI on 100 octane, which would fall in the 355mph on the deck category.

[PJ_Godzilla]

Intercepting a bomber Mosquito is much harder than just outrunning it. 

My thought exactly. Anyone who's attempted to intercept even the relatively slow-moving 4-engine bombers up at altitudes of 15k+ can appreciate how much more difficult the problem becomes when you add an increment of speed to the bomber. not only does the interceptor need speed, it needs climb.

I note, those of you who saw the NatGeo special in which they constructed a radar mockup of the Horten flying wing will recall that the project was undertaken to get an idea of the a/c's radar signature. The conclusion: while the a/c may not have been invisible to radar, its speed combined with its smaller radar x-section meant that detection would occur later - thus compounding the time-to-alt/speed problem facing interceptors.