Mossie / Havoc / NOE fans

[Scherf]

G'day all,

For those of you interested in low-level intruder ops by Havocs and / or Mossies, the 23 Squadron Operations Record Book up to the end of 1943 is now online here:

http://www.oldrafrecords.com/db_search.php

Just plunk the data in the relevant search fields, especially of course the squadron number, month and year, and a series of scans come up.

Gives a good flavour of Havoc and Mossie ops up to the end of '42, with the squadron then in Malta and Italy through the end of 1943.

They eventually headed back to the ETO in mid-44, there to continue Intruding, as well as daylight Rangers and, on occasion, escorting Bomber Command heavies on daylight raids.

Also something of a treasure-trove of serial number / squadron letter combinations, for those interested in such like.

Fairly spooky reading - I know enough about the squadron to recognise some of the names, and their ultimate fates, brrr.

I think some of the Battle of Britain Squadrons are also up on the same site, same search method.

[morfiend]

 Nice Scherf!


   I've got it bookmarked to brows through when I have some time.




   

[Guppy35]

Saw 41 Squadron and got excited.  But nothing from 43-44!

Not a Beaufighter squadron to be seen either.  Hope they fill it out over time.

[Scherf]

You can almost certainly get the Aussie Beaufighter Squadron ORBs from the National Archives of Australia site.

http://www.naa.gov.au/collection/recordsearch/index.aspx

Click on Search Now As A Guest, put in the relevant squadron number (they have ORBs from the European and from the Pacific Squadrons), choose show digiitised images first, click on the most promising title, make sure when it appears you click on the Enlarge radio button at the top of the page.

[bozon]

They eventually headed back to the ETO in mid-44, there to continue Intruding, as well as daylight Rangers and, on occasion, escorting Bomber Command heavies on daylight raids.

That is a most excellent resource website! thanks for the link.
I am very interested in records of mosquitoes being used as daytime escorts, but so far found very little details outside of coastal command (next to none, though I know it happened). Do you have some resource you can refer me to? as you say, 44 is not in the archive.

[Scherf]

Heya,

Only the occasional story from vets, and I combat report I have upstars from 169 Squadron. So far as I can tell it was only ever the 100 Group Squadrons, in Bomber Command, who did the daylight escorts - have read stories from folks in 23, 515 and 169 Squadrons. I can recall one account by George Stewart, an RCAF pilot with 23 Squadron (later went on to train Nationalist Chinese pilots in the use of Canadian-built Mossies in the war vs Mao), but of course I can't find the bloody thing now.

Will keep looking.

[Karnak]

Thank you for the link, Scherf.

[Scherf]

No worries Karnak.

Guppy, dude, "Not a Beaufighter squadron to be seen either" - 25 Squadron was on Beaufighters, were involved in defending against the Baedeker raids in mid-42. There's Beaufighter serial number / squadron letter / crew combinations in the documents, with brief descriptions of actions fought.

[Scherf]

Found one account of daylight escort in a Martin Bowman book - "The Men Who Flew The Mosquito".

Chris Harrison, an Australian on 515 Squadron, I think they were 23 Squadron's sister unit on Little Snoring airfield: "Once we flew to Winkleigh, Devon for a daylight to Bordeaux. The heavies were attacking the U-boat pens and we were flying alongside to make them feel brave and getting ready to dart under them like a chick under a hen's wing if we saw anything dangerous. Still, they reckoned that when we were around, the heavies bombed more accurately, so I suppose it was a good exercise. At night, we use to go individually, but on these particular trips when we were escorting Lancasters we flew en masse."

I think there may be another account in Moskitopanik, will check.

[Guppy35]

No worries Karnak.

Guppy, dude, "Not a Beaufighter squadron to be seen either" - 25 Squadron was on Beaufighters, were involved in defending against the Baedeker raids in mid-42. There's Beaufighter serial number / squadron letter / crew combinations in the documents, with brief descriptions of actions fought.

Missed it.  Thanks for the heads up

I recently got another book for my Beau library by  Bob Willis called "No Hero, Just a Survivor".  He flew Beaus then Mossies with 47 Squadron in the MTO then Burma.  He was talking about the Mossie in Burma and said that they were repainted silver as a measure to reflect the heat after the problems with the Mossie and the inferior glues initially used that had them coming apart in the warmth there.  I'd never made that connection or seen it written anywhere before.  Was a bit of a surprise, but made sense.

I imagine you Mossie fanatics knew that, but it was interesting to me

[Karnak]

I imagine you Mossie fanatics knew that, but it was interesting to me

Yeah.  I've got the difference in temperature inside the wing going from camo to silver in one of my books.  Off hand I think it was ~40 degrees, but I could be way off.

[bozon]

"The heavies were attacking the U-boat pens and we were flying alongside to make them feel brave and getting ready to dart under them like a chick under a hen's wing if we saw anything dangerous. Still, they reckoned that when we were around, the heavies bombed more accurately, so I suppose it was a good exercise.

hehe, that was funny
thanks!

[Scherf]

Heheheh, yeah, that sense of humour goes all the way through his article.

[bozon]

One of the reasons I am interested in this is that I know very little about air2air combat training for mosquito pilots. For the night fighters ACM was about "sneak up his 6 and zap him out of the sky". I found very few references to mosquitoes actually (daylight) dogfighting and most of which were from coastal command, where mosquitoes did surprisingly well. However, it seems that the pilots were not really trained in dogfighting, except for a few that transitioned from fighter squadrons. If some squadrons were commonly assigned to day escort duties, perhaps they got some more training.