Mosquito construction film

[Scherf]

Another from the Australian War Memorial website, shows the wooden construction of the Mosquito.

http://www.awm.gov.au/collection/F01586

To put the achievements of Glyn Powell into perspective, he not only built KA114 (the world's only flying Mosquito) from scratch, he also built all the jigs and molds, and re-invented all the construction methods.

[nrshida]

That's fantastic Scherf, thanks very much 

[earl1937]

Another from the Australian War Memorial website, shows the wooden construction of the Mosquito.

http://www.awm.gov.au/collection/F01586

To put the achievements of Glyn Powell into perspective, he not only built KA114 (the world's only flying Mosquito) from scratch, he also built all the jigs and molds, and re-invented all the construction methods.

Outstanding post sir! 

[Scherf]

Heya Earl,

No worries, your "furniture bomber" post turned out to be quite prophetic!

 

[MOSQ]

Awesome film, thanks for posting. I've read a lot about Mosquitos but did not know about balsa wood being used for filler.

Another thing I've never read about: the Mossie at the end of the film appears to have 6 x 303's in the nose. I thought they only came with 4. Here's the image, maybe it's an optical illusion?



Larger:

[Scherf]

Can't see the pics MOSQ.

[Scherf]

If you mean the one at 14:41, it's an optical illusion if you're seeing 6 mgs in the nose. There's a light in the very centre of the nose cone which might cause some of the confusion.

The large aperture on the port side of the nose cone above the mgs is indeed for the gun cam. I believe, from other clips, that the aircraft in the shot is an FB.VI of the Coastal Command strike wing at Banff.

[MOSQ]

I fixed the images. Hmm, yes at least one gun barrel is probably a shadow on the wood wall....

[FTJR]

Thanks for sharing, what struck me was how labour intensive it all was.

[Scherf]

Thanks for sharing, what struck me was how labour intensive it all was.

No worries.

For what it's worth, AVIA 46/116 says the Mossie required 30,000 man-hours to build, the Lancaster 84,000. (The document was put together in September '43, no doubt both aircraft required fewer hours by war's end).

Not sure how one relates man-hours to aircraft size, or volume, or weight, or indeed expected tons of bombs delivered before the aircraft was lost. There must be some kind of standard calculation.

Edit, had a quick look at the empty weights of the Mossie XVI and the Lanc I on wiki  - empty weight on the Lanc was 36.5k, on the Mossie 14.3k (again, it's wiki, your Lanc may vary). So, it took 2.8 times as many hours to build an aircraft which was 2.6 times heavier.

I suppose it was all labour-intensive back then.

[Karnak]

No worries.

For what it's worth, AVIA 46/116 says the Mossie required 30,000 man-hours to build, the Lancaster 84,000. (The document was put together in September '43, no doubt both aircraft required fewer hours by war's end).

Not sure how one relates man-hours to aircraft size, or volume, or weight, or indeed expected tons of bombs delivered before the aircraft was lost. There must be some kind of standard calculation.

Edit, had a quick look at the empty weights of the Mossie XVI and the Lanc I on wiki  - empty weight on the Lanc was 36.5k, on the Mossie 14.3k (again, it's wiki, your Lanc may vary). So, it took 2.8 times as many hours to build an aircraft which was 2.6 times heavier.

I suppose it was all labour-intensive back then.

Of course much of the labor for the Mossie was by workers that would otherwise not be contributing to the war effort.

[GScholz]

At least not the air war... Lots of wooden craft were used by the RN and other services.

[Karnak]

At least not the air war... Lots of wooden craft were used by the RN and other services.

Boats already had established manufacturers.  Small furniture makers in the midlands weren't going to be contributing to those efforts.  Wooden boats were also used in far smaller numbers than aircraft, even the wooden one.

[GScholz]

Well I'm sure they would have contributed in some way. However building Mossies was by far the best use of their labor.

[nrshida]

It's incredible to compare the Mosquito's fuselage construction with modern so-called composites especially CFRP. In formula 1 cars the floors mimic the fuselage sandwich with an aluminium honeycomb replicating the balsa core between the Mosquito's inner and outer skins. De Haviland really was employing nature's composites if you get right down into the makeup of the wood itself. A very rare truly monocoque structure, as Earl mentioned once before.

I really liked the way the door was literally cut out of the surface and also how the halves were joined together by those strips. I've been struggling for a while to find details of that so again thanks for the film.

Finally De Haviland didn't abandon the approach after the war, the (Sea) Hornet employed a further evolution with alloy bonded into the wooden structure also. I've only been able to find a little information about that construction.