The Mosquito is too fragile and too flamable

[Karnak]

The Mosquito in AH is very fragile and one of the most flamable aircraft.  This does not match the historical records, so far as I can tell.

Every source I can find that mentions the Mosquito's durability says that it could absorb tremendous punishment and was actually more resistant to damage than were the more common metal aircraft in use at the time.

A De Haviland engineer's explained the reasons as follows:

• Explosive cannon shells often did not fuse when they penetrated light wood surfaces, like those on the Mosquito, and therefore failed to explode
• When damaged, wood splits and shatters fairly neatly, whereas metal deforms and twists, further stressing the remaining metal

The first point is simple and obvious in the effect it would have.  The second point seems to say that the skin of the Mosquito, which is a stressed skin that is an integral part of the structure as in stressed skin aluminium aircraft, would have a hole punched cleanly through it rather than bending, distorting and tearing.  Plywood is very resistant to splitting/tearing due to its cross grain construction, and the Mosquito's skin was all plywood.  Metal, by contrast, tears quite nicely, as anyone who has played with aluminium cans can atest.

The next point is fire.  The Mosquito's fuel tanks were all just as protected as any other British, American or German warplane's.  It should be no more prone to fires than a Lancaster or P-51D (both aircraft that have wing tanks).  Wood does not increase the likelyhood of fire in this case as the fuel is what fuel's the fire, and that would ignite or not in the same fashion regardless of metal or wooden structures.  Fires cannot be started on the surface of a Mosquito by gun fire any more than you could start a fire with a tinderbox in a hurricane with 350mph wind speeds.

I have a photo in a book (Mosquito Fighter/Fighter-Bomber Units of World War 2 (Combat Aircraft 9) to be precise) that is of a Mosquito that shot down a Bf110 from very close range. The Mosquito was covered in fuel from the Bf110, fuel that subsequently ignited. The fire scorched the entire Mosquito, I can only imagine the aircrew must have been very scared.  All of the paint had been burned off of the Mosquito, as well as the fabric covering on the rudder, yet it returned home.  This is a far cry from the very flamable Mosquito that has seconds to live once it is on fire.

As people like photos of pulverized aircraft that came home, heree is a photo of a Mosquito FB.VI that did so.  On May 4th, 1945 F/L Gerry Yeates of 248 Squadron participated in an attack that sank four U-Boats.  During a straffing run he got too low and collided with one of the U-Boat's mast.  The collision tore the cannon from the Mosquito's belly.  On landing it was found that the mast head and German flag had been carried back with the Mosquito.

[Karnak]

Here is the photo:
(I forgot to attach it)

[whgates3]

i have a book by a RAF nightfighter RADAR operator ("Pursuit Through Darkened Skies") which has a picture of a Mossie with most of the rudder burned off.  apparently this can happen if you flame a 110 from undel 100 yards. the Mosq in question flew home. did the mosquito have fabric control surfaces like the Spit I?
i've read fabric alierons give highly reduced roll rate at high speeds...
..
...not to hijaque the thread, but i've just been reading about the
He 219.  could be great in AH as a heavy fighter/bomber/interceptor:
>typical armament was 4 x 30mm (100 RPG) + 2 x 20mm (300 RPG); another 2 x 30mm Shräge Musik pair was not uncommon
>it could carry bombs or tordonuts.
>quite fast - top speed was near or above 410 MPH without using nitrous oxide, which some models had.
>1000+ mile range

[Karnak]

So far as I know, only the rudder on the Mossie is fabric covered.  The ailerons were wood or aluminum covered.

It sounds like your book has the same photos as mine.

[Wotan]

As people like photos of pulverized aircraft that came home, heree is a photo of a Mosquito FB.VI that did so.

how many didnt come home to much less visible damage? You dont know.....

So you cant make any claim using pictures like that.

All AC in ah seem fragile.

To make a claim based on how tough a plane should be you need data not just from damaged planes that made it back but from planes that didnt as well.

4 planes leave on sortie  2 dont come back 1 comes back a  little damaged 1 comes back damaged badly.  The 2 that came back doesnt prove how tough an aircraft is. The other 2 could have shot down with 7mm. How do you know?

A lot of stuff in ah doesnt match up with what has been writen.

[Karnak]

Wotan,

I agree with you that it is not representative.  Frankly they got damn lucky to survive a collision with a surface object.

The same is true of photos people post of P-47s, B-17s et al.  I was merely posting it as proof that there are photos of severely damaged Mosquitoes that made it home as well so that people couldn't simply state that they didn't believe any of what I was saying.  All photos of massively damaged aircraft that returned are examples of exceptions, not examples of what normally happened.


That said however, if the engineer's statements about the way wood reacts to damage are correct, Mosquitoes with bullet holes and cannon holes would not look nearly as impressively damaged as B-17s and Lancs with huge rents of torn metal in their sides.  The dramatic looking stuff is what gets published.

As for aircraft all being so fragile, well, that is true to a point.  However, try flying the Mosquito for a tour and then tell me it isn't very noticably more fragile and flamable than the German, American and other British aircraft.  I have flown all of the aircraft in AH, I have been shot down in all aircraft save the Ar234 and have shot them all down at one time or another.  I have spent tours in the Bf109G-10, Typhoon, Spitfire Mk V, Fw190D-9, Spitfire Mk IX and Mosquito Mk VI.

The Mosquito is very noticably more fragile and flamable and there is no data to back that up.  In fact there is emperical data to say that the Mosquito was at least as tough, and probably tougher, than were its contemporaries.  In AH the very opposite is true, and I suspect that it is based on nothing more than the gut feeling that metal must be stronger than wood.

I could be wrong, but I doubt that there are any sources of really hard data on how much damage any given WWII aircraft could take.  I'd not be at all surprised if the damage values on AH aircraft are based soley on emperical data.

And by the emperical data the Mosquito should be a durable aircraft, maybe approaching the P-38.

[whgates3]

Originally posted by Wotan

...A lot of stuff in ah doesnt match up with what has been writen.

you say so, but i'm skeptical...LOL

¦¬ž

[Karnak]

There is another way to examine durability as well.  If aircraft have a similar role and similar performance capabilities, yet one suffers a significantly higher loss rate then it is almost certainly less durable.

Such is the case of the Lancaster and the Halifax.

The RAF found that aircrew were something like 33% to 50% more likely to get out of a doomed Halifax than they were out of a doomed Lancaster, however Halifaxes had a loss rate something like 50% or 66% greater than that of the Lancaster despite the fact that they were doing identical operations.
(the numbers are rough guesses based on my memory of the document, but they get the gist across)

Based on that we can safetly conclude that the Lancaster was significantly more durable than the Halifax.

[Kweassa]

 As far as I know, there is no way of depicting different damage levels according to the difference in material of the fuselage with current DM.  

  So, I assume the Mosquito is so weak and flammable because, knowing the Mossie had wood in its structure, HTC probably set its overall hitpoint lower than most other planes, and set a higher chance of catching fire.

 ...

 As Wotan says, and I agree, ALL rides are weak and fragile in AH. Heck, even the Panzer gets strafed by MGs and gets disabled in a regular basis. (And people say there is notthing wrong with that.. duh!) The "Hitpoint/All or Nothing" DM is like that. Preset hitpoint, preset DM, no regard to quality/penetration/detonation of the shot. Land the shot anywhere and it will do its theoretical damage in points. A knick, a scratch, detonation on surface, detonation on empty fuselage, detonation on vital parts all amount up to the same "point" in AH.

 Thus, planes that were known for rugged construction, are not so 'rugged' in AH.

[HoHun]

Hi Karnak,

>When damaged, wood splits and shatters fairly neatly, whereas metal deforms and twists, further stressing the remaining metal

In the 1930s Winter and Tschischwitz examined aircraft battle damage focusing on 20 mm shells in their report FB505. They used the old MG C30 shells as the more effective mine shells hadn't been developed yet.

"The trials proved that plywood only has little resistance to hits by explosive shells. Reinforcing the plywood by applying cloth covering, integrating wire mesh layers, using smaller segments and using bakelite(?)-impregmated layers did not result in any improvements. In comparison to plywood, the materials Duralumin and Electron show very much superior behavior.

[...]

4) Extremely heavy damage was observed for plywood-covered stabilizers. The extensive cracking of the skin that hardly seems to absorb any energy is remarkable."

However, I'd guess wood still may have been superior in the way you indicated against the machine gun rounds which made up the main defensive firepower of the Luftwaffe night bombers and night fighters. Once again, the affair is pretty complicated :-)

Regards,

Henning (HoHun)

[thrila]

I fly the mossie often and i entirely agree with, karnak.  The mossie is always getting set on fire-  more than any other plane i've flown.  I've actually mastered ditching the mossie in under 30 secs before the wing blows off.

[Vermillion]

Karnak, are the fuel tanks in the Mossie self sealing types?

For some reason, some of the early or midwar aircraft had self sealing tanks in the fuselage but had standard tanks in the wings. I don't have much info on Mossie's to even check on that issue though.

[Hristo]

Mossie - wood
La-7     - wood

Do they seem to have similar durability in AH ?

[Glasses]

No.

[Karnak]

Kweassa,

Giving it more hit points is how a material's ability to absorb more damage is simulated in AH.  Giving the Mossie bottom end hit points doesn't make sense.  This is especially true as the Mosquito demostrated its durability in WWII.  There is also no reason that wood would be more flamable.  Try starting a fire with a sheet of plywood and a tinder box in a 350mph wind.

Vermillion,

I have never seen any information in regards to that.  I know that the first production runs of Spitfire Mk Is and Hurricane Mk Is (I think Bf109s, Bf110s and Ju 87s too) lacked self sealing fuel tanks.  However, it seems assumed after 1939 or so that all European aircraft had completely protected fuel tanks as the issue is never mentioned.  The Mosquito had plenty of room in its wings for the tanks, so it doesn't seem that there is any reason for it to lack self sealing tanks.

In addition, fuel fires are very rarely described in accounts of Mosquito losses.  It seems to me that if the huge fuel tanks in the wings were unprotected it would be apparent in the descriptions of losses.

While I will admit that the lack of absolute data does leave open the possibility of unprotected wing tanks, it seems very unlikely based on what I've read.

(Spitfires with wing tanks {Mk VIII, Mk XIV} do not have self sealing tanks in the wings.  But there is a major space issue there and it wasn't designed for wing tanks originally, whereas the Mosquito was always intended to have wing tanks)