Jetrader - November/December 2008 - 29

the north and south of the U.K., similar
to the German system used during the
blitzkrieg. With progressive improvements
in the radar bombing aid and aircraft
performance, ground radio navigation aid
was eventually eliminated. The aircraft
were also employed as a pathﬁnder force
with top crews who laid the aiming point
ﬂ ares for the heavy bomber stream.
The night ﬁghter version had four 20
mm cannon and 10 cm radar; with its
range increased by a fuel tank in the
bomb bay, it accompanied the bomber
stream to hunt down the Junkers 88 night
ﬁghters. To counter the Junkers' radar,
rear-looking radar was eventually ﬁtted
to signal the release of chaff to jamb the
attacker's radar-return signal. In 1945 the
jet Messerschmitt 262 night ﬁghter was
equipped with radar and the capability to
ﬂy higher than the Mosquito to silhouette
it against the burning city below. Nine
Mosquitos were shot down in one raid.
A U-boat buster version had a 57 mm
cannon in place of the four 20 mm cannons,
plus eight 60 lb armor-piercing rockets.
The two Costal Command squadrons sank
eight U-boats as they ran on the surface

383166_ITC.indd 1

from French ports on the Bay of Biscay,
and numerous small ships such as mine
sweepers were also sunk. Exactly 900
lbs of amour plating protected the under
surface and engine nacelles from ships'
anti-aircraft ﬁre.
It was the ﬁghter-bomber night ﬁghter
and long-range intruder version that
eventually proved to be the best of all.
Some versions with a pressurized cockpit
had an operational ceiling of more than
43,000 feet and a speed of 370 mph, and
a nitrous oxide injection could boost
the speed another 47 mph. The famous
daylight rooftop raids conducted by the
Royal Air Force's Number 2 Group against
the Amiens prison in France and the
Gestapo Shellhaus records building in
Copenhagen caught the imagination of
the war-weary British public.
Around 1944, when I was 13, the
searchlights were swinging around trying
to pick up any night intruders visiting
the town (Brighton). I would stand in the
garden to see the ﬁreworks if the Bofors
40 mm guns should open up with their
tracer shells. The searchlights found a
Mosquito, which then banked sharply and

disappeared out to sea. A minute or so
later, there was a clump of tracers followed
by a point of ﬂ ame which rapidly became
a ﬁreball erratically plunging down, with
orange-colored smoke illuminated behind.
All of this happened in complete silence,
followed by the familiar note of Merlin
engines from the returning Mosquito.
Did you know the Heinkel He 178
was the ﬁrst jet airplane and ﬂew in
August 1939? It had wood wings and an
all-wood jet ﬁghter-the He 162-was
in production by 1945. It was built by
unskilled workers-mainly prisoners. By
the end of the war 116 had been delivered
to the Luftwaffe.

REFERENCES:
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*

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Ian Thirsk; de Havilland Mosquito, Volume 2;
Crécy Publishing Ltd. 2006
Ferenc Vajda & Peter Dancey; German Aircraft
Industry and Production; SAE International
1998
www.uboat.net/allies/aircraft/mosquito
www.en.wikipedia.org/wiki/de_havilland_
albatross
Numerous other Web pages for cross
checks

Jetrader 29

7/28/08 7:13:07 PM
http://www.uboat.net/allies/aircraft/mosquito.htm http://www.en.wikipedia.org/wiki/de_havilland_albatross http://www.en.wikipedia.org/wiki/de_havilland_albatross http://www.itca.co.jp
Jetrader - November/December 2008

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