The Mosuito Bomber

[Ron Scott]

The deHavilland mosquitto bomber.

http://gowood.blogspot.com/2012/07/wooden-wonder-de-havilland-mosquito.html

[doctorb]

I think that's really cool, Ron.  Great post.

[Ianab]

A NZ company is rebuilding one to flying condition. It's more than a restoration as ALL the wood needs to be replaced. So they are effectively starting with a box of assorted metal parts and baking everything else.

http://www.mosquitorestoration.com/index.shtml

Because the plane is mostly wooden construction and the airframes were build by woodworkers in furniture factories there is not really any parts that cant be recreated from the original blueprints.

Ian

[Norm]

Interesting, thanks for sharing that Ron.

[Wookiee]

The deHavilland mosquitto bomber.

http://gowood.blogspot.com/2012/07/wooden-wonder-de-havilland-mosquito.html

Okay that is seriously cool.

[Paul_H]

My Uncle Bob Lasser was a navigator on a Mosquito during the war.Him and I put together a model of a Mosquito one Christmas when I was around 10 years old and how I wish I could do it with him now.
He is in his mid nineties now,still married to Barb,his beautiful war bride from England.

[pineywoods]

The materials have changed, but the construction technique lives on. The mosquito was made of a balsa wood core coverd with birch plywood. Today, the latest aircraft construction technology is hi-density foam sandwiched with fiberglass or carbon fiber..pioneered by a fella named Burt Rutan...Duplicating a mosquito bomber with the latest materials would be an interesting project. Biggest problem would be obtaining two of the rolls royce engines..

[Ianab]

Just saw the locally rebuilt one on TV doing it's first test flight. Can't find it online yet, but this is a clip of it doing engine and taxi tests

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7vQOY3d89JE

Will have another look tomorrow, I'm sure someone will have uploaded some footage.

Ian

[SwampDonkey]

Not war planes, but bush plane engines are tested at the Bush Plane Museum in Sault Ste Marie, Ontario. I heard that some of the de Haviland bush planes are being built or going to be by Bombardier. These planes go back to the 40's like the Beaver and Otter. They are popular world over.

I don't know where the Mosquito was built in NA, never hear tell of it being built in the Maritimes. All I ever heard was that yellow birch was harvested for the planes. About the mid 40's we had a massive birch die-off here. So it's not been 100 years yet thus very scarce to see a 40" birch now. It would have to be close to 200 years to get those again. ;) I have a 25+ one on the woodlot, but it's only 100. Was a fire that long ago.

[Ianab]

According to Wikipedia over 1,000 of them were built in Ontario up until 1945.

The wood structure, although brilliant, wasn't exactly durable which is why there were none left flying. The one in NZ has had about $7 million spent on it to basically rebuilt it from scratch.

Ian