MISSING PLANS

[Gil Boyd]

You never know, he may have been involved in Operation Jericho, which, for the Mosquito was an epic achievement and a feat of great airmanship by all crews involved few of which were home grown English pilots, the majority were brave Commonwealth pilots.

If you haven't heard of it before take a read for five minutes.......outstanding Military combined achievement. I have some footage somewhere, I'll see if its on disk not tape and put it up.

Operation Jericho - Mosquito Attack on Amiens Prison - 18th February 1944 - The Peoples Mosquito

Here it is a Pathe news piece:

---------- Post added at 03:18 PM ---------- Previous post was at 03:12 PM ----------

On the same theme, here is a piece of footage on the gun camera pod and the weapons used on the Mosquito, very interesting for the time bearing in mind it was plywood and Rolls Royce Merlin engines and nothing else............a frame that stood up all that shaking and achieve so much.

[old rockape]

Unfortunately not. He joined 418 sqn before Christmas 1944. The Squadron flew intruder missions and used the Mk6 fighter bomber. However, I believe they were the highest scoring Canadian Sqn.

[Gil Boyd]

Yes I notice the RCAF and RAAF lads made up a lot of the specialist crews, as did 617 Sqn the Dambusters, who had a large group, and they seemed to appear towards the end of the war

[Peter Laidler]

When I was at boarding school in the late 50's/early 60's, my friend 'Dutch' Holland came in with a shed load of photographs that he'd got off his dad and they were all low level reccy photos of different bombed out sites in Northern Germany plus loads of machine gunning the sites on the run-in to take the photos. I don't suppose his dad was particular who was strolling about along the run-in path as he just hosed them all down with cannon and MG fire. Well, share and share alike as they say in polite RAF circles! I don't know what he was flying but he was flying Canberras when I knew him and gave the school a large scale aerial view of the school, taken as though it was a bombing target, all marked with co-ordinates, heights, attack levels etc etc. Hung in a frame in the senior library. He also had some leaflets printed on thin flimsy paper that were dropped over Holland and Belgium to apologise for the noise that they had made the previous night and to take care of any downed airmen they found who might ask for help and treat with reverence those who would not be returning home again - and that they would be amply rewarded when the RAF had finally finished the job. VERY sobering, even now when I think about it. Yep, very sobering

[Flying10uk]

The de Havilland museum, near London, is very interesting and is well worth a visit. They also have a section of Horsa glider on display or they did when I visited a few years ago. I was amazed at the thickness and weight of the section of glass from the Mosquito's bullet proof windscreen which was on show. I believe that what is now the museum site is where de Havilland had their design centre situated during WW2.

World War 2 Piston Engine Aircraft de Havilland Aircraft Museum

[Gil Boyd]

The whole of the De Havilland team is based on the second floor of building 213 a two level RAF building with The Parachute Regiment archive downstairs at Duxford, or Airborne Assault as its correct title within the Imperial War Museum.
It is one of the original buildings built in 1933 on the north side of the A505 road, and still has the faint outlines of two tone camouflage paint on its exterior. Across the road is a small original wooden ship lad building no bigger than 20' x 30 ' which has been rebuilt on site, and is the original De Havilland designers workshop brought up piece by piece from Surrey, where
Moths, Bulldog, Tiger Moths, Chipmunks, and all things De Havilland including the DH82A.

Some history and the DH Dragon Rapide flies every day from Duxford airfield around the City of Cambridge for those who want to buy their family that special gift. An aircraft once treasured by all those who learnt Military freefall from.

Some history De Havilland has, with the Sea Vixen/Vampire and many more besides.
The Mosquito was actually built at Hatfield on the A1, where after the war and after its flying history became a film studios and where the final scene of Saving Private Ryan was filmed.
Hatfield Mosquito factory 1944 Geoffrey De Havilland would be proud of where his company went.................................

[Peter Laidler]

They talk about needing £7million to make a flyable replica of the mosquito from the newly found drawings...... If they can make a brand new steam loco for £1.5m I'd want a LOT of mosquitos for £7m

[Flying10uk]

The Standard Motor Company built just over 1000 Mosquito aircraft during WW2.

[jmoore]

The Curtiss H81 and H87 (Tomahawk and Kittyhawk) drawings were largely intact on microfilm rolls at the Smithsonian. What didn't survive are the fixture drawings! We utilized old factory floor photos and as much intact pieces as possible to reverse engineer the tooling. Along the way, it was discovered that the frame drawings that were retained have some dimensional errors. One area that comes to mind is in the firewall area. IIRC, the engine mount distances from the split line are fairly badly out! (As in there's no way you could make it work, trying to fit existing parts to an assembly created from the drawing. Not even with a big hammer!)

[Gil Boyd]

Peter,
Agree with that price assumption, when they can build a brand new Spitfire for 2 Million at Duxford, as long as the fragment if recovered from land crash sights has a serial number on it to identify the donor. Seven million sounds very high, perhaps a price made before this discovery.
A good friend at Duxford, has now personally built and assembled two Blenheims.

He crashed in the first one which nearly cost him his life, as he was in the upper turret, where the perspex slashed his neck, but the second one and the one now flying around airshows in the UK, he constructed from all remaining parts including a whole cockpit which he bought from a man down south who had made it into a car, and luckily kept all the pedals and other bits which would have been a nightmare to rebuild without drawings ot having the piece in your hands.
He has just finished a Lysander he built from scratch...........amazing skills.

A bit like building a valuable rifle!!