Spurned in concept by the Air Marshals, designed and built in secrecy at a moated manor house and flown out of an adjoining farm field, the de Havilland Mosquito was the most successful and versatile military aircraft of the Second World War.
Photographic-reconnaissance aircraft, day fighter, night fighter, bomber, mine-layer, torpedo-bomber, pathfinder, tank-buster, submarine-smasher...the little Wooden Wonder, powered by two Rolls-Royce Merlin engines, starred in just about every possible role.
In 1938 as the war clouds gathered, his proposal for a "Wooden speed-bomber" turned down in Whitehall, Sir Geoffrey de Havilland said: "We'll do it anyway". Encouraged privately by Air Chief Marshal Sir Wilfred Freeman - for a while the project was known as Freeman's Folly - the pioneer planemaker moved his design team into Salisbury Hall, an historic house near St. Albans in Hertfordshire and a few miles from his works at Hatfield.
The prototype flew in November, 1940, and very soon the Mosquito became a cottage industry as components were fashioned by furniture craftsmen, piano makers, pew carvers, many other woodworking businesses and even by small groups of housewives in outhouses and garden sheds.
Very soon also the Wooden Wonder - some 8,000 were built in Britain and Canada - was helping to make new aces and the one aircraft which pilots and navigators, who had already achieved recognition, demanded to crew.
The story of the Mosquito is also the story of some of the 1939 - 1945 war's most audacious operations and distinguished aircrew...Pickard and the breaking open of Amiens jail.. .Cat's Eyes Cunningham, the night fighter ace...the Pathfinders...
by Edward Bishop
Published by Airlife 1980 2nd revised edition of Max Parrish 1959 1st. 189pp profusely illustrated, index, appendices. 14x23 near fine, in slightly edge worn d/j.
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"Long" descriptions, where shown, may have been taken from the book's dust jacket notes, and as such are relevant to the date of publication (e.g. any references to "new edition" "previously unpublished photographs" etc.) and not the present.
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The Mosquito Log | Pathfinders at War | Mosquito |
