303 Browning machine guns will not be included in the team’s finished version, according to Sharp. It’s “highly likely” the Mosquito FB.6’s four nose-mounted.
However, there’s a way to find the extra space. The Mosquito is an extremely cramped plane, perhaps even by the standards of World War II, leaving little room for the electronics, communications gear and anti-collision systems aboard modern aircraft. “That’s not going to happen.”īut they must make several upgrades to allow the plane to operate in modern skies. “We would not under any circumstances dream of altering Sir Geoffrey de Havilland’s vision, or even try to reinvent the wheel,” Sharp said. Basically, that means those planes would likely have to be practically rebuilt anyways.Ī war-time propaganda poster depicting a Mosquito day raid over Berlin. So not only is the age of the wooden, museum-piece airframes a concern, the glue decays over time. Sharp explained that while the Mosquito is made of wood, a milk-based glue holds the sandwiched fuselage together. Not counting the three flying Mosquitos, there are around 30 more sitting in museums - but those survivors are unlikely to pass safety tests were anyone to try restoring them to airworthy status. There’s a reason the team is building a plane with an original airframe. Bill Ramsey, the project’s operations manager, is a retired Avro Vulcan bomber pilot and a former commanding pilot with the Red Arrows, the RAF’s aerobatics team. Sharp is an aviation consultant, anti-corrosion specialist and a former curator for several British aviation museums. Sharp and his team know a thing or two about aircraft. “It’s going to be mostly new parts, of course, which in a predominantly wooden aircraft like the Mosquito is vital.” “Providing you possess everything that is left of that aircraft, legally you are in possession of what our civil aviation authorities call ‘the mortal remains’ - that’s the technical term - and you can then restore it,” Sharp said. But that’s not necessary for the team to get the finished aircraft certified as a restoration. The original Mosquitos did not contain data plates. The plane will thus be a “data plate restoration,” meaning the airframe, wings and engines will be fresh, but it will also contain some non-structural bits from the original RL249. Instead, the People’s Mosquito team is building - largely from scratch - a Mosquito FB.VI variant, a highly-configurable fighter-bomber. RL249's remains were recovered in 2010, but the pieces are almost entirely unusable. Kirby, the plane’s navigator, later died from his injuries. 14, 1949, the NF.36 fighter RL249 suffered failures in both engines after takeoff and crashed near RAF Coltishall in Norfolk. For a time, it was one of the fastest planes anywhere in the world. The Mosquito’s maximum speed was around 366 miles per hour, with some give or take depending on the variant, payload and altitude. The specific Mosquito that Sharp and his team is restoring is an NF.36 - a night-fighter version that came with a U.S.-made AI.Mk X radar and two powerful Rolls-Royce Merlin 113/114 engines capable of generating 1,690 horsepower each.
The aircraft had a fitting name, as the Mosquito was a fast, annoying little sucker and hard to swat. Mosquitos would also carry out their own raids en masse over Germany, including dropping 4,000-pound blockbuster bombs in harassment attacks. “That was due, I think, because it performed so many roles and performed them superbly.”Ī Mosquito TT35 - a target tug variant - in 1964.
“One was the Spitfire, the other was the Lancaster and the third was the Mosquito, and if you had to rank them, you’d put the Mosquito first.” Eric ‘Winkle’ Brown, once said that three British aircraft were preeminent in World War II,” Ross Sharp, the People’s Mosquito’s director of engineering told War Is Boring. “A much beloved friend of ours, and our patron, Capt.
Since 2012, the U.K.-based People’s Mosquito project has raised funds and begun working to restore an ex-Royal Air Force Mosquito which crashed in 1949, was buried and then recovered 61 years later. There are currently only three airworthy Mosquitos in the world.Ī group of British engineers are trying to change that by bringing a Mosquito back from the dead. That’s why it’s strange so few of the wooden, twin-engine machines appear at air shows. The de Havilland Mosquito was arguably the best British plane of World War II, the war’s most effective fighter-bomber and one of the most versatile military planes ever built. Britain’s multi-role Mosquito remains a legend