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Subject: Magic Mossies
Aussiegunneragain    7/11/2010 9:01:10 AM
There was a thread on here a few years ago put up by a fellow named Shooter, who was trying to make the argument that the Dehavilland Mosquito was a strategically insignificant aircraft which should never have been produced for the RAF, because it represented a waste of engines which could have better been used in Avro Lancasters. Shooter, an American, had a hobby of trying to diss any non-American type that had an excellent reputation (the Spitfire was another favourite target) and most people here told him he was being a clown with that being the end of it. However, the thread has stuck in the back of my mind and made me wonder whether in fact the Mossie, despite its widespread usage in a variety of roles, was in fact underutilised in the daylight strategic bombing role? It did perform some very important low level raids such as the daylight raid on the Phillips radio works (along with Ventura's and Bostons - far less Mossies were shot down)in Holland during Operation Oyster. However, I can't find many references to the Mossie being used for the sort of regular high altitude daylight strategic bombing missions that the B-17 and other USAF daylight heavies conducted. Consider its characteristics: -It could carry 4 x 500lb bombs all the way to Berlin which meant that you needed three mossies to carry a slightly larger warload than one B-17 did, which upon this basis meant more engine per lb of bomb in the Mossie. -However, the Mossie was hard to catch and was more survivable than the Heavies. The latter only really became viable with the addition of long-range escort fighters, something that the mossie could have done without. -It only required two crew versus ten on a B-17. Without intending to be critical of the USAF daylight heavies, because they were one of the strategically vital assets in winning WW2, I am wondering whether had the RAF used the Mossie in the role at the expense of night bombing operations in Lancasters? I have read accounts that suggest that the later were not really directly successful in shutting down German production, with the main contribution being that they forced the Germans to provide 24/7 air defence. If they had used Mossies more in the daylight precision role is it possible that the impact that the fighter-escorted USAF bombers had on German production might have been bought forward by a year or so, helping to end the War earlier? Another idea that I have is that if Reich fighter defences had started to get too tough for unescorted Merlin powered Mossies on strategic daylight missions, that they could have built the Griffon or Sabre powered versions that never happenned to keep the speed advantage over the FW-190? Up-engined Fighter versions of the Mossie would also have probably had sufficient performance to provide escort and fighter sweep duties in Germany in order to provide the bombers with even more protection. Thoughts? (PS, in case anybody hasn't worked it out the Mossie is my favourite military aircraft and my second favourite aircraft after the Supermarine S-6B ... so some bias might show through :-). I do think it has to rate as one of the best all round aircraft of all time based on its merits alone).
 
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Aussiegunneragain    HC   7/20/2010 7:41:12 AM

It also describes the typical raid size which was TYPICAL of the 10-16 planes at one time, which was a pinprick and actually in that case ridiculously ineffectual.  I do notice those details, AGG.
Thats the point of the thread, that they could have used them more effectively had they operated more of them in the daytime role. However, I would note that the raid on the Phillips factory was conducted with over 80 bombers of the three types and shut down 1/3 of the Nazi's radio valve production. Think of that repeated in all of those places where Bostons and Venturas couldn't go but where Mossies could and tell me that this would have been "ridiculously ineffectual".
 
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Hamilcar       7/20/2010 10:10:39 AM

I missed your assertion about British military organisation, I must admit that I tend to zone out from reading long posts by somebody who can't even read the original post correctly and respond accordingly.

Meaningless noise.

Anyway, to use a very British term, your assertion that that the high degree of military organisation demonstrated during the Mosquito raids was "unBritish" is complete and utter "bollocks". How on earth do you come to these ideas? Sheesh ... I'm just sitting here shaking my head.

 Simple. I know how those raids were timed and routed, AGG.. 

The reality is that you are talking about the nation whose armed forces have on average demonstrated themselves to be amongst the most professional military's in the World. Just because Harris didn't want to make more use of Mossies or any other type on daylight missions, doesn't mean that the British wouldn't have been as up to the task organising them just as well as the USAF had they wanted to.


Is that so? Not when you look at the planning for CRUSADER, GOODWOOD, or MARKET GARDEN, or the second attempt to retake Arreakren,  or the recent debacle in Basra  just to name five very classic British land screw ups.  How about a few RAF disasters?

1. RAF  Faulden? That was a GOOD one. Left a nice large crater in the countryside, that one did.
2. The Leipzig Raid of 19th February 1944 makes the planning that went into Schweinfurt look like genius..
3. How about Nuremberg that followed March 30th 1944? That was a beaut where the RAF totally screwed up.  That was when the USAAF was tearing the LW apart in day bombing and fighter battles  by the way. You may have heard of Operation Argument?
 
Talk to me about British professionalism and planning? Not.  Don't get me started about the Royal Navy.

As for "cherry picking data points", if you want a global picture the fact is that the Mossie had the lowest loss rate of any bomber in the theatre and was highly successful in daylight low-level missions of both a tactical and strategic nature. That's why they used them for tactical missions like against railway yards etc after D-Day, even though the later were protected by light flak.

That would be the B-26, not the Mossie. 
 
RAF No 2 Group in 1944 had a loss rate of 1.84% for Mosquito's on daylight raids, whereas its Boston and B25 Squadrons had a loss rate of 0.37% on daylight raids for the year. I recognize that this isn't quite the same as B26 operations by the USAAF but my belief is that the B26 and No 2 Group Bostons and B25's had similar missions.

QED.
 

The reality is is that had they been more heavily used the Germans would have had to beef up their light flak protection for big targets. That means that it is likely that the Mossies would have tied up personel and materials in the same way that the Lanc did on its night raids, only it would have been more effective in hindering the war effort.

The Germans would have more opportunities to shoot and the losses would go up as a ratio of pidgeons encountered in the stream.  Massed Mossie raids just means a greater ^% shot down as a result of a predictable vector and target. The reason the Mossie worked was because because the raid groups were kept small, the night targets laid on while  the Lancasters kept the LW busy, and distracted. 

Facts when you dig into what the RAF did and why, trumps myth.

H.
 
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Aussiegunneragain    HC   7/21/2010 6:49:55 AM





 

Is that so? Not when you look at the planning for CRUSADER, GOODWOOD, or MARKET GARDEN, or the second attempt to retake Arreakren,  or the recent debacle in Basra  just to name five very classic British land screw ups.  How about a few RAF disasters?

1. RAF  Faulden? That was a GOOD one. Left a nice large crater in the countryside, that one did.

2. The Leipzig Raid of 19th February 1944 makes the planning that went into Schweinfurt look like genius..


3. How about Nuremberg that followed March 30th 1944? That was a beaut where the RAF totally screwed up.  That was when the USAAF was tearing the LW apart in day bombing and fighter battles  by the way. You may have heard of Operation Argument?


 Talk to me about British professionalism and planning? Not.  Don't get me started about the Royal Navy.



Talking about cherry picking data ... thats what you are doing right now with respect to British military performance. I could list a number of almighty f-ups by any of the more professional militairy's then and now. Be they British, US, German, Australian, Japanese or Israeli, everybody has made mistakes. On the average though the Brits come out better than most . The number of mistakes that have been made have more to do with the large amount of action they have seen.
 
As for the rest of your post, given some of the guff you write I find it so hard to to take you seriously or even believe half the things that you post that I just don't enjoy debating you. As such I really can't be bothered arguing, there is no point if I'm not having fun. Say what you want and I'll just concentrate on carrying on the discussion with people who I can be bothered with.
 
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Hamilcar       7/21/2010 1:32:01 PM











 



Is that so? Not when you look at the planning for CRUSADER, GOODWOOD, or MARKET GARDEN, or the second attempt to retake Arreakren,  or the recent debacle in Basra  just to name five very classic British land screw ups.  How about a few RAF disasters?




1. RAF  Faulden? That was a GOOD one. Left a nice large crater in the countryside, that one did.



2. The Leipzig Raid of 19th February 1944 makes the planning that went into Schweinfurt look like genius..






3. How about Nuremberg that followed March 30th 1944? That was a beaut where the RAF totally screwed up.  That was when the USAAF was tearing the LW apart in day bombing and fighter battles  by the way. You may have heard of Operation Argument?






 Talk to me about British professionalism and planning? Not.  Don't get me started about the Royal Navy.











Talking about cherry picking data ... thats what you are doing right now with respect to British military performance. I could list a number of almighty f-ups by any of the more professional militairy's then and now. Be they British, US, German, Australian, Japanese or Israeli, everybody has made mistakes. On the average though the Brits come out better than most . The number of mistakes that have been made have more to do with the large amount of action they have seen.

 

As for the rest of your post, given some of the guff you write I find it so hard to to take you seriously or even believe half the things that you post that I just don't enjoy debating you. As such I really can't be bothered arguing, there is no point if I'm not having fun. Say what you want and I'll just concentrate on carrying on the discussion with people who I can be bothered with.


I read that and I see the excuse; "but everybody has that and the British just have a few more because they see lots of action.
 
Wrong. Its the failure mechanisms that should interest you. The British have an undeserved reputation for conservative staid tactical and strategic thinking bit brilliant training and professional execition, which is at variant with their actual military history. From James Wolfe, Horatio Nelson, and Arthur Wellesley forward, the British down to Liddell Hart, JFC Fuller and the RN clowns who pulled off Taranto with a botched plan, the British have been radical strategic thinkers and tactical innovators in theory.
 
What they are, is inept on the battlefield, in application of their innovative theory.
 
There is a functional institutional disconnect between their innovation ability and their practical application. Its that disconnect that makes a British disaster peculiarly British as opposed to French, German, Italian, Russian or even American disasters where poor leadership combined  with wrong concepts, could make a Bataan almost indistinguishable from a Stalingrad, or even a Corporetto or Kiev encirclement as to the failure mechanism.
 
Neville Ritchie had a clue about the right way in armored warfare, as did Arthur Harris in the air campaign, but both men had organizations and procedures designed into their orfanozations, into that peculiar British way to fail, from the aircraft crew or the infantry squad or tank crew up.   
 
So you get debacles like the Cauldron and Market Garden and the botched Montgomery campaign into North Germany where "the slows" plague the British Army and deny them the fruits of a victory through inability to exploit a breakthrough, and you get Leipzig where a simple communications foul up and the British high command inability to think on their feet or on the wing compels them to still feed the bomber stream into the Flak sausage anyway
 
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brodie 21       8/7/2012 7:56:14 AM
This seems to be an american web page.
It might be worth knowing that the mossie did carry out many daylight raids over Germany in ww2 and was capable of carrying twice the bomb load that any american bomber was capable of.As was the Lancaster bomber.The Lancaster dropped three times the bombs than any  American.Please get your facts right before posting on the web
 
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45-Shooter       8/7/2012 10:12:15 PM
The below quote seems just a wee bit childish? Maybe?
I thought that the B-29 was the best bomber of WW-II?
I usually refrain from posting about the B-29 because it is such an over match Vs anything else, but..
Do a google search of B-29 carrying two grand slams, or even worse the T-12, 44,000 pound bomb. Not only are there pictures, there is a paper written by an employee of A. O. Smith of Milwaulke, Wisconsin with detailed first hand knowledge of the affair.
I only make this point because I consider the B-17 and Lancaster to be contemporary and just about equal. The B-24 was better and the B-29 best.
But if you had to find a twin engine bomber to compete with the heavies, look no further than the B-42. It is faster than the Mossy and carries TWO to FOUR times the load.







brodie 21       8/7/2012 7:56:14 AM
This seems to be an American web page.
It might be worth knowing that the mossie did carry out many daylight raids over Germany in ww2 and was capable of carrying twice the bomb load that any American bomber was capable of.As was the Lancaster bomber.The Lancaster dropped three times the bombs than any  American.Please get your facts right before posting on the web
 
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45-Shooter       8/7/2012 10:12:39 PM
The below quote seems just a wee bit childish? Maybe?
I thought that the B-29 was the best bomber of WW-II?
I usually refrain from posting about the B-29 because it is such an over match Vs anything else, but..
Do a google search of B-29 carrying two grand slams, or even worse the T-12, 44,000 pound bomb. Not only are there pictures, there is a paper written by an employee of A. O. Smith of Milwaulke, Wisconsin with detailed first hand knowledge of the affair.
I only make this point because I consider the B-17 and Lancaster to be contemporary and just about equal. The B-24 was better and the B-29 best.
But if you had to find a twin engine bomber to compete with the heavies, look no further than the B-42. It is faster than the Mossy and carries TWO to FOUR times the load.







brodie 21       8/7/2012 7:56:14 AM
This seems to be an American web page.
It might be worth knowing that the mossie did carry out many daylight raids over Germany in ww2 and was capable of carrying twice the bomb load that any American bomber was capable of.As was the Lancaster bomber.The Lancaster dropped three times the bombs than any  American.Please get your facts right before posting on the web
 
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Aussiegunneragain       8/9/2012 12:17:52 AM
Wow, this is a blast from the past .... I wouldn't expect people to still be posting on a topic that effectively died two years ago.
 
Brodie,
I started the thread and I am an Australian so I don't really have any national pride invested in whether British or American bombers were better. I just happen to think that the Mossie was an outstanding light bomber and could have been used more effectively strategically in the daylight role had the focus not been on nighttime pathfinding for Lancasters. 
 
As for your claim that it could carry twice the warload of any American bomber, that is clearly wrong with lots of American types carrying far more (B-24, B-17, B-25 to name a few). The Mossies effectiveness came from speed, accuracy and survivability, not from a large warload.
 
Shooter, if you are going to talk about the B-42, which never entered operational service and couldn't have before the war ended, we may as well talk about the DH-101 Sabre Mossie derivative which would have performed as well if not better. Sure, it was only a concept but it was a concept in 1941, so had the British gone ahead with it it would have been in service by the time the XB-42 was just a prototype in 1944. Personally I think applauding aircraft that never actually saw active service is stupid, but if that is what you want to do ...
 
As for the B-29, it was clearly the most advanced heavy of the war and great for the Pacific campaign, though it arrived quite late and the engines tended to catch on fire and cause it to crash a lot which was a major hinderance. In Europe I tend to think the B-17 was the best heavy because of it's high altitude capability and armament made it acceptably survivable on escorted daylight missions, but I think that had the Mossie been used more effectively it could have outperformed it on may strategic missions using tactics similar to the Phillips raid.
 
 
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HeavyD       8/9/2012 7:55:59 PM
"best" is always subjective.  That said the Mossie was one helluva aircraft that could have been given a larger role.  However as it's been noted one reason for it's effectiveness was it's relatively small role - it wasn't worth it for the Germans to focus on countering it.
 
It's laughable though to think that more Lancasters would have made a difference:  the evidence is scant enough that the Lancasters were all that effective in actual target damage in the first place.  If anything the Allies needed more Mossies for pathfinders to give the Arvo's SOMETHING to aim at...
 
Seems like there could have been a bigger ground attack role too - especially for the up-armored version with a 6 pounder that was used to counter U-boats. 
 
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Aussiegunneragain       8/10/2012 12:45:34 PM


"best" is always subjective.

It could act as an unescorted day and night light bomber, long range fighter bomber and intruder capable of dogfighting with the single seat fighters of the day, night fighter including night intruder, pathfinder, unescorted photo recon, maritime and anti submarine strike and special transport, and was best in its class at ALL of them when introduced. It remained best in class for all roles or near to it throughout the war and didn't even reach it's full development potential. What's more it could largely be constructed of material that literally grew on trees, by every piano and cabinet maker in the country. Objectively, what other military aircraft ever built can list that array of achievements? I can't think of one.
 
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