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The closest thing to a metal Mosquito I have seen is the post-WWII Argentine FMA I.Ae.30 Namcu.
Looks more like a Hornet, had Merlins, but was WAY faster than a Mosquito. Unfortunately they only built one ...
It was better-looking than the Mosquito, but that is subjective and personal. Since they only made one, the combat-proven choice is the Mosquito. Still the Namcu was METAL and the closest to the Mosquito in metal I kow of ... which is, after all, the title of the thread.
Re more Mosquitos. The existing carpentry industry was pretty well at capacity with Horsas, Hamilcars, Albermarles, Master, Martinet and Mosquitos.Perhaps the Albermarle and Master/Martinet capacity could have been diverted to Mosquito production but the biggest increase possible in Mosquito bombers would have been to divert all Mosquito production to bombers. No fighters. Let Beaufighters do the nightfighting etc. Squeeze as hard as you like but I doubt if you could end up with more than 50% more Mosquito bombers so what will you use if you choose not to mass bomb at night with heavy bombers?
I have a videotape here somewhere which features an interview with Ralph Hare, who was one of the original design team. later becoming Head of Structures at BAe. He makes the statement that dH undertook a study of a similar design in metal, based on the dH Flamingo (I think it's the Flamingo), the study concluding that had the Mosquito desigin been continued in metal, it would have been heavier for the same strength.
Bear in mind dH's experience with high-performance aircraft was pretty much all in wood - even the Vampire jet fighter had a wooden cockpit pod.
I love the Mossie but there were jobs it couldn't do - shutting down the French railways required lots and lots and lots of 500 lb bombs per acre of target. The Hallies and Lancs could deliver them, the Mossie not.
But then it is likely that they would attack at low level and achieve a larger percentage of bombs dropped into the target area.
Agreed. I sometimes wonder, when I see pics of "Mosquito X drops Y bombs through the roof of target Z", what the corresponding cost of the same effect would have been had the heavies been asked to do the job.
Hmm, Mossies vs German oil, woulda coulda shoulda.
Yep, the RAF wasn't going to be able to pull 600 Mossie bombers from its hat at any point after February 1942 really. The Mossie did well to stay on the Bomber Command OOB at all, and even then it was a near-run thing.
Most sources suggest that an all-metal Mosquito would have been heavier.
The other problem was that early Mosquito daylight raids appeared to have high loss rates. But that was largely because the raids were small, often having little more than 3 or 6 bombers on a mission. The loss of a single or two bombers made the loss rates high (1/6 = 16.7%).
It has been my belief for a while that it was the capacity of the defenders that determined loss rates moreso than the numbers of attacking bombers. So if the LW was able to down 1 Mossie in a raid using 6, it is unlikely that they would be able to down 17 in a 100 bomber raid. Maybe get a couple more.
It was something that changed the loss rates for the USAAF 8th AF too. In mid 1943 when they sent around 300 bombers to Schweinfurt they lost around 60, yet in early 1944 when they sent as many as 1000 bombers on a raid they still lost around the 60-80 mark.
Most ?
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2. Some of the late Bf109G's had wooden tails (due to material shortage). They were so much heavier, that they needed a 25kg counterbalance in the nose.