Bomber command used the De Havilland Mosquito to improve the very poor accuracy of the heavy bombers and to reduce their losses, but it refused to consider the alternative, which was finally adopted only after World War 2 and dominates modern air power since. The alternative was to replace the big and slow and expensive heavy bombers with the Mosquito as Bomber command's main bomber. The points in favor of this alternative were also clearly presented by group commander Bennett, as a comparison between the Mosquito and the Lancaster, which was the best British heavy bomber:
- Mosquito carries to Berlin half the bomb load carried by a Lancaster, but...
- Mosquito loss rate is just 1/10 of Lancasters' loss rate
- Mosquito costs a third of the cost of a Lancaster
- Mosquito has a crew of two, compared to a Lancaster's crew of seven
- Mosquito was a proven precision day bomber and the Lancaster was not.
Bennett added that any way you do the math with those data, "It's quite clear that the value of the Mosquito to the war effort is significantly greater than that of any other aircraft in the history of aviation". In the German side, Erhard Milch, the deputy head of the Luftwaffe, said about the Mosquito "I fear that one day the British will start attacking with masses of this aircraft". But in one of the greatest allied mistakes in World War 2, bomber command persisted with its heavy bombers, and less than 1/4 of the Mosquitoes produced were of bomber types.
Bomber command dropped a total of 1.2 million tons of bombs in World War 2. Given the above 1% hit precision statistic, it actually means dropping just 12,000 tons of bombs on real strategic targets. Since accuracy was later improved thanks to Mosquito Pathfinders, let's assume for a moment that the amount of bombs which hit strategic targets was 50% higher. A quick calculation shows that a force of only 1000 Mosquito bombers of the 7781 Mosquitoes produced, could drop this amount on the same targets with high precision in just ten bombing missions each, at a fraction of the cost in blood, material resources, and time. This demonstrates the tremendous potential lost by using most of the Mosquitoes for every possible mission other than as a main strategic day and night precision bomber. The entire course of World War 2 could be drastically different.
The Mosquito bomber enabled the British bomber command to do exactly what it wanted to do, and destroy the entire German military industry in a precision bombing campaign even before American B-17s and B-24s began their costly day bombing campaign over Germany.
...
Modern bombers no longer rely on gun turrets to engage an enemy fighter which intercepted them. Instead, all modern bombers, like the De Havilland Mosquito, rely on their speed and agility, and also on electronic warfare and stealth, to avoid being intercepted in the first place.
De Havilland Mosquito
Any objections ?
