MIflyer
1st Lieutenant
The century before last, in England, a boy was fishing and caught a pike, an English game fish, a powerful predator. It was such a nice example of the breed that it was preserved, mounted, and displayed in a manor house.
Over forty years later Great Britain was under attack by the German Luftwaffe. Aircraft factories were a target for the Germans and a team from the De Havilland company tasked with designing a new bomber was relocated to the manor house where the pike still hung on the wall.
The design team might well have found some inspiration from the shape of that fighting fish. The bomber they designed and built right there in that house, the DH98 Mosquito, bears a resemblance to a pike, being long and sleek, superbly streamlined, with a sharp fin at the rear.
The Mosquito was not just a success; it was literally a roaring success. Not only used as its originally conceived as a fast bomber, it almost immediately was turned into the best night fighter of the entire war and eventually became a fighter bomber, a long range recon plane, an antishipping and antisubmarine attack aircraft, and a pathfinder for night bombing operations. Mosquitoes carried out daring operations across Occupied Europe, including blasting Gestapo headquarters and prisons to enable prisoners to escape. Luftwaffe night fighter pilots even invented a new word, "mosquitopanic" which described why they began to dive away after attacking British bombers, fearful of being shot down by a Mosquito before they could escape.
The Mosquitoes not only represented a serious threat to the Germans also but drove them to distraction. Herman Goring was infuriated. Not only were the Mosquitoes often too fast to intercept, but they were made of wood. Goring thought it terribly unfair that the British had access to plenty of Aluminum, while the Germans did not, and yet chose to make such an impressive airplane out of wood.
The Germans tried building their own airplane similar to the Mosquito, the TA-154, but it did not work out very well. The Germans shot down some Mosquitoes but never bested the sleek wooden airplane. And they never bested the little boy who caught that inspirational pike, either.
His name was Winston Churchill..
Over forty years later Great Britain was under attack by the German Luftwaffe. Aircraft factories were a target for the Germans and a team from the De Havilland company tasked with designing a new bomber was relocated to the manor house where the pike still hung on the wall.
The design team might well have found some inspiration from the shape of that fighting fish. The bomber they designed and built right there in that house, the DH98 Mosquito, bears a resemblance to a pike, being long and sleek, superbly streamlined, with a sharp fin at the rear.
The Mosquito was not just a success; it was literally a roaring success. Not only used as its originally conceived as a fast bomber, it almost immediately was turned into the best night fighter of the entire war and eventually became a fighter bomber, a long range recon plane, an antishipping and antisubmarine attack aircraft, and a pathfinder for night bombing operations. Mosquitoes carried out daring operations across Occupied Europe, including blasting Gestapo headquarters and prisons to enable prisoners to escape. Luftwaffe night fighter pilots even invented a new word, "mosquitopanic" which described why they began to dive away after attacking British bombers, fearful of being shot down by a Mosquito before they could escape.
The Mosquitoes not only represented a serious threat to the Germans also but drove them to distraction. Herman Goring was infuriated. Not only were the Mosquitoes often too fast to intercept, but they were made of wood. Goring thought it terribly unfair that the British had access to plenty of Aluminum, while the Germans did not, and yet chose to make such an impressive airplane out of wood.
The Germans tried building their own airplane similar to the Mosquito, the TA-154, but it did not work out very well. The Germans shot down some Mosquitoes but never bested the sleek wooden airplane. And they never bested the little boy who caught that inspirational pike, either.
His name was Winston Churchill..
