Up close with a Mosquito

[nuuumannn]

Hi Guys, the most recent New Zealand produced Mosquito made a stop at my local airport, so I dropped by with my trusty camera. The aircraft stopped for fuel on its way south for Warbirds over Wanaka this weekend.

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Jaiden, Steve and Wal, no, Jaiden didn't fly down in the bomb bay...

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Yes, that is Steve Hinton...

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Next, start, taxy and take off.

 

[nuuumannn]

The Mossie departing for Wanaka, pilot's loo break over...

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First to depart was the ground crew's support aircraft, this nifty Death Star...

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Mossie departure.

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I'll be posting coverage of Warbirds this weekend, including heavy metal departures, as the USAF are coming to town!

 

[Crimea_River]

Sweet pics. Gotta say, I'm not a fan of the paint scheme.

 

[SaparotRob]

It must have sounded glorious! Love the paint scheme.

 

[Wurger]

 

[Thumpalumpacus]

Damn, don't those Merlins sure look the business.

 

[Snautzer01]

Very nice !

 

[Jeff Hunt]

General Mosquito question. Were any Mossies ever finished in a desert camo pattern? I do not remember ever seeing a photo of one.

My 2 cents worth..... any Mosquito is sweet but I do prefer camo birds to silver C/S.

Jeff

 

[special ed]

Lucky catch of the exhaust flame.

 

[Gnomey]

Great shots Grant!

 

[nuuumannn]

Thanks guys. The colour scheme is a hybrid, the identity and squadron codes belong to the aircraft when it served with the RNZAF post-war, although the red codes was a choice of the owner, as are the invasion stripes, honouring 80 years since Overlord. No doubt we'll see what Mr Lewis has planned for this aircraft in future. Silver also acts as a good basis for repaiting the aircraft at a later date. See the Flying Heritage Collection's Mosquito TV959, which wore post-war RNZAF markings following its restoration in New Zealand, but has been repainted in a wartime scheme since its arrival in the USA.

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Mosquito TV959 First Flight

The first North American flight of Mosquito TV959 took place right around 10am on Friday June 23, 2017, at Paine Field near Seattle. The...

www.ascalecanadian.com

 

[Wurger]

 

[nuuumannn]

General Mosquito question. Were any Mossies ever finished in a desert camo pattern? I do not remember ever seeing a photo of one.

Good question. I don't recall seeing pictures of one. PR Mossies that operated in the Med retained their PR Blue colours, although to avoid friendly fire incidents, they tended to adopt brightly coloured fins and spinners and so forth. In the Far East, they sometimes wore dark Earth and Dark Green topside camo, or silver, with the PR aircraft wearing the blue or silver...

 

[ThomasP]

Not quite to the desert theater topic, but here are a couple of pages with colour photos of Mosquitoes in the Med.

"De Havilland DH.98 Mosquito Color Photographs Part I"

"De Havilland DH.98 Mosquito Color Photographs Part II"

 

[EwenS]

By the time that the first Mossies arrived for permanent basing in the Med, the desert campaign was almost over. Prior to that some PR.I from RAF Benson had made temporary stopovers from Nov 1941 onwards.

The first permanently based Mosquitos to arrive in the Med theatre were the Mk.II Intruders of 23 squadron which went to Malta in Dec 1942. One of their YP coded aircraft appears in the first link posted by ThomasP. MSG/Dark Green upper surfaces and Night lower surfaces.

The first PR Mossies were a pair of specially converted PR.II that went to 60 SAAF in Feb 1943. They had been sent out to Egypt for weather trials but were hijacked and converted for PR work. These were in their original night NF.II night fighter camouflage but were repainted later.

SOUTH AFRICAN Mossies

STEVE MACLEAN EXPLAINS HOW 60 SQUADRON SOUTH AFRICAN AIR FORCE...

www.key.aero

683 sqn began operating PR.II in May 1943. 256 then took a detachment of NF.XII to Malta in July 1943 with the rest of the squadron following in Oct.


The first Mossies in the Far East were sent out May-Aug 1943 for weathering trials. Then in Aug a couple of Mk.II and a Mk.VI went to 681 sqn for PR work, to be followed by PR.IX in Sept. The latter were in PRU blue. All these PR Mossies went to 684 in Oct.

FB.VI began to arrive in India in Jan 1944 but it was Oct before operations began. These early aircraft were camouflaged. Some were DG/DE/blue but others retained the overall MSG/DG seen in Britain. But by the end of Oct all were grounded due to gluing problems, until each airframe could be cleared or scrapped. From that came the decision that all future Mossies in that theatre would be painted in silver dope. Not sure how long the changeover took but certainly by mid-1945 all new issue Mossies, whether PR, NF, or FB were silver doped. The only exception were the PR.34 that arrived from June 1945 that came out from the UK with silver upper and PRU blue undersurfaces.

 

[nuuumannn]

Not quite to the desert theater topic, but here are a couple of pages with colour photos of Mosquitoes in the Med.

"De Havilland DH.98 Mosquito Color Photographs Part I"

Those are great, the US Mossies illustrating the brightly coloured bits that were done to avoid getting shot down by their own side, given the type was not prevalent in theatre.

The first PR Mossies were a pair of specially converted PR.II that went to 60 SAAF in Feb 1943. They had been sent out to Egypt for weather trials but were hijacked and converted for PR work. These were in their original night NF.II night fighter camouflage but were repainted later.

The first PR Mosquitoes in the Med theatre were 540 Sqn, RAF aircraft. 540 Sqn had detached PR Mosquito Mk.IVs to Malta and Gibraltar from October 1942, although the unit used Malta only as a staging post, being based at Leuchars with a detachment at RAF Benson with a semi-permanent basing at Gibraltar. The aircraft operated from Gibraltar to cover the advances following the Torch landings in November and were often pursued by Vichy French fighters. From Malta, the aircraft were sent to get images of the Italian naval bases at Leghorn, Pola, Spezia and Fiume.

683 sqn began operating PR.II in May 1943. 256 then took a detachment of NF.XII to Malta in July 1943 with the rest of the squadron following in Oct.

683 Sqn operated Mosquito PR.IVs from RAF Luqa, Malta from May 1943. There were only four F.IIs converted into PR.IIs, two of which operated with the previously mentioned 540 Sqn, the other two were not listed as operating with 683 Sqn. The unit was based in Tunisia following its departure from RAF Luqa and then San Severino Italy, with detachments around the traps.

680 Sqn, RAF, was another PR unit that was based in the Med, in Egypt from 1943 and was equipped with Mosquito IXs and XVIs from February 1944, which were detached to Italy and Sicily. These aircraft wore standard PR blue, but had garish fin markings as well, one particular aircraft that is often covered in profile illustrations has a white fin with red diagonal stripes and yellow spinners. This was because US fighters in theatre had attacked the aircraft, mistaking them for Me 210s and 410s.