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Do you know what the abbreviations mean? Interested to know why briefing notes were sent from S.I.C. in Middleton St George to G.I.C. HQ of 6 Group
Considering the survivability and comparable bomb loads,would we have been far better off with the former? Would we even have built the lumbering Liberator had we had thousands of these?
I don't see how one would cancel out the other. They're in entirely different categories, akin to Jeeps canceling out Shermans. But I could see America building the Mosquito instead of the A-20 Havoc or A-26 Invader as the category is closer.What if America built De Havilland Mosquitoes instead of the B-17 Flying Fortress?
I don't see how one would cancel out the other. They're in entirely different categories, akin to Jeeps canceling out Shermans. But I could see America building the Mosquito instead of the A-20 Havoc or A-26 Invader as the category is closer.
If there are no B-17, does that mean Boeing is out of the design biz, and is just a contract manufacturer? So no B-29, etc?
Canada produced Mosquitos using US-sourced Packard Merlins, so I see no reason the USA couldn't either. But we need to ask why does the Mosquito exist, wasn't this to use non-strategic materials in resource-poor Britain? That's hardly the case in the USA where everything to make anything is plentiful.I agree. I think this is an arm-waving exercise. I think it is much more interesting researching what actually happened, not what "coulda-shoulda been".
Nobody seems the least bit concerned about the demise of Chongqin, Nanking, Shanghai, Warsaw, Poznan, Bialystok, Jaslo, Polanow, Zabludow, Gubin, Oradour sur Glane, Murmansk, Bryansk, Vitabsk, Stalingrad, Vyasma, Minsk, Smolensk, Kursk, Voronezh, Sevastopol, Chernogov and so on.
Considering the survivability and comparable bomb loads,would we have been far better off with the former? Would we even have built the lumbering Liberator had we had thousands of these?
*if* the US licensed the Mosquito, they would have most likely made it from Aluminum instead of wood.I remember reading a similar question; I think it was in Quora topics. The answer said something about Dehavilland having both sufficient experience in wood constructed aircraft and having the people with wood working skills to build airplanes like the Mosquito, Dragon Rapide, Tiger Moth, and so on. By that time the US aviation industry had been building in metal for a number of years and numbers of the people required and capable of that level of wood working expertise were no longer available.
This whole wood vs metal Mosquito thing comes up again and again and again, almost as bad as the P-plane that must not be named.
Getting enough wood to build thousands more mosquitos would be a major problem, perhaps solvable, perhaps not.
Keeping the external shape/form of the Mosquito and designing an all new, all metal structure (or even substantially metal) is going to take months. It might also degrade performance as part of the Mosquito's performance came from the high quality surface finish the doped fabric covering gave compared to a metal aircraft with rows of rivets even if counter sunk.
It wouldn't seem very Mosquito-like with radials.
It's true that the smaller US aircraft companies still were making airplanes in wood but note the planes you're using as examples. They were all straightforward relatively simple designs again built in relatively small numbers. An airplane like the Mosquito is a bit more complex both in building as well as in the numbers the military was looking for.*if* the US licensed the Mosquito, they would have most likely made it from Aluminum instead of wood.
The reason being that US had more resources in aluminum than Britain did.
Also, the US was quite capable of manufacturing aircraft with wood or wood components and had quite a few types in service that were made with wood such as the Beech AT-10, Cessna AT-17 and so on.
The US didn't need to build aircraft out of wood.It's true that the smaller US aircraft companies still were making airplanes in wood but note the planes you're using as examples. They were all straightforward relatively simple designs again built in relatively small numbers. An airplane like the Mosquito is a bit more complex both in building as well as in the numbers the military was looking for.
The US didn't need to build aircraft out of wood.
So, to misquote Douglas Adams: "Something almost, but not entirely, quite unlike a Mosquito".....?I think it more likely that if a metal Mosquito was to be made it would be a new design based on the unarmed Mosquito concept.
As a later design it would be able to take advantage of advancements in aerodynamics, such as using laminar flow wing profiles.
If it was to be used by the Americans, it would need a larger bomb bay, even if only to carry 4 x 500lb GP American bombs, due to the extra size of the tails compared to the British designs.
It need not use the Merlin, either.
An engine such as the R-2800 could be utilised, if desired.