Ad: This forum contains affiliate links to products on Amazon and eBay. More information in Terms and rules
They had two different design briefs, the P-38 had no peer when introduced as a long distance high altitude fighter. The Mosquito as a light bomber had few peers in its service life and having a two man crew and internal space meant it could do a lot more much more easily. Almost comically when de Havilland produced a top class single seat fighter (the Hornet) they were then asked to put another man in it.I agree with you, Tomo. That's the only twin engine I could think of.
In the necessary time scale there was insufficient balsa wood.They key ingredient to the plywood, however was Ecuadorian balsa. Would should have been able to attain that as well.
For the other woods required it would have been a huge effort too. Not saying it couldnt be done, but it wouldnt be cheap.In the necessary time scale there was insufficient balsa wood.
As per a previous discussion, Europe was stripped of Yew trees to make bows and a huge amount of oak forests destroyed to make sailing ships. The amount of wood actually used in an aircraft is an incredibly small percentage of the wood in a forest. To produce 5 times as many Mosquitos in the same time would require a massive and constantly expanding infrastructure of selection cutting and transport.Balsa was not being grown on plantations at the time. It had to be harvested from trees growing in the wild. Balsa tends to spread out, not grow in groves. 2-3 per hectare?
From Wiki
"Ecuador supplies 95% or more of commercial balsa. In recent years, about 60% of the balsa has been plantation-grown in densely packed patches of around 1000 trees per hectare (compared to about two to three per hectare in nature). The trees are harvested after six to 10 years of growth. "
Not every spruce tree is going to give you aircraft quality spruce, especially in the lengths desired.
I think you have stumbled upon a cunning plan.At least the ships bringing the Balsa trees from South America are harder for the U-boats to sink
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?
But it was correct that such an idea was dead on arrival, because it wouldnt work. Look at the famous raids by Mosquitos, small numbers used and very high percentage losses frequently against targets that werent considered targets. The strategy of the bomber campaign progressed to eliminating the LW as an effective force in the air and on the ground prior to D-Day, that couldnt be done with a Mosquito or a B-25, B-26 either. Only a few pilots had the chance to make a precision attack, as soon as the first bombs fall things get hidden by smoke and dust. Industrial towns and targets were frequently covered by smoke and "haze" to start with. If the allies sent thousands of planes of any type over at tree top level the Germans would react, since the easiest way to navigate was to follow railways and canals that is where the guns would be placed, and so on and so forth.The Bomber Mafia Bullies would have been absolutely bat-sh_t apoplectic at the mere suggestion of replacing their 4-engine lumbering war-winning beauties with a 2-engine plywood blah, blah, blah. Nothing could have convinced them of the efficacy or efficiency of such a move. Dead on arrival.