What if America built De Havilland Mosquitoes instead of the B-17 Flying Fortress?

[Schweik]

Let me add to this based on the OP's question.

Could the US have built the Mosquito? Yes

I think under license Bellanca would be a perfect company for this based on their experience building wood aircraft.

Could the Mosquito have replaced the B-17 in a strategic role?

For some missions, yes but in the bigger picture no.

Bringing the Mosquito on line, getting a production license, signing contracts and building tooling would have taken at least 18 months if not longer. As mentioned earlier, General Arnold showed several manufacturers Mosquito drawings, no one wanted to touch it - but then again the AAC did not put up a solicitation for bid.

Could an "all-Mosquito" bomber force bring the same amount of destruction to Germany as the around the clock bombing by the RAF and USAAF did with 4 engine bombers?

IMO - No, however there were probably many applications where using the Mosquito "would have" been more efficient and effective.

Was the Strategic Bombing Campaign of Germany a complete failure?

Obviously not LOL! But in hindsight it could have been done more efficiently with less losses of airmen and aircraft.

Did the US "NEED" the Mosquito? Need no, "would have been nice to have" yes. As we know the Mosquito was used by the AAF as a night fighter and recon aircraft.

The Mosquito did show that in tactical and some strategic applications, the fast, low and precise fighter bomber can be more effective than the "bomb truck." Until the day of precision weapons and delivery systems came, you were still dropping unguided bombs. Everyone talks about mitigating civilian causalities but even with the most accurate bomber of the era, civilian causalities are going to happen.

Operation Carthage - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

All reasonable, but it's a matter of scale. The heavy bomber campaign wasn't a "complete failure" but it could have been done much more effectively. Sometimes we just go with the momentum on something when it would have actually been wiser to change course. Inevitably civilian casualties are going to happen (we still see that with predators and hellfires or laser guided bombs) but that is a far cry from intentionally burning down a whole city.

There is also such a thing as continuing a particular strategy even when it's not showing results and is costing too much in friendly casualties. The 8th AF and US commanders showed the good sense to back off from the (partly) unescorted daylight bombing after Schweinfurt etc., and basically wait until improvements to the existing (P-38, P-47) escort fighters and the incredibly rapid run up of the new one (P-51) allowed them to continue deep penetration raids.

I am just suggesting something similar could have been done with the bombers, though it would have required a couple of true visionaries in the right places at the right time, and there is always a shortage of those. Luckily we had a few in place for the P-51 etc. And in the early development of the Mosquito itself.

 

[Schweik]

After reading the premise and most of the posts in this what if I have come to the following conclusions;

1. The B17 was not a good multi-purpose twin engine aircraft.

2. The B17 was a good four engined bomber as per design.

3. The Mosquito was a good twin engine multi-purpose aircraft as per design.

4. The Mosquito was not a good four engine bomber.

I may have missed a few things here but it remains that as with all what ifs it is mostly in the the realm of personal preference.

Here is another - Mosquotes could conduct unescorted bombing raids into Occupied Europe and specifically Germany with very low casualties (0.7%) and could hit targets much more accurately than four engined level bombers dropping from high altitudes.

 

[Schweik]

Actually you raise a very valid point that most ignore.

Building wooden aircraft on a large scale is a far far bigger task than building metal aircraft on the same scale. Over 18,000 B-24s were built. Wooden, and part wooden, aircraft were smaller aircraft and only built in hundreds, and maybe very low thousands, in the USA.

A typical pressed metal wing rib is a single piece of metal with lightening holes and pressed flanges and pressed stiffeners. For a single metal aircraft this is costly to build but when you go to mass production you cut out the blanks using a pantograph router or similar in lots of 10 to 50 (forty 0.025 thick ribs being cut simultaneously make a stack only 1 inch high and take little more time than routing a single rib), then after cleaning and de-burring the blanks spend a couple of minutes in the press where in most cases multiple parts were pressed simultaneously, then a bit of rework and you turn out hundreds of each part per day with only a few men or women and tools. To maximize output many presses had four parts tables mounted NSEW with three being loaded/unloaded while one is actually in the press. The single stack of 12ft x 4ft sheets on the router table is cut into not just ribs but much of the "waste" is cut into smaller parts so that there is minimal real waste. All the shavings and small off-cuts were, in turn, recycled. Some plants used presses that in a single action blanked and shaped the component but they had much higher tooling costs and higher waste which was offset by the reduced man-hours.

With a wooden wing rib (or a Spitfire wing rib) each one requires a lot of man-hours to assemble from lots of individual parts that nearly all have to be individually cut to size and shape and which then have to be assembled in a jig to get the correct shape. They cannot be stack routed or press blanked. As well as requiring a lot of tradesmen, producing a large number of each part requires a large number of jigs and all the other tools required to make the minor parts. That in turn would require a much larger plant with all the attendant problems with moving ribs (or what ever) from dozens of output sources to the inspection department and component or final assembly lines. And that is before you add in cure times for the glues used, often in jigs which means even more jigs are required where you cannot remove the part until the glue cures, etc, etc, that are absent from a metal production line where the part leaves the form block or jig the moment it is completed. AND it is very difficult to productively recycle wood waste like shavings, sawdust and small off-cuts.

As a counter to all this, I'd point out the 20,000+ Higgins boats I already mentioned (production starting in 1942), and also that the Soviet Union (among others) built a huge number of wooden fighter aircraft in the tens of thousands (think I-16 (10,000), Yak 1 (8700 built), Yak 7 (6300), LaGG 3 (6500), La 5 (9,900) etc.) plus others like Yak 3, Yak 9 and MiG 3 which were partly wood. And they ramped up production under incredibly difficult conditions, sometimes assembling them under the open sky, after the big move of the factories over the Urals.

DeHaviland themselves built ~70,00 Mosquitos, of which I believe at least a few hundred were built in Canada during he war.

If there was one thing the US was very, very good at in WW2, it was mass production of weapons and war materiel. I think they could have figured it out.

 

[FLYBOYJ]

I can also see P-51A being a useful fast recon bird for a couple of scenarios in the PTO.

Why? The F-5 (P-38) fulfilled the role quite well and was the mainstay in the PTO until the F-6 came along. The F-5 was faster than the P-51A and had twice the range.

 

[FLYBOYJ]

As a counter to all this, I'd point out the 20,000+ Higgins boats I already mentioned (production starting in 1942), and also that the Soviet Union (among others) built a huge number of wooden fighter aircraft in the tens of thousands (think I-16 (10,000), Yak 1 (8700 built), Yak 7 (6300), LaGG 3 (6500), La 5 (9,900) etc.) plus others like Yak 3, Yak 9 and MiG 3 which were partly wood. And they ramped up production under incredibly difficult conditions, sometimes assembling them under the open sky, after the big move of the factories over the Urals.

DeHaviland themselves built ~70,00 Mosquitos, of which I believe at least a few hundred were built in Canada during he war.

If there was one thing the US was very, very good at in WW2, it was mass production of weapons and war materiel. I think they could have figured it out.

And the Soviet-built wood aircraft had many issues when first deployed. The LaGG 3 was not well liked and had many issues with it's constriction quality - the Soviets did have a shortage of aluminum and also had the manpower to build wood aircraft, so this was done more out of necessity. The MiG-3 was not entirely built of wood.

Building wood boats is A LOT different then building and maintaining wood aircraft and MiTasol did an excellent job pointing this out!

 

[Thumpalumpacus]

Building wood boats is A LOT different then building and maintaining wood aircraft and MiTasol did an excellent job pointing this out!

Which also raises the point that if we're crash-building thousands of Mossies, the shortage of landing craft which caused the delay of two amphibious invasions (Dragoon and Burma) -- as well as hampering Anzio by the precipitate withdrawal of LCs for Overlord -- is going to possibly be exacerbated by the demands on both wood stocks and skilled woodworkers now tasked to building the aircraft.

Another issue that comes to mind for me is the Merlin bottleneck. Heavy American bombers were using engines which weren't in great demand for fighters, meaning that building -17s and -24s didn't bite into P-51 production. Building three or four thousand Mossies (6-8000 Merlins) would require not only a big pivot in wood resources and skilled labor, it would also require a big pivot in engine production, what with retooling and retraining factories and labor respectively.

As mighty as America's industry was, it wasn't limitless, and redirecting these resources would probably have had ripple effects impacting amphibious operations in ETO and PTO both, I think.

Whether the Mosquito would have been better in a strategic role, I'm not qualified to say one way or the other. But the production issues alone would seem to argue against such a course of action. Sticking with the radial-powered heavies allowed wood to go to LCs and Merlins to go to fighters without much industrial displacement, and I think everyone here agrees that the latter two bits of kit were vital to Allied victory.

 

[NevadaK]

Here is another "what if" answer to this "what if" question.

This question reminds me a little of the thread about the JU288. Without a doubt, the Mosquito is one of the preeminent medium bombers of the second world war. It demonstrates wide range adaptability to different tasks and in certain variants exceptional performance. Its reputation is largely built on performing certain kinds of missions such as small raid hit & run attacks (Gestapo Records), pathfinding, night fighter, photo recon. The what if asks, what if the Mosquito was the principal bombing platform of the western allies rather than the heavy bombing force? First off, I think this would signal a shift in thinking away from a strategic bombing campaign and more to a focus on tactical air power. In other words, the western ally air forces would start to look more like the Russian and German Air Forces in composition and practices. What would this mean for the rest of the war? For starters, the campaign to destroy the Luftwaffe was successful in no small part to the scale and force of the strategic bombing effort. Mass bombing attacks provoke mass fighter responses, without which the USAAF/RAF would not have been able to achieve the advantage in the air. Without air superiority, the Normandy invasion doesn't happen. Without mass bombing attacks, the need for deep air cover doesn't exist and the need for the Merlin powered Mustang is diminished and maybe never happens. With the shift to bombing via Mosquito, air defenses over Germany shifts away from the 88 to other guns appropriate to lower altitude and faster moving targets. This allows for more 88's to be delivered to the eastern front impacting the effectiveness of Russian armor. Smaller fast bombing attacks probably leads to the accelerated development of the ME-262 as a home defense fighter rather than some of the investigations into dive-bombing etc.

Those are my what ifs to the what if.

FWIW, it seems to me that a lot of the arguments favoring the Mosquito are colored by the success of western air power over the last 20 years. The Mosquito benefits from the idea that a plane can be untouchable and operate with impunity, but that also comes from the type of missions it was engaged in.

I also think that the US had a different perspective on the scale and range of battle, based on our physical size and distance from likely combatants. The thinking of the day was cross continental and I have a hard time believing that planners would have moved away from that.

My two cents for the day.

 

[SaparotRob]

Great thread!

 

[Schweik]

At low level mosquito fighter-bombers were able to place bombs into a corner of a building in the middle of a city. Is that good enough?

The aircraft doesn't have to fly the whole route at low level. For longer range targets it would be necessary to get the range.

Very much this. I don't see the need for such huge bombs (or bomb loads) if you can bomb with relative accuracy.

We can debate the "destruction radius" of a 500 lb or 1000 lb bomb all day, the issue isn't that a 500 lb bomb doesn't hurt. It wrecks shit.

It's just that the nature of high explosives is such that the effects diminish rapidly with distance.

So the key thing is to hit the target. If you can get some reasonable percentage of bombs within the 100' radius you will wreck the target.

Once in a while you will need the bigger bombs, which makes it it nice that the Mosquito could carry the 4,000 lb bomb.

I also don't propose fully getting rid of four engine heavies. There are some targets for which a heavy bomber is very useful. Some big nasty German ship parked next to Norway, hardened sub pens, whatever. Sometimes you need a 'Grand Slam', sometimes you need a badass bruiser bomber bristling with guns to fight the way through super heavy defenses.


Finally, I'd say, it's absurd to think the Germans would not react to increasing raids by Mosquitoes. They were already working hard (and succeeding) at making their fighters a lot faster and higher-flying, and I think they simply would have had to go in that direction instead of more heavily armed and armored. They would probably make fewer 88s and more light AAA. But they would certainly react and I think it's a cinch to say that the escort fighters would have been needed more or less when they were brought in for the heavies.

 

[Thumpalumpacus]

But they would certainly react and I think it's a cinch to say that the escort fighters would have been needed more or less when they were brought in for the heavies.

While the Mossie would need less escort, I think 1) it would still need escort while it's lugging its load (and perhaps afterwards if doing low-level escape, to prevent bounces) and 2) you're still going to need those fighters to wrest air superiority in advance of D-day, and not have huge fleets of bombers to draw GAF fighters (meaning they can husband their fighters for Der Tag.)

 

[Schweik]

While I think it's likely that the heavy defensive firepower* of US heavy bombers increased casualties, as those very guns increased the size of each bomber's aircrew, reduced its bomb load, and increased the number of sorties required, I don't think Mosquitoes (or a comparable US aircraft) would be able to inflect the sort of damage as a mass of B-17s (or B-24s) without adopting many of the same tactics, that is massive formations dropping bombs based on a signal from a lead bombardier. They'd also be suffering the same lost rate due to AAA, as they would be constrained to the same long straight and level path prior to bomb delivery. There may be lower losses on the flight to the target, as they may be able to cruise at higher speed**, and on the return flight, as their superior speed may result in lower losses, as the aircraft may be much less vulnerable out of formation than in.

Disagree. I think the only way this scenario could work is if a completely different attack strategy was adopted. You would need Mosquitos attacking specific industrial or operational targets, not trying to pulverize or burn down whole cities. They aren't good for that and would be wasted in that approach.

The attacks would have to be as Wuzak described - low level raids for near targets, and for further away targets, high-altitude then descending to low level to bomb, and then climbing up and out for the return trip home. The mosquito gives speed and high altitude performance which makes flying in massive formations unneccessary; the mosquito can survive attacking at low altitude and strike accurately which means you don't need so many bombs.

 

[Schweik]

Why? The F-5 (P-38) fulfilled the role quite well and was the mainstay in the PTO until the F-6 came along. The F-5 was faster than the P-51A and had twice the range.

F-5s got shot down a lot in Europe, maybe it was different in the PTO, probably was. I'm also not sure about the timelines, P-51A was available pretty early. But I'm not gonna die on this hill

 

[Schweik]

And the Soviet-built wood aircraft had many issues when first deployed. The LaGG 3 was not well liked and had many issues with it's constriction quality - the Soviets did have a shortage of aluminum and also had the manpower to build wood aircraft, so this was done more out of necessity. The MiG-3 was not entirely built of wood.

Building wood boats is A LOT different then building and maintaining wood aircraft and MiTasol did an excellent job pointing this out!

Most of the Soviet construction quality problems (which were a major issue for ALL the early Soviet fighters except maybe the I-16 and I-153) were because they had a work force which was 95% rural / farmworkers with no factory skills, and because of the huge disruptions with what factory base they did have (largely in Ukraine) by the German invasion, requiring many of the factories to be moved East across the Urals. As I noted previously, some of those aircraft were being built under an open sky while they were scrambling to build roofs over the heads of the workers.

The US really had none of these problems, had a larger population, much better supply / resources, and was not fighting for their life against a massive invading army. If the Soviets could ramp up production of their various fighters (good, bad and in between) I think the US could certainly have done so as well.

 

[pbehn]

Very much this. I don't see the need for such huge bombs (or bomb loads) if you can bomb with relative accuracy.

We can debate the "destruction radius" of a 500 lb or 1000 lb bomb all day, the issue isn't that a 500 lb bomb doesn't hurt. It wrecks shit.

It's just that the nature of high explosives is such that the effects diminish rapidly with distance.

So the key thing is to hit the target. If you can get some reasonable percentage of bombs within the 100' radius you will wreck the target.

Once in a while you will need the bigger bombs, which makes it it nice that the Mosquito could carry the 4,000 lb bomb.

I also don't propose fully getting rid of four engine heavies. There are some targets for which a heavy bomber is very useful. Some big nasty German ship parked next to Norway, hardened sub pens, whatever. Sometimes you need a 'Grand Slam', sometimes you need a badass bruiser bomber bristling with guns to fight the way through super heavy defenses.


Finally, I'd say, it's absurd to think the Germans would not react to increasing raids by Mosquitoes. They were already working hard (and succeeding) at making their fighters a lot faster and higher-flying, and I think they simply would have had to go in that direction instead of more heavily armed and armored. They would probably make fewer 88s and more light AAA. But they would certainly react and I think it's a cinch to say that the escort fighters would have been needed more or less when they were brought in for the heavies.

You are taking the various aspects of the Mosquito and cherry picking. The 2.000 Lb cookie was better described as an aerial mine, not only did it have the aerodynamics of a brick, it couldnt be dropped at low altitude because the shock wave could and did damage the aircraft. The low loss rate of 0.7% was overall including many night time raids. If you look at the losses on daylight raids they were much higher in percentage terms and frequently against targets that were not considered targets by the Germans, like prisons, TV head quarters and Gestapo offices.

What the tall boy attacks proved, if they proved anything was that level bombing from fairly high altitudes could be accurate if you have crews who train and practice doing it with aerodynamic bombs.

 

[Schweik]

Here is another "what if" answer to this "what if" question.

This question reminds me a little of the thread about the JU288. Without a doubt, the Mosquito is one of the preeminent medium bombers of the second world war. It demonstrates wide range adaptability to different tasks and in certain variants exceptional performance. Its reputation is largely built on performing certain kinds of missions such as small raid hit & run attacks (Gestapo Records), pathfinding, night fighter, photo recon. The what if asks, what if the Mosquito was the principal bombing platform of the western allies rather than the heavy bombing force? First off, I think this would signal a shift in thinking away from a strategic bombing campaign and more to a focus on tactical air power. In other words, the western ally air forces would start to look more like the Russian and German Air Forces in composition and practices.

Nicely written post, but I disagree. Neither the Soviets nor the Germans had a bomber like the Mosquito. A couple of points:

1) None of the Soviet bombers (and I am a big fan of their Pe 2) was fast or well performing enough to evade German fighters.
2) The Pe-2, by far the best Soviet bomber until late in the war, had about half the range of the Mosquito and a top speed of about ~330 mph. Even so, they could have done more with it (they managed a strike on Ploesti with a tiny number of Pe-2s early in the war which was quite impressive) but it did not have the same potential as a Mossie.
3) The Germans were in the same boat. None of the German bombers was fast enough to evade Allied fighters*. Their best was the Ju 88 but it could not outrun a Spitfire, nor even a Kittyhawk in many cases. Once P-38s, P-47s and P-51s were in Theater deep strikes by Ju 88s were very risky. They did do them, but sometimes paid a very heavy price.

In short, the Mosquito offered the Anglo-American Allies a capability that the Soviets, the Germans or Italians, or the Japanese, simply didn't have - A fast bomber that performed so well that it could evade fighters and could strike deep into enemy territory on it's own. Therefore, you would not be just shifting into tactical strikes. Mosquitos did both Tactical and Strategic / Operational strikes. I'm saying you could have used far less of the B-17s / B-24s / Lancasters / Halifaxes, and used many more Mosquitos (and maybe later, A-26s, F7Fs whatever) to attack German Strategic and Operational targets, like rail yards, factories, refineries, supply depots and so on.

What would this mean for the rest of the war? For starters, the campaign to destroy the Luftwaffe was successful in no small part to the scale and force of the strategic bombing effort. Mass bombing attacks provoke mass fighter responses, without which the USAAF/RAF would not have been able to achieve the advantage in the air. Without air superiority, the Normandy invasion doesn't happen. Without mass bombing attacks, the need for deep air cover doesn't exist and the need for the Merlin powered Mustang is diminished and maybe never happens. With the shift to bombing via Mosquito, air defenses over Germany shifts away from the 88 to other guns appropriate to lower altitude and faster moving targets. This allows for more 88's to be delivered to the eastern front impacting the effectiveness of Russian armor. Smaller fast bombing attacks probably leads to the accelerated development of the ME-262 as a home defense fighter rather than some of the investigations into dive-bombing etc.

I do not think that the Germans could ignore a heavy increase in deep raids by high speed bombers. Even as it was historically, the Mosquito created immense consternation in the Luftwaffe and more broadly, the German high command. If you tripled the number of Mosquito raids and did more of them against very sensitive targets like oil infrastructure, I think you would find the Germans pushing their manufactuers to make faster and better performing fighters. They were already doing this and went down this road. Eventually they would have fighters which could catch Mosquitoes. Certainly they had their jets. This would have created another type of arms race of faster higher performing fighters, but it would not have eliminated the duel between the Anglo-American fighters and Luftwaffe.

88's were devastating against armor in the early / mid-war, but were vulnerable to things like low flying CAS aircraft, heavy artillery and Katyusha rockets.

Those are my what ifs to the what if.

Like I said, I disagree but good post.

FWIW, it seems to me that a lot of the arguments favoring the Mosquito are colored by the success of western air power over the last 20 years. The Mosquito benefits from the idea that a plane can be untouchable and operate with impunity, but that also comes from the type of missions it was engaged in.

I also think that the US had a different perspective on the scale and range of battle, based on our physical size and distance from likely combatants. The thinking of the day was cross continental and I have a hard time believing that planners would have moved away from that.

My two cents for the day.

Those are fair points but I also think the gradual replacement of heavy bombers by smaller fast bombers (and fighters) is not an accident, and actually supports my argument. Anyway I'm basing the ideas about the Mosquito on wartime data.


*At least until the jets, but I think they were too limited in range for Strategic bombing.

 

[Schweik]

You are taking the various aspects of the Mosquito and cherry picking. The 2.000 Lb cookie was better described as an aerial mine, not only did it have the aerodynamics of a brick, it couldnt be dropped at low altitude because the shock wave could and did damage the aircraft.

I think you are just skimming my posts - understandable, if you don't want to read them, but it is resulting in a skewed perception of what I am actually saying. IMO most strikes only needed the 500 lb bombs. Some marks of Mosquitos could carry the 1,000 pounders, and we know they did also sometimes carry 4,000 lbs bombs. I thought the 2,000 lb bomb wasn't actually used, maybe I misunderstood Wuzaks post.

The low loss rate of 0.7% was overall including many night time raids. If you look at the losses on daylight raids they were much higher in percentage terms and frequently against targets that were not considered targets by the Germans, like prisons, TV head quarters and Gestapo offices.

That is a fair point though most of those kinds of targets were in heavily defended areas, and they were taking extra care not to kill civilians.

What the tall boy attacks proved, if they proved anything was that level bombing from fairly high altitudes could be accurate if you have crews who train and practice doing it with aerodynamic bombs.

I also pointed out, I think you still did want to have and need some heavy bombers. They did have their uses. I would just have reversed the ratio.

 

[Schweik]

While the Mossie would need less escort, I think 1) it would still need escort while it's lugging its load (and perhaps afterwards if doing low-level escape, to prevent bounces) and 2) you're still going to need those fighters to wrest air superiority in advance of D-day, and not have huge fleets of bombers to draw GAF fighters (meaning they can husband their fighters for Der Tag.)

I think you are still going to have the Luftwaffe ramping up to stop the Mosquitos. They would have the added urgency of their families being killed so much, but their war machine and fighting ability would be getting degraded that much faster, if we assume that the Mosquitos were indeed more accurate.

This means that while the raids start out as small groups of Mosquitos flying in on their own, eventually the Germans would have fighters which could catch Mosquitos, which means that eventually you DO need escorts and therefore the Götterdämerung fighter vs fighter showdown still does happen.

 

[Thumpalumpacus]

I think you are still going to have the Luftwaffe ramping up to stop the Mosquitos. They would have the added urgency of their families being killed so much, but their war machine and fighting ability would be getting degraded that much faster, if we assume that the Mosquitos were indeed more accurate.

This means that while the raids start out as small groups of Mosquitos flying in on their own, eventually the Germans would have fighters which could catch Mosquitos, which means that eventually you DO need escorts and therefore the Götterdämerung fighter vs fighter showdown still does happen.

Perhaps, but given the production schedules, Overlord is still going to be captive to production schedules and will likely be delayed. This also isn't considering the need to shift wood, labor, and engine production to produce the Mosquitoes, which will also add delay into the program.

You're certainly correct that the RLM would have pushed for better fighters earlier, but given that you're diverting Merlins for the Mosquitoes, I'm not sure that results in the Allied air supremacy historically attained over NW France by May of 44, because those newer and hotter fighters are going to be fighting fewer Spitfires and Mustangs due to the engine crunch, and the wood and woodworkers building Mosquitoes wouldn't be building the LCIs landing on the five beaches.

In either event, Overlord seems like it would be delayed, in my opinion.

 

[Schweik]

Perhaps, but given the production schedules, Overlord is still going to be captive to production schedules and will likely be delayed. This also isn't considering the need to shift wood, labor, and engine production to produce the Mosquitoes, which will also add delay into the program.

I'm not sure that there would actually be a conflict on labor or wood - Mosquito used some specific types of wood some of which would have to be imported. I think they could have trained the labor just like they did to work in B-17 factories.

You're certainly correct that the RLM would have pushed for better fighters earlier, but given that you're diverting Merlins for the Mosquitoes, I'm not sure that results in the Allied air supremacy historically attained over NW France by May of 44, because those newer and hotter fighters are going to be fighting fewer Spitfires and Mustangs due to the engine crunch, and the wood and woodworkers building Mosquitoes wouldn't be building the LCIs landing on the five beaches.

In either event, Overlord seems like it would be delayed, in my opinion.

I don't think Overlord would have been delayed.

As for Merlins, look how many Hurricanes they were still building into 1944, just to mention one aircraft type. I think they could have found the engines too, though it would take some work. There was a potential conflict between P-51 engines and Mosquito engines I'll grant you that.

 

[Thumpalumpacus]

I'm not sure that there would actually be a conflict on labor or wood - Mosquito used some specific types of wood some of which would have to be imported. I think they could have trained the labor just like they did to work in B-17 factories.

You may be right; I'm not well-educated on the industrial requirements involved, but even that retraining is going to impose delays. Laminating and attaching wood to aeronautical standards is probably a bit more complex than building boats, given the higher-stress regimes the aircraft will be experiencing.

I don't think Overlord would have been delayed.

We disagree here.

As for Merlins, look how many Hurricanes they were still building into 1944, just to mention one aircraft type. I think they could have found the engines too, though it would take some work. There was a potential conflict between P-51 engines and Mosquito engines I'll grant you that.

You're right regarding the Hurris -- if you're going to discontinue something, that plane would be the obvious choice to my mind. But retraining and retooling American factories/labor from R-1820s to Merlins will still take time and resources. And fewer Mustangs to fight these higher-performance LW fighters would probably delay the achievement of the air supremacy which allowed DDE to tell his troops "If you see a plane overhead, it will be ours", no matter how useful the Mosquitoes prove to be.

So I adhere to my point that having two separate engine requirements and logistical chains, one for bombers, one for fighters, allowed for (in a counterintuitive sense) more efficient exploitation of American industrial capacity. You're spending more energy building the engines you've been building all along, rather than taking months to shift machinery and training.

Be it said that though I don't agree with everything you've written, I do appreciate your pushing in this discussion. It's given me a lot to think about and that is always a good thing.