Warbird Information Exchange

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Those who possess real knowledge are rare.

Those who can set that knowledge into motion in the physical world are rarer still.

The few who possess real knowledge and can set it into motion of their own hands are the rarest of all.

Great piece!
I love the production line stuff.
Thanks for posting.
Jerry

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"Always remember that, when you enter the ocean or the forest, you are no longer at the top of the food chain."

So why is it so hard to keep 'em flying?

Funny, I smiled at the same comment

If you'd like to order a couple of hundred of new ones, I dont think you'd have any problems....

Bruce

Actually keeping them flying isn't the issue, it's been refurbishing them to fly. Most flying preserved Mosquitoes remained airworthy to the end of their flying days.

Building new, as TriangleP points out, is being done - one of the most major warbird achievements ever.

Back to the wartime film, actually, the irony was that the Australian Mosquito production was a disgraceful failure, with poor construction costing lives, wasting time and effectively meaning the whole programme was too little too late.

Also reading the online Flight accounts of the 1920s and 1930s, it's interesting to note how suspicious British aero-engineers were of all metal construction, regarding it as more risky than wood-fabric or metal-fabric construction. Early accounts of Junkers of Lockheed all-metal airliners show amazement they don't suffer from structural problems. Sounds odd, now, but then, that was clearly an issue.

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James K

"Switch on the underwater landing lights"
Emilio Largo, Thunderball.

www.VintageAeroWriter.com

James, that's like saying that you had found something in the last place you looked!



Could this have been suspicion of aluminum specifically? Certainly steel was well respected in that era as a structural material.

Not being a practicing historian in metallurgy, I wonder if the heat treating of aluminum was not very well understood back then (or the processing methods were unreliable).

No, not really. Sorry if you missed the precision. (OK, I put it badly.) They were rarely grounded due to structural / airworthyness issues; and also got through the massacre of the innocents of lighter wood-construction British aircraft of the 1960s. Given the problems of wood-design aircraft servicing that is an achievement. However once out of service, they would deteriorate from airworthy condition much more quickly than an equivalent metal type - and were harder than an equivalent metal type to restore to flightworthy condition. Modern NDT might have helped, but repairs for voids etc. would still be hard.


Good question. I'm certainly no metallurgist either; however my impression of the suspicion of the Junkers F13 airliner and questions put to the Junkers representative, and later the Lockheed 10 examination certainly smells a lot of the 'Not Invented Here syndrome'.

Oh, and the Brits are still suspicious of that American material 'aluminum'. They prefer aluminium.

If I refind the quotes...

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James K

"Switch on the underwater landing lights"
Emilio Largo, Thunderball.

www.VintageAeroWriter.com

Although the UK were involved with building aluminium aircraft early on and intially had great faith in them, they were shocked when a foreign airliner of the day crashed and the inquest found that metal fatigue was to blame.

Very good point, Glyn, I'd forgotten that. It was an F.13, as well. However it post-dated the article on the type I was thinking of, and was pre- the Lockheed reference.

I'd agree it was important, but relatively less so than the Knut Rockne Fokker accident in the US, if we are considering the legislative and public confidence effects.

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James K

"Switch on the underwater landing lights"
Emilio Largo, Thunderball.

www.VintageAeroWriter.com

I'm not sure how they stood up in the Pacific, but the first few wooden British aircraft to arrive in Canada had a hard time with the weather. Freeze/thaw cycles caused the glue to come apart. Several Anson Mk. Is at RAF Schools in Canada were scrapped after being parked outside during their first Canadian winter, even though in regular use. The RCAF received large numbers of Canadian built Mosquitos after VE day, and got rid of them as fast as they could. I always wondered if the memory of the Ansons was part of this.

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Bill Walker
Canadian Military Aircraft Serials
www.ody.ca/~bwalker/

I follow you now. Davis Monthan/AMARC type of facilities wouldn't work very well for the Mosquito compared to aluminum aircraft.

Yeah. Actually you'd need humidity control (within a certain range) and protection from numerous bugs.

Following on from Bill's post, the Mosquitoes in SE Asia had lots of problems, due to bugs and high humidity, wet conditions. Casein glue, being organic, is very attractive to bugs once it's got damp. The RAAF Museum's example was glued with urea formahyadide (sp) which is bad news 60 years later - wheras, well maintained casein glued airframes can still be good today.

But I'd re-emphasis the build quality of the first Aussie Mozzies was below acceptable and several crews were killed by structural failure. Not comfortable for the remaining aircrew.

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James K

"Switch on the underwater landing lights"
Emilio Largo, Thunderball.

www.VintageAeroWriter.com