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Aviation History
1942
1942 - 2254.PDF
466 FLIGHT OCTOBER 29TH, 1942 OUR NEW RECONNAISSANCE BOMBER : The De Havilland Mosquito is powered by two Rolls-Royce engines driving De Havilland three-bladed hydromatic airscrews. Its similarity to the De Havilland Comet, shown on the opposite page, is somewhat remarkable. THE DE HAVILLAND MOSQUITO Our Latest Reconnaissance Bomber : Logical Development from Comet Which Won England-Australia Race in 1934 whereas the Mosquito is a mid-wing, but that change SOME weeks ago the Germans announced on their radjo that they had brought down a new British aircraft type, the Mosquito. Official reticence pre vented the British Press from making any mention of the existence of the new machine, and it was not until the daylight raid on Oslo that the name of the new type was divulged officially. Since then the Mosquito has figured several times in the war news, and it has now- become possible to refer to it and to publish an illus tration. Designed and built by the De Havilland Aircraft Co., Ltd., the Mosquito shown in our photograph is classed as a reconnaissance bomber. It is, as the picture shows, a remarkably clean machine, with the wing placed approximately half-way up the fuselage sides, and the two Rolls-Royce liquid-cooled engines underslung from the wing in such a way as to leave a very smooth sur face where the top of the engine nacelles merges into the upper surface of the wing. This is an arrangement which has been found (in the Avro Lancaster, for instance) to give very low drag, as the airflow over the top cf the wing is but slightly disturbed by the power units. Readers who remember the England-Australia race of 1934 will be struck by the similarity between the De Havilland Comet which won that race (piloted by C. W. A. Scott and T. Campbell-Black) and the new Mosquito. The Comet was a low-wing monoplane, is, of course, easily explained by the fact that the newr machine has to carry bombs housed internal! ', whereas the Comet, designed for the greatest possible range at the highest possible speed, had its petrol tanks installed in the forward portion of the fuselage. It will also be observed that in the Comet the crew of two were placed fairly far back. That position im- i paired the view somewhat, but was necessary to get the f centre of gravity in the right position, and could be tolerated in a racing machine. In a military aircraft, very different considerations obtain, and consequently we find the crew's stations in the Mosquito well forward in the fuselage. Aerodynamic Cleanness Bearing in mind the operational functions of the two types, which have resulted in the changes in outline design mentioned, it is quite obvious that the Mosquito may be regarded as the logical scaled-up development of the Comet. It is, therefore, natural to assume that the aerodynamic cleanness of the racing machine find- its counterpart in the military aircraft, and that, as a result, the Mosquito is very efficient aerodynamic ally If that be so in actual fact (and external visual evidence gives good grounds for the assumption), the low drag •can, of course, be utilised in two ways: to give very
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