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Aviation History
1942
1942 - 2618.PDF
a FLIGHT Twenty-seventh of the New Recognition Series AIRCRAFT TYPES AND t DE HAVILLAND MOSQUITO VERY little information has as yet been released for publication about the De Havilland Mosquito, the R.A.F.'s latest, and probably fastest, light recon naissance-bomber. This machine, as described in Flight of October 29th, is of wooden construction and is powered by two Rolls-Royce liquid-cooled, 12-cylinder "V" type engines, equipped with De Haviiland three-bladed, hydromatic type airscrews, and although performance figures may not yet be men tioned, it goes without saying that they are extremely good. Undercarriage and tailwheel are retractable, but the latter is not completely enclosed. It is, as the accompanying illustrations show, a particu larly clean aircraft, with a beautifully streamlined fuselage on which the cockpit cover, while obviously providing good visibility, blends very smoothly into the upper surface. Another good feature, aerodynamically, is the way in which the engine nacelles are underslung, so that their upper surfaces merge into the upper surface of the wings, an arrangement which has been found to give very low drag, as the airflow over the top of the wing suffers a minimum disturbance by the power units. The Mosquito was first officially mentioned when four of them made a daylight raid on the Nazi headquarters at Oslo; since then the type has increasingly figured in suc cessful raids on enemy objectives across the Channel. Incidentally, the Mosquito is the first operational type to be developed by De Havilland since the last war, and its simple construction lends itself to widely dispersed manu facture. Offensive armament may consist of four 20 mm. cannon and four 0.303 machine guns.
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