Mosquito!!

[zulu Delta 534]

Recently received from an EMail;

Tech Ops' Auckland base saw a world first today, welcoming the world’s only flying Mosquito on its maiden flight from Ardmore aerodrome. Most of Tech Ops Auckland personnel popped out to see the Mosquito land, escorted in by a Trojan and taxi onto the Tech Ops hardstand for a quick checkover.


The pilot, Cathay pilot David Phillips, is one of New Zealand’s most experienced pilots in vintage and classic aircraft. He owns and flies his own Hawker Hunter jet. He said the Mosquito was quite unlike anything he’s flown before.“Kind of heavy and light and the same time. It’s hard to describe. The controls are light; it’s responsive but you are conscious of the inertia. You can feel the rudder is a long way back. It flies like a very well designed, 15,000lb twin-engined strike aircraft.”

He says he wasn’t really nervous, just concentrating hard, “conscious of what you would be remembered for if anything went wrong.”

“It was lovely. They did a fantastic job of building it.”

His observer on this historic first flight was Warren Denholm who runs Avspecs, the Ardmore-based restoration company that has been rebuilding the aircraft since its American owner since 2005.

He was also concentrating hard on the gauges. “It’s my first time in a Mosquito; it’s the pilot’s first flight in a Mosquito, it’s the first time the plane has flown; it’s the first time anyone has flown a Mosquito anywhere in the world for decades so you don’t have much time to smell the roses. But when you finally stop gritting your teeth and look out the window over South Auckland and realise no-one else can do this, in the only flying Mosquito anywhere in the world, life is pretty good.”

They picked a couple of items they wanted their engineers to look at before the flight back but Warren was well satisfied with the first flight. “It went very, very well.”

KA 114 was built in Canada and saw brief service in 1945 before going into reserve storage. It was sold to a farmer and it lay in a field for 30 years before it was moved to the Canadian Museum of Flight awaiting a proper restoration. Jerry Yagen of the Fighter Factory Collection in Virginia bought it and sent it to Warren’s team to restore. What makes the Mosquito so special and so rare is its wooden balsa-core sandwich construction. It was the world’s first composite construction aircraft. Like almost every other Mosquito, KA114’s body had rotted – it broke in two when being rescued from a farmer’s field. So this and several other Mosquito projects around the world owe their existence to Kiwi Glyn Powell and his Mosquito Aircraft Restoration team who undertook the task of building the two 11m moulds needed to lay up the new fuselage halves, with the precision needed to get the bulkheads and pick-up points in exactly the right place. They also built the 16.5m wing.

The first Mosquito was delivered in 1941 and was used in many different roles, as a low-level daytime bomber, as a reconnaissance aircraft, as a bomber escort and was particularly successful as a U-boat hunter.

[KA 114] will be the main attraction at Ardmore Aerodrome this weekend where it will fly in company with a Spitfire, Mustang and Kittyhawk.

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Hope these are of interest
Regards
Glen

[Lotz-A-Landies]

Thanks Glen

AH from the LRC-ACT and Temora was involved in making some parts for that bird a couple of years ago. At least he and a few others flew over in a G3 for the discussions with them.

[JDNSW]

The Mosquito was certainly not the first composite construction aircraft (even if you want to extend that modern term to wooden construction!). Unless I am mistaken, the construction method was pioneered in its predecessor, the DH91 Albatross airliner, and possibly the DH88 Comet racing aircraft, which, however used glued ply and stringer construction rather than the sandwich structure used in the DH91 and DH98.

Wooden glued airframes were quite common from the early days of aviation, and were favoured by De Havilland, as it was something they were good at. Their first turbojet aircraft, the DH 100 Vampire had a sandwich construction wooden forward fuselage. The fatigue problems encountered with the Comet airliner may have reflected De Havillands relative lack of experience with working in metal rather than wood.

The performance of the DH 91 and DH 98 was enhanced relative to their contemporaries because of the ability of the moulded structure to have three dimensional curves and the lack of rivets. Compare for example the wing surface of a DC-3 (covered in rivets and ripples) with that of the contemporary DH91, and you can see why the wooden aircraft was 30kts faster and had a higher maximum weight for the same power. The drawback, of course, is indicated by the fact that this is the only one flying - wood is biodegradable! And so is the casein glue used in building most of them (Late production Mosquitoes headed for the tropics used urea formaldehyde glue, which has its own problems).

John

[DoctorJ]

My dad was in the RAF during WWII and always raved on about the Mosquito

[incisor]

must be that time of year!

RAAF Mosquitos over Brisbane 1945

http://www.aulro.com/afvb/attachment.php?attachmentid=52567&stc=1&d=1351132297

[Lotz-A-Landies]

There are reports of early Australian built Mosquitos falling apart on their first and subsequent flights because of adhesive failures.

It does however seem that the glues holding the Mosquitos failed before the plywood rotted.

Now that Glyn Powell and the Mosquito Aircraft Restoration group have the moulds, there are apparently about six more aircraft in production. All they need are the original ID plates and preferably the remains of the airframe, plus a lot of money and they will do a restoration. Same deal as they are building brand new "restorations" of Spifires in the U.K.

[JDNSW]

There are reports of early Australian built Mosquitos falling apart on their first and subsequent flights because of adhesive failures.

It does however seem that the glues holding the Mosquitos failed before the plywood rotted.
..........

As I commented above, the Mosquito was designed to use casein glue, which was touted as a wonder glue at the time - although it dates to the 19th century, it was only in the late 1930s that it began to replace hot melted hoof glue. This is, as I noted, biodegradable, but survives if kept reasonably dry in cool conditions. When first serving in India in 1943, the shortcomings soon became apparent.

The Casein glue was replaced by urea formaldahyde glue, which is presumably what was used in Australian manufacture, although I can't find any information on that. While completely waterproof, this has the drawback that it is applied as two parts, to each side of the join, one of which is an acid. If too much acid is used, the excess can destroy the wood adjoining the bond. The bond from both types of glue depends on the surface condition and fit of the wood being joined - it is not a low technology operation, and de Havilland spent years before and during the war gaining this experience.

Today, both glues are hardly used, woodworking today usually uses synthetic glues, PVA if not required to be waterproof, various two part glues (resorcinol, epoxies) if it is.

(Much information from "Mosquito wooden wonder", Edward Bishop, Pan/Ballantine, London, 1972 - ISBN 0345097203)

John