The Dutch ship Duyfken was the first European ship to land in Australia in 1606. No nails or screws just wood joinery and dowels. A reproduction was made by the Australian Maritime Museum.
@@williamzk9083 The British once made a full size clinker built ship. It flexed to much on its maiden, and only sailing, that everyone on board was terrified from fear of it coming apart. Once back in harbour the whole crew, including the officers, refused to sail her again.
Actually, the Mustang mk.1(P51-A) with the Allison engine was really fast at low altitudes, so the Brits used them to great effect in the fast photo recon, ground attack and long range armed scouting roles. It was hardly a failure, except that the greater ongoing need was for high altitude bomber interception and dogfighting with escort fighters. Hence the effort to adapt the Merlin. Brilliant engineering by the Brits and great intuition by the procurement section.
@@BasedpilledandtradmaxxedGermany lasted as long as it did by surprise and isolation. Took out France and the USSR with surprise early war. Then fought the British in North Africa where they got defeated heavily by American supplied Brits, and then had to be on the retreat for the second half of WW2.
@@turkeytrac1 Apollo 13 might have been its finest hour, but the stuff was around for quite a while. Before the 20th century in fact, though the stuff we tend to think of showed up during WWII to seal/waterproof Ammo cans courtesy of the Johnson and Johnson company that had been making medical tape.
The DH Mosquito had the entire wooden airframe built at furniture factories and transported to De Haviland for the final assembly. The Mosquito NF MkXXX in 1944 could reach 425mph fully loaded and was the fastest piston engine Night Fighter of WW2. However the British also had glue issues, though the glue worked great in moderate climates, it was not too good in hot and humid climates encountered in the Far East.
Btw they are planning to build a hornet as the actual moulds still exist. Imagine a low pass at 400 mph with one engine shut off. But that's probably against the rules now!
As I understand the Brits were using casein glue for the mosquito, being made from milk it is biodegradable and could be broken down by fungi in humid climates. I think they may have partially addressed the issue by going to a phenol-formaldehyde resin in later production.
I made a 2 meter diameter hot air balloon at science camp in my teens with a camp buddy. We had a pattern supplied by the camp counselors, constructed it out of paper for the skin with multiple sections glued together using Elmers yellow glue, and reinforced with packaging string between the sections for extra strength. There was a sturdier paper board collar attached at the throat of the balloon that allowed it to be fitted over a stove pipe coming from a wood stove to provide the hot air. Three teams made balloons, but ours was the best and flew the best because my buddy and I focused on completing its construction, while the rest of our team and the other teams goofed off climbing the hills surrounding the camp.
The DH Mosquito was in its element in the temperate European climate. When it was sent to the humid, tropical climate of the CBI theater, it wound up having the same problem with the glue not holding up as the Ta 154 and was soon withdrawn. FYI: German aircraft designations were the the first two letters of the manufacturer, or in the case of double named makers, the first letters of each name, e.g. Focke-Wulf - FW; Blohm und Voss - BV. Kurt Tank (Koort Tahnk, please), an aeronautical engineer and test pilot who led the design department at Focke-Wulf, was so well respected (the FW 200 and FW 190 were his designs) that he was the only designer to have two of his designs be given the 'Ta' designation rather then FW: the the high-speed/high-altitude Ta 152, an iteration of the FW 190; and the ill-fated Ta 154.
"FW: the the high-speed/high-altitude Ta 152, an iteration of the FW 190;" You forgot the word 'crap' after the word 'the' but before the word 'High' Regarding the Mosquito delamination problems in the tropics. I suggest you do a tad more research.
@@dupplinmuir113 Mosquitos were also made in southern Australia where the climatic conditions didn't differ quite enough to upset the original glue, but were also used successfully in the tropical North, so the improved glue must have been available by then.
Apart from the defective substitute glue, what about the wood itself? De Haviland built the DH.98 Mosquito from wood because that was their preferred material, the argument that the project would not stress the supply of aircraft-grade aluminum was just icing on the cake. The pre-war de Haviland Albatross airliner had already proved the concept of high-performance all-wood construction aircraft. In designing the Albatross and later the Mosquito, de Haviland learned that the choice of wood was paramount to success. Their ideal material was birch plywood with balsa wood (ochroma) cores. Excellent birch was available from U.S. and Canadian sources, and balsa was available from Ecuador and other regions of South America. Later on, due to shortages they substituted American Sitka spruce for the balsa wood. Birch was also the prime material used in the Hughes Hercules flying boat, though it was unfairly and stupidly labeled the "Spruce Goose" by reporters. Without any background in designing all-wood construction aircraft, what sort of wood did Kurt Tank select for the Ta 154? There was abundant birch in Russia, but by 1943 Germany was on the retreat in Russia -- not a good situation for harvesting and transporting lumber. There was good spruce in Norway and Sweden, but that required transport by sea in ships, again not ideal for a new aircraft at that time in Nazi history.
@@scientificconsideration8294 IN the construction of the de Haviland Mosquito, there was a final step. Before the engines and control surfaces were installed the whole aircraft was covered in a layer of doped linen fabric. Did Tank use something similar?
-The Americans had developed the Duramold process, Dehaviland merely copied it using slightly different woods instead of birch. It was used on the Hughes Hercules H4. so called spruce goose which had no spruce but lots of birch. -Only 7000 mosquitos were produced. It was impossible to increase production due to limits in supply of specialists woods and worker. For this reason the Germans shouldn't have bothered and concentrated on hybrid air-frames with steel spars and wood wings as in the Ta 154 which were quite successful.,
Interesting that Germany did not have enough carpenters for this project. One of the big successes of the Mosquito was that parts were made by small furniture makers and sent to De Havilland for assembly. But knowing that when Germany cancelled a number of defence contracts in 1943 the scientist and engineers from them ended up fighting on the Eastern Front I think that is where the furniture makers ended up. A couple of years ago I had a brief discussion on another RU-vid channel about the poor quality of the glue Germany used during the war and he pointed out that the Germans were using slave labour to make the glue. And they were deliberately sabotaging the glue so that it would not work.
Yep pretty much. The Nasties would draft the specialty carpenters needed for cold molding as "not essential workers". Opps. Both the plane factory and the glue (chemicals in general) relied on slave labor in the late war, and yeah, quality wasn't a high priority for them.
The Mosquito was highly limited in production due to limits in specialist wood supply and specialist workers. Only 7000 were produced (about 2000/year) and it would be impossible to produce more unless the air frame was switched to metal. It was fairly pointless for the Germans to try to emulate as they had even worse shortages, certainly no ecudorian balsa.
The irony being that Germany had better fibreglas resins than they did wood-glue and could have sidestepped the whole issue if they'd thought to use fibreglas for more than firewalls....
They probably could've but by the middle of WW2, most skilled workers were either at the eastern front or sitting at the western fronts waiting for an invasion. By the middle of the war, it would be mostly slave labor building thing's.
Many thanks for this video! I've had a soft spot for this plane ever since I thought that one of my late grandfather's may have flown it! It freakishly turned out to be another German pilot with the same name and age (I found photos - def. a different person, that one being with the day fighters and then test pilots, my granddad being with the night fighters). At any rate, I managed to get my hands on "Focke-Wulf Nachtjäger Ta 154 "Moskito": Entwicklung, Produktion und Truppenerprobung" by Dietmar Herrmann. As a German engineer, he arguably wrote that book as the ultimate authority: he used the original plans, designs and was able, at the time of writing, to still speak with some of the designers, engineers and pilots. As the book is currently packed away due to construction, I can't immediately check, but I do dimly remember that, while the glue was a problem to a certain extent, it was not the top issue. That *did* still fall to the lack of suitable engines and, as so often, the N**i bureaucracy and infighting. Even when the engines were available, they weren't allocated with any priority to this program. They couldn't get this high enough up the flagpole (which generally meant somehow getting this inside the short attention span of the dude with the idiotic mustache).
In Finland we too tried to make mostly wood construction fighter plane and it too failed, among other things but mostly because low quality wood glue, maybe domestic, maybe sourced from Germany. As far as i remember, especially parts of the tail tented to rip off in a dive with catastrophic results, the planes were called VL Myrsky.
1 To be fair the Germans had an excellent process. TEGO film was not a glue but an adhesive sheet that was placed between wood ply and then pressed by male and female dyes into a 3D shape. Heat was applied to cure the glue and mold the plywood into shape. It was effective and strong. 2 The Ta 154 was not really cancelled because of the replacement glue was acidic. There were many reasons. a/ The Ta 154 was promoted by the powerful Erhard Milch who saw it as providing the benefit of not needing Aluminum and being able to use a cheap and available Jumo 211 by 1944 he had fallen out of favor due to an argument with Hitler and he was no longer in a position to promote this anachronistic project. (which he did obsessivily to the point of suppressing the He 219) b/ However analysis showed that with the improved 1500hp Jumo 211N the aircraft could not cope with the Mosquito and that the Jumo 213 would be needed. Junkers abandoned Jumo 211N development was abandoned to focus on the Jumo 213 which was not realistically available till mid 1944 leaving only the 1450hp Jumo 211J engine. -It's not surprise that the Mosquito with a 2 stage inter-cooled Merlin using 100/130 octane fuel would outperform 1 stage inter-cooled Jumo 211 using 87 octane. c/ The cockpit tended to disintegrate on impact which needed redesign. d/ By 1944 it was obvious that the Jets like the Me 262 and Ar 234 were going to work. The Ta 154 was now a total waste. It wasn't only the air ministry that wanted to kill of the Ta 154 it was the chief designer at Focke Wulf, one Kurt Tank. He wanted to concentrate on the Ta 400 Jet fighter and the Fw 190 and Ta 152 which had wooden wings with a steel spar. 3 The foolishness of the Ta 154 was that it was started in late to mid 1942 which is too late to complete development in time to be useful. Germany's failure was not developing the Fw 187 which would have given the Luftwaffe a Mosquito/P-38 equivalent in 1940 by firstly denying it the DB601 engines it needed and secondly the air ministry ruining it by trying to turn it into a zerstoerer. Imagine someone in the USAAF insisting the P-38 needed a rear gunner before it was allowed to enter service.
@@gingernutpreacher The low pressure of the Annular radiators was an advantage in drag. The British tested annular radiators on Tempest and found them significantly superior to chin. The only reason they didn’t convert to annular was because the centre of gravity changes had knock on effect and it requires some re-engineering and redistribution of weights for a production variant. The spitfire and the 109 both had fairly sophisticated pressure recovery concepts that basically used the duct as a ramjet but neither aircraft was very good in that area. P51 used the same concept but it was a much better implementation.
The Germans had a perfectly good late war twin engine fighter bomber in the form of the Messerschmitt 410. In his book "Night Fighter" C.F. Rawnsley describes chasing Me410s in a Mosquito over Britain at night. Most of them got away because the performance of the Me410 was so similar to that of the Mosquito. Rawnsley described it as the German equivalent to the Mosquito. But the Germans never had enough of them to mount anything other than nuisance raids over Britain.
The DeHaviland museum has a sectioned part of a Mosquito wing. I was surprised to see that a lot of nails or roves were used in the construction. Nex time I go I'm taking a magnet to see of they are steel or duralamin nails.
Republic and the RAF worked on fitting the Merlin into the P-51 at the same time since it provided better high altitude performance plus Packard would be producing those soon. The P-51 using the Allison was as fast as a Merlin Mustang at low altitude so it was fitted with dive brakes to become the A-36 Apache fighter bomber. The US also considered using wood construction for aircraft, primarily flying boats for transporting troop with gear to the Pacific Theater. Howard Hughes won the design competition to eventually build the Spruce Goose. The adhesive company had some difficulty coming up with a suitable glue and finally did after experiments showed how to use it. It had to be applied in a thin coat to one surface then clamped to another piece before being heated to set then cure the adhesive. For wing and body panels, ladies applied a very thin coat to a very thin section of birch veneer then used clothes irons to press it down on another section of veneer to set and cure the adhesive. That adhesive and method of application resulted in producing very strong laminated wood that wasn't affected by temperatures and humidity to this day.
There is an argument that Britain could have substituted many of the Lancaster heavy bombers with Mosquitos as the ratio of crew to bomb load was identical. (4000lb/crew of 2 as against 14,000lb load/crew of 7).The Lancaster's could have been retained for specialist jobs like Dam busting and dropping the Tall Boy and Grand Slam bombs. The Mosquitos would have been harder to shoot down and the British would have lost far less planes and aircrew. There would have also been more aluminium available for other aircraft.
The problem was that the EEFTS (Empire Elementary Flight Training Schools) produced crews of pilots, navigators, radio operators, bomb aimers and gunners, not just pilots. There would have been a pinchpoint of pilots to fly the Mosquitos.
This is the first time i've heard of this Luftwaffe WW2 warplane. The FW TA 154 had some differences to the de Havilland Mosquito. It had a tricycle landing gear (similar to the Lockheed P38 Lightning), and a high wing, whereas the Mosquito had a mid-wing (like many small and mid sized planes). Also the TA 154 had (good) air cooled engines like the highly sucessful single engine FW 190, whereas the Mosquito had the glycol cooled Merlin engines. The British had a lot of pre-war furniture makers, who were experienced in wood gluing and plywood manufacturing, meaning that they could apply these skills to making the Mosquito wings and fusilage. Something that Geoffrey de Havilland was very aware of. It appears that the Germans did not quite have those levels of woodworking skills. De Havilland also deployed a superior monocoque construction method for their airframes in two upper and lower halves shells, that were later screwed and glued together. FYI, over 3000 Mosquito's were manufactured in the UK alone.
The Ta154 had Junkers Jumo J211 or 213 engines. These are not air cooled. They have annular radiators but are inline, liquid cooled engines. You are confusing the FW190A series, which had air cooled BMW 801 Radials
Another factor may have been all the skilled german woodworkers being sent to the eastern front earlier in the war. Or similar dispersals of skilled wood workers to other factories.
The destruction of the Tego film factory caused a huge problem for the German aircraft industry as it was intended that wooden construction was to be used in a lot of late war projects. The lack of a reliable adhesive that wasn’t acidic in nature doomed a lot of aircraft.
Tego film wasn't a liquid glue, it was like a plastic sheet that was placed between the wooden laminate. Pressure and heat was then applied by molds which shaped the wood and heat cured the glue in the film.
Great video. Although I would add that Adolf Galland in his excellent autobiography stated the true reason the Ta154 came about, was an almost obsessive admiration / hatred by both Goering and Hitler of the extreme performance of the British Mosquito . The Mosquito was very hard to intercept, and was one of the first allied bombers to hit Berlin during the day, which really pissed off Hitler and Goering. But what pissed them off even more, was why the German aircraft companies, supposedly the best in the world, couldn't design a similar or better plane. And this is supposedly what originally got the ball rolling on the Ta154 project.
I've always thought the "de-motivational" posters were so much better. More honest and an indication that the company doesn't take itself too seriously.
The Allison V1710 only had a single stage supercharger and was designed with a turbo super charger in mind. AKA the P38. The Twin Mustang reverted to the Allison V1710.
@@paulbantick8266 There we’re a number of Mosquito sqns in India that we’re used against targets in Burma. Checks after a series of unexplained crashes in 1944 revealed that the hot and humid conditions were weakening the glue.
@@Dalesmanable You posted "falling apart" It was delamination. I suggest you do a bit of research as to the problems encountered and the remedies used.
@@paulbantick8266 Er, I’m a retired MSc-level aircraft engineer. I think I knew what the issues were probably before you were born. Do some research and come back when you’re as qualified as I am. I’m not interested in semantic games.
In World War I the German Pfalz D.III and D.XII used a molded fuselage made of strips of plywood and glue laid over a cement mold. very light and strong, but tricky to repair.
Remarkable that it had a tricycle landing gear when it was sitting in a very nose up attitude. When looking carefully, a tall tail wheel would probably result in same angle.
British Mosquito was designed so that sub structures could be sub contracted to small furniture manufacturers and boat builders to increase and disperse production.
I read somewhere that the glue issue led to the numerous failures of the He-163. In my source, The Battle of Hamburg - by Martin Middlebrook, he asserted that the factory (in Hamburg) was razed along with loss of technical information causing lamination problems in German aircraft from that date forward.
Just one criticism in that the DH Mosquito was not constructed of wood to save other materials. The wood composite design made it possible to get the required aerodynamic shape and smoothness. In fact the balsa wood that was between the two skins of plywood had to be imported from South America.
Though Kurt Tank said about the Ta 154 that it was "a good airplane", other sources claim that the Luftwaffe rejected the Ta 154 from the beginning. IMHO even a genius like Kurt Tank sometimes may design a pile of scrap. The crew had almost no side view because the engine nacelles were mounted at the same height as the cockpit. Thus, formation flights were quite impossible. 14:07 Please note that the Ta 154C had an elevated cockpit to adress this issue.
@@obsidianjane4413Poor visibility in a night fighter sounds not like a good idea. The Me 110 G night fighters flew with an extra crew member (who served as an aircraft mechanic on the ground) to have another "pair of eyes" on board.
@@OliverSchroederThat is not true. The 3rd (usually 2nd because gunners were often not carried esp. if it were a schragemusik version) member was the radar operator.
@@obsidianjane4413Anyway, it's complete nonsense to say that visibility would be of secondary importance for a night fighter - it is crucial! At least when using the Lichtenstein radars, the final approach to the target has to be flown on sight. I cannot imagine that the A.I. units of the Mosquito N.F. were so sophisticated that you shoot right into the blackness where the green dot of the radar screen indicates a target. I suppose the cockpit arrangement was adopted from the Fw 187 Falke, but since this was a low-wing plane, it did not affect the pilot's sight there. Apart from material defects like glue or landing gears, the cockpit enclosed by nacelles was a serious design flaw. The Ta 154C blueprint clearly indicates that a rectification was mandatory.
This is what the fanboys of the Luftwaffe seem to forget. Re: they read and run with the tests made with pre-production or prototype aircraft which had no combat, inservice production or loads added. It's happens with the likes of Do.335, Ta.152, Ta.154 and He.219.
I have also read that the use of forced labour in the making of various components, esp the glues resulted in sabotage by urination. The workers added some unauthorised liquids to the batch. Weakening the glues,and I guess adding to that acidic problem.
Noise gear failures also plagued the ME262 it wise to remember that their was server political infighting between the opposing Aircraft Manufacturers all this undermined most of these projects.
The Ta 154, should have been developed earlier and gotten into service by at least the fall of 1943. It could have been a frightening scourge against Allied bombers because it was reasonably fast and could carry four MK 108 cannons, which would have been a frightening danger to Allied bombers.
Years ago I was made aware of the Veto film problem.The telling of the story was,fare more intense and instructive . One, wonders had they started earlier why Red they not have more that one facility to produce the glue.
Great plane history, thanks! Germany 1939 was like, what do you do for a living? I am a woodworker. Off to the Army! Germany 1942 is like, we need wood workers, we have none left. Lol.
One should always be careful with the majority of these pods , as more often then not , they are inaccurate or suffer major omissions . In this case the D.H. Mosquito also had serious Glue failures , not in northern Europe but in S,E.Asia . Wings were detaching resulting in the grounding of Mossies . The problem was caused by the high humidity effecting the glue. Ciba Geigy developed a new glue at Duxford , which I believe became Locktite.
Cool looking aircraft I never saw before. Surprising, to see the rounded cowlings for inline engines? I wonder if the Germans wanted to have the option of a radial engine as well? The drawing of the C model for the 213 showed more streamlined enginge cowls. Thanks!
1:55 It wasn’t the “Merlin” that made the Mustang great, or better at high altitude. It was the supercharger. If Allison was allowed to make them… It would be the same if not better. As early on the Allison mustangs were more powerful at low altitude. With a real supercharging system that might translate at high altitude. The Merlin was I think 300lbs heavier whilst being smaller/weaker displacement. So it can be argued that the limited progression of the Allison V-1710 engine, and use of the Merlin actually hampered the potential for the Mustang. But we don’t know that probability. But to say the Merlin alone was the god that saved the Mustang is utterly incorrect. The lack of the supercharger being implemented in the Allison Mustang is what created the need for the Merlin. The next best engine with a supercharger…
Now keep in mind that they cancelled the Fw 187 years earlier, and then they wanted something almost exactly like it. Possibly one of the biggest missed opportunities.
@@davidyoung8521Yes, the development stop was declared by Hermann Göring himself, the fat morphine addict. Secretly ignored by several manufacturers.
Not so much an "inspirational" quote but at my workspace on the factory floor I had a small laminated card that read," It's hard to soar like an eagle when you're surrounded by turkeys." One day I came to work and the card was gone, very strange.
Making high performance aircraft from wood does not make it lighter !! Wooden construction is heavier than semi-monocoque dural (aluminium). Doing good surface finish might be easier with wood, and Mossie made good use of that. Great example of lead-like wooden construction is Soviet LaGG-3. It was made from phenol impregnated wood, and was hundreds of kilograms overweight compared to aluminium construction. Bf-109F ate them like French fries. In addition invidual aircraft varied considerably in weight, like 100kg, depending supply of wood.
Later in war Soviets put radial engine on that same basic airframe (having already MUCH higher aerodynamic drag, but over 500hp more power made wooden construction less of an issue). Every time aluminium supply eased by lend-lease shipments, Soviets modified design to have more, and more aluminium and less wood. Exactly same with Yaks, and Il-2s. There is hundreds after hundreds subvariants of Soviet WW2 era aircraft. When they got some aluminium supply secured, designers immediately started to replace wooden parts with dural, bit by bit.
The mosquito had aerolite glue. A superior product… l was using the same in a boat builders in 1965/6. A two part, sticky clear liquid plus a watery hardener….green, l seem to remember…..once it came in contact with the hardener it set very quickly. It was damn strong and would never break at the joint…no wonder the Mossie was the Wooden Wonder…
The Mosquito wasn't called the wooden wonder for nothing, twin merlins honey comb structures made of 3 layers Equadorian Bulsa wood, and two layers of 3 ply birch wood. Also fir and spruce were used through out the aircraft.
1st: I don't know why they keep showing a frontal photo of a (US) P-61 Black Widow (made by Northrop) >Added in the edit Note: the 4 blade propellers, twin tail, oil coolers (for the R-2800 engines) outboard of the engine nacelles/booms of the Black Widow.< 2nd: The timing seems odd to me, just before the Ta-152, He-162, and a few other "wooden wonder" aircraft came into production, the factory, The ONLY Factory that makes the glue "just happens" to get bombed out existence!!! By "Sheer Luck" ?!?!?
The Allison and Merlin engines were very, very comparable. The defining difference was the Allison's poor supercharger (I remember reading somewhere that the planned 2 stage supercharger for the Allison got "organized away" by the US military, dooming it to low level duties... Apart from the P-38, which had decent superchargers).
The USAAF went through a period of 'turbo-mania' where they more or less insisted that they would not buy anything that wasn't turbocharged. As the USN was simultaneously insisting they they would never buy any liquid cooled aircraft ("it makes as much sense as an air cooled submarine!") Allison designed the V-1710 with the expectation that it would always be used with a turbo, and thus provided a supercharger that was practically optimised for sea level (the turbo would boost the air up to sea level pressure before feeding it to the engine). Not long after, it became clear that the weight and bulk of a turbo installation was too much to fit in a single engined fighter with a V-1710 without a significant performance penalty. So the P-40, P-39 and P-51 got hamstrung.
@@nerd1000ify I'd read that Alison was told an amazing 2 stage supercharger was being built for the V-1710 by another Army appointed company (forgot which) that then dropped the ball and never delivered. Can anyone corroborate this?
@@cabanford I don't know about an external contractor, but Allison did eventually develop their own add-on supercharger that could be bolted to the back of the engine. It even had a hydraulic coupling like the supercharger on the DB60x series engines, so the speed was continuously variable. It was used on the P-63 and boosted its performance a great deal, but I don't know of any other applications.
The P-38 had only V-1710F's with a single stage supercharger. You had only one gear ratio at a time, and had to pick at manufacture. Lockheed added GE TurboChargers in the booms, which gave the Lightning all altitude performance, like the P-47.
@@LordDustinDeWynd … one reason given for no American produced DH Mosquito was the P-38 already filled the role. The P-38 was designed as an Interceptor. While the Mosquito started as a fast bomber. After WW2 the P-38 taken out of service. While the Mosquito stayed on in numerous roles. World wide
I think that the TA-154 could be a great plane.But the Germans had available already great planes such as the DO-335 and HE-219.If they had these aircraft available in time may be the war if not had a different result it could be far more difficult for the Allies to win it.
Very good content, and you are absolutely right, the german glue was really a problem. My grandfather often told me, they (the german airforce. Luftwaffe, but it applies to the whole army) had bad glues and week engines, compared to the US models. And a lack of fuel, ammo and spareparts as well, they called it "the management of the shortage" 😂 Greetings from Munich
