Flying The Mozzie 

Because its boring - just sayin'

Because it doesn't show the plane actually flying.

I know, right? The Wooden Wonder deserves far more coverage, IMHO. Fortunately, I get to fly it in the simulator worlds of il-2, and the massive online WW2 sim Aces High 3. Both games model the Mossie fairly well.

It's just a bit technical. I'm not a flyer at all but concentrated hard enough and appreciated what the chap was saying. From this I take out if it even greater respect for the young men who flew these planes in WW2. I can only hope I'd could emulate them if ever called upon but have no doubts I probably couldn't. Not that arrogant!

ABSOLUTELY

I'd be interested to know his name and dates with 107. My late father was a navigator with themin early '45.

Canada is not Britain

Stewart Nicol as BILLY CONNOLLY u

I think you will find that the Supermarine Spitfire and Hawker Hurricane are different aircraft, by different manufacturers. Worth noting that all four planes cited are by different companies - Supermarine, Hawker, Avro and de Havilland

It was an incredible British creation. But like most all allied aircraft, materials were sourced from many (allied) nations including the USA: "Aircraft were needed and Roddis Plywood and Veneer Company, as well as Lullaby/Oshkosh Pluswood/Northern Veneer Company supplied Sir Geoffrey Dehavilland with thin veneer and plywood for the Dehavilland Mosquito. Materiel was desperately needed in Britain. " ... This is not to claim that the Mosquito is any less British; only to say Allied nations pitched in together to kick the hun's ass. After all, if not for the British order/requisition, naming convention and then idea to fit it with the Merlin, the Mustang might never have existed.

soaringtractor . True and the Allison engine was a piece of crap. The Mustang was and sadly this is still classified info, the brainchild of the Cottons club pilots who drew up the spec for a fast single seat recon aircraft that had the range to cover all of germany. The air ministry then packaged/stole their design as a spec for the yanks to build and let North American take credit for the design. Be that as it may, North American did a damn fine job. CC11 had special access and highly skilled crews to take production aircraft and soup them up. The Mustang being their dream child. But how many people have even heard of the X squadrons even now ? Who indeed gives credit to westlands whirlwind twin engine fighter ? The obvious prototype air frame for the Mossie and meteor ?

Keith Skilling has been flying high performance vintage aircraft longer than many knowledgable RU-vid warriors have been alive. I'm pretty sure that he knows what he is doing. So do the owners of the very expensive vintage aircraft that he flies.

+drott150 A surprise discovery and project was announced in October 2017 for the restoration of a DH Sea Hornet to flying condition. The work will be done in NZ.

A strange thing to hear of, but there MUST be very good and practicle reasons for that, Given the speed of it's creation and build, the urgency of the situation at that very critical time, it is self explanetary really. I guess that, with genius, comes excentricity, and we had plenty of that.

I think that's an unfair comparison. The Spitfire was an equally extraordinary achievement. I don't think it serves either aircraft well to think in terms of one being "better" than the other. Horses for courses and all that. They were both private ventures in a time when the Air Ministry seemed locked into issuing unrealistic specifications to manufacturers resulting in mediocre aircraft. Reginald Mitchell and Geoffrey de Havilland had vision and a single purpose when they drew up their designs. They were brave in design and moved things forward by a considerable measure. That's what makes both aircraft great.

@@timhancock6626 That is true , But the multi roles of the mozzi and it being made largely of wood. Meant they could be built in any workshops without to much machinery. That helped greatly with the airfields being bombed. Yet it was capable of several roles. They where both great aircraft and i would nether say the spitfire was less worth. Just that the mozzi had more capabilities and should be appreciated as much as the spit. Growing up it was always about the spitfire and i heard little of that wonderful multi role mozzi and it should of had an equal rating. Read up more on that aircraft and see just how useful it actually was.

that's what he said mate. the yanks will hate it but here's a man with more experience than most. swallow it.

Correct, it was a horrible airplane in a turn fight. It bleed energy much faster than others and the rate of climb was less than most. It pretty funny that most will agree the spitfire and 109 are basically matched in a dogfight and it’s also agreed that a spitfire can beat the heck out of a mustang in a dogfight. All of a sudden when you say 109 on a mustang in a dogfight, somehow the mustang supposedly is better. 🤔 I did have a higher top speed (the 109K was faster than a mustang though) and could accelerate faster going downhill and had more range. That’s it. Less maneuverability, less firepower than a 109/190. I have not found anyone yet that has flown a 109 with a mustang that says the mustang was any good in a turn fight. Ray Hanna, Mark Hanna, Skip Holm etc....highly experienced warbird pilots.

Only true if you compare the relative numbers of these aircraft. So if there were twice as many P-51s as P-47s the loss ratio was about the same.

About the same number of P 51`s and P 47`s were made, of these not all of either was used in Europe, the same for the P 38. I have seen that in air combat not a single Spitfire MK XIV was shot down, the Spitfire Mk XIV was in action from late 1943 to the end f the war and it did take on any Luftwaffe plane, the USAAF tried to shoot down Spitfires but failed every time.

WHY WOULD THE USAAF WANT, TO SHOOT DOWN A SPIT ?

How many of these were lost to ground fire, it's a fact that the Mustang could out outperform the ME 109 in all aspects except climb rate, even then the ME 109 would stall first

These numbers represent losses to all causes on combat missions including such things as mechanical failure, running out of fuel and AA. The P-51 was very susceptible to ground fire with all its coolant lines in the belly of the plane - a hit anywhere in its coolant system and it was not making it back - yet it was still used extensively for ground attack. Hubert Zemke had his P-51 breakup in heavy turbulence (probably due to overstressing the air frame pulling G's in a previous mission), Francis Gabreski hit the ground strafing a German airfield in his P-47, George Preddy's P-51 was knocked down by a flak battery putting him in the Channel, and Henry R. Spicer got is P-51 shot down as he descended to 12,000 ft to light his pipe as he approached the Channel. These top pilots were not shot down by enemy aircraft. As far as the P-38's, about 20% of them were unarmed and used for aerial reconnaissance - and probably accounted for a hundred or more of the losses in the ETO where they were used extensively for aerial photography over enemy territory. The UK is listed as having lost 30,045 fighters in Europe - the breakdown is not given.

jenny gore, England had better get rid of political correctness or they won't have a country

Idiot

How many in a B- 17 crew, if your gonna be that way about it

@@Scatpack21 hey jimmie your the fucking idiot ,period, any German pilot got 2 points for doing so . and fuckall to do with how many crew were aboard , re the twats comment re B17

@@Scatpack21 its a fact lol

You had better update Wikipedia. according to that the P38 had around 600BHP less power but still managed to be only 1 mph slower than the Mossie. Mind you I believe the USA gave there max speed unladen. 2 tons is an awful lot you know. They also say the engines were not exactly reliable.

Um...Guy Gibson died flying a Mosquito.

MarsFKA It has recently been suggested that GG's Mozzie may have been shot down by friendly fire. A British AA gunner, shortly before he died, said that he shot down an aircraft at the time and place that GG's plane crashed. He said he thought he was shooting at a German plane but the time,date and location strongly suggests it was GG's plane.

There are different theories about why Gibson crashed. One is that he was not sufficiently familiar with the Mosquito - he had very few hours on the type - and ran out of fuel because, in the dark he hadn't switched over to full fuel tanks.

MarsFKA That was the theory until the Lancaster gunner's log book was made public - shortly before the gunner's death - the location and time of the downing of a twin-engined plane do coincide with Gibson's crash.

Was that friendly fire from a British AA (anti-aircraft) gunner or a Lancaster gunner? Your two posts don't coincide on that point.

NOT down under mate. When you have the ONLY ONE still flying you can say it pretty much however you want.

The P 51 can dogfight but not well, it had poor performance

Mustang was good bomber escort, not good dogfighter.

The P-51 was an "energy fighter" as were the German fighters. They were equally matched for dog fighting. The Spitfire could out turn them because it had more wing area relative to weight, but when the FW-190 was introduced, it was downing 4 Spitfires for every FW-190 the Spitfires got - this lasted about a year until the British introduced the Mk-IX Spitfire with the two stage supercharger. When the Brits tried to dogfight the Zero with the Spitfire they were not successful.

@@danzervos7606 Regarding Spitfires trying to dogfight Zeros, as a teenager I read "Bluey", the story of Australian Spitfire ace Keith William "Bluey" Truscott. He flew in Europe against the Luftwaffe until being posted back to Australia in 1942. I have forgotten most of the book but I remember the shock that he and his fellow Spitfire pilots from the the European Theatre of Operations received when they tried to dogfight Zeros as if they were Bf-109s. More than a few experienced former ETO pilots died before they changed their tactics against an agile aircraft that was beyond anything that they had previously experienced.

@@MarsFKA I remember reading that the British couldn't accept that the Japanese could make a plane the could best the Hurricane let alone the Spitfire, but then early in the war it was a court martial offense to break away from a swirling dog fight, an engagement which favored the Zero.

Not unsafe, that was the P 38 which would flip over if it lost one engine.

In fact the mosquito retained full aerobatic capability on one engine. Hilariously over engineered out of plywood and British tenacity.

@@barrierodliffe4155 So, under certain conditions, would the Mosquito. There's a very interesting interview with Captain Eric "Winkle" Brown, who probably test flew more different types of aircraft than anyone else: ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-d9Hjne0OA4w.html In it, he discussed a project where they investigated flying Mosquitos on and off carriers and they found - testing it first at a safe altitude - that if an engine were to fail on approach, the Mosquito would go inverted in about two seconds. You may have already seen the video. If not, have a look. It's very interesting.

@@MarsFKA Under certain conditions maybe but the Mosquito had the more reliable Rolls Royce Merlin and the P38 was far more likely to crash if or when an engine failed.

Keith Skilling was talking about flying the aircraft. The headline is accurate. If it bores you listening to an expert, click away to something else that better suits your attention span.