The Miraculous Mosquito
 

Rather nice writeup on the Mosquito:
The Miraculous Mosquito

The original MRCA...
 

Terrific article. I hadn't realised that it was the original MRCA.

Nice piece (if rather familiar)...

The biggest thing that it misses is that the structure was truly innovative, the load-bearing skin being based on a sandwich of plywood (high tensile strength) and balsa (compressive strength). The principle is exactly the same as a Cirrus or a Rutan design, using fibreglass and plastic foam.

Another point is that casein glue - which was also critical because of strength and water resistance - was not standard wood glue, which is was made from hides (hence, "glue factory"). It had been known to the Egyptians, almost lost, and rediscovered by boatbuilders (an innovative bunch*) in the 1900s.

However, the vulnerability of casein to biological attack was a spur behind the development of epoxy glues - which in turn became the matrix materials for fibreglass and carbonfibre.

* There's a reason that GKN's composite center of excellence is on the Isle of Wight.

Built using Duramold - an American invention....

Was it?, no heating nor pressing was involved, it was laid up over concrete shaped formers and simply glued together, they would build the two halves of the fuselage and fit them out then join them vertically.

Here you go the new build ones and pictures galore

http://www.mosquitorestoration.com/

http://www.mosquitorestoration.com/gallery02.shtml

From the OU technology foundation...
 

....one of the elements to be studied was materials and the set text was "The new science of strong materials or why we don't fall through the floor". I can't right now remember the author's name but he gave beautifully clear explanations of the different stresses in materials and there was/is a good bit about the Mosquito and why it came apart in the Far East.

The Ancient Mariner

PS it was T101 so it was a while ago.

Set Text was J. Gordon - top book for any budding engineer; I've always recommended it!

Ah T101. An excellent course!

Low Observable (#3),

Your: "However, the vulnerability of casein to biological attack" was all too clearly demonstated in India/Burma in the summer of '44 !

They fell to pieces in mid-air in the monsoon heat and damp :eek:; the main spars delaminated when the glue failed. There were fatalities.

D.

If your Mosquito smells like overripe Camembert do not attempt to fly it.

Orac - Not Duramold. That was pressure-formed, phenolic plywood all the way through (and I imagine rather harder to work with). Phenolic plywood, which was then quite new, was used in the Mossie, but only in the quite thin face sheets of the sandwich.

And very well deserved hat-tips to Prof Gordon.

There's an interesting video somewhere that shows footage from the war - of furniture factories being co-opted to help turn out Mosquitos.
Amazing aircraft.

Nice article - I've had a fascination with the Mosquito since I watched '633 Squadron' with my dad roughly 50 years ago. It was clear to me even then (~10 years old) that my dad had a special respect for a wooden bomber that was as fast as a fighter plane. He was a WWII vet, but he fought in the Pacific theater so it's unclear if he actually saw them in combat action (he never mentioned it if he did - unlike the P-38, F4F, F6F, and B-17).


One thing I wonder about - balsa grows in the tropics, during much of the war I'd think that balsa might have been hard to source. Anyone know if there were issues with the balsa supply?

Balsa is native to South America - Mexico south to Brazil.

I would imagine no more difficult than sourcing aluminium in quantities, and if your ship was full of balsa it would probably be difficult to sink ;)

Ah the assertive assurance of youth :}

But wait...

http://users.skynet.be/BAMRS/dh103/pics/fuselage6.jpg

An absolute marvel, and one of the most graceful aeroplanes ever to fly.

p.s any truth that the later versions contained concrete?

My grandfather was a shop foreman (electrical) on the Mossie. In his spare time he volunteered at the Officers' hospital in Hatfield House, where he developed and patented a portable lung fluid drainer that provided much relief, which was commercialised after the War. I always remember him saying that there were a lot of clever men working on the Mossie, and he never regarded himself as anything special.

Hempy - Interesting photo. Concrete may have been used for the molds. It's cheap and stable. In the early 90s the Phantom Works made 3D molds by cutting and stacking chipboard, using a computer-guided bandsaw.

If you read my post I said it was a concrete mould, they used it because with was a stable material that wasn't adverse to temperature changes, thus ensured uniformity in size.

Incidentally the DH Museum at Salisbury hall actually has a damaged half of the original concrete mould on display for the Sea hornet. See

http://www.airfieldarchaeology.co.uk...30445_orig.jpg

from

Salisbury Hall - Airfield Archaeology

Facinating read here on the construction

GLTA - Glued Laminated Timber Association - GLULAM

Balsa Wood
 

ORAC (#13) - elsewhere in Wikipedia, Ecuador is said to produce 90% of the world's commercial balsa.

My family was involved in the model hobby trade from the early fifties. In those days model aircraft only used that wood. At that time US interests had an effective monopoly and the wood came to us from Ecuador through mills in the States. I guess that was a continuation of the situation prevailing throughout WWII.

I wonder if the Ministry of Aircraft Production preferred to order finished balsa components for the Mosquito factories, not because milling it was difficult but to minimise the "bulk-out" factor in its sea transport.

In the 1970s our model manufacturers found they could import logs direct, still only from Ecuador, and a few mills were established in Great Britain. As the hobby has shrunk, I suspect we are back to an US monopoly with UK representation.