Mosquito vis-a-vis Beaufighter

Thank you gentlemen! Well, I wasn’t smart enough to search the word ‘beau’ separately, which turned out to has its own distinctive meaning, almost the same for both British and American variants… But I strongly suspected that ‘Beaufighter’ might be a kind of ‘beau-tiful fighter’, ‘smart f.’, ‘good looking f.’ or so…

The Beaufort as an etymological origin of B. is also highly appreciated!

Alex.

runaway: I don’t think that the word “Beaufighter” means anything apart from its reference to the aircraft. As stated above by Ant.H, it was developed from the Beaufort (eg Sir Francis Beaufort, inventor of the Beaufort scale of wind speeds). When it was developed as a fighter I assume that Bristol simply invented the new word “Beaufighter”.

Laurence

Runaway,

The Beaufighter was a development of the Beaufort bomber, the idea in the simplest terms being the wings and tail of the Beaufort married to a slimmer fuselage and fitted with more powerful engines. The “Beaufort fighter” became known as the Beaufighter and the name was adopted officially. 

https://www-collinsdictionary-com.cdn.ampproject.org/v/s/www.collinsdic…

Gentlemen, would you please to explain the foreigner what does the word ‘beaufighter’ mean in English? My googling led me to nothing but airplane… ???

To see him disappearing out of sight below us still spinning was very enjoyable.

I have this vision of Peter leaning over and saying “Meep meep!”

[ATTACH=CONFIG]228999[/ATTACH]

Going back to the Me262 v Mossie situation. On exercises I can remember us having to simulate day bombers to exercise the defending Vampires. My pilot would make me kneel on my seat and keep him updated on what was behind and call the break if I judged a vampire was getting into firing range. Because they would come screaming in and my pilot had a bit of flap down, we could turn them easily, very satisfying to see them shooting past and turning to give us a chance of a deflection shot if we were lucky.

The really funny situation arose while flying the Meteor NF14, when a F84F Thunderstreak tried it on when we were just stooging along minding our own business. A swift turn into him and when he cranked on the bank to stay with us he just snapped into a spin. To see him disappearing out of sight below us still spinning was very enjoyable.

Mosquito Tr.33 navalised torpedo bomber and strike aircraft. About 50 were built post-war…

There’s an echo in here. Post #39.

Ordered Jan ’45 but first delivered for squadron service November ’45 so cancelling the balance is logical. TR.33 had the thimble nose as pictured, TR.37 bullnose similar to the NF.30.

Putnam’s Naval and DH, Sharp’s DH History and Bowman’s Mosquito all say 18″ torpedoes so 15″ in “Mosquito” could be a typo. I can’t find any mention of testing anywhere (so far) but by that stage of the war I hope they were past ordering aircraft just in case they worked so presumably there were trials.

Seemingly not: http://forum.keypublishing.com/showthread.php?114703

Does anyone know if Griffins were fitted in the Mosquito ?

Mosquito Tr.33 navalised torpedo bomber and strike aircraft. About 50 were built post-war.
[ATTACH=CONFIG]228961[/ATTACH]
I think that image is in the public domain.
There were also a few Tr.37s that differed in radar.

I do have a picure I scanned from an old librabry book -it was done a long time ago. I can’t remember the book. Don’t want to break copyright- that shows a Yugoslavian Mk.IV converted to carry a TR54/A torpedo dated to 1953. It has had the four cannon fared over. 5 aircraft were eventually converted.

A further scan through Sharp & Bowyer finds “a salvo from a 6″ cruiser” as opposed to a broadside. So many people, including me, remember broadside that it must be in print somewhere.

I can find virtually nothing about the Sea Mosquito, I’ll have to try some different books. One of the few mentions in there is of it carrying a 15″ torpedo which I didn’t even know existed, I assumed they were all 18″ so I obviously know even less than I thought I did about torpedoes.

One point mentioned earlier was that the construction of the Mosquito represented some sort of ‘cul de sac’….. Actually, I have to disagree. In reality it was light years ahead, since it was a fully Composite aircraft. As well as more conventional metal elements, it was made-up of factory-moulded sections. Not only that, areas such as the fuselage utilised moulded sandwich construction, which again, presaged modern techniques. Don’t be blinded by the fact that the primary composite element was wood. Wood was, and still is a great material for aircraft purposes, it’s just that today, we can synthesise it very effectively….

T

Although many small (i.e. a couple of hundred Kg to 3000Kg) composite aircraft use the mosquito sandwich/fuselage halves method, I reckon even today nothing of mosquito size i.e. approx 9000Kg has used/is using composites in this way. Larger composite aircraft such as 787/350/Typhoon etc use monolithic composite sections with moulded in stiffeners, tape layed or even filament wound…..so the mosquito for its size it’s construction method is still a ‘cul de sac’. Feel free to correct me if you known of any.

Please don’t get me wrong, DH thinking was bold and the engineering was truly inspired.

Re 62

Well maybe, maybe not. I have something fairly elementary in common with pre war DH. For the past 55 years, not for a living but as a hobby, I’ve built and rebuilt timber and composite boats of all shapes and sizes. From the point of its compound curves and bevelled angles one of the most difficult was a pre war 55 ft. former French customs cutter.

None of them, including this particular vessel would have been difficult to build in aluminium alloy. You write ‘designing a new machine’, maybe, but I can’t think of any good reason why it shouldn’t look like its wooden counterpart. Whether it would have the same performance is something for an aerodynamicist to work out.

My comments of a couple of years ago which almost sparked off WW3 were to do with investing my own cash to obtain a product with the longest potential life without being stuck in a controlled environment with all the associated expense.

Be gentle with me – I have tender feelings.

While it could be foolish to try a one on one turning fight against a single seat fighter…

With the exception of the Me-262. This, in fact is the way several Mosquitos avoided Me-262 attacks, by continually turning into them until they were able to flee or find a cloud bank. No -262 could turn with a Mosquito.

John – there is a world of difference between a design team and factory building an aircraft and someone retrospectively deciding that they would rather have a metal Mosquito.
Certainly D.H could have built either – whether the metal machine would have looked exactly the same at the wooden machine is open to debate.

None of which means that you can throw your glue -screws and ply away and simply substitute aluminium – it means you can certainly build something like but you will be designing a new machine down to the finite detail.

So could a squadron of Mosquito’s fly high and fast enough to avoid German fighters in daylight?
If caught they could jettison their bomb and dogfight?

As a high level bomber, the mosquito operated primarily at night.
Daylight operations by both bomber version and armed fighter-bomber versions were often at low level. The Mosquito was not a dogfighting machine, but could prevail if the circumstances were right. If single seat fighters were encountered, the Mosquitos best defence was speed.
However, the PR versions of the Mosquito ranged all over Europe in daylight at very high altitudes and losses were very low, which speaks for itself.

Re 59

Wise comments. I can hear the clucking of ‘chickens coming home to roost’, eh Bruce !

Does anyone know whether that unit at wartime Farnborough, responsible for evaluating the performance of Allied a/c against their Axis opponents, ever did a comparison between the Mosquito and an Me 109 and Fw 190 ?

The Mosquito used techniques which were first used in the construction of the Albatros. It was not a revolution in construction -rather D.H using one of its existing skills. Whether they would have used wood if there hadn’t been the threat of a strategic metal shortage is open to debate. The construction of the streamlined Flamingo straight after the Albatros showed that the company chose whether through cost or ease to embrace metal monocoque as keenly as wood.
Whether we would have seen a metal Mosquito if the opportunity was there is an interesting concept.

The quote as I recall it was “broadside from a light cruiser” which suggests 6″ but where I read it and even if I remember correctly is long gone.

Despite my admiration for all things DH, given a dogfight between a Mosquito FB.VI and an FW190, I think I’d rather be in the ‘190.
As far as outrunning is concerned, I think it mainly applied to the bombers which of course was the original intent. I’m not sure I’ve ever known whether it was permanent or temporary but for certainly for some time at least any Mossie shot down counted as two kills.

It’s so long since I built either of the 1/72nd Airfix Mosquitos I can’t remember the fit now. The main thing to me was the ridiculous wheels on the early kit which were difficult to see past. For an aircraft that had very distinctive fat tyres, bike wheels stood out like a sore thumb. I guess as an early kit, nobody had thought then of moulding them as two parts – or it could have been too expensive to tool.