Hi Alex:

I think Philip Birtles of the Mosquito Museum is your man there. He has the pic I believe you’re after in his “Mosquito – The Illustrated History” book. He cites it as a de Havilland photo, so I reckon he has access to the original.

Classic post re: time zones during the war:

Since 1916, Great Britain has used GMT in the winter and GMT+1 (British Summer Time) in the summer.

From 1941 until 1945, Double British Summer Time was introduced (GMT +2) to replace the normal Summer Time.

BST (GMT +1) was used between the following dates:

25/2/1940 to 7/10/1940

DBST (GMT + 2) was used between the following dates:

4/5/1941 to 10/8/1941
5/4/1942 to 9/8/1942
4/5/1943 to 15/8/1943
2/4/1944 to 17/9/1944
2/4/1945 to 15/7/1945

Source: Rob de Bruin, Bulletin Airwar 1939-45 Journal Number 99

Cheers

Rod

7) To make things more clear some examples:

Date Time in Holland/Germany Time in England.

30-05-1940 12.28 11.28
22-06-1941 06.05 06.05
03-11-1942 14.18 14.18
01-04-1943 23.25 22.25
01-05-1943 20.08 20.08
06-06-1944 05.30 05.30
05-05-1945 08.00 09.00

8) The change of time was done in the early Sunday morning hours at 2.00 O’clock.

9) Here follows a list of dates when the German time was equal to British time.

a. 1941 May 4th till August 10th.
b. 1942 April 5th till August 9th and November 2nd till December 31.
c. 1943 January 1st till March 29th and April 4th till August 15th and from
October 4th till December 31st.
d. 1944 January 1st till April 2nd and April 4th till September 17th and October 2nd
till December 31st.
e. 1945 January 1st till April 2nd.

This is a translation of the essence of an article published in Bulletin Airwar 1939-1945
Nr.99. With many thanks to Mr. Robert de Bruin, Great Bookham, England.
The translation has been made by Jaap Woortman.”

There’s an excellent grid explanation system and converter (see the “LUMA” links- works for 1943 and earlier) links here:

http://www.gyges.dk/reporting_grids.htm

There is also an excellent map of the (slightly later) Luftwaffe grid system here:

http://www.lesbutler.ip3.co.uk/jg26/gradnetz.htm

I can help you a little on 3 of your queries, with the exception of crew names

The crew of HP848 were W/C John Sidney Dunlevie 37965 and F/O Islay Sinclair MacMillan 142329.

The crew of HX809 were F/L Allison and P/O Tamplin, who hit a balloon cable at 820 feet, damaging the Mossie enough to make a landing impossible. They climbed to 9,000 feet and baled out OK, landing near Huntingford, with the aircraft coming down two miles away. The aircraft was coded UP-O.

Info on the first crew is from various posts on another board, confirmed by the CWGC site. Info on the second from “We Never Slept – The Story of 605 Squadron” by Ian Piper.

To Mark:

I have wrote a mail to Norman Malayley, but the mail came back, because his mail address was not found…

Do you have an another mail address ?

Hi Nils:

The address is actually a bulletin board, where Norman posts relatively often. If you just click on the link, it should open up into the Mosquito Forum page, where you can start a new topic. Norman should see it there.

If that doesn’t work for you, email me, markhuxAThotmail.com (replace AT with @) and I’ll see if I can find another route for you.

Cheers,

Mark

PS – Isn’t the first part pictured one of the exhaust stubs?

Hi again – sorry, should have mentioned that you’ll also likely find Juergen Haus over there. Some of the information I posted is actually from him – he may have the Missing Air Crew Report.

Cheers,

Mark

Hi Nils:

I believe your Mossie is NS509, a P.R. XVI in service with the USAAF.

MACR 11912, 21 January 1945, 25th Bomber Group. On a Blue Stocking weather reconnaissance on 21/1/45. Crew were 2nd Lt. Jerry M. Roberts 654th BS Serial No. 0722219, 1st Lt. Ralph E. Fisher 653BS Serial No. 0814044. I don’t have definitive information as to crew roles, however it was definitely Roberts who survived, and it appears he was the pilot.

Researcher Norman Malayney spoke with Roberts’ family and friends (Roberts died in 1994), and their recollection was that Roberts had attributed the loss of the Mosquito to “yellow-bellied P-51s.” As you know, the KE report says an Me 109 was responsible, however Mossies were often subject to attack by over-enthusiastic Mustangs, and I’ve not found any Luftwaffe claim which would match.

The information I have is that the aircraft came down at Emkendorf – can you confirm?

Cheers,

Mark

Edited due to finger trouble

^ Someone needs to grow a skin.

It’s fairly clear to me Ross was speaking in general terms, and you’re the one who first mentioned “war grave.”

Is there any book available that tells the story of how the Mosquito was built?
Nothing too tecnical though !
Cheers, Alan.

There’s an excellent little photocopied / reprinted article from “Aircraft Production” entitled “Construction of the Dh.98 Mosquito” available from the Mosquito Museum. Twenty-odd pages or so of the how-to.

Neilly, me old anorak, I now owe you 8,372 emails. Suffice to say the following: “Redundant, home, happy.” Details WILL follow!

Cheers,

Mark

PS – The B.35 pictured is in the Edmonton Aviation Museum, and is in the colours of 418 “City of Edmonton” Squadron, RCAF. Russ Bannock’s aircraft, to be exact. Tough enough making a living in Edmonton, let alone running an aircraft museum – give ’em some leeway.

PPS – The film referred to above is “The Mosquito”, 45 minutes of B&W goodness, also available from the Mosquito Museum. They take credit cards.