it is the context you have to look at B-17 was a air-ea bomber where only 5% of bombs came with in 5 miles of any target and this is from USAF reports the Mosi was a prostitution targeting bomber with a 75% on target hit rate RAF reports but to compere them with each other is wrong as they both did to different jobs plus the B-17 had about 90% of planes made to be bombers the Mosi only about 40%(more like 35%)was made up with bombers what you have to remember the Mosi would be called to day a multi roll plane witch no one would in there write mind would the B-17
@@marktaylor3727 1,284 mossies built as unarmed bombers minus conversions to photo/recon. BAE Mosquito page About 1/6 of wartime production, the rest of you comment has the same level of accuracy.
Hello Greg, if you revisit the Mustang could you shed some light on how much input the British had in its design ? I occasionally see ridiculous claims that conveniently ignore or forget Spitfire wing was developed with data from NACA and then there is the Bendix Stromberg "origin" claim that it was designed by the British and "given" to Bendix, adopted by RR then SU "redesigned" it and made it better. Thanks
@@nickdanger3802 the accuracy is for the RAF were about a 1/3 of all mosis was bombers but there main job was to distract the Germans witch was highly successful because they put more and more of there time into stopping the mosis this is not new it is a documented facted from both sides
If the Mossie could have replaced the heavies, don't you think that the Brits would have done so? Instead, they continued building and operating Sterlings, Halifaxes and Lancasters long after the Mossie entered service.
you would think so. Churchill liked to mess with war planning. Removing Dowding and replacing him with Mallory. Mallory also famously killed off the long range spitfire project. A super genius move. So no - just because it seems logical, does not mean the british are going to follow up on that. Also no. Also the lanc's could carry loads of bombs and maybe hit within a 20 mile accuracy. The RAF promise to sweep all before away with raids before d-day also missed the targets. They did manage to kill 1000s of french though. The mosquito on the other hand - carried less, also had a good chance of actually hitting required target. Also a good chance to come home.
It's like when chubby shutins who play World of Tanks think they can shut down actual veterans who worked in the vehicles regarding what the tank could and could not do.
No... we would say... a duel Mustang????? Thats cool... now where's my duel P47!!!!! And once that's done... stack three on top of each other for the ULTIMATE TRI-PLANE!!!!!
Thank you Greg. That last part was really needed. Sometimes you have to remind people that WWII wasn’t a video game but rather the biggest tragedy in the history of Mankind.
On most social media channels, TH-cam, Facebook...etc, whenever there is a picture of a Mosquito you will invariably see comments about how it could fly faster and carry more bombs then a B-17 then fight its way back home. Folks like to take several of its greatest attributes and lump them all into a single "wonder plane" ( a mozzie with 4 20mm cannons, 4 .303 machine guns, 4000 pound bomb load, extra fuel tanks while flying at 450 mph or faster ). Thanks for clearing up the myth, great video !
The arguments about bomb load are a bit beside the point: the Mosquito could have put its bombs more accurately on target, so fewer needed. And while TH-cam loves the "Mossie could replace B-17" thing, that's just the big American audience. Now you have to make a video explaining why the Mossie could not replace the Lancaster and Halifax. The haymaking reason (along with the need to shoot down Luftwaffe fighters), the Mosquito could not replace heavy bombers is as follws. It had a low loss rate specifically because the Luftwaffe had to optimise its fighters to kill heavy bombers. That made them a very poor choice to stop Mosquitoes. If the bombers were ALL Mosquitoes, then the Luftwaffe would have optimised its fighters for opposing them and hacked them down. Greg, please at least caveat the idea the RAF murdered civilians at night while the USAAF dropped bombs on production lines. Plenty of USAAF bombs hit houses. PLENTY.
@@lllordllloyd A lot of what you say is true, but the Mossie still had a lot going for it, very fast small target and it was stealthy. The Mossie hardly showed up on German WW2 radar. They would not have needed to fly in formation or need escorts. The 8th Air Force was notorious for poor bombing accuracy, especially when bombing in support of Allied troops. It was known as the "8th Luftwaffe"
Another point worth remembering is that the Cookie was also known as ‘the blockbuster’. It was designed to be used as an explosive bomb, to flatten an individual building or block. By itself it was only partially effective. It was intended to be used in conjunction with incendiaries, with the cookie being to expose structural timbers and the incendiary being used to start a conflagration which would lead to a firestorm and burn down adjacent structures. The weight of a bomb was only one aspect of its specification, its application is quite another.
The Blockbuster is a different bomb, essentially two Cookies coupled together, end to end. It was possible to have three together, but there was no name change. In reality, there were some detail differences between two Cookies and a Blockbuster. There were also different variants of Cookie (slightly different dimensions, tails, fusing).
Glad someone had pointed out the correct use of a Cookie. Also not mentioned was the fact that 500 lb bombs were pretty useless at destroying heavy industries. It would knock down the building but seldom did serious damage to heavy plant - in many cases the Germans just cleared away the debris and carried on. Don't think the Mossie would have operated at low level at night either - in fact the Night Fighter Mossies operated at medium level like the Bomber Stream and German Night Fighters.
Greg, a minor note you missed: while you are correct that the B-17's maximum internal bombload was 12,800 pounds, you failed to mention that the only way to get that heavy a bomb load internally was because the 1600 pound bomb was a thick-cased armor-penetrating bomb. The heavy armor-piercing case meant that the bomb was much smaller in size than a high-explosive general-purpose of the same weight, because the heavy, dense steel case concentrated much weight in little volume. But the 1600 pound bomb was NOT appropriate for most targets. The B-17 bomb bay was limited by it's size/ volume, not by the B-17s actual lifting capacity. The highest valid internal GP bomb load I have been able to figure out based on the shackle and volume limits was 9,000 pounds, and required a mix of 1,000-pound, 500-pound, and 250-pound bombs to "Tetris" in as many bombs as I could in the space. I also didn't hear any mention of the B-17's external bomb shackles, or the 4,000-pound bombs that could be carried one under each wing.
I believe he has a video on the B-17 vs British heavies as to why the Brits could have a heavier bomb based on the fact that the bay lay outs on each bomber. I believe he lays out the fact based on wings , engine and removal of armor to levels of brit bombers the B-17 could carry heavier loads in certain configurations.
Right. The Lancaster could carry a 22,000 lb bomb load but only as a single Grand Slam and only because of its unitary bomb bay and still only because it could fly without bomb bay doors.
@@ethelburga total of 32 Lanc's heavily modified to carry one 12,000 lb Tallboy OR one 22,000 lb Grand Slam, first use of Grand Slam was March 1945. BAE Lancaster page
Interesting chart with the fighter losses, if you add both the med and western front the guts were ripped out of the luftwaffe. Understated how much that helped the soviets
I don’t think Soviet great ground offensives of 1944-45 - operation Bagration, Corsun-Shevchenko, Vistula-Order etc - would have been so successful if Luftwaffe could fully concentrate on the Eastern front.
Strategic bombing was a way for the US and UK to attack Germany before they were ready to open a western front. The Soviets did not have the option of waiting. I've never read about a Soviet strategic bombing campaign against Germany, but I'd guess they were focused on tactical support for the Red Army troops that did most of the fighting against the Wehrmacht.
I am reminded of the Luftwaffe ace who transferred from the Eastern to the Western front. His initial response was 'Oh cool, tons of targets to rack up kills against!' followed not long after by 'that's a lot of things shooting at me...'
I'm a big Mosquito fan boy with a few out of print books in my library. But the idea that the Mosquito could replace the B-17 needs to die. You can argue validly that the USAAF notion of self-defending bombers was in error and the weight of armament led to poor bomb loads, but even then the Mosquito was no replacement. For example, although some Mosquitos took a single 4000lb bomb to Berlin, the usual load was 3 500lb and 1 250lb for s total of 1750. Also, although the Mosquito serendipitously used under utilised furniture workers (de Havilland's expertise was in wooden construction, which is why it was wooden) the raw materials were imported and bulky and the workforce was tapped out. It wasn't really possible to significantly increase production by the factor of three to nine required for replacing heavy bombers (depending on whether you are talking about just B17s or maybe all the heavies). Yes, in theory the USA could have built them but it took a long time to get Canadian production running and in response to a USA request for helping set up limited production for USAAF use for pathfinding, de Havilland indicated it did not have the resources to do so.
I'll summarily disregard any "argument" (wild opinion) that just throws a bunch of Max Numbers into the equation. Anyone quoting actual performance curves for possible bombload vs. range vs. altitude vs. speed, are starting to be worth listening to, anything else is pointless.
_"You can argue validly that the USAAF notion of self-defending bombers was in error and the weight of armament led to poor bomb loads"_ Except you can't argue this because the numbers for both are already available.
@@GeneralJackRipper I'm not sure what you are trying to say here. Bomber losses without escort were far too high, so large amounts of defensive armament were not providing protection from losses, but escort clearly did. Thus, unescorted raids were an error of judgement. At the start of WW2 the RAF had also attempted unescorted raids and had abandoned them in daylight. The numbers are indeed available and indicate it was a flawed strategy. Given that unescorted bombers were vulnerable, even with heavy defensive armament, there is an argument for reducing the defensive armament given that it would have the following effects: fewer crew required, thus lower crew losses; at a given bomb and fuel load, the ability to fly higher or faster, making interception harder; at a given all-up weight, a greater bomb load, requiring fewer sorties per target. All would result in fewer crew losses, and two fewer aircraft losses. The RAF came to a similar conclusion for night bombing but didn't implement it. Le May did implement it over Japan. There is probably a minimal level of armament you want for heavy day bombers, though.
The Mosquito could easily have replaced the heavy bombers and done a better job: precision bombing and stealth were as valuable then as today, maybe more so. But these planes were made out of wood, in particular Sitka Spruce, which is not as common as some types of fir. If more places had had that wood, or if other designs could have been developed that were non-metal and readily available in materials, they'd had probably switched in minutes. We have switched to smaller payload, lighter aircraft made with stealthier materials today. That is the Mosquito's real legacy: think outside the box and build fewer, better planes. If you want to be fast and less visible to radar (and thus anti-air and night fighters) then do so. The truth is that the Allies were in a hurry and could see victory in sight within months of Hitler's invasion of the Soviet Union. They didn't have the time or patience to develop these planes until later. Which is what the F-35 is today. Today's Mosquito.
Your incisive point at 16:50 is exactly the type of analysis that you're great for, Greg! I especially appreciate it coming from my time as an Operations Analyst at the Skunk Works, where revealing such points could make or break significant decisions being made on a program.
That last bit was not a downer at all. It's a needed reminder for those of us alive today when thinking back on our grandparents' choices during WWII. The enormity of the scale of death, especially towards the end, is barely imaginable even if you lived through it.
thanks for clarifying...my dad ploughed fields in Canada while Mossies flew training missions 50 feet over his head on Prince Edward Island during WW2. He always loved them and so do I to this day.
Cool! My Dad was stationed at Gander in WWII, the main aircraft deployment base for Mossies and other aircraft flying to UK. There he fell in love with those very same Mossies, and eventually conveyed that love to me, even bought me a Mossie model set to build when I was a kid.
13:12 over here, in post-soviet space, people (especially the elder ones), believe that WW2 was won solely by the USSR and completely ignore massive naval warfare in the Atlantic (germans spent A LOT of resources building u-boats, imagine all that steel went into producing tanks for the eastern front). They also ignore air warfare over Germany, which made a huge dent in their military production capabilities. Most people don't talk about African campaign, nor American efforts in the pacific. Also everyone seems to "forget" that we (the USSR) were an ally of Germany for the first 2 years of war and supplied them with a lot of natural resources, including oil and much more. Stalin didn't really want any western "allies" (because he wanted to conquer all of Europe that is), but he had no choice considering how badly soviet military collapsed and how needed was british and american help at the time, and saying that the war was fully won on the eastern front is just not true, everyone contributed.
The Russians DO deserve full credit for what they did and suffered in grinding down the Wehrmacht. Nobody whines about the number of British soldiers killed on the Western Front in the SECOND World War because the Russians were doing the heavy lifting on land (on their own soil) for the better part of three years, and all the Brits who wrung their hands over the Somme and Passchendaele and berated their own generals as butchers and bunglers said nothing about the huge Russian losses, less-than-optimal tactics and advance-or-die attitude because someone else was doing the dying this time. Someone, I forget who, calculated that the British lost approximately the same number of people from their officer class (educated middle to upper class) in both wars, the difference being that in the second war, most of those losses were as bomber crews rather than infantry officers.
@@fredericksaxton3991 What WAS the division of resources in the Reich between the emergency needs of the five fronts (France, Italy, Russia, Air, Naval) ? Who got the stuff they needed first? I have read numerous accounts of trains going to the front having less priority than trains to the concentration camps.
I admit I have a bias for British aircraft and I must say that your channel is above all others when it comes to covering mainly ww2 aircraft, therefore when I get a British aircraft covered on your channel is the best. I know you have a big audience, that has different interests, but I'd be glued to the screen if you made as many videos as you did for Thunderbolts, IL-2s and others. Wrapping up the comment, I believe as I always do, you make excellent videos, really really thankful.
I just watch for the quality. It's a piece of history now, although with a few ex-combatants still living and I no longer know any of them. Once there were six, .
@@GregsAirplanesandAutomobiles I would need to check with some decent sources but after the channel dash didn't gunisenau hit a mine, probably German off the coast that put it somewhat out of action? I may be a bit off on that, the general trend of the channel dash was however as you put that major German surface forces got to a safer port via the channel, with little cost to the Germans. Major muck up with British interservice coordination didn't help at all as there were options to go after the force properly but none were taken in time just a desperate rush of swordfish which aren't suitable for use around 109s and 190s in daylight.
Thank you for mentioning Canada in the context of the Dieppe Raid. While I know that the supporting forces were predominantly British (RAF and RN) with even some US Army Commandos mixed in; the poor bloody infantry in the raid were Canadian, and they suffered the lions share of Allied casualties in the raid. Always love your videos Greg!
Canada doesn't get mentioned because everyone else is jealous they couldn't have a Sir Arthur Currie of their own. Canada has always been the tip of the spear.
I'd love Greg to cover that: it's not a "superprop" as in high speed, but it is in terms of payload per engine. I'd like to know how it compared to its WWII ancestors.
The Brits also built around 7,000 Avro Lancaster heavy bombers. If the Mosquito could replace the B17, surely it could do the same for the Lancaster. The answer is clearly that it could replace neither. Different aircraft, different missions.
@@ZealothPL the same b17 that managed to maintain its abilty to fly in the light while the lancaster was relegated to bight bombing? So terrible it could actually defend itself? So terrible most of the luftwaffe was geared towards combating its type and its type alone? Sure buddy. Ignore reality
@@casematecardinal That also isn't entirely reality. The B-17s did not fare much better than the Lancaster while flying at daytime without escort. It's worth mentioning that RAF bomber command was committed to night raids over Germany by the time the Lancaster entered service so it was inevitable that it would fly at night(of course they did a daylight raid early on and it was a disaster(of course had it been B-17s the result would've been the same lets be realistic)) and it is also worth mentioning that the Lancaster did have it's advantages, including it's high bombload, among others. My point is that the Lancaster isn't "bad" because it was "relegated" to night bombing, while the B-17 isn't some sort of "good" hero aircraft because it could actually "defend itself", it couldn't, surely that's why the whole escort thing is such a big deal, and at times I believe the Lancaster flew escorted daylight raids later in the war. Also there are some pretty famous Lancaster raids using various Barnes Wallis weapons, like attacking V-weapon sites, U-boat anxd E-boat pens etc... which are pretty impressive
@@imperialinquisition6006 I never said the Lancaster was bad. Just pointing out that the supposedly entirely inferior b17 could maintain a more useful role through the entirety of the war because of its design characteristics. So evidently saying the b17 was bad is silly. Also the Lancaster only ever came out durring the day for raids of opportunity with low air cover such as attacks against turpitz or uboat pens later in the war.
Great as always, I had a video idea. I did a quick video search and I didn't see it. The best fighters by year. Obviously this is a huge task. But as you mentioned some planes were the best in the world when they came out, but with no call for them they were outdated by the time they saw service. This gives people the impression they weren't up to the task when in fact it was just the march of technological improvements. Also there are lots of planes that get no attention as they were made in a time where they weren't able to show their worth. This could be a video series instead of one long one.
As a brit and someone how loves the DH Mosey, ( and the mighty B17 ), Thank god some one has a really good understanding of how and why heavys are used. The role and type of these two wonderful warbirds could'nt be more different. Thank you for a really good video and explaining what tpye of mission and whhat goals they had. You gave really good and clear information for both aircraft. Also the types of bomb and bombload. Both aircraft had their pro's and con's. it was the tactics used and how we learned them. Thank you again for a really good video. Peace out and stay sunny side up from me and my dog Max on the east Coast of the UK. ( strange thing i live in lincolnshire that has the nick name Bomber county 🙂)
The cookie was really just a blast weapon or air mine - designed primarily to open up buildings by blowing in windows and doors and dislodge roof tiles etc over a wide area. This would make the damaged buildings susceptible to incendiary weapons and that could create large uncontrollable fires
thanks for busting that myth, the general idea that it could have replaced the b-17 is squirrel nuts... but yes, love the mosquito as a fighter bomber in most games, it just isn't terribly good outside of that and not as a strategic bomber as was very much pointed out
Gregg, excellent video. But you forgot one aspect. If you run up hundreds of mosquitoes into formation, you have the same limitation as the B-17 regarding fuel. This would of necessity decrease the Mosquitoes available bombload for the same mission.
That's true, the idea of sending in Mosquitos in a formation just doesn't work. The whole point of the formation is to allow for massed defensive firepower. It would also make them much easier to intercept as they would all be in the same place.
@@GregsAirplanesandAutomobiles Another point is that a formation of geographically and aerodynamically same aeroplanes drops bombs the same way, more or less. 🙂
Not certain about the supposed huge decrease in time over flak zone. Accuracy decreases exponentially for both speed and altitude so for the supposed better accuracy they are not going to be able to go 300MPH, twice the speed of a 17. Because the DH98 was as clean as it was possible for a bomber to be, open bomb bay doors were probably close to throwing out an anchor. IMHO
Tis a wonderful video! I second the "Why not Mosquitos to replace the Lancasters" question- though it likely comes down to production considerations as well.
The answer to your question is simple: striking power. The Lancaster could carry 10,000 lbs of bombs to Berlin; the Halifax III, 8,000 lbs. The Mosquito with bulged bomb bay doors could carry 4,000 lbs, consisting of a single 4,000 lb bomb; the regular Mosquito only 2,000 lbs. To replace a single Lancaster would require at least 2.5 Mosquitoes, and each Halifax III at least 2 Mosquitoes. Such replacement would require more Mosquitoes for heavy bombers alone than the entire production run of all Mosquito types built during the war.
@@primmakinsofis614 Worse than that!!! A 50 Squadron Lancaster based in Lincolnshire could get 9,800lb of droppable load to Berlin. One 4000lb Cookie, plus 5,800lb of Incendiaries (a mixture of 4lb Magnesium and 30lb phosphorus / Oil bombs) all carried in Small Bomb Containers. SBC's were not part of the aircraft and were not dropped, but brought back for reuse. Figures for how much they weighted are not readily available, but the 250lb version which was the first version weighted in at 44lb empty and by 1942 could carry 90 x 4lb Incendiaries. Bomber command had a modified enlarged version come into service in 1943 which could carry up to 150 x 4lb Incendiaries (600lb) or 12 x 30lb Incendiaries (360lb). I don't think the big ones fitted in a Mosquito unless you put one the mount for the Cookie and you could only get two of the smaller ones in the front of a Mossie. So the maximum Incendiary load using a SBC on a Mossie was between 600 and 720lb. The RAF did start using Incendiary Cluster Bombs from late 1943 onwards in three sizes, 350lb, 500lb and 1000lb. The Mosquito could only carry 2x500lb Incendiary Clusters on the front two 500lb stations in the Bomb Bay. The total bomb load in the 500lb cluster was 104 x 4lb Magnesium Incendiaries giving a total load of 832 lb. You could get 4 x 350lb Incendiary Cluster bombs into a Mosquito bomb bay, but they only held 72 x 4lb and in June 1944 were still under development. This would give a loadout of 1,152lb of 4lb Incendiaries. At best it would have taken 6 Mosquitos to do the job of 1 Lancaster and the Lanc can dump its complete bomb load of Cookie and Incendiaries in one place, where the 6 Mosquitos couldn't!!!
@@richardvernon317 According to the weight tables for 44 Squadron, the fully loaded weight of SBCs: 60 x 4-lb = 291 or 312 lbs, implying an empty weight of 51 or 72 lbs 90 x 4-lb = ??? 8 x 30-lb = 266 lbs, implying an empty weight of 66 lbs 150 x 4-lb = 676 lbs 16 x 30-lb = 476 lbs 12 x 30-lb = 376 lbs The implied empty weight for all three of the above is 76 lbs. Note that the 30-lb incendiary actually weighed 25 lbs. I don't know of any 350-lb class cluster projectile (cluster bomb) for incendiary bombs. Period ordnance manuals list the following (500-lb, 750-lb, and 1,000-lb classes): No. 4 = 14 x 30-lb J-type No. 14 = 106 x 4-lb No. 15 = 158 x 4-lb No. 16 = 235 x 4-lb Bomber Command also used the U.S. AN-M17 aimable cluster (110 x 4-lb). According to the monthly ordnance reports, the No. 4 was first used in April 1944 and last used in Nov. 1944. The No. 14 was used from Jan. 1944 onward; the No. 15 from Oct. 1944 onward; the No. 16 from Feb. 1945 onward; and the AN-M17 from Oct. 1944 onward. SBCs continued to be used up to the end of the war. A small number of the U.S. 500-lb AN-M76 incendiary were used in April 1944.
Great video. Well thought out and informative. And you have a great grasp of the issue. All of the aircraft of the day had their limitations. Each of them had their own qualities. And they were mostly used in the correct manner.
It’s also worth considering that, to carry that kind of load over those distances, a Mosquito would lose a lot of its speed advantage. For an intruder that is flying under radar or that may even be ignored amidst all the other intercepts going on, that might not be too bad. But for a large raid that’s almost impossible to hide and the Luftwaffe could not afford to ignore, Mosquitos would have to spend a lot of time flying within the performance envelope of available interceptors.
Never heard the rumor, but often thought it (smoking sub grade, outdoor garden grown indica). Thanks for setting the record straight! (Have switched to dispensary grade indoor hydroponic sativa)
Thank you Greg for dispelling the myth of the Mosquito. It had a different job to do as did the B-17s. Each was well suited to do what was needed of them.
Another excellent aviation video! For those that say the 8th Air Force campaign in Europe was ineffective need to see this video. God Bless all those brave flyers!
Thanks Greg, Many years ago one of videos caught my eye and I just had to listen. I don't even remember the exact one but I do remember being ticked off that you where destroying one of my favorite myths. I'm glad you did and I'm now one of those guys that says "You can't argue with facts!". Keep up the good work!
@@bengunderman5382 Yes, the NF.II was an early version into service using A.I. Mk IV radar from Jan 1942, and then later versions with better radars continued in service as RAF night fighters until the Vampire NF.10 came into service in 1951
Re the ‘why not replace the Lancaster?’ The answer is ‘because the Lancaster could carry a much larger payload. Up to 10 tonnes (Grand Slam), though that required some pretty large mods to the bomb-bay.
That just flying a lot more tonnage to do a lot less of anything useful. The Lancaster is no more to be applauded than the Mosquito. You are flying a long way just to strike a lot of nothing most of the time.
Also the Lancaster could carry the 8,000lb HC and 12,000lb HC bombs (larger diameter than the 4,000lb HC), and the 12,000lb Tallboy with some modification of the bomb bay doors. To carry the 22,000lb Grand Slam teh bomb bay doors were removed, and the bomb bay faired in, with the front and upper turrets removed.
And to the aircraft as a whole (front and mid upper turrets gone, more powerful versions of the Merlin fitted). There's a reason the Tallboy and Grand Slam droppers were designated as B Mk1 (Special). Depending on the source, you can sometimes find raw poundage of bombload for the Short Stirling that is higher than that for an _unmodified_ Lancaster. However, this is strictly for VERY short range missions, and is almost exclusively limited to smaller bombs (500lb or at most 1000lb); the Stirling never had the flexibility in its bomb bay that was a feature of the Lancaster.
@@Ensign_CthulhuA 500lb bomb is more than enough to remove a roof to let the 4lb incendiaries in. Maybe they could have designed two-piece bombs which separate on the way down.
@@20chocsaday they used SBCs (small bomb containers) which although usually containing incendiaries, could carry many HE bombs too, typically with delay fuses. The Cookie and Blockbuster were considered much more effective than 500lb bombs at removing roofs, hence their use.
A very good example that explains the meaning of the phrase; "The devil is in the detail" and a great analysis of the bigger picture to understand the reality/objective of the USAAF bombing campaign.
Very true, One of the problems being the type of person who can't grasp the nuances of the issues and has a "top trumps " attitude. Some actually believe that WW2 aircraft could make maximum speed all the way to Berlin and back. There's no hope for them.
Some people today forgot just how smart the people running things in WW2 really were. If Mosquitoes wouldve worked Jimmy Dolittle would've had Mosquitoes made in the States by the thousands.
He would not have. Because, like everyone else except the armchair few who make stupid comments like equating B17 and Mosquito, or indeed "what worked" without qualifying the comment, he understood that they were different aircraft, optimised for different missions. Each, and like the Lancaster and Liberator and B-29, could do things the others could not. The B-17 could not have done the hyper-accurate high-speed low-level raids the Mossie could; and the US was quite happy to leave pissing off the gestapo and much else to the Brits, who wrote the book on it. In turn, no other aircraft, even the Liberator, could have ground down and demoralised the Luftwaffe day air defences, and wiped out so many of their pilots and airframes, the way the B-17 with their Mustang escorts did.
I think the RAF did consider this point at length but concluded it unfeasible simply because they couldn't train enough pilots to make up the shortfall in tonnage required. Also, you would be putting all your eggs in the strategic materials basket, getting enough timber to build the vastly increased numbers required. You could argue that different tactics would have been needed, for instance, vastly increasing the low level intruder attacks the Mossie was so good at, but sitting in rigid daylight formations would have been slaughter. It's a valid point though of provoking the luftwaffe to send massed attacks up, thereby exposing them to a high attrition rates. Good vid and raises interesting points. Thanks for sharing.
You forgot to mention one of if not the major threat to the luftwaffe during the whole war .. on the 10th of March 1940 Mussolini and Hitler would have a face-to-face meeting to discuss Italy entering the war…. This was the same day Chuck Norris was born , coincidence!? I think not !
Glad you make the point about Doolittle, air superiority and D-day. A recent youtube video was going on about the cost of that campaign whilst ignoring completey, the point and effect of it.
I've really been enjoying and finding these videos on bombing very interesting. I feel like on the subject of British medium and heavy bombers that there is a lack of unbiased and well reaserched content. Could you consider covering aircraft such as the Wellington, Halifax, Stirling and Lancaster? Or even just more bombing in general. Thanks and keep up the great work
Also the German guy who incidentally did an analysis of German records found that the mosquito was the most mentioned aircraft of their war also made the point that fewer numbers of mosquitos also made them harder to intercept despite the German preoccupation with them they weren’t doing massive damage to the war machine except certain specific hard to get targets and the path finding and because there were fewer of them than daylight raids that had a lower priority of intercept
@@GregsAirplanesandAutomobiles yeah he didn’t say that specifically but it IS what he was driving at the sheer bloody nuisance of mosquitos fits the name, but the point on IF their were more mosquitoes then they would be more important for resources to be spent on, still stands Such a shame no airworthy mosquitos here in England, my fav none jet aircraft of all time!!!
@@osmacar5331 This, even more than embarrassment, their ability to penetrate and hit almost anything made the damage they caused more significant. They may not be able to flatten half a city but they can get where you don't want them and cause chaos.
@@dzzope in war, the surgical win. however like surgery, some cases bones must be broken. to win war one must understand its surgical nature. to use the scalpel, or the sledge.
Very good episode. It's especially useful, not so much for debunking the B-17 vs Mosquito nonsense, but for clarifying what the 8th AAF was doing in 1943-44. Lots of airmen were indeed killed, but they did destroy the Luftwaffe and ensure air superiority on the western front from D-Day onward. Again, this one was really excellent.
As a Brit I love the mosquito and I’m from that area, you are spot the mosquito was never designed to replace the heavy bomber, it was another tool in the airforce armoury and one of the best ones
Closterman, a pilot and aeronautical engineer, mentioned that there were not enough cabinet makers to build many Mosquitoes and that it was not going to win the war. This shows that it was considered but rejected for many reasons. He did work for the AIr Staff before D-Day. The Allies were fighting for survival and losing thousands of aircrew; if there was a better solution, they would have done it.
Despite the fact that close to 8000 Mosquitoes were made ; that was nowhere near enough to cover all the missions the allies needed to meet their objectives . The Americans may have been able to make some more but otherwise it was built to it's maximum production . Not only B17s but B24s and Lancaster and Halifaxes were built in large numbers . Also a whole lot of medium bombers . All these combined were just enough to meet losses and destroy the various targets on a large variation of targets . Of course alternative manufacturers could make Lancasters and other main types but there was all sorts of issues like tooling that required manufacturers to keep making their own types , even some that were verging on obsolete . The allies were always struggling to keep up with losses . It would have been impossible to just make enough , even if you assume ( which is unlikely ) that the Mosquito could do it all .
Armchair generals fighting wars that have already been won... Done is done, things turned out to our advantage. Oh, and the obligatory "hindsight is 20/20" in case you haven't yet figured it out. Thank you, Greg, for delving into this silliness.
That YOLOing B-17 into Germany without Escorts was suicide is not current day hindsight. Its what the RAF told the Americans would happen if they tried (because the RAF had tried the same dumb shit already). They ignored that, did try it, and murdered 10000s of men for literally no strategic gain what so ever.
How long did it take to build a single Mosquito? As a wooden structure there had to be carving and shaping involved. Surfacing, gluing, clamping, pressing, finish trimming - it was a manufacturing proceedure to be sure, but not the same as 40 people riveting structure and skin to make a fuselage in one shift. Another factor was the raw material; there wern't any balsa forests left in South America by the end of the war. The required number for area bombing at a constant pace wouldn't have been possible. Another incredible program, Thanks.
It was composite plywood monocoque construction - there would have been very little carving or trimming. The big advantage of making it in wood was not so much in raw material but the wide availability of the skills and tools for working it. Every furniture and piano company in the country made major sub assemblies - something of which Goering himself complained (as in "why the hell can't we do that?").
Geoffrey De Havilland originally intended the Mosquito to be unarmed on the grounds that sheer speed was a better defence against fighters than gun turrets etc. That philosophy worked for a light/medium bomber or Schnellbomber, but nobody got it to work with a heavy bomber.
@@casematecardinal Yes, I agree. However its turbosuperchargers allowed it to fly high and fast. Remember, it was designed and flown pre-radar. The fighters of the day had little chance of intercepting B-17s at 25,000 feet and moving fast. The Condor Legion was using JU-52s, later supplanted by He-111s and Do-17s at the time. The B-17 was a quantum leap. One that the bomber mafia assumed would be capable of independent operation.
Fantastic analysis as always, Greg. So much of the US strategic effort over Europe is often judged by metrics like tonnage dropped on targets (area bombing) and maxims like "the bomber will always get through", forgetting that from mid-1943 onwards these were completely irrelevant and obsolete for US doctrine. It was clear that the bomber would not, in fact, always get through, which would have been clear to everyone about 3 years earlier regardless - but for the USAAF's planning from that point on, this was at best a secondary consideration. A lot of this stems from looking at strategic bombing from the point of view of individual airplanes and their qualities, which is just not how air power theory that was being developed and used in that time works. Thank you for bringing it back to the big picture so concisely.
@@Zajuts149 You are missing the point. Which how prevalent ignorance is. I only know I know nothing. That goes for me and everyone else. Including you.
Different roles, Mozzy was a Pathfinder, directing bombers onto a target at night. Mozzy's set the target on fire, Bombers could easily see the fire and adjust. Great Video.
As I recall, mossies also saw significant use as a precision bomber and anti-sub weapon system. I think it might have even been mossies that managed to bomb open a POW camp without hurting many (if any) of the prisoners. Very useful aircraft, not a replacement for heavy bombers.
@@reaganharder1480 Operation Jericho. 60 mile penetration into Northern France with Typhoon Fighter Escort. Done in awful weather in February 1944. 19 Mosquitos and 14 Typhoons launched. 18 Mosquitos with bombs and one Camara ship to make a propaganda film. Four Mosquitos had to abort as they got lost from the rest of the Formation, plus a couple of the Typhoons. Two Mosquitos were lost (10% lost rate), one getting a 20mm Flak shell exploding in the Navigator's chest from a zero deflection AA shot (badly wounded pilot managed to crash land the aircraft and survive) while the other had the Raid Leader have his whole tail get blown off by a Fw-190 which resulted in the aircraft bunting into the ground killing both crew. One Typhoon was also shot down and one crashed in the channel, the later pilot being killed. 100 plus Prisoners were killed by the Mosquito's bombs as well as 50 German and French guards.
Not really an anti sub aircraft, the Molins version may have sunk one U boat and rockets were found to be more effective. The prison attack was Amiens (not a POW one) and of the 700 French prisoners, 102 were killed in the raid and 258 managed to escape . The Mosquito was a fine plane but lets not give it super powers it didn't have
I've seen it said that many (most?) of the RAF considered the cookie Mosquito to be a mis-step as the versions with the smaller bomb load could achieve much greater accuracy with low level strikes (something that 4 engine bombers couldn't match). It's also worth bearing in mind that the Mosquito was a victim of its own flexibility - switching production to ramp up 4000 pounders would have had a critical impact on its other roles (many of which supported 4 engine heavy raids).
Thank you for addressing this so comprehensively. It's a myth we've all heard endless times. I've found that any modern assertion based on the assumption that WW2 strategists were morons has a very high likelihood of being proven false once you get serious about analyzing it...
The thing is this myth has its origins in war times strategists. There were British officers pushing for unarmed fast bombers to replace the gun heavy bombers using the statistics of the mossie as one of the corner stones of the argument.
@@matthiuskoenig3378 It's the British take on the shnellbomber concept, and has the same flaws. The schnellbomber in the 30s/40s is to aerial strategy what the 1800s Jeune École was to naval strategy-- attractive-sounding but ultimately flawed in practice. (Although, ironically, a spin on both concepts are becoming viable in the drone age.)
To be fair Greg, more Mossies ‘could’ have been built to carry cookies at the cost of only two crew and a small two engined bomber. Most bombing was carpet bombing, with appalling accuracy, although ‘muricans at least tried daylight targeted attacks. But on balance I kind of agree with you. No wonder Churchill was diffident about Bomber Command’s albeit heroic record at the end of the war especially after Hamburg, Nuremburg and especially Dresden. Personally carpet bombing civilians or ‘de-housing’ as it was euphemistically called was v controversial. I think it was Curtiss LeMay who said ‘if we’d lost the war, we’d be the ones on trial as war criminals.’
yes I thought that curious. If what was required was an enlarged bulged bomb bay doors and fairings and suspension fit, thats almost a retrofit. The point was they could take 4000 lbs of ordinance to the target, and probably have an easier time getting in and out. By wars end Mossies had the lowest loss rate in Bomber Command service of the war, but were called on for many very difficult missions.
If the US had lost the war against Japan, everyone would have been beheaded regardless of virtue. It was total war. Napalm and nukes were standard fare. No modern revisionist can comprehend the uncertainty and panic from fighting a manic suicidal foe. I'm not talking about just kamikazes. But soldiers, their wives, and even their kids would suicide by grenade to take out a US marine. An excellent story on a grand scale is Dan Carlins Hardcore History, Supernova.
Although I suspect it might come to the conclusion this video has, I think a more interesting dissertation could be entitled "How might the Mosquito have been used as an alternative weapon for targetting the Luftwaffe'. You could then have discussed low level daylight pinpoint raids, with (as was done) P51s providing cover to a plane that was no sitting duck for fighters especially once it had dropped its bombload. The relevance of being able to fly a mission in half the time of a four engine heavy could then have been discussed, also the better intel gathering that might be done at low level, the reduced collateral damage to civilian populations that can result in greater resolve in the enemy etc etc. It'd be an interesting dissertation whatever the conclusion.
Nice work, well reasoned and logical- I have a great affection for the Mosquito and believe that it was deployed towards it's strengths rather than it it's weaknesses, as should be the case for any type in wartime. You did a great job in dispelling the myth, and I agree with your synopsis.
Greg a question. Did the bomber mafia and the guys flying the missions in heavies understand that their mission was to destroy the German Air Force? It seems like it’s not until Dolittle takes over and cuts the fighters loose to focus on shooting down German fighters that the goal became more focused on that than on winning the war through a strategic bombing campaign. My timeline may be off but my memory is that early on it was much less about taking out the German Air Force than it was about destroying strategic targets some of which (like the ball bearing raids) obviously were aimed at aircraft production.
Because by destroying industries related to aircraft production dual purposes could be served. Forcing the Luftwaffe to defend those facilities, then if they fail also destroying the facilities. The fighters were only loosened up after the Luftwaffe's numbers went down post early 1944, and also when it became clear the bombing itself wasn't going to win the war.
"Did the bomber mafia and the guys flying the missions in heavies understand that their mission was to destroy the German Air Force? " They were directly ordered to do that (as was the RAF) at the early 1943 Casablanca conference but it took until January 1944 before either the RAF or USAF's bomber guys took that order seriously - and then only after a furious row with their respective army commanders (who were understandably worried about D-Day). Just as Harris stayed with "morale bombing" far too long so did Spatz stay too long with "unescorted daylight precision bombing".
Technically a P-47 could carry a heavy bomber-ish warload if you really packed it up, but both it and the Mosquito would probably be slow and lower altitude and would be very vulnerable if they had to actually maintain discipline to drop the bombs over target. The range would also be very poor. Maybe for certain specialized missions that are shorter ranged a heavily bombed up mosquito or Thunderbolt or Typhoon or whatever is a great choice, but to maintain the steady grind of a strategic campaign of the era, the bigger planes were the right choice in the mid 1940s.
I'm a fan of the P-38 and P-47 but the Mossie could carry internally which was a huge advantage for flying into the target faster and with less fuel burn. The P-38 also had a 4000lb loadout, if my memory is right, but was of course entirely external and caused significant drag. I generally say that however good the Mosquitto was, the P-38 was at least as good, and better at high altitude, and a year or more earlier, and didn't require Merlins that were in such short supply. That said, my argument does require some "if-only" dreaming, eg, that if there had been a need for a fast 2-engine bomber, a P-38 could be developed with no guns, the canopy forward, and bombs internally and well-balanced loaded or empty.
@@sergeipohkerova7211 with a heavy bomb load, the P-47 was slower than the Mosquito. It also lacked a bombsight and electronic aids so would be inaccurate as a level bomber.
@@lqr824 the "droop snoot" is what you are suggesting. With external bombs, it would have been relatively slow and likely more vulnerable than the Mosquito at 4000lb. With two 1000lb bombs for 2000lb total load it would be closer, though. The USAAF was keen to have Mosquitos and the fact that very few glass nose P-38s were built suggests it wasn't a good option.
@@wbertie2604 sure but the p47 was capable of glide bombing which is more accruate and given is superior handling at high speeds it could more easily perform even dive bombing manuevers than the mosquito. It was also faster and far more durable and well armed/suited for fighting so it was a more well rounded aircraft. Its use in cas proves its viability in the fighter bomber role as opposed to a bomber fighter role.
@@casematecardinal the Mosquito was capable of very accurate level bombing. Glide bombing, without a sight, needs to be at a significant angle and to get comparable accuracy needs to take you quite low, meaning significant risk from flak.
I like how this makes it clear that the the accuracy of the Mossie during the pathfinder mission cannot be equated to it being used like a B17: in large numbers that may be fast but can be shot down and probably easier than the B17 as it does not have defensive armament.
Whilst losses would have been higher for the Mosquito than they were had they replaced the B-17, the B-17 was quite vulnerable without fighter escort even with heavy armament. With high speed, the Mosquito was very hard to catch and a shoot down attempt at high altitude was largely restricted to a single pass. So even used en masse, Mosquito losses would likely have been lower than the B-17 given the fighters the Luftwaffe actually deployed. But with such a hypothetical, it would be reasonable to assume that Germany would have prioritised aircraft with better high altitude performance. It would be hard to predict the result in such a very hypothetical situation.
Consideration was given to mounting some defensive armament on Mosquitos - Vickers K in the engine nacelles firing reward as scare guns. A turret fighter with 4 20mm cannon was mocked up but the turret was optimistic and it wouldn't necessarily have had any capacity for bombs in such a configuration. The experience of the Ju-88 suggests adding defensive armament would have been s mistake
@@GeneralJackRipper RAF targets were not necessarily 10 miles wide. That's a myth. The RAF regularly attacked non-area targets such as factory complexes (e.g. BASF at Ludwigshafen, Peenemunde, synthetic oil plants). Target marking was on point targets (for Dresden it was a sports stadium) which frequently achieved accuracy of around 200 yards. In 1942, prior to the Pathfinder Force and other improvements, accuracy could be poor (although the BASF attack was in 1942) but it was more the adopted strategy of area bombing (and the origins of that in the UK can be traced back to Baldwin in 1932) meant that the criterion for success was quite relaxed and that aligned with the outcome of the Butt report. However, when asked to bomb much smaller targets, the RAF demonstrated an ability to do so.
As I commented on your previous video, the Mossie VS B-17 argument always ignores the timeline difference in production and availability between the airframes. The Mosquito prototype had its first flight on 25 November 1940. The Boeing 299 first flew in 1935 and the Y1B-17 prototypes 02 December 1936. The Mosquito B Mk IV first production aircraft flew in March of 1942, the B Mk XVI first flew in January 1944. By March 1942, at the time the Mk IV bomber variant of the Mosquito had its first flight, ~470 B-17C/D/E models had been delivered, with the B-17E delivering 512 aircraft between September 1941 and 28 May 1942. In March 1943, the Mosquito B Mk IX first flew. By mid-1943 (within a couple months of this first flight), 3,405 B-17Fs had been delivered. By the time the Mosquito B Mk XVI first flew in January 1944, over 5,871 B-17 C/D/E/F/G models had been delivered. Basically, the B-17 was being delivered in quantity while the Mosquito was in prototype form.
One of my uncles, who was a furniture maker, ended the war inspecting Mossies coming off the Canadian assembly line. All the while reporting weekly as a suspected ‘enemy alien’ since he was born in Italy.
That book is brain rot. I've been meaning to do a video tearing it apart, but it is telling this was Forczyk's first book on Bomber Command because he got pretty much everything wrong.
Greg, excellent video. The Mossy is one of my all time favorite airplanes. Your conclusions are all correct, but I wasn't able to get much data on fuel/payload info on the Mossy, but as you said the effective bombing payload of a Mossy is 2,000#; 4/500# and as you said just not the same destructive speard of say 16-20 250# and the B-17 could carry much more with sufficient fuel to make the 1100 miles trip. Combat radius is important. The internal fuel capcity in the wings was limited to perhaps 600-700 gal in the wings, although with a fuselage and drop tanks it could almost double. One fact of note that with all the allied bombing, the highest annual production of Bf 109s occurred in 1944 if I remember correctly. Also the Germans tried to make their own version of a wood Mossy, but couldn't get the glue right. The prototypes had many inflight breakups. With its wood platform, the Mossy had a low radar signature, kind of stealty. The only plane better than the B-17 (the B-24 was compaarable) was , of course the B-29 as long as they ccould keep the Wright 3350s cylinders in one piece. The Germans as amazing a fight they put up, were doomed by Yamamoto's statement after Peral Harbor. Yeah the mosquito was fast, but how far could it fly at 350 mph.
Use the best tool available for the job in hand. The Mosquito could no have destroyed the Luftwaffe - but nor could a B17 have pulled off Operation Jericho.
Great video, as always! The Mosquito was definitely one of the best planes of the war, and one of the things that made it great was the adaptability to a variety of roles: Bomber, strike aircraft, night fighter, photo reconnaissance, and even high-speed transport/passenger plane. The British Overseas Airways Corporation (B.O.A.C.) operated unarmed and civilian marked(still with RAF camouflage) Mosquitos on routes where military aircraft couldn't operate, such as in and out of neutral Sweden. SOE agents that had escaped to Sweden from Nazi-occupied Norway could get a swift but uncomfortable flight back to the UK in a less-than-optimally converted bomb bay of a Mosquito.
The Mosquito B.IX RAF data sheet actually lists the maximum for bulged bay versions as 4000lb plus a 500lb under each wing for 5000lb total. I don't think it was done and with a Cookie and wing tanks stability was compromised. The B.XVI lists the maximum as 4000lb which suggests some realism set in. But the B.XX also lists 5000lbs.
Well done, Greg, as usual. I especially appreciate the last couple of minutes. There's nothing benign about a war, whether in the air or on the ground, and good people died horribly throughout WW 2. I'm not convinced that slowing down the RATE of death would necessarily be a good thing if it just means I die in 1946 instead of in 1944. Or if I die flying plane "X," which is superior to plane "Y," but is, alas, not invincible. Every machine, and perhaps aircraft more than most, has its limitations, and attention has to be paid to those limitations lest even more people die. The bombing offensive by the Allies in Europe had multiple flaws, but the Mosquito, a fine airplane according to everything I've read about the air war, wasn't capable of fixing those flaws.
Physical size is misleading. B-17 104' span, 74' long Mossie 54' span, 44' long F-4 Phantom 38' span, 63' long The F-4 could carry 18,000 pounds of bombs.
@@grizwoldphantasia5005 The phantom was a generation later (so more efficient aero, stronger construction and a jet). Physical comparisons only work when you're dealing with things that are roughly technologically equal, such as the 17 and the mosquito. Even then they can be misleading, but when the comparison is simple volume vs volume like for bomb loads it is fairly reliable.
My mother and aunts worked at the De Havilland plant in Downsview, near Toronto, that built mosquito bombers and no they were never asked to get a bucket of prop wash
Between 1936 and 1945 there were 12, 731 B-17 bombers built. There were ~18,500 B-24s built in WWII as well. We don't even have to log the numbers of US built medium bombers (B-25, A-20, B-26, A-26 to name a few types) but they were each built in larger numbers than the Mosquito. Mosquito production at 7,800 units total would not have been numerous enough to take up the role of the US heavy bombers. Especially as only ~500 or so were configured as pure bombers. Plus, I'm curious about what the air speed and range of a Mosquito loaded with 4000 lbs of bombs at 25000 feet would be, if indeed it could operate at that altitude.
@@boydgrandy5769 Also, they used completely different manufacturing techniques. Every furniture and piano manufacturer in England were already building Mosquitoes. I don't think they could have built more.
@@martinricardo4503 Yeah but none of those were made of wood. You needed different kinds of manufacturers with a totally different skill set to make the Mosquito than the planes you listed. Maybe we could have recruited furniture and piano makers in the US to join the war effort by building Mosquitoes, but I have no idea how to gauge if that would be enough to match the sheer quantity of metal airplanes they'd supposedly be replacing.
@@boydgrandy5769 the Mosquito could operate above 25,000ft with the cookie. If I pull out my books I can tell you exactly what speed was possible, but from memory it was only about 15mph reduction compared to a 2000lb load.
Not so good in the tropics and Pacific as the heat combined with the humidity caused the wood construction to delaminate. Then, that combination is hard on everything
@@GregsAirplanesandAutomobiles That's insane. I would personally almost put that into the same category as "What if the Me262 came into service earlier and saved the germans". Well, maybe not that bad, but they are two vastly different categories of aircraft. Btw, thank you for all your great in depth videos. If I may ask, do you have any more WW1 content in the works? Not many other creators are covering WW1 aviation.
This is a concept that relies on at least some understanding of the operational use of the B-17, so it’s much more likely to have come from a misunderstanding of stats in a book or documentary. If someone was getting their information solely from War Thunder (I’m not sure anyone actually does that, but hypothetically speaking) they’d be well aware that the B-17 could carry a higher payload.
I love this sort of argument. As with current politics it's all about taking facts out of context, over-simplification, and drawing conclusions that look attractive but are actually completely unrelated to reality. Fortunately, WWII strategists knew rather better than subsequent barroom/keyboard warriers. Good summary!
The first time I heard the Mosquito vs B17 argument, I nearly broke my jaw as it hit the floor. It was from a friend who normally doesn't say such things. One 4klb cookie is a lot more compact than four 1k's, much more than eight 500's, and sixteen 250's likely take up much more space as two 4k's. Then you have to have the racks to carry the load. To carry four 1k's you'd need two of them to be external. That would do a real number on the Mossie's speed and range. Finally, call it a 1 to 1 swap, Mossie for B17. That's a lot of Merlin's, curious where that production is coming from. Radial production lines and machine tools aren't interchangeable. Many machines that did excellent service producing radial crankcases, cylinders, and cranks, would be useless finishing a massive V12 block and crank. That means additional production of large machinery. The logistics of such a change is a nightmare.
I think the reason Merlins were used in such large numbers is that Packard and British Ford were allowed to redesign the engine for parts interchangeability and production speed. Those were, like Rolls, automakers and the Merlin was still more like a car engine than a radial. I don't know if there were as many contractors out there who could have done the same with radials.
YEAH but a mossie only needs 10% of the warload for the same effect measuring tonnage dropped is not the measure its bombs ON TARGET that counts you'd need LESS mossies than B-17's and a stream of mossies all traveling, aiming and dropping independently would be far more effective than a box formation of B-17 dropping when the lead bomber does and post-war German fire-fighters agreed the fires from a bomber stream get established, do more damage, and were harder to fight
Attrition. First time I've heard this perspective on the US Daytime "Precision Bombing". The US were masters of Total Air Superiority. This was key in the D Day Invasion. The Luftwaffe was almost Non-existent. I remember that the Luftwaffe was so instrumental in Germany's Blitzkrieg Tactic. People tend to focus on the Mechanized Armor Assault. The Mosquito was such a brilliant design and very affective Craft. Just love the B-17. Great Video. Thank you.
You need to learn more. Up until January 1944 US doctrine was indeed unescorted daytime precision bombing - and the B17 was a definite failure at that (modern fighters were too good at shooting them down if they had no fighter cover, and the Nordern bombsight under combat conditions was nowhere near as precise as believed). But with the arrival of good escort fighters the strategy became "tethered goat" - the B17s acted as the tethered goat to bring the Luftwaffe up to battle where the P51s could shoot them down, often by just following them back to their airfield. This was spectacularly successful.
@@GregsAirplanesandAutomobilesI wonder what the B-17 crews thought of that purpose. Being sent over Germany so that P-51s got targets. At least beaters raising grouse don't normally get shot at.
So if I have this right, the one variant of the mossie could carry about the same bomb "weight" of the ave of the B-17 missions? Almost as far, at a same or better speed? The wood used was imported not local to the British Isles, so that's not a huge benefit over light alloys since they both have be shipped in at U-boat risk. Daylight/un-escorted sustained raiding the losses might have been even worse, imo.
Both fine machines but fundamentally built for different roles. Neither could replace the other. They were complementary yes, and they both carried out their roles brilliantly.
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it is the context you have to look at B-17 was a air-ea bomber where only 5% of bombs came with in 5 miles of any target and this is from USAF reports
the Mosi was a prostitution targeting bomber with a 75% on target hit rate RAF reports
but to compere them with each other is wrong as they both did to different jobs plus the B-17 had about 90% of planes made to be bombers the Mosi only about 40%(more like 35%)was made up with bombers
what you have to remember the Mosi would be called to day a multi roll plane witch no one would in there write mind would the B-17
@@marktaylor3727 1,284 mossies built as unarmed bombers minus conversions to photo/recon. BAE Mosquito page
About 1/6 of wartime production, the rest of you comment has the same level of accuracy.
Hello Greg, if you revisit the Mustang could you shed some light on how much input the British had in its design ? I occasionally see ridiculous claims that conveniently ignore or forget Spitfire wing was developed with data from NACA and then there is the Bendix Stromberg "origin" claim that it was designed by the British and "given" to Bendix, adopted by RR then SU "redesigned" it and made it better.
Thanks
@@nickdanger3802 the accuracy is for the RAF were about a 1/3 of all mosis was bombers but there main job was to distract the Germans witch was highly successful because they put more and more of there time into stopping the mosis this is not new it is a documented facted from both sides
plus BAE was not around in ww2 it was made by Hawker
If the Mossie could have replaced the heavies, don't you think that the Brits would have done so? Instead, they continued building and operating Sterlings, Halifaxes and Lancasters long after the Mossie entered service.
Well in practice the Lanc carried way more bombs than a B17 in practice.
You have to remember the influence of sir Arthur Harris who was obsessed with the Lancaster above all other aircraft.
@@peterregan8691hear, hear it’s an examples of doctrinal politics in Harris’ case!
you would think so. Churchill liked to mess with war planning. Removing Dowding and replacing him with Mallory. Mallory also famously killed off the long range spitfire project. A super genius move. So no - just because it seems logical, does not mean the british are going to follow up on that.
Also no. Also the lanc's could carry loads of bombs and maybe hit within a 20 mile accuracy. The RAF promise to sweep all before away with raids before d-day also missed the targets. They did manage to kill 1000s of french though. The mosquito on the other hand - carried less, also had a good chance of actually hitting required target. Also a good chance to come home.
@unvaxxeddoomerlife6788The Lancaster did complete daylight missions in late 1944/45. After the Luftwaffe was a spent force.
"The Mosquito could replace the B-17" sounds like something a War Thunder player would say.
No , not even in WT , in WT it has only 2x500 lb bombs
It's like when chubby shutins who play World of Tanks think they can shut down actual veterans who worked in the vehicles regarding what the tank could and could not do.
Better for air rb cus it can be played as a support fighter
Or HoI players?
No... we would say... a duel Mustang????? Thats cool... now where's my duel P47!!!!!
And once that's done... stack three on top of each other for the ULTIMATE TRI-PLANE!!!!!
Thank you Greg. That last part was really needed. Sometimes you have to remind people that WWII wasn’t a video game but rather the biggest tragedy in the history of Mankind.
👏🏻👏🏻👏🏻🥃👍🏻
why not both?
@@alexandervapnyar3979 Arlington Cemetery has no respawn....
No, the biggest tragedy in human history was the creation of gods. This one act slowed humanity's development.
@@neiloflongbeck5705 Religions appeared in many different places independently, so that's hardly one single tragedy.
On most social media channels, TH-cam, Facebook...etc, whenever there is a picture of a Mosquito you will invariably see comments about how it could fly faster and carry more bombs then a B-17 then fight its way back home. Folks like to take several of its greatest attributes and lump them all into a single "wonder plane" ( a mozzie with 4 20mm cannons, 4 .303 machine guns, 4000 pound bomb load, extra fuel tanks while flying at 450 mph or faster ). Thanks for clearing up the myth, great video !
Oh, and I forgot the..."and do it twice a day" thingy.
I wonder what percentage of the "average" WW2 pilot could handle a Mosquito.
The Mossie bomb bay was two small for 4 x 1,000 lb bombs. However 2 aircraft could carry 8 x 500 lbs bombs to Berlin at much greater speed
The arguments about bomb load are a bit beside the point: the Mosquito could have put its bombs more accurately on target, so fewer needed. And while TH-cam loves the "Mossie could replace B-17" thing, that's just the big American audience. Now you have to make a video explaining why the Mossie could not replace the Lancaster and Halifax.
The haymaking reason (along with the need to shoot down Luftwaffe fighters), the Mosquito could not replace heavy bombers is as follws. It had a low loss rate specifically because the Luftwaffe had to optimise its fighters to kill heavy bombers. That made them a very poor choice to stop Mosquitoes.
If the bombers were ALL Mosquitoes, then the Luftwaffe would have optimised its fighters for opposing them and hacked them down.
Greg, please at least caveat the idea the RAF murdered civilians at night while the USAAF dropped bombs on production lines. Plenty of USAAF bombs hit houses. PLENTY.
@@lllordllloyd A lot of what you say is true, but the Mossie still had a lot going for it, very fast small target and it was stealthy. The Mossie hardly showed up on German WW2 radar. They would not have needed to fly in formation or need escorts.
The 8th Air Force was notorious for poor bombing accuracy, especially when bombing in support of Allied troops. It was known as the "8th Luftwaffe"
Another point worth remembering is that the Cookie was also known as ‘the blockbuster’. It was designed to be used as an explosive bomb, to flatten an individual building or block. By itself it was only partially effective. It was intended to be used in conjunction with incendiaries, with the cookie being to expose structural timbers and the incendiary being used to start a conflagration which would lead to a firestorm and burn down adjacent structures. The weight of a bomb was only one aspect of its specification, its application is quite another.
Exactly, and that's one reason so few Mosquitoes were set up to carry it.
The Blockbuster is a different bomb, essentially two Cookies coupled together, end to end. It was possible to have three together, but there was no name change. In reality, there were some detail differences between two Cookies and a Blockbuster. There were also different variants of Cookie (slightly different dimensions, tails, fusing).
Glad someone had pointed out the correct use of a Cookie. Also not mentioned was the fact that 500 lb bombs were pretty useless at destroying heavy industries. It would knock down the building but seldom did serious damage to heavy plant - in many cases the Germans just cleared away the debris and carried on. Don't think the Mossie would have operated at low level at night either - in fact the Night Fighter Mossies operated at medium level like the Bomber Stream and German Night Fighters.
@@wbertie2604 thank you, I forgot this. That being said, it was always designed as a high explosive device, for use in conjunction with incendiaries.
@@Pete-tq6in yes, it had a particular role along with the Blockbuster
and once again, you've proven why you're one of the better youtubers out there
Greg, a minor note you missed: while you are correct that the B-17's maximum internal bombload was 12,800 pounds, you failed to mention that the only way to get that heavy a bomb load internally was because the 1600 pound bomb was a thick-cased armor-penetrating bomb. The heavy armor-piercing case meant that the bomb was much smaller in size than a high-explosive general-purpose of the same weight, because the heavy, dense steel case concentrated much weight in little volume. But the 1600 pound bomb was NOT appropriate for most targets. The B-17 bomb bay was limited by it's size/ volume, not by the B-17s actual lifting capacity. The highest valid internal GP bomb load I have been able to figure out based on the shackle and volume limits was 9,000 pounds, and required a mix of 1,000-pound, 500-pound, and 250-pound bombs to "Tetris" in as many bombs as I could in the space.
I also didn't hear any mention of the B-17's external bomb shackles, or the 4,000-pound bombs that could be carried one under each wing.
I have never seen a picture/image of a B17 carrying external bombs. Did this happen?
I believe he has a video on the B-17 vs British heavies as to why the Brits could have a heavier bomb based on the fact that the bay lay outs on each bomber. I believe he lays out the fact based on wings , engine and removal of armor to levels of brit bombers the B-17 could carry heavier loads in certain configurations.
@@paulcaine2603 I've seen one, but I think it was just for testing
Right. The Lancaster could carry a 22,000 lb bomb load but only as a single Grand Slam and only because of its unitary bomb bay and still only because it could fly without bomb bay doors.
@@ethelburga total of 32 Lanc's heavily modified to carry one 12,000 lb Tallboy OR one 22,000 lb Grand Slam, first use of Grand Slam was March 1945.
BAE Lancaster page
Interesting chart with the fighter losses, if you add both the med and western front the guts were ripped out of the luftwaffe. Understated how much that helped the soviets
Exactly, the losses on the Eastern front just don't compare. It wasn't the Soviets who broke the Luftwaffe, although they did contribute.
I don’t think Soviet great ground offensives of 1944-45 - operation Bagration, Corsun-Shevchenko, Vistula-Order etc - would have been so successful if Luftwaffe could fully concentrate on the Eastern front.
Strategic bombing was a way for the US and UK to attack Germany before they were ready to open a western front. The Soviets did not have the option of waiting. I've never read about a Soviet strategic bombing campaign against Germany, but I'd guess they were focused on tactical support for the Red Army troops that did most of the fighting against the Wehrmacht.
@@alexandervapnyar3979honestly wouldn’t have made a difference as the Luftwaffe was a beaten force by then
I am reminded of the Luftwaffe ace who transferred from the Eastern to the Western front.
His initial response was 'Oh cool, tons of targets to rack up kills against!' followed not long after by 'that's a lot of things shooting at me...'
I'm a big Mosquito fan boy with a few out of print books in my library. But the idea that the Mosquito could replace the B-17 needs to die. You can argue validly that the USAAF notion of self-defending bombers was in error and the weight of armament led to poor bomb loads, but even then the Mosquito was no replacement. For example, although some Mosquitos took a single 4000lb bomb to Berlin, the usual load was 3 500lb and 1 250lb for s total of 1750.
Also, although the Mosquito serendipitously used under utilised furniture workers (de Havilland's expertise was in wooden construction, which is why it was wooden) the raw materials were imported and bulky and the workforce was tapped out. It wasn't really possible to significantly increase production by the factor of three to nine required for replacing heavy bombers (depending on whether you are talking about just B17s or maybe all the heavies). Yes, in theory the USA could have built them but it took a long time to get Canadian production running and in response to a USA request for helping set up limited production for USAAF use for pathfinding, de Havilland indicated it did not have the resources to do so.
I'll summarily disregard any "argument" (wild opinion) that just throws a bunch of Max Numbers into the equation.
Anyone quoting actual performance curves for possible bombload vs. range vs. altitude vs. speed, are starting to be worth listening to, anything else is pointless.
@@Zoroff74agree.
You need to be talking about typical missions not outliers.
_"You can argue validly that the USAAF notion of self-defending bombers was in error and the weight of armament led to poor bomb loads"_
Except you can't argue this because the numbers for both are already available.
@@GeneralJackRipper I'm not sure what you are trying to say here. Bomber losses without escort were far too high, so large amounts of defensive armament were not providing protection from losses, but escort clearly did. Thus, unescorted raids were an error of judgement. At the start of WW2 the RAF had also attempted unescorted raids and had abandoned them in daylight. The numbers are indeed available and indicate it was a flawed strategy.
Given that unescorted bombers were vulnerable, even with heavy defensive armament, there is an argument for reducing the defensive armament given that it would have the following effects: fewer crew required, thus lower crew losses; at a given bomb and fuel load, the ability to fly higher or faster, making interception harder; at a given all-up weight, a greater bomb load, requiring fewer sorties per target. All would result in fewer crew losses, and two fewer aircraft losses.
The RAF came to a similar conclusion for night bombing but didn't implement it. Le May did implement it over Japan.
There is probably a minimal level of armament you want for heavy day bombers, though.
The Mosquito could easily have replaced the heavy bombers and done a better job: precision bombing and stealth were as valuable then as today, maybe more so. But these planes were made out of wood, in particular Sitka Spruce, which is not as common as some types of fir. If more places had had that wood, or if other designs could have been developed that were non-metal and readily available in materials, they'd had probably switched in minutes. We have switched to smaller payload, lighter aircraft made with stealthier materials today. That is the Mosquito's real legacy: think outside the box and build fewer, better planes. If you want to be fast and less visible to radar (and thus anti-air and night fighters) then do so. The truth is that the Allies were in a hurry and could see victory in sight within months of Hitler's invasion of the Soviet Union. They didn't have the time or patience to develop these planes until later. Which is what the F-35 is today. Today's Mosquito.
Your incisive point at 16:50 is exactly the type of analysis that you're great for, Greg! I especially appreciate it coming from my time as an Operations Analyst at the Skunk Works, where revealing such points could make or break significant decisions being made on a program.
That last bit was not a downer at all. It's a needed reminder for those of us alive today when thinking back on our grandparents' choices during WWII. The enormity of the scale of death, especially towards the end, is barely imaginable even if you lived through it.
It is based on a premise not fact.
Mosquito may have shortened war instead of lengthening.
thanks for clarifying...my dad ploughed fields in Canada while Mossies flew training missions 50 feet over his head on Prince Edward Island during WW2. He always loved them and so do I to this day.
Cool! My Dad was stationed at Gander in WWII, the main aircraft deployment base for Mossies and other aircraft flying to UK. There he fell in love with those very same Mossies, and eventually conveyed that love to me, even bought me a Mossie model set to build when I was a kid.
13:12 over here, in post-soviet space, people (especially the elder ones), believe that WW2 was won solely by the USSR and completely ignore massive naval warfare in the Atlantic (germans spent A LOT of resources building u-boats, imagine all that steel went into producing tanks for the eastern front). They also ignore air warfare over Germany, which made a huge dent in their military production capabilities. Most people don't talk about African campaign, nor American efforts in the pacific.
Also everyone seems to "forget" that we (the USSR) were an ally of Germany for the first 2 years of war and supplied them with a lot of natural resources, including oil and much more.
Stalin didn't really want any western "allies" (because he wanted to conquer all of Europe that is), but he had no choice considering how badly soviet military collapsed and how needed was british and american help at the time, and saying that the war was fully won on the eastern front is just not true, everyone contributed.
The Russians DO deserve full credit for what they did and suffered in grinding down the Wehrmacht. Nobody whines about the number of British soldiers killed on the Western Front in the SECOND World War because the Russians were doing the heavy lifting on land (on their own soil) for the better part of three years, and all the Brits who wrung their hands over the Somme and Passchendaele and berated their own generals as butchers and bunglers said nothing about the huge Russian losses, less-than-optimal tactics and advance-or-die attitude because someone else was doing the dying this time.
Someone, I forget who, calculated that the British lost approximately the same number of people from their officer class (educated middle to upper class) in both wars, the difference being that in the second war, most of those losses were as bomber crews rather than infantry officers.
Russians suffered fatalities in massive numbers. Estimates around 20,000,000.
The US lost around 600,000.
Work smarter, not harder.
Add lend lease to that as well.
Plus all those 500,000 troops held in the west to combat the RAF and USAAF.
They would have helped in the easter front.
@@fredericksaxton3991 What WAS the division of resources in the Reich between the emergency needs of the five fronts (France, Italy, Russia, Air, Naval) ? Who got the stuff they needed first? I have read numerous accounts of trains going to the front having less priority than trains to the concentration camps.
I admit I have a bias for British aircraft and I must say that your channel is above all others when it comes to covering mainly ww2 aircraft, therefore when I get a British aircraft covered on your channel is the best. I know you have a big audience, that has different interests, but I'd be glued to the screen if you made as many videos as you did for Thunderbolts, IL-2s and others. Wrapping up the comment, I believe as I always do, you make excellent videos, really really thankful.
Thanks.
I just watch for the quality.
It's a piece of history now, although with a few ex-combatants still living and I no longer know any of them.
Once there were six, .
@@GregsAirplanesandAutomobiles I would need to check with some decent sources but after the channel dash didn't gunisenau hit a mine, probably German off the coast that put it somewhat out of action? I may be a bit off on that, the general trend of the channel dash was however as you put that major German surface forces got to a safer port via the channel, with little cost to the Germans.
Major muck up with British interservice coordination didn't help at all as there were options to go after the force properly but none were taken in time just a desperate rush of swordfish which aren't suitable for use around 109s and 190s in daylight.
Thank you for mentioning Canada in the context of the Dieppe Raid.
While I know that the supporting forces were predominantly British (RAF and RN) with even some US Army Commandos mixed in; the poor bloody infantry in the raid were Canadian, and they suffered the lions share of Allied casualties in the raid.
Always love your videos Greg!
Canada doesn't get mentioned because everyone else is jealous they couldn't have a Sir Arthur Currie of their own.
Canada has always been the tip of the spear.
Always enjoyed you're channel. I appreciate the nuance to the story. Thanks!
Thank you very much, I really appreciate that.
When the A-1 Skyraider came into service in 1946, it had 15 external hardpoints with a capacity of 10,500 lbs.
I'd love Greg to cover that: it's not a "superprop" as in high speed, but it is in terms of payload per engine. I'd like to know how it compared to its WWII ancestors.
A-1 Skyraider is one of the coolest propeller planes ever. It's a tie for my favorite, alongside the Corsair.
But couldn't carry 10,500 lb any serious distance
@tokul76 it's not for max load. With max load range was about 300 miles, so with a reserve for the mission, radius was about 120 miles, IIRC.
Im very glad you covered this. Between this and the p47 and wright bros stuff, you are doing much to irrefutably reconcile and correct the record.
The Brits also built around 7,000 Avro Lancaster heavy bombers. If the Mosquito could replace the B17, surely it could do the same for the Lancaster. The answer is clearly that it could replace neither. Different aircraft, different missions.
Lancasters were not awful, unlike horribly obsolete B-17s
@@Aspeer1971 even de Havilland didn't think it could do that and proposed a larger aircraft with three crew and Sabres and a default 4000lb load.
@@ZealothPL the same b17 that managed to maintain its abilty to fly in the light while the lancaster was relegated to bight bombing? So terrible it could actually defend itself? So terrible most of the luftwaffe was geared towards combating its type and its type alone? Sure buddy. Ignore reality
@@casematecardinal That also isn't entirely reality. The B-17s did not fare much better than the Lancaster while flying at daytime without escort. It's worth mentioning that RAF bomber command was committed to night raids over Germany by the time the Lancaster entered service so it was inevitable that it would fly at night(of course they did a daylight raid early on and it was a disaster(of course had it been B-17s the result would've been the same lets be realistic)) and it is also worth mentioning that the Lancaster did have it's advantages, including it's high bombload, among others. My point is that the Lancaster isn't "bad" because it was "relegated" to night bombing, while the B-17 isn't some sort of "good" hero aircraft because it could actually "defend itself", it couldn't, surely that's why the whole escort thing is such a big deal, and at times I believe the Lancaster flew escorted daylight raids later in the war. Also there are some pretty famous Lancaster raids using various Barnes Wallis weapons, like attacking V-weapon sites, U-boat anxd E-boat pens etc... which are pretty impressive
@@imperialinquisition6006 I never said the Lancaster was bad. Just pointing out that the supposedly entirely inferior b17 could maintain a more useful role through the entirety of the war because of its design characteristics. So evidently saying the b17 was bad is silly. Also the Lancaster only ever came out durring the day for raids of opportunity with low air cover such as attacks against turpitz or uboat pens later in the war.
Great as always, I had a video idea. I did a quick video search and I didn't see it. The best fighters by year. Obviously this is a huge task. But as you mentioned some planes were the best in the world when they came out, but with no call for them they were outdated by the time they saw service. This gives people the impression they weren't up to the task when in fact it was just the march of technological improvements. Also there are lots of planes that get no attention as they were made in a time where they weren't able to show their worth. This could be a video series instead of one long one.
As a brit and someone how loves the DH Mosey, ( and the mighty B17 ), Thank god some one has a really good understanding of how and why heavys are used. The role and type of these two wonderful warbirds could'nt be more different. Thank you for a really good video and explaining what tpye of mission and whhat goals they had. You gave really good and clear information for both aircraft. Also the types of bomb and bombload. Both aircraft had their pro's and con's. it was the tactics used and how we learned them. Thank you again for a really good video. Peace out and stay sunny side up from me and my dog Max on the east Coast of the UK. ( strange thing i live in lincolnshire that has the nick name Bomber county 🙂)
Great breakdown, Professor!!! I so appreciate your commentary!!!
The cookie was really just a blast weapon or air mine - designed primarily to open up buildings by blowing in windows and doors and dislodge roof tiles etc over a wide area. This would make the damaged buildings susceptible to incendiary weapons and that could create large uncontrollable fires
thanks for busting that myth, the general idea that it could have replaced the b-17 is squirrel nuts... but yes, love the mosquito as a fighter bomber in most games, it just isn't terribly good outside of that and not as a strategic bomber as was very much pointed out
as a young engineer with intrest in airplanes... I wish for a mentor like you, Greg. Great job as always!
Gregg, excellent video. But you forgot one aspect. If you run up hundreds of mosquitoes into formation, you have the same limitation as the B-17 regarding fuel. This would of necessity decrease the Mosquitoes available bombload for the same mission.
That's true, the idea of sending in Mosquitos in a formation just doesn't work. The whole point of the formation is to allow for massed defensive firepower. It would also make them much easier to intercept as they would all be in the same place.
@@GregsAirplanesandAutomobiles and if you make one long stream heading for the same target, you give time for the enemy to organize a defense.
@@GregsAirplanesandAutomobiles Another point is that a formation of geographically and aerodynamically same aeroplanes drops bombs the same way, more or less. 🙂
Send a stream and you would have fighters attacking you along most of its length.
Not certain about the supposed huge decrease in time over flak zone.
Accuracy decreases exponentially for both speed and altitude so for the supposed better accuracy they are not going to be able to go 300MPH, twice the speed of a 17. Because the DH98 was as clean as it was possible for a bomber to be, open bomb bay doors were probably close to throwing out an anchor.
IMHO
Tis a wonderful video! I second the "Why not Mosquitos to replace the Lancasters" question- though it likely comes down to production considerations as well.
The answer to your question is simple: striking power.
The Lancaster could carry 10,000 lbs of bombs to Berlin; the Halifax III, 8,000 lbs. The Mosquito with bulged bomb bay doors could carry 4,000 lbs, consisting of a single 4,000 lb bomb; the regular Mosquito only 2,000 lbs.
To replace a single Lancaster would require at least 2.5 Mosquitoes, and each Halifax III at least 2 Mosquitoes. Such replacement would require more Mosquitoes for heavy bombers alone than the entire production run of all Mosquito types built during the war.
@@primmakinsofis614 Worse than that!!! A 50 Squadron Lancaster based in Lincolnshire could get 9,800lb of droppable load to Berlin. One 4000lb Cookie, plus 5,800lb of Incendiaries (a mixture of 4lb Magnesium and 30lb phosphorus / Oil bombs) all carried in Small Bomb Containers.
SBC's were not part of the aircraft and were not dropped, but brought back for reuse. Figures for how much they weighted are not readily available, but the 250lb version which was the first version weighted in at 44lb empty and by 1942 could carry 90 x 4lb Incendiaries. Bomber command had a modified enlarged version come into service in 1943 which could carry up to 150 x 4lb Incendiaries (600lb) or 12 x 30lb Incendiaries (360lb). I don't think the big ones fitted in a Mosquito unless you put one the mount for the Cookie and you could only get two of the smaller ones in the front of a Mossie. So the maximum Incendiary load using a SBC on a Mossie was between 600 and 720lb.
The RAF did start using Incendiary Cluster Bombs from late 1943 onwards in three sizes, 350lb, 500lb and 1000lb. The Mosquito could only carry 2x500lb Incendiary Clusters on the front two 500lb stations in the Bomb Bay. The total bomb load in the 500lb cluster was 104 x 4lb Magnesium Incendiaries giving a total load of 832 lb. You could get 4 x 350lb Incendiary Cluster bombs into a Mosquito bomb bay, but they only held 72 x 4lb and in June 1944 were still under development. This would give a loadout of 1,152lb of 4lb Incendiaries.
At best it would have taken 6 Mosquitos to do the job of 1 Lancaster and the Lanc can dump its complete bomb load of Cookie and Incendiaries in one place, where the 6 Mosquitos couldn't!!!
@@richardvernon317 According to the weight tables for 44 Squadron, the fully loaded weight of SBCs:
60 x 4-lb = 291 or 312 lbs, implying an empty weight of 51 or 72 lbs
90 x 4-lb = ???
8 x 30-lb = 266 lbs, implying an empty weight of 66 lbs
150 x 4-lb = 676 lbs
16 x 30-lb = 476 lbs
12 x 30-lb = 376 lbs
The implied empty weight for all three of the above is 76 lbs. Note that the 30-lb incendiary actually weighed 25 lbs.
I don't know of any 350-lb class cluster projectile (cluster bomb) for incendiary bombs. Period ordnance manuals list the following (500-lb, 750-lb, and 1,000-lb classes):
No. 4 = 14 x 30-lb J-type
No. 14 = 106 x 4-lb
No. 15 = 158 x 4-lb
No. 16 = 235 x 4-lb
Bomber Command also used the U.S. AN-M17 aimable cluster (110 x 4-lb).
According to the monthly ordnance reports, the No. 4 was first used in April 1944 and last used in Nov. 1944. The No. 14 was used from Jan. 1944 onward; the No. 15 from Oct. 1944 onward; the No. 16 from Feb. 1945 onward; and the AN-M17 from Oct. 1944 onward. SBCs continued to be used up to the end of the war.
A small number of the U.S. 500-lb AN-M76 incendiary were used in April 1944.
Great video. Well thought out and informative. And you have a great grasp of the issue. All of the aircraft of the day had their limitations. Each of them had their own qualities. And they were mostly used in the correct manner.
Nice video Greg!
It’s also worth considering that, to carry that kind of load over those distances, a Mosquito would lose a lot of its speed advantage. For an intruder that is flying under radar or that may even be ignored amidst all the other intercepts going on, that might not be too bad. But for a large raid that’s almost impossible to hide and the Luftwaffe could not afford to ignore, Mosquitos would have to spend a lot of time flying within the performance envelope of available interceptors.
Great video with lots of iformation , that clear up wrong / outlandish clames.
Never heard the rumor, but often thought it (smoking sub grade, outdoor garden grown indica). Thanks for setting the record straight! (Have switched to dispensary grade indoor hydroponic sativa)
Thank you Greg for dispelling the myth of the Mosquito. It had a different job to do as did the B-17s. Each was well suited to do what was needed of them.
Another excellent aviation video! For those that say the 8th Air Force campaign in Europe was ineffective need to see this video. God Bless all those brave flyers!
What moron would say such a thing?
Excellent presentation. One of your best. Love the WWII stuff
"I hate to end the video on such a downer, but sometimes, that's history."
Brother you said it.
Interesting video using a good number of primary sources. Thank you Greg!!
Thanks Greg, Many years ago one of videos caught my eye and I just had to listen. I don't even remember the exact one but I do remember being ticked off that you where destroying one of my favorite myths. I'm glad you did and I'm now one of those guys that says "You can't argue with facts!". Keep up the good work!
From what I recall reading, Mosquitos were used to ambush German night fighters during the latters' take offs and landings at the bases
The Mosquito was a good night fighter.
@@GregsAirplanesandAutomobiles Did they ever mount radar on them?
@@bengunderman5382 Of course. The radar and aerials were installed in the nose, replacing the 4 x .303 MGs and ammunition.
The Hawker Tempest was also highly effective at that.
@@bengunderman5382 Yes, the NF.II was an early version into service using A.I. Mk IV radar from Jan 1942, and then later versions with better radars continued in service as RAF night fighters until the Vampire NF.10 came into service in 1951
Great Video Greg! Thank you for sharing your time and talents…. All the best. Chuck
Re the ‘why not replace the Lancaster?’ The answer is ‘because the Lancaster could carry a much larger payload. Up to 10 tonnes (Grand Slam), though that required some pretty large mods to the bomb-bay.
That just flying a lot more tonnage to do a lot less of anything useful. The Lancaster is no more to be applauded than the Mosquito. You are flying a long way just to strike a lot of nothing most of the time.
Also the Lancaster could carry the 8,000lb HC and 12,000lb HC bombs (larger diameter than the 4,000lb HC), and the 12,000lb Tallboy with some modification of the bomb bay doors.
To carry the 22,000lb Grand Slam teh bomb bay doors were removed, and the bomb bay faired in, with the front and upper turrets removed.
And to the aircraft as a whole (front and mid upper turrets gone, more powerful versions of the Merlin fitted). There's a reason the Tallboy and Grand Slam droppers were designated as B Mk1 (Special).
Depending on the source, you can sometimes find raw poundage of bombload for the Short Stirling that is higher than that for an _unmodified_ Lancaster. However, this is strictly for VERY short range missions, and is almost exclusively limited to smaller bombs (500lb or at most 1000lb); the Stirling never had the flexibility in its bomb bay that was a feature of the Lancaster.
@@Ensign_CthulhuA 500lb bomb is more than enough to remove a roof to let the 4lb incendiaries in.
Maybe they could have designed two-piece bombs which separate on the way down.
@@20chocsaday they used SBCs (small bomb containers) which although usually containing incendiaries, could carry many HE bombs too, typically with delay fuses.
The Cookie and Blockbuster were considered much more effective than 500lb bombs at removing roofs, hence their use.
Excellent video Greg. Spot on.
Another well constructed argument Greg.
As ever, a great an informative video based upon accurate research. Thanks for your efforts Greg.
A very good example that explains the meaning of the phrase; "The devil is in the detail" and a great analysis of the bigger picture to understand the reality/objective of the USAAF bombing campaign.
Very true, One of the problems being the type of person who can't grasp the nuances of the issues and has a "top trumps " attitude. Some actually believe that WW2 aircraft could make maximum speed all the way to Berlin and back. There's no hope for them.
Thank you. That was educational. Good comments from your viewers too.
Some people today forgot just how smart the people running things in WW2 really were. If Mosquitoes wouldve worked Jimmy Dolittle would've had Mosquitoes made in the States by the thousands.
He would not have. Because, like everyone else except the armchair few who make stupid comments like equating B17 and Mosquito, or indeed "what worked" without qualifying the comment, he understood that they were different aircraft, optimised for different missions. Each, and like the Lancaster and Liberator and B-29, could do things the others could not. The B-17 could not have done the hyper-accurate high-speed low-level raids the Mossie could; and the US was quite happy to leave pissing off the gestapo and much else to the Brits, who wrote the book on it. In turn, no other aircraft, even the Liberator, could have ground down and demoralised the Luftwaffe day air defences, and wiped out so many of their pilots and airframes, the way the B-17 with their Mustang escorts did.
No chance. US first.
It was fight to get Merlin into p51.
I know, it's depressing how many alt-historians and youtubers seem to think they could have done the whole thing better than the guys who did it.
I think the RAF did consider this point at length but concluded it unfeasible simply because they couldn't train enough pilots to make up the shortfall in tonnage required. Also, you would be putting all your eggs in the strategic materials basket, getting enough timber to build the vastly increased numbers required. You could argue that different tactics would have been needed, for instance, vastly increasing the low level intruder attacks the Mossie was so good at, but sitting in rigid daylight formations would have been slaughter. It's a valid point though of provoking the luftwaffe to send massed attacks up, thereby exposing them to a high attrition rates.
Good vid and raises interesting points. Thanks for sharing.
You forgot to mention one of if not the major threat to the luftwaffe during the whole war .. on the 10th of March 1940 Mussolini and Hitler would have a face-to-face meeting to discuss Italy entering the war…. This was the same day Chuck Norris was born , coincidence!? I think not !
Once Chuck Norris was born they had no hope.
@@jayartz8562 And what chance does the vest have now that steven seagull has gone over to the dark side?
@@owenoneill5955😟 We're doomed!
@@jayartz8562 I heard Chuck Norris drove his parents home from the hospital the day he was born
Chuck Norris Lunch with Chuck
th-cam.com/video/lQ3vNftrQHk/w-d-xo.html
Glad you make the point about Doolittle, air superiority and D-day. A recent youtube video was going on about the cost of that campaign whilst ignoring completey, the point and effect of it.
I've really been enjoying and finding these videos on bombing very interesting. I feel like on the subject of British medium and heavy bombers that there is a lack of unbiased and well reaserched content. Could you consider covering aircraft such as the Wellington, Halifax, Stirling and Lancaster? Or even just more bombing in general. Thanks and keep up the great work
Great video! Concise, factual, well-reasoned. Thanks again.
Also the German guy who incidentally did an analysis of German records found that the mosquito was the most mentioned aircraft of their war also made the point that fewer numbers of mosquitos also made them harder to intercept despite the German preoccupation with them they weren’t doing massive damage to the war machine except certain specific hard to get targets and the path finding and because there were fewer of them than daylight raids that had a lower priority of intercept
Yes, but it wasn't the damage they were doing, it was the embarrassment the Mosquito was causing.
@@GregsAirplanesandAutomobiles yeah he didn’t say that specifically but it IS what he was driving at the sheer bloody nuisance of mosquitos fits the name, but the point on IF their were more mosquitoes then they would be more important for resources to be spent on, still stands
Such a shame no airworthy mosquitos here in England, my fav none jet aircraft of all time!!!
Mosquitoes did major damage. They did minor in appearance. But you knock out a powerplant you just killed a huge area. A damn there goes an aquifer.
@@osmacar5331 This, even more than embarrassment, their ability to penetrate and hit almost anything made the damage they caused more significant.
They may not be able to flatten half a city but they can get where you don't want them and cause chaos.
@@dzzope in war, the surgical win. however like surgery, some cases bones must be broken.
to win war one must understand its surgical nature. to use the scalpel, or the sledge.
Very good episode.
It's especially useful, not so much for debunking the B-17 vs Mosquito nonsense, but for clarifying what the 8th AAF was doing in 1943-44. Lots of airmen were indeed killed, but they did destroy the Luftwaffe and ensure air superiority on the western front from D-Day onward.
Again, this one was really excellent.
As a Brit I love the mosquito and I’m from that area, you are spot the mosquito was never designed to replace the heavy bomber, it was another tool in the airforce armoury and one of the best ones
Closterman, a pilot and aeronautical engineer, mentioned that there were not enough cabinet makers to build many Mosquitoes and that it was not going to win the war. This shows that it was considered but rejected for many reasons. He did work for the AIr Staff before D-Day. The Allies were fighting for survival and losing thousands of aircrew; if there was a better solution, they would have done it.
Despite the fact that close to 8000 Mosquitoes were made ; that was nowhere near enough to cover all the missions the allies needed to meet their objectives . The Americans may have been able to make some more but otherwise it was built to it's maximum production . Not only B17s but B24s and Lancaster and Halifaxes were built in large numbers . Also a whole lot of medium bombers . All these combined were just enough to meet losses and destroy the various targets on a large variation of targets . Of course alternative manufacturers could make Lancasters and other main types but there was all sorts of issues like tooling that required manufacturers to keep making their own types , even some that were verging on obsolete . The allies were always struggling to keep up with losses . It would have been impossible to just make enough , even if you assume ( which is unlikely ) that the Mosquito could do it all .
Once again a great video. Thanks Greg.
Armchair generals fighting wars that have already been won...
Done is done, things turned out to our advantage.
Oh, and the obligatory "hindsight is 20/20" in case you haven't yet figured it out.
Thank you, Greg, for delving into this silliness.
That YOLOing B-17 into Germany without Escorts was suicide is not current day hindsight. Its what the RAF told the Americans would happen if they tried (because the RAF had tried the same dumb shit already). They ignored that, did try it, and murdered 10000s of men for literally no strategic gain what so ever.
How long did it take to build a single Mosquito? As a wooden structure there had to be carving and shaping involved. Surfacing, gluing, clamping, pressing, finish trimming - it was a manufacturing proceedure to be sure, but not the same as 40 people riveting structure and skin to make a fuselage in one shift. Another factor was the raw material; there wern't any balsa forests left in South America by the end of the war. The required number for area bombing at a constant pace wouldn't have been possible.
Another incredible program, Thanks.
It was composite plywood monocoque construction - there would have been very little carving or trimming. The big advantage of making it in wood was not so much in raw material but the wide availability of the skills and tools for working it. Every furniture and piano company in the country made major sub assemblies - something of which Goering himself complained (as in "why the hell can't we do that?").
Geoffrey De Havilland originally intended the Mosquito to be unarmed on the grounds that sheer speed was a better defence against fighters than gun turrets etc. That philosophy worked for a light/medium bomber or Schnellbomber, but nobody got it to work with a heavy bomber.
The B-17 was built with the same theory in mind. When it first appeared, it flew higher and faster than its possible opposition.
@@jaym8027 that was the b10 Im pretty sure. The b17 always had a pretty decent level of defense.
@@casematecardinal Yes, I agree. However its turbosuperchargers allowed it to fly high and fast. Remember, it was designed and flown pre-radar. The fighters of the day had little chance of intercepting B-17s at 25,000 feet and moving fast.
The Condor Legion was using JU-52s, later supplanted by He-111s and Do-17s at the time.
The B-17 was a quantum leap. One that the bomber mafia assumed would be capable of independent operation.
Fantastic analysis as always, Greg.
So much of the US strategic effort over Europe is often judged by metrics like tonnage dropped on targets (area bombing) and maxims like "the bomber will always get through", forgetting that from mid-1943 onwards these were completely irrelevant and obsolete for US doctrine. It was clear that the bomber would not, in fact, always get through, which would have been clear to everyone about 3 years earlier regardless - but for the USAAF's planning from that point on, this was at best a secondary consideration.
A lot of this stems from looking at strategic bombing from the point of view of individual airplanes and their qualities, which is just not how air power theory that was being developed and used in that time works. Thank you for bringing it back to the big picture so concisely.
This myth shows what George Carlin said "Think about how stupid the average person is and realize ... half the people are stupider than that!"
And he was being kind. I am offended when accused of being smart enough to be stupid.
This also shows George Carlin's lack of understanding of 'average'. His joke fails because what he describes is the 'median', not the average.
@@Zajuts149I still laughed although I am aware of definitions of Average. Don't forget the Mode and keep the curve in mind.
@@Zajuts149 You are missing the point. Which how prevalent ignorance is. I only know I know nothing. That goes for me and everyone else. Including you.
@@Nickrioblanco1 and yet, you rest your arguments on broken reeds.
Another great "Mythbuster" episode!
(And I mean that as a compliment)
Different roles, Mozzy was a Pathfinder, directing bombers onto a target at night. Mozzy's set the target on fire, Bombers could easily see the fire and adjust.
Great Video.
Imagine the B-17 as a nightfighter😂
As I recall, mossies also saw significant use as a precision bomber and anti-sub weapon system. I think it might have even been mossies that managed to bomb open a POW camp without hurting many (if any) of the prisoners. Very useful aircraft, not a replacement for heavy bombers.
@@reaganharder1480 Operation Jericho. 60 mile penetration into Northern France with Typhoon Fighter Escort. Done in awful weather in February 1944. 19 Mosquitos and 14 Typhoons launched. 18 Mosquitos with bombs and one Camara ship to make a propaganda film. Four Mosquitos had to abort as they got lost from the rest of the Formation, plus a couple of the Typhoons. Two Mosquitos were lost (10% lost rate), one getting a 20mm Flak shell exploding in the Navigator's chest from a zero deflection AA shot (badly wounded pilot managed to crash land the aircraft and survive) while the other had the Raid Leader have his whole tail get blown off by a Fw-190 which resulted in the aircraft bunting into the ground killing both crew. One Typhoon was also shot down and one crashed in the channel, the later pilot being killed. 100 plus Prisoners were killed by the Mosquito's bombs as well as 50 German and French guards.
@@NielsenDK-1Why?
Not really an anti sub aircraft, the Molins version may have sunk one U boat and rockets were found to be more effective. The prison attack was Amiens (not a POW one) and of the 700 French prisoners, 102 were killed in the raid and 258 managed to escape . The Mosquito was a fine plane but lets not give it super powers it didn't have
I've seen it said that many (most?) of the RAF considered the cookie Mosquito to be a mis-step as the versions with the smaller bomb load could achieve much greater accuracy with low level strikes (something that 4 engine bombers couldn't match). It's also worth bearing in mind that the Mosquito was a victim of its own flexibility - switching production to ramp up 4000 pounders would have had a critical impact on its other roles (many of which supported 4 engine heavy raids).
Greg. Thank you for a logical, almost scientific, analysis. You make sense, as usual. Your knowledge is first rate.
Thank you for addressing this so comprehensively. It's a myth we've all heard endless times. I've found that any modern assertion based on the assumption that WW2 strategists were morons has a very high likelihood of being proven false once you get serious about analyzing it...
The thing is this myth has its origins in war times strategists. There were British officers pushing for unarmed fast bombers to replace the gun heavy bombers using the statistics of the mossie as one of the corner stones of the argument.
@@matthiuskoenig3378 It's the British take on the shnellbomber concept, and has the same flaws.
The schnellbomber in the 30s/40s is to aerial strategy what the 1800s Jeune École was to naval strategy-- attractive-sounding but ultimately flawed in practice.
(Although, ironically, a spin on both concepts are becoming viable in the drone age.)
Cool video and great photos.
To be fair Greg, more Mossies ‘could’ have been built to carry cookies at the cost of only two crew and a small two engined bomber. Most bombing was carpet bombing, with appalling accuracy, although ‘muricans at least tried daylight targeted attacks. But on balance I kind of agree with you. No wonder Churchill was diffident about Bomber Command’s albeit heroic record at the end of the war especially after Hamburg, Nuremburg and especially Dresden. Personally carpet bombing civilians or ‘de-housing’ as it was euphemistically called was v controversial. I think it was Curtiss LeMay who said ‘if we’d lost the war, we’d be the ones on trial as war criminals.’
Hi, Doc. Yes, it was LeMay who said that, although he was referring specifically to the "Fire bombing" of Japanese cities by B-29s
yes I thought that curious. If what was required was an enlarged bulged bomb bay doors and fairings and suspension fit, thats almost a retrofit. The point was they could take 4000 lbs of ordinance to the target, and probably have an easier time getting in and out. By wars end Mossies had the lowest loss rate in Bomber Command service of the war, but were called on for many very difficult missions.
If the US had lost the war against Japan, everyone would have been beheaded regardless of virtue.
It was total war.
Napalm and nukes were standard fare. No modern revisionist can comprehend the uncertainty and panic from fighting a manic suicidal foe.
I'm not talking about just kamikazes. But soldiers, their wives, and even their kids would suicide by grenade to take out a US marine. An excellent story on a grand scale is Dan Carlins Hardcore History, Supernova.
Although I suspect it might come to the conclusion this video has, I think a more interesting dissertation could be entitled "How might the Mosquito have been used as an alternative weapon for targetting the Luftwaffe'. You could then have discussed low level daylight pinpoint raids, with (as was done) P51s providing cover to a plane that was no sitting duck for fighters especially once it had dropped its bombload. The relevance of being able to fly a mission in half the time of a four engine heavy could then have been discussed, also the better intel gathering that might be done at low level, the reduced collateral damage to civilian populations that can result in greater resolve in the enemy etc etc. It'd be an interesting dissertation whatever the conclusion.
@@Triple_J.1 Nobody asked you to bend over backwards to defend war crimes.
Nice work, well reasoned and logical-
I have a great affection for the Mosquito and believe that it was deployed towards it's strengths rather than it it's weaknesses, as should be the case for any type in wartime.
You did a great job in dispelling the myth, and I agree with your synopsis.
Greg a question.
Did the bomber mafia and the guys flying the missions in heavies understand that their mission was to destroy the German Air Force?
It seems like it’s not until Dolittle takes over and cuts the fighters loose to focus on shooting down German fighters that the goal became more focused on that than on winning the war through a strategic bombing campaign. My timeline may be off but my memory is that early on it was much less about taking out the German Air Force than it was about destroying strategic targets some of which (like the ball bearing raids) obviously were aimed at aircraft production.
Because by destroying industries related to aircraft production dual purposes could be served. Forcing the Luftwaffe to defend those facilities, then if they fail also destroying the facilities. The fighters were only loosened up after the Luftwaffe's numbers went down post early 1944, and also when it became clear the bombing itself wasn't going to win the war.
"Did the bomber mafia and the guys flying the missions in heavies understand that their mission was to destroy the German Air Force? " They were directly ordered to do that (as was the RAF) at the early 1943 Casablanca conference but it took until January 1944 before either the RAF or USAF's bomber guys took that order seriously - and then only after a furious row with their respective army commanders (who were understandably worried about D-Day). Just as Harris stayed with "morale bombing" far too long so did Spatz stay too long with "unescorted daylight precision bombing".
Excellent analysis- thanks Greg.
Technically a P-47 could carry a heavy bomber-ish warload if you really packed it up, but both it and the Mosquito would probably be slow and lower altitude and would be very vulnerable if they had to actually maintain discipline to drop the bombs over target. The range would also be very poor.
Maybe for certain specialized missions that are shorter ranged a heavily bombed up mosquito or Thunderbolt or Typhoon or whatever is a great choice, but to maintain the steady grind of a strategic campaign of the era, the bigger planes were the right choice in the mid 1940s.
I'm a fan of the P-38 and P-47 but the Mossie could carry internally which was a huge advantage for flying into the target faster and with less fuel burn. The P-38 also had a 4000lb loadout, if my memory is right, but was of course entirely external and caused significant drag. I generally say that however good the Mosquitto was, the P-38 was at least as good, and better at high altitude, and a year or more earlier, and didn't require Merlins that were in such short supply. That said, my argument does require some "if-only" dreaming, eg, that if there had been a need for a fast 2-engine bomber, a P-38 could be developed with no guns, the canopy forward, and bombs internally and well-balanced loaded or empty.
@@sergeipohkerova7211 with a heavy bomb load, the P-47 was slower than the Mosquito. It also lacked a bombsight and electronic aids so would be inaccurate as a level bomber.
@@lqr824 the "droop snoot" is what you are suggesting. With external bombs, it would have been relatively slow and likely more vulnerable than the Mosquito at 4000lb. With two 1000lb bombs for 2000lb total load it would be closer, though. The USAAF was keen to have Mosquitos and the fact that very few glass nose P-38s were built suggests it wasn't a good option.
@@wbertie2604 sure but the p47 was capable of glide bombing which is more accruate and given is superior handling at high speeds it could more easily perform even dive bombing manuevers than the mosquito. It was also faster and far more durable and well armed/suited for fighting so it was a more well rounded aircraft. Its use in cas proves its viability in the fighter bomber role as opposed to a bomber fighter role.
@@casematecardinal the Mosquito was capable of very accurate level bombing. Glide bombing, without a sight, needs to be at a significant angle and to get comparable accuracy needs to take you quite low, meaning significant risk from flak.
Very well done clarification, thanks.
I like how this makes it clear that the the accuracy of the Mossie during the pathfinder mission cannot be equated to it being used like a B17: in large numbers that may be fast but can be shot down and probably easier than the B17 as it does not have defensive armament.
Whilst losses would have been higher for the Mosquito than they were had they replaced the B-17, the B-17 was quite vulnerable without fighter escort even with heavy armament. With high speed, the Mosquito was very hard to catch and a shoot down attempt at high altitude was largely restricted to a single pass. So even used en masse, Mosquito losses would likely have been lower than the B-17 given the fighters the Luftwaffe actually deployed. But with such a hypothetical, it would be reasonable to assume that Germany would have prioritised aircraft with better high altitude performance. It would be hard to predict the result in such a very hypothetical situation.
Consideration was given to mounting some defensive armament on Mosquitos - Vickers K in the engine nacelles firing reward as scare guns. A turret fighter with 4 20mm cannon was mocked up but the turret was optimistic and it wouldn't necessarily have had any capacity for bombs in such a configuration. The experience of the Ju-88 suggests adding defensive armament would have been s mistake
It's easy to be accurate when the target is 10 miles wide.
@@GeneralJackRipper RAF targets were not necessarily 10 miles wide. That's a myth. The RAF regularly attacked non-area targets such as factory complexes (e.g. BASF at Ludwigshafen, Peenemunde, synthetic oil plants). Target marking was on point targets (for Dresden it was a sports stadium) which frequently achieved accuracy of around 200 yards.
In 1942, prior to the Pathfinder Force and other improvements, accuracy could be poor (although the BASF attack was in 1942) but it was more the adopted strategy of area bombing (and the origins of that in the UK can be traced back to Baldwin in 1932) meant that the criterion for success was quite relaxed and that aligned with the outcome of the Butt report. However, when asked to bomb much smaller targets, the RAF demonstrated an ability to do so.
This was a very informative segue into doctrine from engineering, and shows how one complements the other, especially in war.
As I commented on your previous video, the Mossie VS B-17 argument always ignores the timeline difference in production and availability between the airframes.
The Mosquito prototype had its first flight on 25 November 1940. The Boeing 299 first flew in 1935 and the Y1B-17 prototypes 02 December 1936.
The Mosquito B Mk IV first production aircraft flew in March of 1942, the B Mk XVI first flew in January 1944. By March 1942, at the time the Mk IV bomber variant of the Mosquito had its first flight, ~470 B-17C/D/E models had been delivered, with the B-17E delivering 512 aircraft between September 1941 and 28 May 1942. In March 1943, the Mosquito B Mk IX first flew. By mid-1943 (within a couple months of this first flight), 3,405 B-17Fs had been delivered. By the time the Mosquito B Mk XVI first flew in January 1944, over 5,871 B-17 C/D/E/F/G models had been delivered. Basically, the B-17 was being delivered in quantity while the Mosquito was in prototype form.
Great topic and analysis, thanks!
One of my uncles, who was a furniture maker, ended the war inspecting Mossies coming off the Canadian assembly line. All the while reporting weekly as a suspected ‘enemy alien’ since he was born in Italy.
Good bit of history there. Things are always deeper than one thinks. Full points to your uncle for his patience and care.
I've been wondering this myself recently, thanks for this video :D
IIRC, Robert Forczyk promoted the nonsensical Mosquito could replace the Lancaster and proposed that in his duel book BF 110 Versus Lancaster.
That book is brain rot. I've been meaning to do a video tearing it apart, but it is telling this was Forczyk's first book on Bomber Command because he got pretty much everything wrong.
@@kellyshistory306 Glad to see I'm not the only one who got that impression. It is really, really bad.
@@kellyshistory306 Awesome channel by the way, subscribed
Greg, excellent video. The Mossy is one of my all time favorite airplanes. Your conclusions are all correct, but I wasn't able to get much data on fuel/payload info on the Mossy, but as you said the effective bombing payload of a Mossy is 2,000#; 4/500# and as you said just not the same destructive speard of say 16-20 250# and the B-17 could carry much more with sufficient fuel to make the 1100 miles trip. Combat radius is important. The internal fuel capcity in the wings was limited to perhaps 600-700 gal in the wings, although with a fuselage and drop tanks it could almost double. One fact of note that with all the allied bombing, the highest annual production of Bf 109s occurred in 1944 if I remember correctly. Also the Germans tried to make their own version of a wood Mossy, but couldn't get the glue right. The prototypes had many inflight breakups. With its wood platform, the Mossy had a low radar signature, kind of stealty. The only plane better than the B-17 (the B-24 was compaarable) was , of course the B-29 as long as they ccould keep the Wright 3350s cylinders in one piece. The Germans as amazing a fight they put up, were doomed by Yamamoto's statement after Peral Harbor.
Yeah the mosquito was fast, but how far could it fly at 350 mph.
Use the best tool available for the job in hand.
The Mosquito could no have destroyed the Luftwaffe - but nor could a B17 have pulled off Operation Jericho.
Great video, as always! The Mosquito was definitely one of the best planes of the war, and one of the things that made it great was the adaptability to a variety of roles: Bomber, strike aircraft, night fighter, photo reconnaissance, and even high-speed transport/passenger plane. The British Overseas Airways Corporation (B.O.A.C.) operated unarmed and civilian marked(still with RAF camouflage) Mosquitos on routes where military aircraft couldn't operate, such as in and out of neutral Sweden. SOE agents that had escaped to Sweden from Nazi-occupied Norway could get a swift but uncomfortable flight back to the UK in a less-than-optimally converted bomb bay of a Mosquito.
The Mosquito B.IX RAF data sheet actually lists the maximum for bulged bay versions as 4000lb plus a 500lb under each wing for 5000lb total. I don't think it was done and with a Cookie and wing tanks stability was compromised. The B.XVI lists the maximum as 4000lb which suggests some realism set in. But the B.XX also lists 5000lbs.
Well done, Greg, as usual. I especially appreciate the last couple of minutes. There's nothing benign about a war, whether in the air or on the ground, and good people died horribly throughout WW 2. I'm not convinced that slowing down the RATE of death would necessarily be a good thing if it just means I die in 1946 instead of in 1944. Or if I die flying plane "X," which is superior to plane "Y," but is, alas, not invincible. Every machine, and perhaps aircraft more than most, has its limitations, and attention has to be paid to those limitations lest even more people die. The bombing offensive by the Allies in Europe had multiple flaws, but the Mosquito, a fine airplane according to everything I've read about the air war, wasn't capable of fixing those flaws.
This idea has always been strange to me. You can see by the physical size differences that they obviously don't carry the same bomb loads.
Physical size is misleading.
B-17 104' span, 74' long
Mossie 54' span, 44' long
F-4 Phantom 38' span, 63' long
The F-4 could carry 18,000 pounds of bombs.
@@grizwoldphantasia5005 The phantom was a generation later (so more efficient aero, stronger construction and a jet). Physical comparisons only work when you're dealing with things that are roughly technologically equal, such as the 17 and the mosquito.
Even then they can be misleading, but when the comparison is simple volume vs volume like for bomb loads it is fairly reliable.
My mother and aunts worked at the De Havilland plant in Downsview, near Toronto, that built mosquito bombers and no they were never asked to get a bucket of prop wash
Between 1936 and 1945 there were 12, 731 B-17 bombers built. There were ~18,500 B-24s built in WWII as well. We don't even have to log the numbers of US built medium bombers (B-25, A-20, B-26, A-26 to name a few types) but they were each built in larger numbers than the Mosquito.
Mosquito production at 7,800 units total would not have been numerous enough to take up the role of the US heavy bombers. Especially as only ~500 or so were configured as pure bombers.
Plus, I'm curious about what the air speed and range of a Mosquito loaded with 4000 lbs of bombs at 25000 feet would be, if indeed it could operate at that altitude.
@@boydgrandy5769 Also, they used completely different manufacturing techniques. Every furniture and piano manufacturer in England were already building Mosquitoes. I don't think they could have built more.
Production Numbers: A20 7385. B25 9816. B26 5157. A26 2449. USAAF Statistical Digest.
@@martinricardo4503 Yeah but none of those were made of wood. You needed different kinds of manufacturers with a totally different skill set to make the Mosquito than the planes you listed.
Maybe we could have recruited furniture and piano makers in the US to join the war effort by building Mosquitoes, but I have no idea how to gauge if that would be enough to match the sheer quantity of metal airplanes they'd supposedly be replacing.
@@boydgrandy5769 half Mosquito production, roughly, were pure bombers. It's 500 that had bulged bays.
@@boydgrandy5769 the Mosquito could operate above 25,000ft with the cookie. If I pull out my books I can tell you exactly what speed was possible, but from memory it was only about 15mph reduction compared to a 2000lb load.
Not so good in the tropics and Pacific as the heat combined with the humidity caused the wood construction to delaminate. Then, that combination is hard on everything
I never heard of that theory in my life. This must be some new age war thunder thing.
Really? It seems like I hear it every day here in the comment section.
@@GregsAirplanesandAutomobiles That's insane. I would personally almost put that into the same category as "What if the Me262 came into service earlier and saved the germans". Well, maybe not that bad, but they are two vastly different categories of aircraft.
Btw, thank you for all your great in depth videos. If I may ask, do you have any more WW1 content in the works? Not many other creators are covering WW1 aviation.
Actually this myth is everywhere there's a B17 post. I am a Brit and I still get annoyed.
@@ericadams3428 I really had no idea that was such a prevalent myth. I'm seeing all of this for the first time.
This is a concept that relies on at least some understanding of the operational use of the B-17, so it’s much more likely to have come from a misunderstanding of stats in a book or documentary. If someone was getting their information solely from War Thunder (I’m not sure anyone actually does that, but hypothetically speaking) they’d be well aware that the B-17 could carry a higher payload.
I love this sort of argument. As with current politics it's all about taking facts out of context, over-simplification, and drawing conclusions that look attractive but are actually completely unrelated to reality. Fortunately, WWII strategists knew rather better than subsequent barroom/keyboard warriers. Good summary!
The first time I heard the Mosquito vs B17 argument, I nearly broke my jaw as it hit the floor. It was from a friend who normally doesn't say such things.
One 4klb cookie is a lot more compact than four 1k's, much more than eight 500's, and sixteen 250's likely take up much more space as two 4k's. Then you have to have the racks to carry the load. To carry four 1k's you'd need two of them to be external. That would do a real number on the Mossie's speed and range. Finally, call it a 1 to 1 swap, Mossie for B17. That's a lot of Merlin's, curious where that production is coming from. Radial production lines and machine tools aren't interchangeable. Many machines that did excellent service producing radial crankcases, cylinders, and cranks, would be useless finishing a massive V12 block and crank. That means additional production of large machinery. The logistics of such a change is a nightmare.
I think the reason Merlins were used in such large numbers is that Packard and British Ford were allowed to redesign the engine for parts interchangeability and production speed. Those were, like Rolls, automakers and the Merlin was still more like a car engine than a radial. I don't know if there were as many contractors out there who could have done the same with radials.
YEAH
but
a mossie only needs 10% of the warload for the same effect
measuring tonnage dropped is not the measure
its bombs ON TARGET that counts
you'd need LESS mossies than B-17's
and a stream of mossies all traveling, aiming and dropping independently
would be far more effective than a box formation of B-17 dropping when the lead bomber does
and post-war German fire-fighters agreed the fires from a bomber stream get established, do more damage, and were harder to fight
Attrition. First time I've heard this perspective on the US Daytime "Precision Bombing". The US were masters of Total Air Superiority. This was key in the D Day Invasion. The Luftwaffe was almost Non-existent. I remember that the Luftwaffe was so instrumental in Germany's Blitzkrieg Tactic. People tend to focus on the Mechanized Armor Assault. The Mosquito was such a brilliant design and very affective Craft. Just love the B-17. Great Video. Thank you.
You need to learn more. Up until January 1944 US doctrine was indeed unescorted daytime precision bombing - and the B17 was a definite failure at that (modern fighters were too good at shooting them down if they had no fighter cover, and the Nordern bombsight under combat conditions was nowhere near as precise as believed). But with the arrival of good escort fighters the strategy became "tethered goat" - the B17s acted as the tethered goat to bring the Luftwaffe up to battle where the P51s could shoot them down, often by just following them back to their airfield. This was spectacularly successful.
I'm convinced! The B-17 was definitely a better decoy than the mosquito.
lol, that's one way to look at it.
@@GregsAirplanesandAutomobilesI wonder what the B-17 crews thought of that purpose. Being sent over Germany so that P-51s got targets.
At least beaters raising grouse don't normally get shot at.
More like irresistible bait for the trap than a decoy but they did manage to do a lot of damage to the rail system in the mean time.
A bombers primary job is NOT to be a 'decoy'.
@@20chocsaday ...something something Dick Cheney something something...
Dear Greg, Great help to me. I always wondered why small fast bombers were not used - now I know! Gregg
Small fast bombers were used all the time. Just not on massive daylight strategic bombing raids over the German heartland.
So if I have this right, the one variant of the mossie could carry about the same bomb "weight" of the ave of the B-17 missions? Almost as far, at a same or better speed?
The wood used was imported not local to the British Isles, so that's not a huge benefit over light alloys since they both have be shipped in at U-boat risk.
Daylight/un-escorted sustained raiding the losses might have been even worse, imo.
Both fine machines but fundamentally built for different roles. Neither could replace the other. They were complementary yes, and they both carried out their roles brilliantly.