Expected Mossie performance vs current plane set

[Mogster]

The only role the Mosquito couldn’t perform was day fighter.
 

The RAF spent a lot of time and effort trying to develop tactics that would work when the Mosquito encountered single engined fighters but nothing really did, it was a waste of time. The best tactic was to run away which the. Osquito was good at. If people think the Mosquito will be handy in the day fighter role they are going to be disappointed, it’s a fast bomber, intruder and bomber destroyer.

[Robi-wan]

3 hours ago, Bozon said:

Sure, I’ll die a lot, but if I go down flaming, I want to go down in the most gorgeous plane in history.

 

On this we are in total agreement. 

[bart]

3 hours ago, Bozon said:

Yes of course in MP most of us do not follow historical tactics - often time not even logical tactics… I for one will be throwing it into dogfights, because this is what I do, not because it makes sense. Sure, I’ll die a lot, but if I go down flaming, I want to go down in the most gorgeous plane in history.

 

I recon you've spent way too much time reading "Terror In The Starboard Seat"!!

 

If you ever want a nav on a MP server give me a shout, I have two good chutes under the bed somewhere just in case, and could do with a bit of entertainment! lol.

Edited August 15, 2021 by bart

[Gunfreak]

2 hours ago, Mogster said:

The only role the Mosquito couldn’t perform was day fighter.
 

The RAF spent a lot of time and effort trying to develop tactics that would work when the Mosquito encountered single engined fighters but nothing really did, it was a waste of time. The best tactic was to run away which the. Osquito was good at. If people think the Mosquito will be handy in the day fighter role they are going to be disappointed, it’s a fast bomber, intruder and bomber destroyer.

 

Bomber destroyer will be fun.

Casually flying up behind a Ju88.

Taste 4x20mm you fat bastard. 

[Mogster]

4 minutes ago, Gunfreak said:

 

Bomber destroyer will be fun.

Casually flying up behind a Ju88.

Taste 4x20mm you fat bastard. 

We could have even more fun with the Molins 

[Hummingbird]

18 hours ago, Robi-wan said:

 

Exactly. If folks are using the IL-2 1946 Mosquito as their exemplar, they will be unhappy. 

 

Yeah the FM's in IL2 are mostly quite unconvincing tbh.

Edited August 15, 2021 by Hummingbird

[Bozon]

11 hours ago, Hummingbird said:

 

Yeah the FM's in IL2 are mostly quite unconvincing tbh.

 

Aces High FMs are much better and there the Mosquito is a beast. OK maybe not a beast, it is the beauty, but it is doing OK even against later fighters.

Edited August 16, 2021 by Bozon

[Hummingbird]

4 hours ago, Bozon said:

Aces High FMs are much better and there the Mosquito is a beast. OK maybe not a beast, it is the beauty, but it is doing OK even against later fighters.

 

 

Well I mean realistically it shouldn't be a match for the single engined fighters, neither was it ever meant to be. But as with anything you should never underestimate your foe, a great pilot can turn the tides.

 

The Mosquito is a great strike aircraft, one the Germans had real trouble catching before it was out of their airspace again. The biggest threat to the Mosquito, the Me262, came too late to effectively counter it.

Edited August 16, 2021 by Hummingbird

[grafspee]

Big role may play navigator, who could track enemy constantly giving assist to the pilot when engaged. Maybe performance wise it cant match late power single engine fighters, but 2 pairs of eyes always better

Edited August 16, 2021 by grafspee

[Krupi]

49 minutes ago, grafspee said:

Big role may play navigator, who could track enemy constantly giving assist to the pilot when engaged. Maybe performance wise it cant match late power single engine fighters, but 2 pairs of eyes always better

 

 

 

I really hope we get an AI for this, would be great to have a functioning Navigator. 

[Snowy55]

I’ll be taking out prison walls and Gestapo headquarters whereever they can be found. 

[Jenkem Junkie]

Looks like that 350 mph speed mentioned before was based on a test done with a Mossie that was butchered by it's ground crew and had a long list of defects. They fixed the Mossie and redid the test and reached the high 360s with fuel tanks on at 5000 ft. An earlier test reached the low 370s with fuel tanks off. 

 

If you combine that speed with a possible 3800 ft/m climb at low altitudes and 4 cannons it should do pretty well boom and zooming down low. Kinda gives me twin engine Tiffie vibes. But that's assuming it has at least passable handling and nothing crippling like the 3G limit mentioned.

 

Test: http://www.wwiiaircraftperformance.org/mosquito/hj679-dh-level.jpg

 

Full report:

 

hj679-dh.pdf

 

 

Edited August 19, 2021 by Jenkem Junkie

[Robi-wan]

1 hour ago, Jenkem Junkie said:

But that's assuming it has at least passable handling and nothing crippling like the 3G limit mentioned.

 

If you check out The Mosquito Pocket Manual and look at page 46 you will see that the original specifications for the Mosquito called for a minimum of +3.5 g up to 450 mph.

 

Pages 53-60 of that book provide the AFDU evaluation of W4062 in 1941. Page 56 mentions that at the time this airframe had a 6 g limit..."the Mosquito was unable to throw it off [referring to a Spitfire V] as its safety factor of 6 [that's the g limit] does not allow sufficiently violent manoeuvring with safety. Owing to the high  speed and light elevator control of the Mosquito, high acceleration forces are easily imposed but will normally be avoided as the upright position of the crew reduces the amount of 'G' that can be withstood without 'blacking out.' "

 

Two years later that same AFDU (probably not the same pilots) specifically mentions a 9 lb weight installed to limit g and that with manufacturer's approval it being removed for the single seat tests. Personally I have no reason to think the AFDU made up some BS about "a 9 lb. inertia weight on the elevator control, which improves stability but restricts the amount of acceleration force which the pilot can impose." Having a stable platform for performing your primary mission, ground attack, is a pretty good idea IMO. I admit my opinion is based upon having dropped bombs and strafed in a previous lifetime (1980s). When dropping bombs in a dive we typically used only 4 g (the ROT was 4 g in 2 seconds) during the pull off the target after releasing the weapon. So I find nothing earth shattering or crippling if a twin engine bomber in WWII had a ~3 g limit imposed on it. I could expound on dive angles and altitude lost in 3 g pullouts, but the point is once again a 3 g limit is NOT crippling for your purpose in life as a Mosquito pilot. 

 

If you peruse the 45 pages of Mosquito losses you will find frequent mention of airplanes breaking up in air while pulling out of dives. It is entirely plausible, and most likely that these airplanes suffered structural failure due to over g. The takeaway for those whose eyes have not glased/glazed over. It is entirely logical and plausible that the Mosquito had the elevator authority (ability) to pull 6+ g at high speed, but structurally it may have (IMO probably) had a lower g limit as demonstrated by lots of them breaking up in the air while pulling out of a dive. So it strikes me as completely logical that De Havilland added the 9 lb inertia weight to limit a pilot's ability to over g the airframe.

 

Personally I'm not going to complain if ED gives us a 6 g Mosquito. Then again I'm more of a Holy Grail Mosquito pilot...

 

 

 

 

 

[Jenkem Junkie]

I meant crippling from a purely air to air perspective. It would still be good for bombing. If it's similar to a Spitfire and you have to be very careful pulling out of a dive, then that would be playable from an air to air perspective. If we can't pull higher Gs at slower speeds though, then that's pretty crippling to its air to air potential.

[Bozon]

That inertia weight can be seen in this vid by Kermit Cam.

It is a simple mass at the end of a level that is connected to one of the control cables pulleys. When you pull G the weight increases and the lever applies a greater torque on the pulley in a direction that is the same as when the pilot is pushing the control column forwards. I am pretty sure that the size of the mass was customizable and that pilots adjusted it to their liking.

Starting at 11:47 :

 

 

The tour is nice, though Kermit's mosquito looks as if a hobo was living in it...

 

Mosquitoes did have a high rate of structural failures. This was the greatest problem of wood as a construction material - not that it was weak, it was not, on average, but:

1. The variance of structural strength was large.

2. The properties of the wood vary with treatment and environment conditions.

 

The result of #1 is that while the average mosquito was very strong, the wide distribution of strengths meant that some fraction of the population was prone to failure (while some were exceedingly resilient). Metals on the other hand are much more predictable in their properties and much easier to manufacture to a very tight specification. Take the same beam cut and carved from two different trees in different forests and treated by different sawmills, and the difference in their properties (mass density, stiffness, ability to flex without breaking, etc) can be quite different. I think I already mentions in some thread here that the mass density of Balsa may vary by as much as a factor of 6! Such things make it extremely difficult to manufacture planes with the exact same qualities to match a spec.

 

The result of #2 is that the climate and how the aircraft was treated added to the variance of #1 even more, increasing the fraction of the population that is likely to fail. Heck, even the glue will behave differently at different conditions. Again, the average mosquito had no problems, but a tail of the distribution was at a high risk and it was not easy to tell where your plane is on this distribution, and thus how many G's you may pull without snapping. The official limits would tend to include the weakest of the distribution, so most air frames could go well beyond the limit - but it is a gamble. The Israeli mosquitoes had a high rate of structural failures - these were air frames that were already a few years old and arrived from different places over the world, so some had their wood at a different condition than others. Then the Mediterranean sun dried and deformed the wood even more, and one could no longer put a reliable limit on the stresses they could take.

 

Edited August 19, 2021 by Bozon

[Robi-wan]

15 minutes ago, Bozon said:

I am pretty sure that the size of the mass was customizable and that pilots adjusted it to their liking.

 

Respectfully where did you read this? I've never read anything about pilots crawling into the fuselage to change or otherwise instructing the erks to remove/change this weight. 

[Jenkem Junkie]

I hope it's adjustable in the sim. I can imagine the doom feeling, and the rage at the ground crew, watching a bandit dive on you from behind while you're stuck at 3 Gs in a break turn.

[Bozon]

1 hour ago, Robi-wan said:

 

Respectfully where did you read this? I've never read anything about pilots crawling into the fuselage to change or otherwise instructing the erks to remove/change this weight. 

That is just an opinion because it is so easy to adjust, that I cant imagine a pilot not asking his crew chief to do it if he didn’t like it. This is not even a “modification” to the plane - more like one step above adjusting the friction on the throttle.

 

[Robi-wan]

27 minutes ago, Bozon said:

That is just an opinion because it is so easy to adjust, that I cant imagine a pilot not asking his crew chief to do it if he didn’t like it. This is not even a “modification” to the plane - more like one step above adjusting the friction on the throttle.

 

 

I'm not sure how to respond. I can't imagine a pilot having the intuition that today I want to go kick Jerry's ass in some 1-v-1 action, and his observer thinking that's a great idea. It was in fact an engineering modification from the earlier 6 g limit of W4062. Crawling into the fuselage and removing the weight assembly attached to control cables is IMO much more than simply adjusting throttle friction. But if you've made adjustments to control cables in your RL flying, I salute you. I have not.

 

[Jenkem Junkie]

The limit wouldn't only be adjusted for planned 1 on 1s. If I was asked to risk my life flying these planes I would want every option in my back pocket to pull off in a clutch moment. No one knows with 100% certainty what will happen during a sortie, and I'd like to be able to risk my chances on the balsa wood snapping if I find myself needing extra Gs, rather than have that option taken away from me. Militaries don't tend to care what the individual soldier wants though, so I could see them gimping peoples planes whether they like it or not though.

[Krupi]

It is not gimping the aircraft it is about safety and consistency.

 

Changing the rigging might, potentially be, great for you... not so great for the poor sod who comes after you and has to deal with an aircraft that controls completely differently and could disintegrate at a moments notice because you have ignored the ENGINEERS 

 

I am sure that sometimes the answer or approach to an issue was hastily made or too drastic but they have been done to protect the crews and the aircraft. 

[grafspee]

I am not sure, 3G limit would be dangerous for ground strafing missions, when some times pilot need to pull out from dive quite rapidly. Heaving 3g limit i wonder how many mossies would drill in to the ground.

[Bozon]

8 hours ago, Robi-wan said:

 

I'm not sure how to respond. I can't imagine a pilot having the intuition that today I want to go kick Jerry's ass in some 1-v-1 action, and his observer thinking that's a great idea. It was in fact an engineering modification from the earlier 6 g limit of W4062. Crawling into the fuselage and removing the weight assembly attached to control cables is IMO much more than simply adjusting throttle friction. But if you've made adjustments to control cables in your RL flying, I salute you. I have not.

 

Pilots/crews did a lot more significant unofficial modifications to their planes than this. Robert Johnson famously stated that his chief made modifications that allowed Johnson to over boost his P-47 to 70” MAP.

 

2 hours ago, Krupi said:

It is not gimping the aircraft it is about safety and consistency.

 

Changing the rigging might, potentially be, great for you... not so great for the poor sod who comes after you and has to deal with an aircraft that controls completely differently and could disintegrate at a moments notice because you have ignored the ENGINEERS 

 

I am sure that sometimes the answer or approach to an issue was hastily made or too drastic but they have been done to protect the crews and the aircraft. 

Planes back then were hand made and each had its own “character”. I remember a Mirage III pilot that said even these jets were still individuals and he had his preferred tail number, even though this was not “his” plane like in WWII where pilots usually flew the same plane and had the same ground crew (not always, it didn’t work like that in US Navy).

 

57 minutes ago, grafspee said:

I am not sure, 3G limit would be dangerous for ground strafing missions, when some times pilot need to pull out from dive quite rapidly. Heaving 3g limit i wonder how many mossies would drill in to the ground.

The “3G” shouldn’t be taken too literally. The elevator got progressively stiffer but did not peg at 3G. What the ADFU reporter meant was probably that above 3G the stick was uncomfortably stiff and maybe the pilot needed 2 hands to pull harder. Still, if the pilot felt like ADFU that this limits his ability to maneuver in combat I believe (let me stress again, just my opinion since this is may be a too minor a detail to be mentioned in books) he would have adjusted it.

[Krupi]

2 hours ago, Bozon said:

Pilots/crews did a lot more significant unofficial modifications to their planes than this. Robert Johnson famously stated that his chief made modifications that allowed Johnson to over boost his P-47 to 70” MAP.

 

Planes back then were hand made and each had its own “character”. I remember a Mirage III pilot that said even these jets were still individuals and he had his preferred tail number, even though this was not “his” plane like in WWII where pilots usually flew the same plane and had the same ground crew (not always, it didn’t work like that in US Navy).

 

The “3G” shouldn’t be taken too literally. The elevator got progressively stiffer but did not peg at 3G. What the ADFU reporter meant was probably that above 3G the stick was uncomfortably stiff and maybe the pilot needed 2 hands to pull harder. Still, if the pilot felt like ADFU that this limits his ability to maneuver in combat I believe (let me stress again, just my opinion since this is may be a too minor a detail to be mentioned in books) he would have adjusted it.

 

Exactly, even aircraft coming off the same line had unique quirks, even more reason to try and keep them as consistent as possible. 

 

I agree with your statement regarding 3G, that simply cannot be a hard line just the point that controls started to stiffen up. 

[grafspee]

I didn't mean that 3g as hard point, my though was that 3g being hard to pull, 4g-5g with 2 hands assisted, not suited for high speed strafing.

I wonder how ED implemented this.