{"id":36649,"date":"2016-12-15T03:00:01","date_gmt":"2016-12-15T08:00:01","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/?p=36649"},"modified":"2016-12-14T13:23:20","modified_gmt":"2016-12-14T18:23:20","slug":"rebuilding-a-mosquito","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/2016\/12\/15\/rebuilding-a-mosquito\/","title":{"rendered":"“Rebuilding” a Mosquito"},"content":{"rendered":"

Robert Beckhusen<\/a> on the ongoing attempt to bring a long-ago crashed de Havilland Mosquito back to life:<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>

De Havilland DH-98 Mosquito at the Ardmore Airport de Havilland Mosquito Launch Airshow, 2012 (via Wikipedia<\/em>)<\/p><\/div>\n

The de Havilland Mosquito was arguably the best British plane of World War II, the war\u2019s most effective fighter-bomber and one of the most versatile<\/em> military planes ever built. That\u2019s why it\u2019s strange so few of the wooden, twin-engine machines appear at air shows.<\/p>\n

There are currently only three<\/em> airworthy Mosquitos in the world.<\/p>\n

A group of British engineers are trying to change that by bringing a Mosquito back from the dead. Since 2012, the U.K.-based People\u2019s Mosquito<\/a> project has raised funds and begun working to restore an ex-Royal Air Force Mosquito which crashed in 1949, was buried and then recovered 61 years later.<\/p>\n

\u201cA much beloved friend of ours, and our patron, Capt. Eric \u2018Winkle\u2019 Brown, once said that three British aircraft were preeminent in World War II,\u201d Ross Sharp, the People\u2019s Mosquito\u2019s director of engineering told War Is Boring<\/em>. \u201cOne was the Spitfire, the other was the Lancaster and the third was the Mosquito, and if you had to rank them, you\u2019d put the Mosquito first.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cThat was due, I think, because it performed so many roles and performed them superbly.\u201d<\/p>\n

[…]<\/p>\n

On Feb. 14, 1949, the NF.36 fighter RL249 suffered failures in both engines after takeoff and crashed near RAF Coltishall in Norfolk. Sgt. W.B. Kirby, the plane\u2019s navigator, later died from his injuries. RL249’s remains were recovered in 2010, but the pieces are almost entirely unusable.<\/p>\n

Instead, the People\u2019s Mosquito team is building\u200a\u2014\u200alargely from scratch\u200a\u2014\u200aa Mosquito FB.VI variant, a highly-configurable fighter-bomber. The plane will thus be a \u201cdata plate restoration,\u201d meaning the airframe, wings and engines will be fresh, but it will also contain some non-structural bits from the original RL249.<\/p>\n

The original Mosquitos did not contain data plates. But that\u2019s not necessary for the team to get the finished aircraft certified as a restoration.<\/p>\n

\u201cProviding you possess everything that is left of that aircraft, legally you are in possession of what our civil aviation authorities call \u2018the mortal remains\u2019\u200a\u2014\u200athat\u2019s the technical term\u200a\u2014\u200aand you can then restore it,\u201d Sharp said.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s going to be mostly new parts, of course, which in a predominantly wooden aircraft like the Mosquito is vital.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Robert Beckhusen on the ongoing attempt to bring a long-ago crashed de Havilland Mosquito back to life: The de Havilland Mosquito was arguably the best British plane of World War II, the war\u2019s most effective fighter-bomber and one of the most versatile military planes ever built. That\u2019s why it\u2019s strange so few of the wooden, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":35193,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[4,7,5,15,230],"tags":[123,128],"class_list":["post-36649","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-britain","category-history","category-military","category-technology","category-ww2","tag-aircraft","tag-salvage"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/06\/favicon.png","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2hpV6-9x7","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/36649","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=36649"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/36649\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":36652,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/36649\/revisions\/36652"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/35193"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=36649"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=36649"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=36649"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}