AH Challenge: have the Douglas B-42 Mixmaster in service by early 1944

You know, the Mossie wasnt what people tend to think of when they see it was made out of wood....:)

In fact the construction (and that of the later Vampire) was a composite (you know, composites like they use, oh , now :) :) It was just a composite using natural materials rather than man-made ones. It was in fact very sophisticated, and had some structural properties better, weight-for-weight, that aluminium...

And while it did have a few issues in the tropics (to be fair, it wasnt designed for use there), at least it doesnt come apart in rain like some modern materials do...:p

The big problem, of course, is its hard to mass produce
 
OTOH, it doesn't use the same materials or industry as normal aircraft, that's always a seller when those industrials are already at or near capacity.
 
OTOH, it doesn't use the same materials or industry as normal aircraft, that's always a seller when those industrials are already at or near capacity.

except that it may require specialized material production that would not have the flexibility to be transfered to other priority projects (I know that is good and bad)
 
There was a country that built composite structures. The Soviet Union. The Yak 4 predated the Mossie, and is somewhat configurationally similar. Most Soviet fighters were built of composites, but they usually just called it wood. Later Russian fighters used more aluminum, which imparted a greater internal fuel volume, for greater range.

yak4_3v.jpg
 
except that it may require specialized material production that would not have the flexibility to be transfered to other priority projects (I know that is good and bad)
Well those materials would probably exist anyway (simply for the fact that their production wouldn't have been stopped due to the difficulty of retooling), so you might as well use them.
 
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