de Havilland Mosquitoes on Aircraft Carriers?

Commissar

Banned
I was thinking, was it possible to put de Havilland Mosquitoes on Aircraft Carriers?

I had in mind several scenarios and want to first know if it was possible to do first.
 
Well, if you can put B-25s on aircraft carriers, you can probably put Mosquitoes...the question is why would you bother. The Americans are really the only ones that can realistically do it due to the design of the British carriers, and I don't know why they would have a British aircraft on their decks.
 
It's definately possible, De Havilland Hornets flew regularly off British carriers in the late '40s-early 50s. Kinda supprised there wasen't a SeaMosquito.
 
Possible yes,

but there is next to no operational requirement to do so. Which would require significant modifications to the design. Unless its a 'one shot' like the Tokyo raid.
 

Cook

Banned
Apart from folding wings outboard of the engines and an arrester hook and stronger undercarriage what would it need?

Take off weight would be reduced but you’d still get probably one of the best piston engined strike aircraft, I’m sure you could find a lot of uses for it.
 

Bearcat

Banned
I was thinking, was it possible to put de Havilland Mosquitoes on Aircraft Carriers?

I had in mind several scenarios and want to first know if it was possible to do first.

Umm... yeah. There were Sea Mosquitos.

From Ze Genocide:

Torpedo reconnaissance fighter aircraft

To meet specification N.15/44 for Royal Navy use, de Havilland produced a carrier-borne variant. This resulted in 50 Sea Mosquito TR Mk 33s which featured folding wings, a thimble nose radome and fuselage hardpoints for mounting aerial torpedoes. These were followed by 14 Sea Mosquito TR Mk 37s, which differed in having ASV Mk. XIII radar instead of the TR.33's AN/APS-6.
 
Eric "Winkle" Brown flew more different aircraft and had more deck landings than any other human being. There is a list available and on it is the Sea Mossie. It never flew in service from carriers but trials were successful.
 

Bearcat

Banned
It actually did see operational service, just briefly:

http://www.historyofwar.org/articles/weapons_mosquito_33.html

The Sea Mosquito did not enter service until August 1946, when No. 811 Squadron received the first production aircraft. It had a short operational life as a front line aircraft. No. 811 Squadron was disbanded in 1947, by which time the de Havilland Sea Hornet had been chosen to serve with the navy. Fifty TR 33s were built, seeing service with Naval support units

Picture:

http://1000aircraftphotos.com/Contributions/PippinBill/5593.htm

Better picture:

http://www.hi-litesbyhigh.com/Other...at-Britain/Fighters/GreatBritainFighters.html

So maybe we should shift the POD here to, the Sea Mosquito is ready in '43-'44 and sees WW2 service?
 
Somewhere in late 1945 and early 1946, the FAA was testing the Sea Hornet, which essentially was a Navalized Havillant Mosquito. The problem on the Warbuild Breed of Fleet Carriers was however their small and narrow elevators, which was problematic for the twin engined aircraft.

Another point of concern was the fact that the Mosquito was build out of wood for some larger parts, which was also partially problematic in a satlwater enviroment on the aircraft carriers. Metal framed aircraft were more rugged normally, dispite the dangers of corrosion.
 
Somewhere in late 1945 and early 1946, the FAA was testing the Sea Hornet, which essentially was a Navalized Havillant Mosquito.
... ...
Another point of concern was the fact that the Mosquito was build out of wood for some larger parts, which was also partially problematic in a satlwater enviroment on the aircraft carriers. Metal framed aircraft were more rugged normally, dispite the dangers of corrosion.
According to the wikipedia article on the De Havilland Hornet and Sea Hornet, these planes had metal lower wings and tail units. The day-figher Sea Hornet F20 was a single seat aircraft, and the night fighter version NF21 had a radar operator in a separate cockpit in the rear fuselage, in contrast to the Mosquito, where pilot and radar operator sat side-by-side.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/De_Havilland_Sea_Hornet

De Havilland DH-103 Sea Hornet F20.jpg
 

Bearcat

Banned
Nice art.

Looks like they dropped the torpedo ordnance in the Sea Hornet. Not surprising, I suppose, as the torpedo bomber role was dying.

Would the Sea Mosquito with torpedo have been a good replacement for all the FAA's inadequate torpedo bombers, if it had been available sooner? Also as a dedicated CV night fighter?
 
The Mosquito was experimentally fitted with the "Highball" bomb, similar to, but smaller than the dambuster bomb, invented by Barnes Wallis. It's function was to skip across the water, strike a hull and drop underneath to Keel-blasting depth and explode. It was determined to be effective but someone determined not to use it. Reason unknown.
Considering the launch limitations on aerial torpedoes of the era, I'm not sure if the Mossie would have been ideally suited to purpose of actually dropping the fish.
14 of the TR.33's ended up in the hands of the Israelis, denavalized, and served to the late 50's.
There was a nightfighter version of the Mossie, the NF.38, which was deemed too crappy to fly due to the extra weight of the British over the American radar. They were sold to Yugoslavia. I wonder if the TR.37 variant suffered from nose-heaviness compared to the TR.33.
The original Mossie undercarriage was extremely primitive and simple to aid production.(priorities in strategic materials). The navalized Mossie used Lockheed oleo struts.
Just as a point of interest, unrelated, it was found that maritime rocket-firing Mossies fired their rockets low. It was determined that in a high-speed dive, the wings flexed torsionally, pointing statically aimed rockets below the aim point. This was adjusted.
Regarding the ability to fill the FAA's requirement for a torpedo aircraft earlier in the war, they took up a lot of deck space, limiting numbers available. But mostly, there was never enough Mossies to go around and do everybody's job, since it was the best aircraft for so many jobs.
 
Can't help wondering how long the Sea Hornet might have lasted in service if instead of Merlins they'd been fitted with early Turboprops. They have to have been better than the Westland Wyvern or the Firebrands.
 
De Havilland resisted all suggestions that Griffons power the Mossie. The Hornet/Sea Hornet was designed with the ultimate handed Merlins and performance was optimized with them. Turboprop engines of the day had a slower learning curve than turbojets and would have added nothing but problems to the design which was already aerodynamically optimum.

The Hawker Sea Fury replaced the Sea Hornet on deck, and was pretty nice.

Those Hornets used in the Malayan campaign served reliably and well but in the end, their wooden structure suffered from the climate. There are no Sea Hornets/Hornets remaining complete today.
 
Top