De Havilland Mosquito - Flight & Presentation

[Music] my [Music] [Music] hello my name is kermit weeks i'm the president and founder of the week's air museum in southwest miami on the tamaami airport this airplane behind me is owned and operated by the week's air museum it's a de havilland b-35 mosquito this particular airplane was built in 1946 and was the last of the line of the mosquito marks we acquired the airplane in 1981 and we brought it over this past october in 1987. it is basically the culmination of all the mosquito ideas it's basically the granddaddy of all of them incorporating all the ideas that they had throughout their uh illustrious career the uh this particular mosquito was modified for the four thousand pound cookie bomb which was uh quite a quite a load for an airplane this size as you can see it has the bulge bombay the earlier mosquitoes had the clean belly and a much more streamlined look but of course this thing was designed to carry this bigger bomb load the mosquito was envisioned by jeffrey de havilland early in world war ii there was a shortage of strategic materials such as aluminum and mr de havilland had had quite a bit of experience in designing and constructing airplanes prior to the war made out of a plywood the fuselage of this airplane has a plywood veneer about a half inch balsa wood core and then another plywood coating on top of that making the fuselage skin about five eighths to three quarters of an inch thick this is uh basically an early honeycomb design which is quite a lot in use on in airlines of today the shock absorption of this particular airplane is basically uh taken up by large rubber donuts approximately one inch thick there's a big stack of them inside of each side of the axle there and the shock absorption is taken up in those rubber donuts and they used to operate at low tire pressures not only to absorb some of the landing load but they operated off of very rough grass fields in england unimproved strips until they had the opportunity to develop their airports further as you can see behind the tire there's a mud flap most airplanes you don't see have these but this particular airplane it was felt uh useful to keep the mud from slinging up into the nacelles the engines on this airplane are rolls royce merlin's dash number is a 114. it was the only airplane that that particular dash number of the 114 was used in the horsepower is about 1710 on takeoff and that's at plus 18 pounds of boost and 3000 rpm the british use a pounds of boost system where we normally use inches of manifold pressure uh 30 inches of manifold pressure would equate to zero pounds boost if you want to say plus six boost you basically multiply by two and add to thirty so plus six pounds would be two times six twelve plus thirty forty two inches of manifold pressure the uh one interesting thing on the uh airplane which was typically british during world war ii is the brake system is pneumatic it's operated by an expanding airbag which expands out to uh some brake pucks and while it seems to work quite well at slow speeds uh after landing they tend to fade quite rapidly it's uh of the pilot's concern to get in as short as possible if he doesn't think he's got a lot of runway the radiators are located on the leading edge of the wing inboard of the engines here between the fuselage the main engine coolant radiator is about the outboard total frontal area the front two thirds of the radiator on the back third of the radiator actually behind the coolant radiator is the oil cooler this unfortunately gets all of the hot air from the coolant system before going back to the oil cooler the airplane tends to heat up quite rapidly in hot temperatures we operate the airplane in miami and find that we've got about 10 to 12 minutes before we want to be in the air from crank up the uh induction system here is for the after cooler the after cooler on the engine is for the two stage two speed blower and cools the induction air at high high power settings at altitude the inlet for the air temperature is here it's a nice big screen to keep the birds and the rocks out the engine has a electro-pneumatic filter system on takeoff the the filter is always in when the gear is down after take off the pilot's discretion he can electro-pneumatically put the filter into cold or excuse me filtered temp and of course the basically the induction temperature can be controlled by the hot and cold air which is also electro-pneumatically controlled the gear and the flaps are hydraulic all the all the control systems are cable operated flying the airplane is uh is quite a joy the the control feel and the balance of the controls is is very light and very balanced much like much like a fighter airplane would i find that the uh the airplane responds very well in roll is is fairly sensitive in pitch and i think that at speeds of around 220 knots that the controls are lighter than a say a p-51d mustang both airplanes the control pressure has increased significantly as speed has increased the mosquito was originally conceived as an unarmed high altitude bomber that solely used its high speed as its defense this airplane had no armament whatsoever the pilot was equipped with some armor plate behind his seat um unfortunately the navigator they thought was expendable he didn't have anything so the uh there were other other versions of the airplane um early in the war they converted uh or they actually manufactured some of them with a fighter nose uh on the top of the nose they had four 303 machine guns and in the bottom of the aircraft there was four 20 millimeter cannons the breaches of which used up the first one half of the bomb bay so the fighter fighter the gun noses could carry two 250-pound bombs in the back of the bomb bay originally the mosquito was conceived to carry four 250-pound bombs and ultimately this particular mark which was the last one could carry one four thousand pound bomb [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] 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Channel: Kermit Weeks

Views: 65,093

Rating: 4.9732084 out of 5

Keywords: De Havilland Mosquito, Lancaster, Oshkosh Air Venture, Kermit Weeks, Fantasy of Flight

Id: I_xNbuL7cX0

Length: 12min 22sec (742 seconds)

Published: Wed Jun 02 2021