The Revival Of A De Havilland Mosquito | Gaining Altitude - The Mosquito | Spark

a glorious piece of aviation history years of meticulous restoration until finally VR 796 takes flight sceeto special because it's fast versatile it's rare it's beautiful it was an astonishing airplane for its time goes out of wood with high altitude performance that due to the wooden structure the mosquito there's just not very many of these things left that's what makes this one really special when the wooden de Havilland Mosquito first took flight in 1940 it was the fastest machine on the planet and became the most versatile weapon of world war ii they could just about off maneuver any and the German fighters and deliver quite a punch if you ever wanted to own a Ferrari the mosquito was like that to any other aircraft I've ever flown delight the fly but for over a decade no mosquitoes were flying as if they were left outside and got wet they've deteriorated and rotted away finally in 2009 Victoria Air maintenance began restoring an original mosquito to take to the skies once again it's a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity this one is built from an original fuselage this wood is the wood that was in the aircraft but when it was white an extraordinarily complex project for as long as I have had my heart invested in vintage airplanes in the mosquito in particular I've never seen one fly before there's gonna be some tears in people's eyes I'm sure enough flies for the first time in the design of aircraft some of just right this one was just right it still is everybody knows the mosquito they were built in Canada so it has a lot of local history it's just such a rare and famous airplane and so once-in-a-lifetime opportunity for anybody who gets to work on it this mosquito serial number vr 796 and Canadian registration ZF HML was built in England as a bomber just after World War two ended owner Robert Jen's has brought his plane to world-famous Victoria Air maintenance to be restored to flying condition I started as a aircraft engineer apprentice in 1965 them and kind of went the other way I was a engineer before I went flying they don't get any rarer and I'd be a great thrill to see this actually fly this is one of the projects that was definitely would be the crown of my career it is special there's no doubt about it the challenge of building an airplane that there are no other of that people can come and see him remember about it it's exciting we've done a lot of cool stuff here over the years and you know most of us are pretty used to working on you know rather cool toys all the time and whether you very seldom anyone ever gets to work on the mosquito guys like melon myself this is more of a hobby for us we get paid for it which is great we don't consider it a real job I guess we like to build things that put things back together today despite over 7,000 mosquitos being built there are only thirty mozzies left in the world of the foreign Canada this will be the only flowing example in Calgary a mosquito is currently being restored by volunteers to ground running condition behind us is a de Havilland Mosquito of pretty much the same model as the one in Victoria it's a beef 35 later converted to a PR 35 and we've now been hands-on in the restoration process on the airplane for just over a year now realistically it's going to be 8 to 10 years from this point forward I would have been 14 years old perhaps maybe even 13 when I saw the airplane for the first time one Saturday I took my bike up to Calgary and sticking out of one of the old wartime buildings was this long gorgeous wood cylinder that I immediately recognized as a mosquito and it absolutely stunned me I had no idea well here we are 40 years later and I'm again involved with the very same airplane this time rather than just an admiring kid but as the person in charge of the restoration I'm from England originally so any any airplane that was built over there from that era and my father was in the Air Force it does make you tingle because there's so much history attached with it and it's just part of the fabric of coming from that country as a young kid I've read many stories about the exploits of pilots like Tom birch during the Second World War and I was just fascinated by them and it is an aircraft that absolutely looks right it is right [Music] and all of these are mosquito bits that were taken off the aircraft time road when we first looked at the airplane that was in Vancouver in the hangar it was partially assemble nothing was really hooked up we had to get a crane to take it off the truck so as we took it off the trucks we put the wings on in the hangar we actually assembled it as we unloaded it off the truck didn't have anything in it so I had to figure out how it was supposed to be wired and all the systems and how they work the plane first began being restored in 1966 crews throughout the years have taken all of the parts off the plane and that always makes restorations much harder always things get lost irreplaceable things and that's where Mel and I come in where we have to find out what it looked like what it did and how to make another one this is our supply of BS standard hardware mosquito is a little challenging because there's a lot of parts manual for the airplane there's lots of information we have drawings but that's there was so few airplanes and you know it wasn't built as a maintainable airplane so a lot of the information you get from modeling magazines pictures of other airplanes looking at other airplanes and experience that the guys working on it so it's not too hard to figure all the big pieces out trying to figure out all the little stuff is a little more challenging but it's all doable the plan is to restore this b35 mosquito to a military design this whole company is is all about making airplanes fly we don't do static displays or anything else we make stuff fly it's just what airplanes are supposed to do [Music] brilliant concept was one of the great airplanes of the Second World War it's an iconic airplane it was so versatile it was so innovative it was powered by an engine that just gives you goosebumps when you listen to that and it did help win the Second World War the Merlin was the engine that certainly won the war the mosquito is the unsung hero he had 'land is one of the great aircraft manufacturing companies of the first 100 years of man of light the Havilland made the decision to look at about building an on Iran bomber that could outrun anything that might try to chase it it flew in the face of logic of the time I mean bombers were supposed to be baby they were supposed to have guns for defense they're supposed to be made out of metal building an airplane just big enough for a crew of two for 250 pound bombs fuel for 1,500 miles and it would certainly be a hundred miles an hour faster as fast as a fighter but what de Haviland had in mind to make this airplane effective was to make it very fast to put the greatest engines available at the time on this relatively light wooden airframe so it didn't need guns and gunners it was faster so fast in fact that it could outrun any of the enemy fighters and it was built of wood which was very innovative at the time Geoffrey de Haviland and he said wood because he saw that wood was not going to be a strategic material anything in war production is going to be made out of metal to have one step way out of the box and was persistent he took his idea to the Ministry of Defense and they thought of poopoo that you can't do that Jeffrey de havilland found an ally Sir Wilfred Freeman who was with the Air Ministry in England and Freeman believed in de Havilland's design finally the Air Ministry and the Royal Air Force said you know what let's just get these guys out of our way we'll give them a little bit of money to make a few airplanes so the initial contract order was for just 50 airplanes they designed and constructed the prototype here from start of design to the very first flight was 11 months first mosquito flew in November of 1947 DUP a few months prior to that and the airplane proved itself to be an immediate success faster than any other airplane in the world he realized after it taken off and left the chase plane which was a Spitfire way behind that it was quite a good aeroplane it was at that time the fastest combat aircraft in the world but here's the astonishing thing this wasn't a fighter airplane it was a bomber faster than any of the fighters so right away everybody perked up when hey just a minute we may have something here if it's faster than all of the enemy fighters what if we did put some guns on it not so that it can defend itself but make it an offensive weapon make it a fighter plane so in fact the second prototype mosquito was built as a fighter plane so right away as soon as they saw the possibilities versatility became the key strength of this airplane [Music] the engineers have just returned from a fact-finding mission in Wisconsin Martin and I went down to Ashe Kosh and had permission from Kermit weeks to crawl all over his airplane and he had a mark 35 mosquito that was original hadn't been touched at all and it sits in the museum down there and we went down and spent a whole day taking pictures without any manuals at all this is our only reference to things that we don't know where it goes realize how much stuff we don't have and stuff that we do have we know where it goes now [Music] our squadron flew out of bent my squadron was part of the early BAM strike wing which had four squadrons of mosquitoes we had the four a night fighter squadrons there were three straight night fighters it's all he did was night fighting and then we had one intruder that was all over Germany in Italy and so on we'd fly in and market a dropper share of players market tag the heaviest would come over and bomb on earth where daylight bombing trips on the opal which was the the one rocket sites we didn't come in at a steep angle but probably about 45 degrees you could get a lot closer or better accuracy with this as we called it shallow dive bombing and you could with straight or straight and level bombing no flying over the sea doing ship busting which is what these striking Costa come on strike wing was doing at the airport sir late fighters on them and the Germans would keep an eye on them every day they were overrun and we try to shoot over know and sometimes we get them sometimes we wouldn't [Music] we're installing the call at a firewall this is all stainless steel to protect the wheel well from any fire that might happen in the engine compartment what we're looking for now is there's apparently rubber gasket material that goes in here not along the bottom which we don't have although we do have good pictures up now so you'll be able to reproduce that have you seen anything like that in our air is that all that's all felt it all fit I enjoy the challenge of that kind of stuff making things that we don't have and we can't get so we have to figure out how are we gonna make this work so that that's always fun for me a lot of the construction materials for these airplanes came from right here in British Columbia the Queen Charlotte Islands the Sitka spruce for the spars and a lot of the woodworking materials this is our beauty stripped down to its absolute bearskin here this is where you see that the birch and the Spruce ply in here and over top of this the entire airplane would have been fabric covered as well the other neat thing that you can see while our airplane is in this condition is the fact that the entire fuselage is not much over half an inch thick the fuselage production is perhaps one of the most interesting parts they had great big molds that they would lay the sheets of plywood down and they would strap them with great big metal strap and then they were so light that in essence it took only two people to lift half a mosquito fuselage off the mold and then they would put the two halves side-by-side and people would install the electrical lines the hydraulic lines the instruments and all of the equipment in each half of the fuselage and then the two halves were brought together and so you had a single complete tube once the fuselage halves are glued together a guy comes along with a handsaw and cuts this huge hole out of the center of the mosquito and then the fuselage is dropped on top of the wing to make the wing and the fuselage together the wings are built as a one-piece wing in total it's got a 54 foot wingspan made as a single piece but the wing basically carries the whole load it carries the engines it carries the fuselage it carries the undercarriage it carries the bomb load commonly said fuselage goes along for the ride [Music] not a lot of people know what we do here it's slowly getting through the grapevine that's that this project is here so we're having a lot of enthused people that have had contact with the airplane through the years either they built them in Downsview or they flew them during the war been working on steady now for about eight nine months I guess it is yeah well it's great to see it going back together again really is kind of about 750 hours on them different jobs but I did not fly them during World War two I flew them with the overseas ferry unit I came to the Mosquito squadron in Scotland in 1943 on a Norwegian squadron everybody wanted to get on the mosquitos I think I'm just very fortunate it has a great reputation got the old word tanks in pretty well completed with all the lines made up it was a struggle the first time to find a note how to put them in because you have to put them both in at the same time no brings back a flood of memories of course I just want to climb up the ladder and get into the cockpits I don't think enough people are aware of what happened in those days we weren't just ordinary people and I told by a lot of people that the youth of today or wouldn't do this but they would if they're faced with the same situation that we were at seventeen and a half they do exactly the same thing if the same pressures are on them they're no different wars are horrible things and everybody that's ever fought in the war knows that as soon as you forget it you repeat it so it's important and it's really important to the vets to see all that stuff restored because it keeps everybody interested in it and nobody will forget it there is a set of drop tanks they were made of plywood they're not usable the coating on the inside is is eroded to the point where I doubt very much whether they would hold fuel mr. Jin's wanted us to fit them with all the hardware so that he could use them as a static display the 50 gallon drop tanks you could stay up for probably about six hours six and a half with a hundred gallons you'd get about another half an hour to three quarts in there on top of that just push a button and they drop off did easy we can make sure they're as empty as possible first and originally they were electronically operated so that they could drop them if necessary and that had to be all disconnected because you're not allowed to do that anymore of course so we made it so that it was manual installation and removal aesthetically it's one of the most beautiful airplanes ever designers right along there with a Spitfire in the hunter and a few others that you just look at it and it's just got the lines and it just looks right it's one of those classic airplanes one of the most beautiful elegant airplanes ever designed it sounds like nothing else you've ever heard him the British used in the Commonwealth forces used mosquitos and every active war theater it was perhaps the first original multi-role combat aircraft it worked as a night fighter a fighter bomber photoreconnaissance because of the altitude again they could do all this the sort of things that all kinds of different aircraft would have to do to achieve the same the same goal and it did it all [Music] just about any job you wanted to get done you could do and remarkably you could do that job with just two people there were so many planes that had crews of eight or ten that were getting shot down in huge numbers and many people dying and the mosquito it's arguable could have done a lot of that work if there had been enough of them with putting so so few people at risk the mosquito had the lowest loss rate of any allied bomber during World War two as spectacular as its performance was it turned out to be one of the safest airplanes this airplane was originally brought into Canada by a Spartan and that was used as a high level survey aircraft talk through nature I was a navigator actually on the Mosquito Canada wanted a map of the country so that it could be opened up for development resource extraction anything you do you need a map fun had got into the high-level aerial survey business in nineteen fifty using the p38 that had its limitations and so in late 1954 they went looking for a plane that could replace it and there were these surplus ones sitting out in this airfield in northern England Spartan air services purchased fifteen mosquitoes for fifteen hundred dollars each in nineteen fifty four nine were used for aerial mapping and the others were used for parts there were initial modifications done over in England before the planes were flown across so the mosquito had a six hour 30 range so then you could take advantage of the sparser airfields and that's the only way could we could have done it these particular airplanes have a very significant place in Canadian history although our particular example wasn't built in Canada the work that it did here has a tremendous ripple effect in the maps that were produced in the resources that were discovered in the work that was done by these airplanes there were three crew members in the mosquito there was the pilot and his job was to get the plane to altitude to keep the flight line and to keep the plane at a precise altitude so I was in the front of navigate er the camera operator was in the back since it was a small nose you had to lay on your stomach so I would just direct the airplane down a line on either a map or your own drawn map or the camera operator would actually make sure we were getting the proper overlap of photographs they're very exacting for everybody really isolated from the rest of the crew was the camera operator who had this undesirable position in the back of the mosquitos fuselage it was a high level aircraft so the photography is done either either at 30,000 feet above sea level and that would give you about a mile mile to the inch photography it was tough in your body because unpressurized that 35,000 feet is not a lot of fun it was hard where the mosquito was incredibly noisy and everybody was pressure breathing oxygen there was also the tendency for people to suffer from the bends too similar in the way that divers do when they're diving we're Spartan we started in southern Ontario jardin the spring usually around third week in May and then as a snow melted and the ice melted we keep moving further north further north further north jyllian end up in the Arctic Islands and then when around September you start moving back again staying at the snow and then in the winters we stick around early either Colombia Dominican Republic and do photography down there so I was like I always just think we're migrating birds we got up and out wasn't a great married life but that's the way it was you see pictures of these guys doing a full engine change in the Arctic in the middle of summer with nothing but the most basic tools it was an incredible job that these people did we're living in tent camps for three months in the Arctic we never thought of think of that that was just like what you did but the importance of the whole thing is that we created the map base for Canada the whole map base what Canada ended up with was complete coverage of the country from the 49th parallel up to and beyond the Arctic Circle of this very large country of ours [Music] [Applause] [Applause] there's no mosquito stores we can't go down to the corner mosquito store and pick up parts like you can for other general aviation aircraft hey good afternoon Mike Ingram from victory or maintenance calling yeah I'm just trying to track down some mosquito parts right now we have parts that are specific to a Canadian mosquito ours is a British mosquito the other mosquito that's being built as a Canadian one so we do have some parts that would be valuable so we're hoping that that will be the case it's just a matter of finding the right part there's only so many parts so everybody works together and pretty much everybody knows everybody it's a small community you know you it's worldwide but there's only maybe a half a dozen people that build these kind of airplanes [Music] while we were flying out of a place called V of Ascencio in Colombia so the guy who brought Burton and he'd come in and he'd we dive down roll the airplane a couple of times then come up do a fighter break and land so the commander of the airport came talked to him and said don't do that because you're bad influence on her car flying students so we we had to stop that [Music] it was a long expensive and very difficult process you know they were creating air strips out of the middle of Arctic wastelands in order to operate these airplanes a number of the airplanes crash there were a number of fatalities as well I was with that company for nine years and I think there were 28 people killed what do you see one crew getting killed and you're you're flying on the same type of machine you don't think about those things so he'd never think about them you know you think you're always immortal I was on one flight out of Churchill going through 26,000 we lost the engine the pilot feathered it and there was a problems he towed it would no end a feather then he'll back out a feather and go into full fine well then you had a runaway prop 7000 rpm and we lost his spinner the spinner came off and went by the the cut of perspex and we lost several other parts see FHM ELLs last survey for spartan was in august 1962 it was grounded in lake head with a problem engine it was one of only three remaining Spartan mosquitoes when it was flown back to uplands cfh ml was officially retired in June 1963 with a total of six hundred and sixteen point five flight hours it was a real utility used airplane after the war and that's why this one was actually saved and it is in such good condition because it actually had a life after the war [Music] we always referred to it as a mozzie never mosquito always the mozzie it was the dream aircraft that most pilots would love to have flown a sweet airplane to fly and it did everything you expected it an airplane would do it didn't know no surprises the opportunity of a lifetime if you were if you were a pilot and you would flow another aircraft you'd get into mesquite and say hey I've never seen anything like this in my life flying to me was exciting at that age and I was sort of immortal nothing was gonna happen to me it was always the next guy every day was what do I do today I could have my fellows on a mozzie he lucky because he got an airplane he got lots of speed and speed wasn't a problem mozzie had the speed you found the airplane you could run him down because all we could cut corners you see you know soon as he turned you cut the corner d-day my log book reads covering airborne landings you never flew over any ships if you could help it because most of those Gunners shot at everything that was it if it's in the air shoot that's it the whole linda's channel seemed to be full of boats of various sizes of ships when we came out they hadn't they were bombarding it but they hadn't actually started the landings maybe once every 10 trips should get a you get one full of turn on you but there's a rule they were they would always scatter and run but occasionally you'd get one of their fighters and he wouldn't turn and run he would he would sounds he'd hit on every time he'd turn right in on you and they were a bit of a handful my logbook says I think I did about eight marking trips we flew low got low below the telephone vocês whenever I going over the water you we had a fly up a beam of at a very specific level and a fair or specific speed level and altitude because we'd pick up a signal and have to change course now to be honest with you my navigator was the king of this I was just really the taxi driver the strike wing was aimed at flying over to Norway a lot of the shipping was going up tight wing was tasked to do something about that either sink the ships damaged them or whatever [Music] we were did hours in the dead of night and we were in a note on our way back and we were lucky to cut back on what time I've often heard it referred to as the world's longest continuous aircraft restoration because essentially the airplanes been under restoration since 1966 unfortunately a wooden airplane once it's left outdoors deteriorates very quickly and what happened in this case was a wind spot had finished with it it sat outside for three years in 1966 Don Campbell purchased HML from Spartan for $2,500 and brought it to campus casing when I saw it and it came in from Ottawa it was it was a rough shape fabric was peeling off it paint was peeling off of it Don Campbell pick the airplane up thank goodness you know it's and kept it in storage ever since this is the reason why it's in such magnificent condition as it is dad's philosophy was Air Cadets should be working on airplanes the idea was to restore it completely which kappes Casey is not a nice place to build to do things because the the decent season is very short Don Campbell the original owner had realized he wasn't going to get it finished for various reasons so he found a partner on the west coast who had the resources and they shipped it out there and put a team together and started a second round of restoration work Mike Meeker could commit more time and resources to the next level of the restoration he was an airplane that huge it was sort of all-consuming but this was took on it's a huge importance because of the age of it I first became connected with the mosquito back in the early 80s when I was working in Abbotsford Airport somebody said there's a mosquito in a barn up the roll it was it was a spot you wouldn't have expected yeah it really looked like a glorified horse shed but but inside was this just magnificent airplane the partnership arrangement came just after Meeker had purchased another B mark 35 from Mexico xB tio acts with the hopes of building a new airframe and utilizing the metal parts and engines hired mechanics to help him take it apart I think they cut the wings off with a power saw because it's all plywood and it was rotten the plane was 14 feet high on the truck and you'll Iggy wants to be 13 and a half I made this exit off this freeway at 16 miles an hour and science had over past 12 and a half feet so I went under it it sheared off a foot in half off the rudder which was rotten which it came off nice and easy and they didn't need that part anyway you saw once up in British Columbia the plan changed and the Mexican parts were used to aid in the restoration of CF HML was pretty well all structural work that we were doing at the time I got to see the process on how to work with wooden structure and in getting that plywood to bend in such a tight manner as it was was was a challenge and uh and it came out quite well various reasons we worked ground to a halt the plane was then sold to Ed and Rosa Leske who put the plane into storage for years in 1996 CF HML was advertised for sale for 1.2 million dollars in December 2000 Bob Jen's the current owner purchased the plane and began restoring it once again an aircraft like this is passion you can see that just the type of work that's gone into it the care that's going to and just the the effort in getting this aircraft flying again you can certainly see that in 2009 Bob Jen's brings the plane to Victoria air maintenance to speed up the restoration process [Music] [Applause] [Applause] so this is an original radio and the old technology that used to be in the mosquito wall used to run on glow tubes and nowadays a radio is a fraction of the size so what we did on this aircraft is we took the back off this I took the guts out of the radio and we hid the radios within this box so what we have here is today is radios and all it needed was to to make this aircraft air worthy it's it's pretty much what we had to do to make this a little bit more authentic the plane now has the Canadian registration CF hmj the original registration was F HML but that registration got lost over the years and was never renewed through Transport Canada we tried to get that registration back from the the person who owns it now on an airplane other quebec somewhere but they weren't so willing to give it up another mosquito has recently been restored in New Zealand and delivered to its owners Gerry Yeager and the military Aviation Museum in Virginia that's a big debate at the moment because there are people who are making the wings and the fuse lodges for them down in down in New Zealand and that that makes a very valuable contribution to getting others air worthy for this particular airplane is highly authentic so I've I think that does make a difference to you know that connection with the past the greatest percentage of it is original the airframes original and the wings are all the wood that was in 1947 this is a unique airplane because of its the way that its life was and it was stored inside and made it viable it's the original propeller from the airplane and it's just been sent out with an overhaul that a certified propellers on big pick now is get the propeller all straight so it'll just slide on the shaft going on four years no it's a good feeling to be put in the last big piece on sitting down the touch there goes it's on they're all pilots and all pilots but there are no old bold pilots we're taught that from day one you might say use some discretion or common sense we'll try to fly under every bridge that you see or or you know try to mow the grass on somebody's front lawn or whatever it might be with your props be realistic that the aircraft has as restrictions you have restrictions and sometimes things get in line get in the way when you're low level as fire speed is concerned I had one going in the stall turn where you pull it up and you kicked the rudder and go over and come down I heard of doing roughly a hundred and forty knots I know they're rated for around 4 unders and I've never put one through the gate we were the highest flying British airplane they had at that time 40,000 but 40,000 she was you know you get up the air gets in and you drop a wing and it takes a while to pick it up and so and she's a sloppy air play out of the air we had a radio altimeter and you could set it at various heights and it had three lights on it and we would usually set it at 35 feet as being the lowest and below that a red light would come up and between 35 and 50 feet you'd get a green light and above 50 feet you'd get a yellow so the idea was to try and stay in the green light and when we were thin I'd say site at the target they opened up with machine guns and and tracer and everything and you thought every everyone that came twisting up there was going to get you for sure but we went we would did our dinner dive in underneath this marshalling yard I opened up with the machine guns and the cannons and waved the nose around and of course we're coming in pretty fast probably close to 300 miles an hour and they quit firing the engines that were overhauled were the ones that was sitting in the airplane when it was mothballed by spottin it's been since 1963 census airplane rents it's waking up after a long long sleep we may have to go out there and see that's actually yeah pull the liner sounds like no ignition yeah the left engine started just fine right engine not so much we got a boost coil problem right now and just trying to sort out the wiring for it and might need a boost coil the team has a spare boost coil once its installed both engines can be run up you could argue the getting those engines running as well as they do is almost an impressive achievement as getting the airframe put back together because they're extraordinarily complex foundered a really it is a significant game in the history of this airplane that is significant because it's been a long long time the time has come for the mosquito to shine after five years of restoration at Victoria Air maintenance the plane is ready to test and hopefully fly yes pilot wants to see the gear and then we'll do what we call the emergency gear extension there's an emergency if you lose the hydraulics of how to pump the gear down my hands we want to make sure that all that works so there's nothing left to chance I don't think there's anybody in the world that is flowing more warplanes and what Steve Hinton has there's nobody can touch him as far as his experience level tools are balanced obviously because he's a mechanic he understands a lot more and that's I don't use the term just pilots in a bad way but they don't always understand exactly what's going on out there when you move this handle he does I don't have any experience in a mosquito I've read the books and I've flown planes similar to it and you know they've asked me to help on this based on the fact that I rebuild airplanes for living and fly them as well so we're just tricking checking things two or three times is all anytime you rebuild an airplane you're gonna have but it's good to have a lot of different eyes look at it and it's a 99.99% of it's perfect [Music] did it kick out and we're having a little trouble with one of the main wheels won't lock up and when the pressure comes off the hydraulic system the wheel drops out of the landing gear bait so we're just working through sorting out what the issue is and it's minor issue and it's teething pains and all these airplanes give you these sort of things right up until the day before I call it rag wrenching as long as the term I use all the time because you bring your rag wrench it you're wiping grease but you're still right in the spot where you know you're going to inspect something and look at it they chased a spring on the up latch teams be working that's coming off the jacks so that's a good sight scenario B that will run it check the engines and props and a lot of and then he'll go and tax yet get a feel for the airplane that before it goes flying [Music] congratulations almost airplane it's getting there yeah it's cool I'm almost there it's all sir plane yeah it's a plane not an airplane yep any time you do a restoration on a plane and then you start bringing it back to life you can expect to find little things and that's all we've got is a bunch of little things we've got twice as many little things because it's two engines this airplane holds a special place in my heart not just because it's a former Spartan airplane but because of the way that the owners decided to finish it which is to do honor to the mosquito bomber that had more operational missions than any other allied bomber in World War two it's a tremendously touching story that involves a crew members and the airplane itself the tragic story begins in early May 1945 when f4 Freddy of 105 squadron was chosen to tour Canada to promote war bonds the pilot Morris Briggs and navigator John Baker both had distinguished wartime flying careers they're seen here leaving Royal Air Force benson for their Canadian to it I saw a very brief story just a couple of paragraphs in an aviation magazine when I was quite young and it mentions the connection to my hometown of Calgary so I started to look for additional information about this airplane and found there was almost nothing available so I went back to newspaper stories and then started tracking down some of the people who were involved Richard was only 17 when he first began researching the f4 Freddy's story in the past 30 years seeing this history get proper recognition has been his personal mission it actually ended the war with 213 combat operations which was an absolute record for an allied bomber during World War two they arrived in Calgary Alberta the day after Victory in Europe day and that was the official end of the war in Europe so tremendous celebrations all across the country the airplane put on a phenomenal flying display for the pilot he had earned his wings in Calgary in 1943 it was a bit of a homecoming event imagine putting all these factors together he arrived in Calgary the day after VE Day at the station where he had earned his wings two years prior with the bomber aircraft that had completed more operational combat missions than any other allied bomber in World War two all of these factors coming together after a delay because of an engine repair effort Freddy was to fly to penhold left bridge and Medicine Hat before returning to Calgary they took off and before they departed from Calgary the pilot decided to do a flyby on the control tower he did a couple of passes on the tower at absolute zero altitude just pulling up to clear the control tower at the last minute he did that twice came around a third time and hit a steel pole that was on top of the control tower at that speed the steel pole completely took the wing off the airplane they crashed just outside the airport grants Morris Briggs and John Baker were killed instantly and that put a real poignant end to the war for Canadians and Calgarians in particular I'm very touched to see that this airplane has been painted up as f4 Freddy in honor of those men who served and who died it's an appropriate and very touching honor that's given to this airplane this morning we found a couple of leaking primer valves that are making the engines run a little on the rich side so we're just swapping out some parts and getting the fuel leak stopped and we'll get the engines dialed in the list is getting smaller every minute and hopefully the weather holds out we'll get a flight test entity cook the starter motor the starter button wouldn't disengage and starter got burnt up these airplanes they make their own lineup when they're ready to go and when that's ready it'll it'll tell us and we'll go fly them a starter will need to be shipped in so the flight tests are delayed for five weeks the team is gathered once again to try and get the plane airborne there are only a few remaining tweaks and the plane is ready to go it's really an early airplane the cockpits the way it's laid out you know everything is manual and so that is it's part of the charm of flying a lot of different airplanes enjoyed very much looking forward to what's a pilots error plan it responded beautifully to the controls it was only dangerous on takeoff it had a tendency because of the rotation of the props had a tendency to swing to port a little bit you could control it quite easily mainly by the throttle there was nothing sluggish about it it was just a saint just like a Ferrari you had to be on the stick all the time tricky on on takeoff because both propellers rotated the same same direction and it would swing on take off taking off in something like that we've got a huge amount of power on a light airplane with massive 12-foot metal props giving you a gyroscopic effect there's a lot going on there's so many so many unknowns you you can run the engines up outside and everything sounds good the numbers are good all the gauges read proper you can work the flight controls and everything feels good but as soon as you you know it's not until you get some air beneath the wheels and get the air point off the ground that you really know what's gonna happen when you put everything together so it's a big this big risk you take when you take that first that first light [Music] it's never old hat but no I don't get butterflies doing but of course it's after completing restoration I plan for all these years to there's you know a lot of things that there's some risk involved let's put it that way we can think about that kind of stuff and thinking about you know how they're the aircraft system works so some of the things you need to do without a checklist you know so have to be able to react at things with mail along to that I think that we've got the best of all the worlds I think well I know we'll be fine Amil is also a you know very experienced pilot as well so if we have the troubleshoot anything there's he's the he's the best man for that it's exciting first flight crews just gonna work with the field it just around and also we care about is he of the wings work and they had to run for him it's just taxi you know CF hmj waits for clearance the port main landing gear doesn't retract there are only up for ten minutes before returning we opened us all and let the bakes go for the first time and I think well you know this airplane hasn't flew in a long time but flew like any other airplane it trimmed oat flew fine the crew has a few items to adjust and we'll need to figure out the landing gear problem hopefully you'll be ready for its second flight tomorrow it was just a wonderful noise sound is more like it music to my ears and brought back lots and lots of memories it's breathtaking the watch the thing takes of the air and actually climb out day to the tweaks have been done and the crew discovered that the gear problem was simply a lever falling out of engagement they're ready for a second flight it's important to get a number of flights and hours in to fully test the plane right now the weather conditions are perfect so the push is on to get up [Music] [Music] and both landing gears go back up it's relatively easy to fly it it's not a maneuverable airplane so to speak it flies very night it's a very stable airplane but it's a big airplane feels like a bigger planet it's a just a big honor to be able to fly something like this Henry over the next 48 hours three more flights are taken all the systems are running smoothly and the job now is to simply test the plane [Music] magnificent honor to be here an honor to be here this one's on my bucket list seeing it painted as f4 Freddie a tribute to these men and and a story that I have researched for so many years all of these things coming together it was it was exciting it was thrilling it was satisfying and very touching it was horrific I just love the sound of it you you were very aware of the teamwork that had made that last little bit happen you know I've waited a long time to see that happen to be the second one flying in the world how can you describe that you know there's a few and in museums than that but to actual see one fly and make noise under its own powers is really something special it's tremendous that there are still veterans around who served with these airplanes and and who can see one come back to life and I know it it has a tremendous impact on them but as you say to the younger generation too it's not just a museum piece it doesn't just sit there you know it's something that makes noise and flies and is is active and interactive and has an emotional impact that you can't understand until you actually see one until you actually hear the thing fly that's when it becomes a lot [Music]

Channel: Spark

Views: 1,125,707

Rating: 4.8541179 out of 5

Keywords: Spark, Science, Technology, Engineering, science documentary, science photography, science explained, science experiment, De Havilland Mosquito, de havilland mosquito documentary, de havilland mosquito startup, de havilland mosquito flyby, de havilland mosquito cockpit, de havilland mosquito war thunder, de havilland mosquito the plane that saved britain, world war two

Id: rauNQgkOJhU

Length: 57min 56sec (3476 seconds)

Published: Mon Jan 06 2020