50 January/February 2022PREVIOUS SPREAD: GETTY IMAGESbut resurrecting vintage combat aircraft is the most chal-
lenging and rewarding specialization I’ve encountered. I
started focusing on warbirds when someone asked me to
help them rebuild a Hawker Sea Fury fighter, and over the
ensuing decade, my small New Zealand company AvSpecs
took on more projects for local and international clients,
including American-built Curtiss P-40 fighters and British
Supermarine Spitfires. But the restoration community in
New Zealand had always mused about the legendary, nearly
extinct de Havilland DH.98 Mosquito, a former R AF W WII
plane made almost entirely from wood.
The Mosquito was a unique piece of the United Kingdom’s
wartime history. It was a versatile twin-engine workhorse
used as a fighter, bomber, reconnaissance plane, trainer,
attack aircraft, ship hunter, and radar-equipped night
fighter. In February 1944, a squadron of 18 Mosquitos
conducted a low-altitude bombing of the Amiens prison in
German-occupied France, freeing dozens of prisoners and
French Resistance fighters. When a mission required speed
and precision, the R AF called on Mosquitos.
Mossies were fast; a pair of Rolls-Royce Merlin engines
drove 12½-foot propellers that could pull its airframe
through the sky at more than 400 miles per hour. With those
double V-12s screaming, practically nothing could catch a
Mosquito going f lat-out. It was an intimidating plane while it
was active, and it was an intimidating restoration. Instead ofthe standard rivet and sheet metal processes common in air-
craft resurrection, the Mossie required thousands of hours
of working with screws, glue, and a lumberyard’s worth of
t imb er.
My friend Glyn Powell brought the original Mossie resto-
ration project to life almost single-handedly. He spent years
gathering Mosquito fragments, manuals, parts, and plans
from all over the globe in hopes to one day resurrect his own.
His main challenge was tracking down the Mossie’s unique
laminated-plywood, tapered cigar-shaped fuselage molds.
Almost all of the cumbersome and heav y molds disappeared
or were destroyed after World War II. Glyn devoted all of his
time—seven days a week for maybe 10 years—to scouring the
world for the drawings he needed to build the mold.
A wartime advantage of Mosquito construction was that
it could happen almost anywhere. A majority of the aircraft
could be knocked together in a furniture shop—everyoneI have been
working on
airplanes for
as long as I
can remember,