January/February 2022 53THE NATIONAL ARCHIVES (UNITED KINGDOM), CATALOGUE REF: INF 2/1272
was deteriorating wood and brittle glue. Every inch of the
airframe needed to be fully reconstituted using the vin-
tage methods and materials. The only safe way to rebuild a
Mosquito that could dependably return to the skies was to
embark on a huge woodworking project.
Glyn and his crew started with the fuselage, the most
intricate part of the build, consisting of two vertical body
halves made up of three layers of wood. These pieces began
with Glyn’s half-cigar-shaped molds, each with seven slots
cut into them to fit the plane’s laminated spruce interior
bulkheads.
The first layer of “skin,” or the inner wall of the fuselage,
was made from 1/36-inch birch plywood. This is f lexible wood,
but it needed help bending around the complex curves of the
airplane body, so the skin was made up of hundreds of indi-
vidual pieces of ply fitted together with 12-to-1 scarf joints.
This means the edges of the pieces were cut at a steep angle,
leaving more room for glue and making for a stronger union
than a butt joint.
It was the glue that had been used, not the wood, that
necessitated a nearly total rebuild of the Mosquito airframe.
During World War II, combat planes were built to last for
months, not years. Extended exposure to the elements was
absolute murder on wooden Mosquitoes. Doors and hatches
leaked in England’s misty, rain-soaked climate, and f lying
units in the Far East complained that the oppressive heat and
humidit y mowed through more Mosquitoes than the enemy.
But even if a Mosquito has been babied for decades, its
original urea-formaldehyde glue will degrade. Wooden parts
can last for a century or more, but the vintage adhesive that
keeps all of that lumber f lying becomes brittle and unreliable
over that period, making any restoration project that retains
that adhesive decidedly unsafe to f ly. Glyn employed a tough
marine-grade epoxy resin for our restoration.
We screwed and glued the birch plywood “skin” around
the molds and secured the layer with metal bands so that the
glue could cure. At the same time, we glued a collection of
test pieces that would ride inside the Mosquito in a small bag
and measure the viability of the glue in the future. The orig-
inal specification for the adhesive calls for a tensile test on a
one-inch-square glue sample bet ween t wo strips of American
black walnut. The glue must hold 1,100 pounds without fail,
so future operators will be able to check if our glue joints—
secured in 2014—still meet the original specification.
After the birch skin inner wall of the fuselage was ready,
we added the middle layer—made from ½-inch balsa wood—
around an intricate web of spruce reinforcing bands and
frames circling the fuselage, spanning from the nose to the
tail, and reinforcing the areas around the cockpit, hatches,
and other openings.
A hobby shop in Auckland supplied us with 1,320 feet of
4-inch-wide and ½-inch-thick balsa planks. When finished,
there were no voids in this balsa and spruce layer, which was
glued, screwed, and banded once again over the first layer.
Finally, another course of 1/36-inch birch ply wood made up
the outer skin of the body of the aircraft. The end result was aWHEN MOSQUITOS
CRASHED THE
NAZIS’ PARTY
→
As their grip on Europe loosened, Nazi
Germany appointed January 30, 1943,
as a national day of celebration to bolster morale.
The date marked the 10th anniversary of Adolph
Hitler’s rise to the Chancellorship, and German high
command planned a day of rousing speeches on
international radio. But in England, the RAF saw the
occasion as an opportunity to stick a thumb in the
eye of Germany’s top leaders and break the facade
of Nazi invincibility.
Most of the RAF’s bomber fleet was unsuited for
a mission so far from home. The 1,100-mile round-
trip flight to Berlin, in broad daylight, would span five
hours of exposure to flak and enemy fighters. Only
one aircraft in the RAF’s inventory had a chance.
Mosquito fighter-bombers, faster than the other
planes in the fleet and able to sneak in at 250 feet,
instead of flying at 25,000 feet, could elude German
ground defenses to drop bombs and raise havoc
amid the festivities. This aerial smash and grab oper-
ation would be sudden, terrifying, and intimate.
A trio of Mossies from the No. 105 Squadron led
the way. They bullied their way into Berlin’s airspace
just as Hermann Göring—the German military chief,
or Reichsmarschall—began his radio speech to the
nation. Bomb blasts and the distinctive rumble of
the Mossies’ Rolls-Royce engines overhead forced
Göring off the air for more than an hour.
Later that day, as Nazi propaganda leader
Joseph Goebbels stepped to the podium to
address Nazi party members at Berlin’s Sport-
palast, three more Mosquito bombers from the No.
139 Squadron arrived. As the Reichsminister strug-
gled to speak, the British planes whirled through
the skies outside the arena, and the booming
response from German anti-aircraft fire brought
pandemonium to the ceremonies. One Mosquito
went down—the sole British loss of the mission—
but the United Press lauded what they called a
“daring raid” on Berlin.