Picture of the day

Maginot Line, France 1940.

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Ganderite said:
"To bad they weren't available for the Doolittle Raid on Tokyo in 1942, may have been more survivors"

I wonder if the Mosquito would have been good? Big bomb load and lots of range.
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I love the look of the Mosquito. I first saw a couple when I was very young and never forgot the experience. When the engines were started and warmed up was exciting. When they revved up to taxi to the runway the sound was almost a continuous explosion. When they took off, three right behind each other the spectacle and the noise were almost overwhelming.

In those days, the Kelowna airport was a lot different than it is today. We could walk out for a close look at the planes, within a hundred feet or so. Greatly enhanced the experience.

That was the first and only time I was lucky enough to see/hear one flying. That was well over sixty years ago and the sight/sound was engraved into my brain.

I remember my father and uncles talking about how much fuel was held in the three planes and commenting on how it would last the average family sedan a year.
 
Ganderite said:
"To bad they weren't available for the Doolittle Raid on Tokyo in 1942, may have been more survivors"

I wonder if the Mosquito would have been good? Big bomb load and lots of range.
Click to expand...

Wouldn't have mattered. After Pearl Harbor, it was important to show Tojo that the Japanese home islands were vulnerable. It had to be an All American show to have the right message.
 
Ganderite said:
"To bad they weren't available for the Doolittle Raid on Tokyo in 1942, may have been more survivors"

I wonder if the Mosquito would have been good? Big bomb load and lots of range.
Click to expand...

Too easy to point at a later type that simply wasn't available at the time of the earlier action.

And taking off from the deck length that the first guy off the Hornet had, or the Spitfires operating off random grass fields while Britain was on the back foot early in the war, required terrific short-field performance and would have meant a small B-25 bomb load especially with any great weight of fuel. The point of the Tokyo raid was that they could do it at all!

A quick search indicates Doolittle evaluated the B-26 and found it had "questionable" carrier takeoff characteristics.

Later-war planes able to do a Berlin round trip with a meaningful payload would have been taking off from a nice long paved runway that the enemy didn't have ready access to disrupt anymore.
 
The Doolittle Raid was on 18 April 1942, first DH Mosquito aircraft landing was on March 1944 by Winkle Brown.

But ya I agree thinking it would have been a different out come if they were mossies instead of Mitchells...

Instead of a total crew of 80, it would have been 32. Might have even all made safe landing in China.

Sorry for posting a vid in the pic thread...

 
I don't believe you'd get a B26 off the Hornet after loading it to the gills with all the fuel you could, and then cramming 2 or 3 bombs in there somehow
Those B25's took off in weather that was absolute crap too
 
Dark Alley Dan said:
Early Mustangs at the factory.

uogpnr3vbw661.jpg
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The P-51B, my favourite version of the Mustang! It had such a mean, business like look about it. The 'D' model with the bubble canopy was probably a better aircraft visibility wise, but still .....

I've read that it was often mistaken for an Me-109 by trigger happy ack-ack crews.
 
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