Mosquito versus the German fighters

[merlin]

I do not recall if it was Spaatz or Eaker, but one senior US Air Force General, issued an instruction to his fighter pilots, banning them from 'racing' with 'Mossies' when returning from missions. Apparently it was bad for morale being passed by them!!

[Glider]

Originally Posted by pbfoot

The mossie if you ever listened to the crews cruised at about 240 knots its a good speed for making the engine last and at 240 its easy for the nav to do his plotting of position using the old formula of distance = time x rate or 240 mph equals 4 miles a minute.

I am reading a book on the History of 2 Group that used Mossies in the daylight raids over Europe and Germany.
They tended to cruise at 270 - 290 mph and it was this that they felt gave the Germans the biggest difficulty in interception. From Radio intercepts from the Y service it became clear that the Germans did their intercept calculations based on a cruising speed of 250 mph. This went on for about 9 months before the Germans twigged what the real figures were.

[pbfoot]

Originally Posted by Glider

I am reading a book on the History of 2 Group that used Mossies in the daylight raids over Europe and Germany.
They tended to cruise at 270 - 290 mph and it was this that they felt gave the Germans the biggest difficulty in interception. From Radio intercepts from the Y service it became clear that the Germans did their intercept calculations based on a cruising speed of 250 mph. This went on for about 9 months before the Germans twigged what the real figures were.

[mhuxt]

Originally Posted by Glider

I am reading a book on the History of 2 Group that used Mossies in the daylight raids over Europe and Germany.

What book is that glider? Looking for some additions to my library.

[Glider]

The book is a second hand one that I found on Holiday. Its written by Michael J. F. Bowyer and called '2 Group RAF A Complete History 1936-1945.'

The book is over 500 pages and the detail is extrordinary. For example as you would expect there are a number of photo's of aircraft in them. However, what I have never seen before, is in the caption for most of the aircraft includes the dates when it entered service and when it was destroyed, struck off, whatever.

If your interested they seem to average out at about 9 months in front line service, which for a WW2 aircraft is longer than I expected.

[mhuxt]

Thanks for that - it was on my list but I'll move it up in priority.

Cheers,

Mark

[Kurfürst]

Originally Posted by SoD Stitch

Best answer by Erich; only LW plane(s) that could catch a Mosquito in a tail-chase were the Me 262, 163 and He 162, but the 163 didn't have the endurance. A Ta 152 would be able to catch a Mossie at altitude, but it might take a while.

... and apart from these planes, the FW 190A, Bf 109G etc. Either could quite easily catch them if they were vectored onto the target correctly. As noted by others, the problem Mosquito interception caused was the same as with any target cruising at higher speeds like JaBos or fighter recces. It gave less time frame for interception, making ground control's job more difficult.

Neither it could afford to run at high powers for long time, as it would risking blowing up the engine or running out of fuel before returning to base. When the Mosquito was first entered combat, it had twice the loss rate other RAF bombers in the daylight. Ever wondered why Mosquitos mainly bombed at night - because they were faster than the Luftwaffe's daylight fighters, right? Nightfighters OTOH were slower twin engines, being burdened with lots of extra equipment, like flame dampers, radar, extra cannons and lost quite a bit of their daylight version's speed due to that.

[Jabberwocky]

Originally Posted by Kurfürst

When the Mosquito was first entered combat, it had twice the loss rate other RAF bombers in the daylight.

The evidence doesn't really bear this theory out.

May 31 - 5 sorties, 1 loss to light flak (20% loss rate for the month)

Jun 1 - 2 sorties, 1 loss to unknown causes,
Jun 18 - 3 sorties, no losses
Jun 20 - 3 sorties, no losses
25 Jun - 8 sorties, no losses
26 Jun - 4 sorties, no losses (5% loss rate)

1 Jul - 1 sortie, no loss
2 Jul - 6 sorties, 1 loss to FW 190s, 1 to light flak
11 Jul - 6 sorties, 1 loss to pilot error (hit a house on low level mission)
14 Jul - 6 sorties, no losses
16 Jul - 4 sorties, 1 loss to flak
21 Jul - 6 sorties, no losses
22 Jul - 1 sortie, no loss
23 Jul - 4 sorties and 3 aborts due to weather, no losses
25 Jul - 5 sorties, no losses
26 Jul - 3 sorties, no losses
28 Jul - 6 sorties, 1 loss to unknown causes
29 Jul - 3 sorties, no losses
30 Jul - 4 sorties, no losses
31 Jul - 1 sortie, no loss (6.4% loss rate for the month)

Aug - 54 sorties, 4 losses (7.4% loss rate for the month, 2 to fighters, 2 to flak)
Sep - 58 sorties, 3 losses (5.2% loss rate, with 2 attributed to fighters, 1 to flak)
Oct - 97 sorties, 5 losses, one to fighters, one attributed to navigational error, one flak, two unknown (5.2% loss rate)
Nov - 28 sorties, 3 losses all to naval flak (10.7% loss rate)

From Dec onwards, the Mossies operated both daylight and night time sorties.

Overall loss rate for first six months of daylight operations was 6.7%, which is high, but not twice the average daylight loss rate of BC at the time (which was about 4.6%), and certainly not due to German fighters causing problems.

Of the 22 Bomber Command Mosquito losses in the period, I can only find 6 directly attributed to enemy fighters by the RAF, while 10 were to flak and two to pilot error. The four losses to unknown cause could go to either flak, fighters or pilot error, leaving flak as probably the single largest killer of Mossie pilots in the period before they switched to mixed day/night operations.

However, that all said, this is just information for the inital operational period for the Mossie, before it got significantly more important to the war effort of the UK. Mosquitos flew well in excess of 50,000 bomber / fighter bomber sorties during the war, so 330 sorties in six months is to small a sample to really be statistically significant.

[Erich]

as to night losses of the Mossies you will find that out from the LW side of things next year when Dr. Boitens massive book on the Nachtjagd is published.

the truth is the Bf 109G-6/AS and later G-14/AS could take on the mossies of the LSNF and shoot them down as well as Mossie fighters. We have the documentation for our book

I must add that in the earlier part of the war that the nuisance raids on Berlin made quite a propaganda scare of the Third Reich leadership so much so that Goebbels and staff pressed Fat man to do something about it and the anti-Mossie units were created. JG 50 "tired" during the day and were unsuccessful, 10.(N)/JG 300 with 109G-6/AS and also 1./NJGr 10 much more so and the result of this led to Kurt Welter establishment of his private gang - Kommando

[Glider]

Originally Posted by Kurfürst

... When the Mosquito was first entered combat, it had twice the loss rate other RAF bombers in the daylight. .

I must also question this statement. Looking at the stats for 2 Group in 1944 the stats are
Mossies (Day) 1732 sorties, 1320 successful, 17 lost to flak, 1 to fighters, unknown 11. total loss ratio 2.2 percent.
Mossies (Night) 9899 sorties, 8877 successful, 4 lost to flak, 0 to fighters, unknown 73. total loss ratio 0.9 percent

Note. I did the loss ratio on successful missions, not missions flown the normal method.

So whilst they did have fewer losses at night I don't think a loss ratio of 2.2% is high and definately not twice the loss ratio of other bombers.

the truth is the Bf 109G-6/AS and later G-14/AS could take on the mossies of the LSNF and shoot them down as well as Mossie fighters..

Maybe this should be reworded
'the truth is the Bf 109G-6/AS and later G-14/AS could take on the mossies of the LSNF and shoot them down as well as Mossie fighters, but didn't'

The real question is, why didn't they?

[Erich]

but you are mistaken 10./JG 300 was successful against the LSNF and in one case against a day fighter Mossie. At present they are listed in JG 300 volume 1 bei Lorant/Goyat and will be in much longer length in our Moskito-jagd über Deutschland and of course the kills in Kommando Welter. One case we were able to get the German pilot in a small reunion with the radio op living in Canada, the pilot did not make out of his burning Mossie sadly

[Glider]

Originally Posted by Erich

but you are mistaken 10./JG 300 was successful against the LSNF and in one case against a day fighter Mossie. At present they are listed in JG 300 volume 1 bei Lorant/Goyat and will be in much longer length in our Moskito-jagd über Deutschland and of course the kills in Kommando Welter. One case we were able to get the German pilot in a small reunion with the radio op living in Canada, the pilot did not make out of his burning Mossie sadly

No doubt the odd mossie was shot down as no one is saying that they were bullet proof and I do not doubt that some of the unknows are due to fighters, but nowhere near enought were shot down to make any difference. The loss ratios are almost trivial compared to other aircraft involved in the conflict.

I have no access to the german figures but I would be suprised if the loss ratios of the German planes were less than those of the Mossies.

[Erich]

Glider I am in total agreeance, it did not make any difference as Berlin was repeatedly annoyed by Mossie bombings into April of 45. Losses were minimal to the wooden crate, the Germans rarely got a chance to jump on them and if so it was only 1-2 at a time the Mossie formation if we want to call it that just simply ran off to their homefield(s).

from an earlier post of mine the day-time trials against the Mosquito were a joke, JG 50 scored a fat 0 and was turned over to encounter US day time 4 engine bombers.........

4./NJGr 10 stationed in Holland during 1944 hoped it could catch Mossies en-route to Germany with their Fw 190A-8's ~ they failed every time...

[Glider]

Kurfurst. Can I ask you to say where you obtained your figures and support your statement?

[Nicodemus]

Just out of curiousity, how did the Ju 88 nightfighters fare against the Mosquito? Were there any occasions on which a Junkers shot down a Mossie? I don't think the Ju 88 would be fast and agile enough to catch a Mossie...