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So bombing with HE is very different than bombing with incendiaries. Incendiaries want to be spread out across an area, so having everyone drop individually wit

So bombing with HE is very different than bombing with incendiaries. Incendiaries want to be spread out across an area, so having everyone drop individually within a specified area is preferred. But that's not necessarily the right choice for all targets: going after factories, in particular, drives you to High Explosive bombs. HE effectiveness will suffer dramatically if you let each bombardier control their own route, given that there are not that many good ones available, which drives you to tight formations so one good bomb run can suffice for many planes. And big formations makes the Mosquito vulnerable, because it means that they can't use their speed and elusiveness. It's hard to turn a big formation, so their location is much more predictable, and big formations can't go at their top speed, because all the pilots have to be constantly adjusting their speed to stay in formation, and stay at the speed of the slowest member of the formation. So a Mosquito isn't as effective as a Lancaster at the "burn down a city" job (much smaller bombload), and isn't as effective as a B-17 at the "blast this factory down" with generic crew quality. This isn't a knock on the Mossie: it was a good airplane. Just not suited to every mission.

jabl 8y ago
> And big formations makes the Mosquito vulnerable, because it means that they can't use their speed and elusiveness Sure they could use their speed. Mosquito economic cruising speed was, depending on altitude, 250-300 knots, compared to 160-190 kn for the heavies. Even if operating alone, Mosquitos couldn't floor it for any significant amount of time, since that would consume fuel too fast (same as any other aircraft). Zipping along at 300 kn made them more or less invulnerable to Luftwaffe night fighters, though not day fighters. But even for the faster day fighters, intercepting a bomber formation going 300 kn at 30k feet is much more difficult and time consuming than a 160 kn formation at 25k feet. But yes, all bombers were very vulnerable during their bombing runs. > So a Mosquito isn't as effective as a Lancaster at the "burn down a city" job (much smaller bombload) Since the Mosquito cost only 1/3 of a Lancaster and usually apparently carried between 1/3 and 1/2 as big bomb load, for the same price it would have been possible to carry about an equal amount of bombs. But yes, this would have required 3 times as many pilots and navigators, which were certainly harder to replace than most crewmen on a heavy. Then again, with a loss rate of 1/10 there wouldn't have been such a big problem with keeping the training pipeline filled with replacements either. That being said, one reason for the much lower loss rate of the Mosquitos was certainly that the heavies presented much easier and juicier targets. So if BC had built a mostly-Mosquito force, then presumably the loss rate would have increased, though it's hard to see it could have reached such appalling rates as it did for the heavies. > isn't as effective as a B-17 at the "blast this factory down" with generic crew quality. I'm not sure I follow this argument. For daylight "precision" bombing, Mosquito would have carried 2/3 the bomb load of a B-17G, so yes, a small advantage for the B-17 there if you consider the navigator/bomber to be the critical resource. But for formation bombing with a leader/pathfinder model, no big difference. And with the better survivability of the Mosquitos compared to the lumbering heavies, skilled crew perhaps wouldn't have been such a bottleneck.

jabl 8y ago

> And big formations makes the Mosquito vulnerable, because it means that they can't use their speed and elusiveness Sure they could use their speed. Mosquito economic cruising speed was, depending on altitude, 250-300 knots, compared to 160-190 kn for the heavies. Even if operating alone, Mosquitos couldn't floor it for any significant amount of time, since that would consume fuel too fast (same as any other aircraft). Zipping along at 300 kn made them more or less invulnerable to Luftwaffe night fighters, though not day fighters. But even for the faster day fighters, intercepting a bomber formation going 300 kn at 30k feet is much more difficult and time consuming than a 160 kn formation at 25k feet. But yes, all bombers were very vulnerable during their bombing runs. > So a Mosquito isn't as effective as a Lancaster at the "burn down a city" job (much smaller bombload) Since the Mosquito cost only 1/3 of a Lancaster and usually apparently carried between 1/3 and 1/2 as big bomb load, for the same price it would have been possible to carry about an equal amount of bombs. But yes, this would have required 3 times as many pilots and navigators, which were certainly harder to replace than most crewmen on a heavy. Then again, with a loss rate of 1/10 there wouldn't have been such a big problem with keeping the training pipeline filled with replacements either. That being said, one reason for the much lower loss rate of the Mosquitos was certainly that the heavies presented much easier and juicier targets. So if BC had built a mostly-Mosquito force, then presumably the loss rate would have increased, though it's hard to see it could have reached such appalling rates as it did for the heavies. > isn't as effective as a B-17 at the "blast this factory down" with generic crew quality. I'm not sure I follow this argument. For daylight "precision" bombing, Mosquito would have carried 2/3 the bomb load of a B-17G, so yes, a small advantage for the B-17 there if you consider the navigator/bomber to be the critical resource. But for formation bombing with a leader/pathfinder model, no big difference. And with the better survivability of the Mosquitos compared to the lumbering heavies, skilled crew perhaps wouldn't have been such a bottleneck.