RETURN OF THE MOZZY WOULD BE A TRUE TRIBUTE TO ‘CAT’S EYES’ CUNNINGHAM

IT SEEMS a priceless collection of engineering drawings of the old De Havilland Mosquito has been discovered and a group of enthusiasts is going to try to build one from scratch.

The young will not recall it but it was a brilliant Second World War fighter-bomber. Faster than a German fighter, it could outclimb the Messerschmitt and thus escape. It pioneered pinpoint low-level bombing, slicing away the walls of Amiens jail so the Resistance fighters imprisoned there could escape. Later it did the same to the Gestapo HQ in Copenhagen. Twenty years ago, just before he died, its most famous flier, Group Captain John Cunningham, showed me around the De Havilland museum at Hatfield and told me a cracking (true) story.

In the middle of the war British scientists had so miniaturised the little-known wonder called radar that it could be fitted to the Beaufighter and Mosquito. With it we could suddenly find and shoot down German bombers in pitch blackness. The Luftwaffe was desperate to find out how. So a story was invented.

John Cunningham was “outed” in the media and alleged to have the eyes of a cat. “Cat’s Eyes Cunningham” could see in the dark. It was all bunkum. As he cheerfully explained to me, he had 20-20 vision like everyone else. It happened that food minister Lord Woolton also had a problem: a mountain of carrots he could not get rid of. So the story went out that it was a diet of carrots that gave John Cunningham his cat’s eyes. In a week every boy was clamouring to his mum for carrots. The surplus mountain was eaten. Eventually the Germans discovered why their night-bomber losses had spiralled. But by then it was too late.

John Cunningham was a great flier and a real hero. I hope the Mozzy flies again – in his honour.