Restoring Mosquito to the skies of Britain
DUBBED the “Wooden Wonder”, it fought its way to become one of the planes that saved Britain during the Second World War.
Yet, despite famously successful raids and immortalisation by the 1963 blockbuster 633 Squadron, no de Havilland Mosquito has flown in British skies for nearly 40 years.
Now, Sunday Express readers can help a charity to change this.
The People’s Mosquito will use 22,300 detailed blueprints and schematics found in an old Airbus factory to build the first Mosquito on British soil in seven decades.
The project is the brainchild John Lilley who wanted the British public to see the Mosquito take its rightful place flying in British skies once more alongside Spitfires and Lancasters.
“The dream to rebuild Britain’s most iconic aircraft was alive in 2012, but it wasn’t until 2017 that things really turned around,” said Mr Lilley, the charity’s chairman. “That’s when I got a call to say blueprints had been found at the old Airbus factory near Broughton, where production had moved in 1948.
“There were 22,300 detailed schematics on microfiche. They weighed 65kg and represent 92 per cent of the aircraft.
“We knew it would be possible to rebuild the first new flying Mosquito in 70 years.”
Because its fuselage halves were made of
Ecuadorian balsa wood, spruce and birch before being glued together, time has been unkind to surviving Mosquitos.
Mr Lilley said: “There are only four flying around the world – all based in the US and Canada. We felt it was important that this national treasure, originally built in Britain to a British design, came back home.”
In September 1942 it took part in the successful bombing of the Gestapo HQ in Oslo and in 1943 a daylight attack knocked out Berlin’s main broadcasting station.
Hermann Goering was so envious of the plane’s
400mph speeds and high altitudes that he offered
German pilots two kills for every Mosquito that was downed. In 1943 the former fighter ace proclaimed: “The British, who can afford aluminium better than we can, knock together a beautiful wooden aircraft every piano factory over there is building.”
Mosquito veteran George Dunn recalled: “It was incredibly light and versatile. It took us just over four hours to fly to Berlin – it would have taken eight in a Halifax bomber.”
The painstaking work is being carried out by aviation restoration firm Retrotec Ltd, based near Rye, East Sussex.
Sunday Express readers – who helped raise £1million for the Bomber
Command Memorial in
London’s Green Park – can donate to the project at peoplesmosquito. org.uk
■WE ALL AGREE that hospices are wonderful. Last week I was a visitor for the first time. My dear friend, let’s call her Eileen, had been diagnosed with Stage 4 cancer.
After a rotten few months she was admitted to a London hospice – moved from a noisy hospital ward where everything seemed to be either grubby or broken and nobody had time for anything.
When being admitted to a hospice counts as “good news”, you can imagine how painful her life had become.
But as soon as you stepped inside the hospice you felt different. I’ve been told this in the past, but never quite believed it. But it’s true.there was an air of unforced cheerfulness and calm. Everything was spotlessly clean but still cosy, the sheets were crisp and white. She was in her final deep sleep but the surroundings were as soothing for her family and friends as they were for her.
A mutual friend and I sat on either side of her bed chatting quietly.we wondered if our familiar voices would filter through her morphine dreams and she would believe we were all sitting by a swimming pool in southern Spain (as we had been only last July) talking about nothing much.
As a morale-boosting exercise Eileen had eyelash extensions a few weeks ago. I thought “I must ask her where she had had them done”. I checked myself.there would be no more conversations about eyelash extensions. Sometimes your brain takes a while to catch up with a new reality.
Her hair was now thinned by chemotherapy but it looked clean and combed.the nurses used her favourite moisturiser on her face and body. Her skin was warm and soft.
I don’t know if she has hours or days. But how strong the body is – her heart and lungs pressing on regardless, driving the engine of life even as her body begins to shut down. If this is death, it is a gentle way to go.thank God for hospices.