Mosquito Squadron | Canada Carries On (1944)
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- čas přidán 9. 11. 2023
- This short, dramatised film offers an overview of Canada's involvement in the construction - and operation - of the DeHaviland Mosquito fighter bomber during World War II.
Made in 1944 and part of the "Canada Carries On" series of propaganda films, it tracks the creation of a Mosquito pilot-navigator team and follows them through their training and deployment to an operational squadron. The narrative (by Lorne Greene) offers a brief overview of the aircraft and training process and concludes with a depiction of the preparation and execution of a raid over occupied Europe.
The mosquito to me, is probably the best looking aircraft of the period.
I was just going to say…. Damn that’s sexy😊
I agree, though I don't know *why* it looks so right. It's like there's something in the shape and balance that means even when it isn't moving, it looks like a dangerous cat preparing to pounce.
All of de Havilland’s designs were good lookers, with character, IMO.
Best looking and best sounding aircraft.
It was also one of the best fighter-bombers of the later war years.
As a Canadian, I approve of this video.
Me too!
Good to know, random person!
As a Whitby Boy... So do I !
As a Brit, I approve of you Canadians approving of our Mossie.
Glad to hear that I’d be disappointed otherwise
It wasn't just the fastest bomber in the world , on it's combat introduction , it was the fastest aircraft in the world , bar none ! We all , quite rightly , admire the Spitfire but the Mosquito is just so right . 💓
Roy Chadwick, designer of the Avro Lancaster once famously said, "If it looks right, it is right". Nuff said!
Funny thing is, originally, the Air Ministry rejected the Mossie. It was developed in a country house, privately, by De-Havilland!! 😂
for my money, the NFB (National Film Board) made better-than-average war propaganda films
than the other Allies. (ok, ok, yes. I'm Canadian).
there was always a story, even if it was a little short and mundane.
the narrator was Canada's voice of doom, Lorne Greene, later to be Pa Cartwright
in the long running Bonanza TV series.
he had a very distinctive voice and delivery.
My drafting professor at Georgia Tech was a refined English gentleman who worked on refining the propeller design for the Mosquito during the Blitz in WWII. He told us some rather amusing tales of trying to sleep through air raids.
Nice watch on Remembrance Day. God Bless these heroes of WW2 which will soon be all gone.
I knew several people who flew Mosquitos Operationally with the RCAF.... Glad to see they aren't forgotten!
When I was in the Canadian Forces, in 1997, I was posted to a former Mosquito Squadron - 410 Sqn. They flew Mosquito Night Fighters.
I was in 410 from 85-91. One of 410’s wartime pilots, R. D. “Joe” Schultz went on to set up the flight safety program post war. Were you at the squadron reunion in Winnipeg in 97?
@@xairman565 I only joined 410 in 97, so no - I wasn't in Winnipeg, although I do remember hearing about Joe! Something about needing some foam inserts for prototype ear defenders and finding some women's "Falsies" that fit the job perfectly!🤣
God bless Canada. Brave member of the brotherhood.
Points for recognising the "Voice of Doom" , Lorne Greene long before he ran the Ponderosa!
Worked for the CBC reading the news, known as the voice of doom in the early years of the war.
My late father--in-law was with Pickard and 140 wing, 2 TAF. (The ones who did the Amiens raid). The stories he told about the Mossie aircrews were, to say the least, hair raising..
Love the Mosquito
They look fast in the air, look fast even sitting on the ground....
A good friend of mine was pilot training in Canada when the war in Europe ended . He said the countryside was littered with crashed Mosquito's , green pilots taken from Oxfords to Mossies .
like a New York ticker tape parade!
I heard once that the new pilots had to take off at full speed …. And instructions from young instructors seemed to be a problem !!!
@@louiseclark3208 Not being a pilot , but my understanding is that all piston engine aircraft took off with max power and fully fine prop settings. Most accidents were when landing on one engine , too slow and throttle opened too quickly would make the aircraft flick roll into the ground.
A nice touch having the USAAF fella in the footage. The Mossie looks very smart in Yank colours😊🇨🇦🇬🇧🇺🇲
I seriously doubt Mosquito pilots were encouraged to go mix it up with German fighters, but I guess ground attack wasn't sexy enough for recruitment purposes. Still, pity the poor guy who gets laughed at to his face when he charges in all fired up to dogfight with his Mosquito.
Back home for tea and medals.
Possibly one of the most ott propaganda films from the allies I've seen but enjoyable none the less
P.s. know one from Whitby has ever talked like that 😅
Which Whitby?
I love this footage,I’ve seen various parts many times before..
Folk's that training base was Greenwood, Annapolis Valley, Nova Scotia 😇👍💖Cheers 🍻🍻
The best dam plain never built
Correct it was grown, home grown at that.
Im Canadian. I love these plans and would have risked my life flying them. 👍
Easy to say from the safety of a keyboard , more difficult to actually do
Its easy to reply trolling behind a keyboard without the worry of someone slapping you in the mouth. I have risked my life and came close to death many times for lesser causes in my occupation and hobbies, have you ? 😆😂 @@theonlymadmac4771
Brilliant film.
Apparently the yanks secretly moved a few of the mosquitoes over night and left a large pile of saw dust, with notice “beware termites”
My uncle Flight Sargent Stuart Hutt was trained in Nova Scotia and flew for RAF 23 squadron out of Bradwell Bay. Sadly he and his navigator were killed Nov 26 1942. Captain Eric Brown who hold the record for number of types of aircraft flown said the Mosquito was the best all around aircraft of WW2.
For me, it was a Spitfire/Hurricane combined.!!!
I think I just caught the NFB (National Film Board in a little "creative license". At 7:36 A/C E1 taxis by. It appears to have a serial number beginning with K. This is supposed to be at an operational base in England. However, I have several photos of what I believe is this very A/C taken by my father in Canada, probably at Greenwood, Nova Scotia. This is likely the training base that is described in the video.
Absolutely hands down the prettiest aircraft of WW2.
The Mosquito has to be in the running for the title 'Best all round aircraft of WW2'. Fantastic aeroplane
It might be worth bringing them back in to production,collectors would pay 600.000. for a modern operational Mossie.I have the plans on how to build them.If there was a industry interested i could pass on the plan and make a start.
6.30 "carries twice that bomb load plus four cannon and four machine guns"
DH98 Mosquito FB. Mk VI
2,305 built. (about 1/3 of war time production, ND)
Fighter bomber / intruder variant using Merlin 22, 23 or 25. 4 (Browning) machine guns and 4 (Hispano) cannons, plus 2 x 250 lb bombs carried internally & underwing carriage of up to 2 x 500 lb bombs. Could be fitted with underwing rocket projectiles or drop tanks instead of external bomb carriage.
BAE Mosquito page
Fascinating video. Thanks Jamie. I never knew how important Canadian wood was for the British.
Canadian wood also built Queen Victoria's navy of course it wasn't Canada back then just another colony. All the same the original oak forest build the ships and the empire.
Australia also built Mossies, but not to the scale of Canada. It became a Commonwealth project - like the Beaufort and Beaufighter before it.
And long before "The Great White Mother". @@bernardausterberry9795
My first job out of high school in 1972 I fed a veneer dryer just like the one shown, hell it might have been the same one it was so old! Caught on fire inside every hour or so but it was the warmest place in the plant on a cold wet night
Ben Cartwright is taking time away from the Ponderosa to narrate this film.
Yes,I love the Mosquito!
"Why send us by boat when we could fly over in six hours?"
Good question, with all the U boats out there.
What's with the random Stuka sounds during the "air battle" sequence? Not an 87 in sight! 😂
The narrator sounds like Lorne Greene
Yes, it was Lorne Greene.
"During World War II, Greene served as a Flying officer in the Royal Canadian Air Force. Afterward, he was assigned as the principal newsreader on the CBC National News, with CBC gave him the nickname "The Voice of Canada". However, following Canada's entry into World War II in 1939, his role in delivering distressing war news in sonorous tones with his deep, resonant voice caused many listeners to call him "The Voice of Doom", especially as he was delegated the dreaded list of soldiers killed in the war." (Wikipedia)
What great acting
With the accent he had, there was no way that pilot came from Whitby, Yorkshire 🙂
More like Whitby North-East of Toronto!
Curious as to why exactly they didn’t fly their planes across to England. Was it because that was a different and very specialized type of flying?
If anything went wrong the crews are still ok … many of ferry pilots were women
Almost 500 Canadian built Mosquitos were ferried across the Atlantic to Britain. Sadly, a small proportion never made it. I assume they would have been flown by the Air Transport Auxiliary (ATA). Many of the ATA pilots were very experienced with many hours logged on a variety if types and would have flown the same ferry routes many times. It was probably safer to entrust the ferry operation to the ATA rather than let newly trained combat aircrews have a go at flying across the Atlantic for the first time.
For the real story, see Dave McIntosh "Terror in the Right Seat" a navigator's story. To the tune of Waltzing Matilda: "Ops in a Mozzie, Ops in a Mozzie, Who'll come on ops in a Mozzie witb me, And he sang as he drove around another Messerschmitt, I'd like to stand up and see Germany."
DH98 Mosquito B. Mk XX
245 built
Built by de Havilland Canada with (Lend Lease) 1,460 hp Packard Merlin 31 or 33. Specification otherwise as B. Mk VII.
BAE Mosquito page
Recognize that voice? It's Lorne Greene...
Lorne Greene narrating?
Yes indeed
Dam buster Guy Gibson was killed in this plane.
His experience on the Mossie was minimal. He shouldn't have been flying one operationally at that stage. A little knowledge, combined with an oversized ego, is a very dangerous thing!
Combine that with suspected prior damage to the aircraft's mainspar, and yes, the odds of tragedy soared.
400mph
Twin Merlins.!!!!!
Take it from someone who nos, if your looking for an airoplain this is the way to go
airoplain! Love it! Aeroplane. You're welcome
Canadian wood is the secret… Bunnnnngggg!
I remember reading somewhere, baci in the 1980s, that one of the British Columbia mills that produced the plywood for the Mosquitoes was owned by a pair of Austrian brothers, refugees whose sugar business had been seized by the Nazis because they were Jews.
Working without gloves or protedtive equipment
Why did they send the crews by boat instead of flying the planes themselves?
Almost certainly a risk-reward equation.
And there is minimal margin for error in such a flight for the Mosquito.
It would be a long and hard slog for two men who would have to maintain a very accurate navigation plot and flight attitude. If they're off course even a bit, there would be next to no fuel to compensate.
The weather over that expanse was unpredictable in that era.
And if one engine fails, there is nowhere to go but down (it can't go the distance on one).
And the odds of aircrew being rescued in the mid Atlantic are next to none.
@@ArmouredCarriersExactly but another crew did the flight. So my question is why risk the aircraft being flown by a least experienced crew than the one that has been training thoroughly on it.🤔
It took a few months to build a Mosquito. It still takes 18 years and 9 months to raise a potential trainee pilot?@@crusader5989
It's two very different skill sets, roughly the same as comparing a fighter pilot with a commercial airline pilot. Requiring the combat pilots to be trained for the transfer role would heavily increase their training time for a skill set they would only use once, at much higher risk than an experienced transfer crew. The risk of loss in an atlantic crossing by ship would be much lower than a first time transfer crew.
@@ArmouredCarriers very ABC :)
Pilots picked their own navigators? 🤔 Not too sure about that
It was the method in bomber command. Pilot navigators etc would meet up in an informal setting and form crews themselves as they each saw fit.
@@andrewmountford3608 what if nobody wanted to fly with a certain pilot? What if he was a jackass and nobody liked him?
@@guaporeturns9472 in everything I’ve read this hardly ever happened. But if it was clear someone didn’t fit in (or if on ops they started to break down due to stress) they would be swiftly moved to another branch of the service where they did fit in so they did not effect the moral of the other crews.
@@andrewmountford3608 having a hard time believing that
@@guaporeturns9472 feel free to read up and research it. I did.
I wonder, why didn’t they build 10 times more of this great plane. Bomb load delivery at a fraction of the cost and recources, compared to the stupid B17, 25, 26, 24 or their UK equivalents
Bomb load, Mosquito 4,000 lbs Lancaster 22,000 lbs. That could be a reason.
@@grahvis A Mosquito could carry 4000 lbs, while a B-17 could carry 8000 lbs. However the B-17 usually carried 4000 lbs on long missions, the same as the Mosquito.
This is remarkable since the B-17 was a heavy bomber while the Mosquito was a light bomber.
@@grahvis yes, bit if you look at it from the recource side it is totally another picture. And if you look at the loss rate of the sluggisch big planes that even gets worse. And even more worse if you look atbthe precision/accuracybof the big machines. It is the image that does not compy with the huge ineffyciency in recources and manpower that were those big bombers and there stupid campaigns
Stupid American planes made it so you don't speak German or Japanese you sob!!
@@grahvisThe normal Lancaster bombload was around 8000 lbs.
lol mosquito dogfighting with 109s! quite funny thoses canadians
The war won by planes as wooden as the acting.
Because they're not actors.
@@kleinjahr the men who flew in these planes were very brave men and the actors whose contribution to the war effort was to act in this type of film also contributed. It is not clear whether the actors went on to fly combat or not.My comment was intended to be humorous.
@@billboltonIt was pretty funny.
Well played, Bill
Stick to the day job Bill.
Where's are they medals won by canadains mosquitoes!
I think the narrator is Lorne Greene.
Fajny film