Subject: #1 Jet of World War II
From: (Corey C. Jordan)
Date: 7/18/03 5:55 PM Pacific Daylight Time
Message-id:


still shake my head in amazement when I hear the advocates of the Mossie as
a strategic bomber blubber on about how the Mosquito could have replaced
the American heavy bombers because they were fast enough to avoid
interception. Utter rubbish.

hey seem to forget that it would take huge formations of Mosquitos to put
enough bombs on a target to match that delivered by the heavies. individual
Mossies could evade detection, evan small groups could be hard to locate.
But, hundreds of them would be easy to detect early in their flight. That
meant
the Luftwaffe would be waiting high above them in strength. Without any
defensive or offensive guns whatsoever, the Mosquitos would be scattered and
very much chewed to pieces.

Let's do some numbers. The B--17 carried a 5,000 lb. bomb load on most of its
mssions. The B-26 carried a 4,000 bomb load on most of its mssions.

But a max effort of B-17's was about 22 planes. A max effort of B-26's was 56
planes. The B-17's would drop 110,000 lbs on the target, the B-26's would dump
224,000 lbs on the target and did so it from a much lower altitude and with
far greater accuracy. Now you figure what plane can replace the B-17 best. And
it sure as hell wasn't the Mosquito.

Arthur Kramer
Visit my WW II B-26 website at:
http://www.coastcomp.com/artkramer