De Havilland DH.98 Mosquito Color Photographs Part II

Beautiful machine.

Part I Photo’s HERE.

Inch High Guy

A beautiful in-flight photograph of a Mosquito B Mk. IV. DK338 was later issued to No. 105 Squadron.

This is NT181, a Mosquito FB Mk. VI assigned to No. 620 Squadron at East Wretham.

NT181 again, from the front. The wear to the spinners and nacelle is interesting and would pose a challenge to the modeler.

Rockets proved especially effective against shipping. The armorers here wear leather jerkins, each man is attired slightly differently.

A Mosquito is “bombed up” with a little canine assistance. Compare the appearance of the bomb fins with that of the bomb bodies.

A South African Air Force FB Mk. VI of No. 60 Squadron photographed at Bari, Italy, September 1944. Note the spinners are different colors.

Another view of the same aircraft, serial number HP968.

One of the more attractive Mosquito schemes is the overall PRU Blue, as seen here worn by PR Mk. XVI…

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In Memoriam: Capt. Dale “Snort Snodgrass

H/T WRSA

Q&A: CAPT. DALE “SNORT” SNODGRASS (USN, RET) – THE F-14 AND NAVAL AVIATION

 

Great article about a military naval aviation Pioneer who put the F-14 Tomcat on the map forever.

Read a touching tribute about his death on July 24th, 2021 HERE.

 

The First War Won Primarily with Unmanned Systems

Ten Lessons from the Second Nagorno-Karabakh War By John Antal The Second Nagorno-Karabakh War was fought between Armenia and Azerbaijan from September 24 to November 10, 2020. 29 more words

The First War Won Primarily with Unmanned Systems — American Partisan

Know your WW2 History: The revolutionary fuse that won World War II

The revolutionary fuse that helped win World War II

 

Some very interesting reading on a device that helped shorten the war considerably.

Stay Alert, Armed and Dangerous!

 

World War II History: Hitler’s Kamikazes

April 7, 1945, should have been just another high-explosive day over Nazi Germany. That morning, as they had done on so many mornings for the past three years, the bomb-laden B-17s and B-24s lumbered into the sky from their airfields in southern England. An armada of 1,300 bombers, snug under the protection of 850 P-47 and P-51 fighters, droned majestically over the North Sea toward their targets in northern Germany. Marked for destruction were oil facilities and arms factories near Hamburg, as well as airfields where the revolutionary Messerschmitt 262 jet fighters were based.

No combat mission over Nazi Germany could ever truly be a “milk run.” Yet the Eighth Air Force had come a long way since the dark days of late 1943, when its raids against Regensburg and Schweinfurt cost 20 percent of the bombing force. By April 1945, only a month away from Hitler’s suicide and the Thousand-Year Reich’s surrender, Germany’s defenses were disintegrating.  The Luftwaffe, crippled by fuel shortages and lack of trained pilots, was only capable of sporadic—albeit still deadly—attacks. German jets outclassed the slower propeller-driven Allied bombers and fighters, but there weren’t many of them. At this stage in the war, the biggest problem for the American and British bomber fleets wasn’t German aircraft, but rather finding fresh cities that hadn’t already been bombed to rubble.

Since the first Flying Fortresses had appeared over Germany in January 1943, the Luftwaffe had thrown everything it could think of to knock down the big American four-engined bombers. Single-engine fighters, twin-engined fighters, bombers converted into fighters, fighters carrying anti-tank guns, aerial rockets, and aerial bombs dropped into the bomber formations. The Luftwaffe was caught in a chicken-and-egg crossfire: to shoot down massed formations of heavy bombers bristling with machine guns, the Germans needed heavily armed and armored fighters. But these clumsy “assault fighters” were easy prey for the nimbler American fighter escorts.

Desperate for a solution, the Nazis turned to another idea. They would ram their fighters into the American bombers.

Read the Remainder at National Interest