All metal Mosquito ??

[Six Nifty .50s]

Originally Posted by MarkRS

Another quote from the site:

"The beautifully rounded shape of the Spitfire's fuselage is built with the same "balsa-ply-balsa" sandwich construction technique as used on the famous De Havilland Mosquito, giving tremendous stiffness and strength, but a lot less weight than metal."

I rest my case.

Have you considered termites, beetles, worms, fungus?

Maybe the RAF could save some coin by building a fleet of Eurofighter Typhoons made of less expensive stealthy materials, like balsa-wood.

[MarkRS]

Originally Posted by Six Nifty .50s

Have you considered termites, beetles, worms, fungus?

Maybe the RAF could save some coin by building a fleet of Eurofighter Typhoons made of less expensive stealthy materials, like balsa-wood.

Do you want to build a plane from them or are you worried about them eating the structure? Seriously, today you can protect the wood from all bugs and fungus completely.

The other problem with wood or any composite aircraft is surface heating at high speed. You need a heat shield or sacrificial surface to protect the temperature sensitive structure. Aluminium is not much better which is why Titanium is used a lot.

[Empiricist]

Originally Posted by Graham Boak

the main component of the Mosquito was not balsa but Spruce

Let's remember also about the US contribution in Mosquito. That aircraft was skinned with the American plasticized birch veneer manufactured by the Pluswood Inc., which in fact was a consortium of three companies -- the Northern Hardwood Veneers Inc., Lullabye Furniture Corp. and Algoma Forest Products Ltd. The Pluswood skin (called during WWII the "wood alloy") was far lighter than duraluminum, highly resistant to fire and abrasion, and had very good weight-strength ratio.

[mhuxt]

I thought Roddis did the plywood?

[Empiricist]

The Americans were consultants at Mosquito manufacturing process although the British not necessarily want to remember about it today. Three Mosquitos were tested throughout the war in the USAAF R&D center at Wright Field.

What is mentioned above is a special veneer for aviation industry, not a plywood. The forumers many times do not differentiate plywood from veneer in airframe construction. In interwar period and during WWII the Americans were the world's leaders in plasticized veneers, molding technologies (Duramold process) and the autoclaves for an airframe construction -- pioneer autoclaves as known today for the GRP- or carbon-made airframes. For example, there was a feasibility study done during WWII to manufacture all-wood P-39 fighter. As it was counted then all-wood P-39 would be close to 10mph faster than its all-metal counterpart. There was also a plan to manufacture all-wood SBD Dauntless dive bombers. In period American opinion properly built wooden aircraft has a longer cruising range, is faster and can carry a heavier payload.

When it comes to Mosquito -- the best materials on its manufacturing were published during WWII. I recommend to read an interesting and well-illustrated article "It's The Skin" by Professor Nicholas J. Hoff -- the Air Progress monthly, Vol. 3 No. 3, September 1943.

[mhuxt]

That's great info - many thanks, will try to find that article.

[Empiricist]

Originally Posted by mhuxt

That's great info - many thanks, will try to find that article.

The WWII era American professional aviation press is full of extremely interesting articles on wooden technologies applied in the airframe structures written by the engineers, researchers, CEOs of various companies etc.

Writing his article on Mosquito Professor Nicholas J. Hoff foresaw very well such discussions as can be seen over here. He wrote among others:

"That wood construction can compete with and even surpass metal construction may seem strange to the nonspecialist in aircraft engineering."

[drgondog]

Graham - its hard to say as rivets are an often unaccounted for component of weight for metal fabrication.

Having said this I have long been out of the industry and my only experience with non-metal fabrication components was with 1960-70's composites and never wood construction.

It is intriguing to me to visualize re-designing an existing conventional airframe to employ spruce versus 2024 or 7075, especially in the case of shear load transfer for both panels and beams, where the adhesives replace rivets and fasteners.

[Empiricist]

Re: post #31 and strange wording "balsa-ply-balsa".

We do have misunderstanding in this case. For the Mosquito airframe it was "ply-balsa-ply". Below you can see one of illustrations of Professor Nicholas J. Hoff's article mentioned.


Uploaded with ImageShack.us

[Empiricist]

Originally Posted by MarkRS

Sorry to disagree, but Mosquitos were not ordinary aircraft. They were the highest of high tech at the time.

You did good job in this thread. You are absolutely right. The Mosquito was neither better nor worse than all-metal planes of that era. But in the field of wooden airframes it was high-tech aircraft in the 1940s circumstances.