Mosquito Questions

[Jure Miljevic]

Hello, Dave

Learning something new and dispensing with false data is not a small reward in itself and I do not considered hours of browsing through my books a waist of time. However, when such often stated ´facts´, which I took for granted, turned out to be incorrect, my trust in published information is severely shaken and I spend hours comparing such basic information as length and span of well documented aircraft.

Your advice about not worrying about details ... much easier said than done. I have mustered all my will power and swore I was going to build a kit OOTB many times and then ended correcting 1 mm too short wingspan and worrying about the number of rivets on spinner. Apparently, keeping things simple is against my nature. Cheers

Jure

[Graham Boak]

I'm afraid that most of the published works on individual aircraft are produced by enthusiasts for the type and journalists.  It's just as well, or there'd be a lot fewer works overall.  However few are done by writers with an engineering background or by more academic historians, used to delving deeply into original sources rather than taking for granted what has been printed before.  So we tend to get lots of operational history linked to a summary of major variants and the company's view of it all.  For much of the audience this isn't too important, if at all, but we modellers do notice small differences, and a subset of us even wonder why.  I'm afraid we're stuck with that side of our nature, and have to be thankful for the use of forums such as these where small inconsistencies can be noted and hopefully clarified.

[Jamie @ Sovereign Hobbies]

I'm as guilty as anyone of getting sucked in, but sometimes you get so far in to digging through dusty old documents in national archives etc that you have to just accept that the information to make a definitive statement no longer exists, if it ever did.

 

I try not to get something as accurate as I can within the time I am willing to devote to it, and within what can be verified from readily available evidence. If a photograph appears on Google Images, I'll use it. If some detail emerges later from some photograph pulled from someone's dusty 'private collection' for the apparent sole purpose of pointing out my error then so be it.

 

Ultimately I'm trying to improve my model making abilities on subjects which interest me. I dislike the term "rivet counter" but I personally try to get things as right as practicable whilst still actually getting a few models built each year, and hopefully to an improving quality each time.

 

As for authors - some are good and some are bad. I have some in-law relatives who work as freelance journalists and write for newspapers mostly, but they have also authored a number of books on quite specialist subjects they aren't subject matter experts on. It's a free world and some people feel perfectly qualified to write about stuff they knew literally nothing about prior to deciding to writing a book on it; their publications being a rehash (with added misunderstandings) of other works. There's a series of naval warship books on the go which are deeply flawed and the author's position is that it's better that modellers have more published material rather than less. The sad thing is that people buy this stuff and trust it as though the author had any real knowledge on the subject, and shun actual facts in favour of nicely presented but easily disproven fallacies.

[Basilisk]

Thank you all for contributing to my question. But special thanks go to Dave Swindell for going through several publications.

 

15 hours ago, Dave Swindell said:

Jure, for myself, and I'm pretty sure Graham too, research and historical accuracy is half the fun of modelling. We're not trying to prove anyone right or wrong, we're just trying to establish a little recognised detail of mosquito production. I too have spent a couople of hours trawling through a dozen or so Mosquito books looking at loads of photos - did I get any modelling done? no! did I learn something I didn't know yesterday? yes! Did I enjoy it? yes! Will it bother me if I see a pre 1943 Mosquito model with a strake? no!

If the details are killing the fun, stop worrying about them (oh  and by the way, there's very few panel lines and rivets on a Mosquito, should be easy to count... sorry couldn't resist )

I couldn't have said it better. I myself thoroughly enjoy this kind of detective work in the hope to make a model more authentic. But at the end a lot is speculation, but I learn normally a lot in the process. 

 

48 minutes ago, Jure Miljevic said:

Hello, Dave

Learning something new and dispensing with false data is not a small reward in itself and I do not considered hours of browsing through my books a waist of time. However, when such often stated ´facts´, which I took for granted, turned out to be incorrect, my trust in published information is severely shaken and I spend hours comparing such basic information as length and span of well documented aircraft.

Your advice about not worrying about details ... much easier said than done. I have mustered all my will power and swore I was going to build a kit OOTB many times and then ended correcting 1 mm too short wingspan and worrying about the number of rivets on spinner. Apparently, keeping things simple is against my nature. Cheers

Jure

I know how you feel as I am a bit of a rivet counter myself.

 

Looks like another myth is busted in regards to the implementation of the strengthening strake. I read at several places that the strengthening strake can be difficult to see, maybe because it just isn't there - sometimes we see what we want to see. Still, it would be nice if a mod leaflet comes to light giving a date of the implementation.

 

This information will certainly be of help in making the model of DK310.

Cheers, Peter

 

[Jure Miljevic]

Hello

Graham and SovereignHobbies, there is little I could add to your posts. Perhaps only a remark that an author, who invested his or her knowledge, experience, time and finances into a new project, can ill afford to lower his or her price below certain amount and someone doing a thousand and the first variation on a same theme has no such problem. A question, whose work is publisher more likely to pick, is purely academic.

Peter, good luck with your DK310 model and I hope I will see it in WIP. Cheers

Jure

Edited February 7, 2017 by Jure Miljevic
edited for spelling

[Basilisk]

On 08/02/2017 at 6:20 AM, Jure Miljevic said:

Peter, good luck with your DK310 model and I hope I will see it in WIP. Cheers

Jure

 

I started my WIP in the De Havilland Mega GB and it contains lots of information and speculation on Mosquito DK310 / E-42 / HB-IMO / B-4.

 

Cheers, Peter

[nuuumannn]

Hello,

 

I don't know if this might be of assistance, but I have a copy of Japanese publication Aero Detail 23 de Havilland Mosquito that states on 114 as a key to line drawings the following: "Reinforcing strake (fitted as modification to all aircraft from early 1943)"

 

Although it does refer specifically to an illustration of a B.IV. I have a couple of books that show later Mossies not fitted with it. It shows up pretty clearly and when two photos are placed side by side with and without it, it is quite definite, although lighting might account for it not being visible in some images. 

 

Just to add a bit of spice to the strake investigation, Australian built Mosquito Mk.41s had the strake on both sides. These aircraft were not PR aircraft, but modified for photo survey and had a cut out door on both sides, hence the strake on the left hand side. A52-319 at the Australian War Memorial at Canberra:

 

 

Peter, here is a walkaround of a Mosquito T.III and other images of preserved Mossies on my site, if you are after some more reference images for your model build. Your investigation into HB-IMO makes for fascinating reading.

 

http://warbirdswalkaround.wixsite.com/warbirds/tv959

Edited February 20, 2017 by nuuumannn