Given the superb record of deHavilland Mosquitos on night bombing raids I ask the question would the massive industrial resources spent on the Lancasters and Halifaxes have been better allocated to equiping the bomber squadrons with mosquitos? They had a very low loss rate, could carry large bombloads [including the 4000lb "cookie"], were built mainly from non strategic materials, and required far fewer aircrew. Would a Bomber Command equipped in the main with mosquitos have been more effective?

The Mosquitoes were faster and easier to build, however they could not carry that 4000lb bomb for the same range as a Lancaster. It would have taken thousands of the Mosquitoes to do the same level of damage as a couple hundred of the bigger bombers.

The Mossies were excellent as a night fighter and a night intruder, but two engined bombers just could not do the damage of the bigger 4-engined bombers. If you had a pinpoint target at mid-range, then the Mosquito may be the better bomber.

Jeff

humm difficult to say but look at the germans most of thier bomers were only 2 engines and it really hampered them in operations, to be fair you might get 3 crews from a lanc but wear and attriction and resting of pilots would also come into it think of the amount of mossies and crews it would take to mount a large raid and also the logistical back up of the ground crews as this would also eat into the man power pool for the army and navy

I dearly love the mosquito, but it would have been unfeasable to try to replace heavy bombers with them. The biggest difference is bombload capacity. The mossie could carry a 4,000lb cookie to Berlin, but nothing else, whereas a lanc could carry a cookie and a full load of incendiaries as well and do much more damage. A lanc could carry roughly 20,000lbs of bombs to Berlin, so it would take 4 or 5 mossies to equal the bomb capacity of one lanc. In order to replace all the lancs with mossies, you would almost have to completely pave over England for enough runway space to handle them all. I don't think anyone would want that.

In my opinion I think that the mosquitos and lancasters worked pretty good together. In ways of the Mossie marking the target and then the heavies hitting it. Other ways of mutual destruction would be with the little night raids the mossies did.

~cHIP :-)

You could have a similiar discussion concerning the Martin B-26 Marauder and the B-17/24. The B-26 ended the war with the lowest loss rate of any USAAC bomber. But there is no way that B-26, A-20/A-26/B-25 could replace the heavies. Each aircraft had a niche or two that they could feel, just like there British counterparts.

Just an interesting aside - Only the US and UK had an effective four-engined strategic bomber force during WW2. What would have happened if Germany and/or Japan had started the war with a true strategic bomber force.