Havilland DH98 Mosquito

The de Havilland company conceived the idea of a wooden aircraft to take advantage of the underutilised resources and skills of the furniture industry at a time when the conventional aircraft industry was under great pressure, combined with wartime shortages of steel and aluminium.” The Air Ministry was originally uninterested in the revolutionary concept, therefore de Havilland built the Mosquito on a speculative basis under principal designer Ronald Bishop.

The performance of the Mosquito prototype piqued the ministry’s curiosity. Throughout the 1930s, de Havilland had built a reputation for manufacturing revolutionary high-speed aircraft such as the DH.88 Comet mailplane and DH.91 Albatross airliner, both of which used the composite wood construction that the Mosquito would utilise.

The Island’s part in its history stems from conversations with Mr Frank Colson who was deployed at SARO works by the Folly Pub on the River Medina. He recounts that the wings were laminated there from plywood that had been compressed using German presses that had been installed some years earlier rather ironic.

• Smithsonian

• Smithsonian