Dunsfold Wings and Wheels 2017 not only gave members of the public an opportunity to enjoy some much needed (and long overdue) summer sunshine, it also helped to generate considerable support for The People’s Mosquito (TPM).
It proved a great opportunity to promote the project’s aims to those who visited our stand on 26-27 August and helped with fundraising towards our fuselage deposit fund.
It also saw our Managing Director, John Lilley, explain the importance of the 22,000 aperture cards recently discovered and donated to The People’s Mosquito by the Airbus team at Broughton.
Decoding the Mosquito’s DNA
We are often asked by members of the public if the project will deliver a restoration or replica DH.98 Mosquito. Having acquired what the Civil Aviation Authority refers to as the ‘mortal remains’ of RL249, the project is classified as a restoration. However, while the project aims to salvage items from the original 1949 aircraft, the reality is, in effect, The People’s Mosquito will be a new aircraft.
While restorations in recent years have seen three DH.98 Mosquitoes returned to airworthiness – all of which are today North-American based – the discovery of the original technical drawings effectively gives us the DNA fingerprint, or genome of the entire Mosquito family. It enables TPM to unlock the engineering secrets of the world’s first, true multi-role combat aircraft. The ability to relate back to original OEM drawings will be invaluable to returning a ‘Mossie’ to UK skies and gives the project the ability to reconfigure the aircraft to multiple marks in the future.
The importance of these drawings, which we continue to study and catalogue in detail, was underlined by John when he was interviewed by Airshows International Radio. You can listen to the interview below:
Nice one, John!