The P-38 would fly faster, climb much faster and much higher than the Mosquito. Not taking anything away from the Mosquito but it was designed as a fighter bomber.
For entertaining, educated amateur commentary on the P-38 and the Mosquito, Chuckhawks.com is hard to beat:
Also covered here: The Best Fighter Planes of World War II
and here: The Super Warbirds of World War II.
Dh.98 Mosquito covered here: The Great Bombers of World War II.
Lightning and Mosquito compared as fighters here: Twin Engine Fighter Planes of World War II
Lots more on that site for those inclined to rhapsodize about period planes and ships.
The P38s top end performance is indeed better than a mosquito. I want to find out why American pilots were given standing instructions not to fly next to a mossie.
As a night fighter , presumably because it was big enough to carry a chunk of fancy, heavy radar equipment on top of it’s stellar performance, the mossie doesnt seem to have had an equal.
The US never dropped a bomb out of any of them, having converted the only ones it got from canada, delivered as bombers, into reconnaissance planes (again, better than a spit or a p38 it could carry numerous cameras) . The RAF sent a whole bunch of guys down to the pacific equipped with highball, who had been training to sink Tirpitz. Assuming it also had room for radar, then surely hitting jap ships under cover of night, using a radar to spot a massive lump of metal on a flat sea, would have been like shooting fish in a barrel. Alas they spent the end of the war sitting about in Australia.
The 40 odd variants alone is testament to how useful the plane was, and how much demand it was in. It’s difficult to find anything it wasn’t doing by 1945. It is also a lot harder to build, despite it’s low use of aluminium, than the heavy bombers by the end of the war. I suppose, by late 44 that we all thought that the war would be over tomorrow and for an American manufacturer to start trying to build them by then would have seemed pointless.
It still doesnt explain why the carrier capable mosquito squadron sent to help out wiping out any remaining jap carriers, were never used. Or why, as early '43, when several senior American figures, including the president’s son no less, were singing it’s praises., that the US was not churning them out.
I know this is turning into a yank bashing rant by me (again).
I have a number of culprits in the case of why were there not more mosquitoes built in WWII. Chief among them is this guy
who lied about the damage the Luftwaffe had done to Britain in order to justify carpet bombing of Germany.
Arthur Harris is up there, though you could argue he was just following orders, as they say.
But we are still left with two bare facts
not one bomb was dropped by USAAF out of a mosquito
not one Mosquito was built by the US
It’s been argued that, once the P51s were escorting the B17s, that causalities plummeted. Also, once they had Norden, that they were hitting stuff a lot more accurately.
But before then, it was virtual suicide. If we’d had more mossies in 43 we could have done far more damage. And afterwards, if we’d had lots lots more, we could have converted the lot into rocket bearing fighter bombers and relentlessly attacked German land and air forces.
Given the appalling casualty rate of bomber command, both US and British & Commonwealth, it’s worth picking over.
I’ll go the Mosquito-vs-Lightning debate one further: since so much of the Mosquito’s performance came from using the wonderful (and British) Merlin engine, which was also the power plant for war-winning fighters like the Spitfire and P-51 Mustang, how would a P-38 have performed if given Merlin engines? Using the less-efficient Allisons, later models of the P-38 were able to hold their own with the best fighters of the war. Imagine a Merlined Lightning!
I know why they didn’t do it – even a Merlined Lightning wouldn’t be as good as the two Mustangs you could build with those engines. But still, what a monster she would have been.
You mean like a “twin” mustang? Hmmm.
A problem is that the Merlin evidently would have required a major redesign of the engine nacelles for the Lightning. This would have come with many theoretical benefits—see this blog post on potential speed/altitude curves for a Merlin-equipped Lightning—but ultimately not worth shutting down the production line for the months it’d have taken to retool for the new nacelles. Plus, as has been mentioned, you’re only getting one fighter for these two Merlins, not the two you’d get by putting them in a P-51. There also were allegations of chicanery in War Department procurement in favor of Allison; see this discussion for a synopsis. I think the retooling explanation is adequate, but there you go.
Finally, the P-38 mod that should have been done, if it was needed, was the P-38K with bigger props, better Allisons, and a different intercooler design. Yet again, it looks like the delay for retooling doomed that modification. Also, the main things that stand out as improvements for the P-38K, rate of climb and service ceiling, don’t seem to me to be absolutely essential in an escort fighter, though they probably would enhance the P-38s boom and zoom preferred dogfight tactic. As an Interceptor though, the modification was amazing. 5 minutes from stand-still to 20,000 feet is appreciably faster than the 6.6 minutes a P-51D showed in an April 1945 test. But how many things needed intercepting by the Allies in even April 1943?
The “twin mustang” was identified as the F-82 Twin Mustang. Adequate for Korea and the end of WWII but jets were the future.
The immense distances between islands in the Pacific Theater required a fighter type that could fly for hours between islands, yet have its pilot fresh for combat at any time. The P-38 only had one pilot, so a new plane was needed. North American’s solution was its XP-82 Twin Mustang, essentially two modified P-51H fuselages combined in a twin-boom configuration, carrying two pilots to share the tasks of flying and fighting. Although the Twin Mustang arrived too late for World War II, it joined the Air Force as the F-82 escort fighter and night fighter, and went on to a successful combat career in the Korean War.
http://www.globalsecurity.org/military/systems/aircraft/f-82.htm
F-82E Twin Mustang
The F-82E main upgrade was in its two Allison liquid cooled engines, V-1710-143 and V-1710-145 (Each of these 12 cylinder engines developed 1,600 horsepower at takeoff; each of the F-82B’s Packard built V-1650 engines, only 1,380.). Otherwise, the twin fuselage (joined by a center wing panel and tailplane) low wing, long range, F-82E escort was similar to the F-82B. The wing had a NACA low drag, laminar flow air foil section and could haul external fuel tanks, bombs, or rockets. Both the F-82B and E could be provided with jettisonable canopies, hydraulic boost controls for all movable surfaces, thermal anti-icing, anti-G suits, adequate cabin heating and ventilation, lowpressure oxygen system, and armorplating to protect the two pilots.
http://www.globalsecurity.org/military/systems/aircraft/f-82e.htm
And all twin fuselage aircraft suffered from serious pilot visability problems which were problematic during dogfights.
(shortened for clarity)
Why do you assume that the another country had to build Mosquitos? In the case of the U.S., it was already churning out thousands of fighters, bombers, cargo planes, sea planes, observation planes, etc. Should a new factory be built or should an existing assembly line be shut down and converted to build de Havilland’s design?
The Mosquito was a remarkable aircraft but it certainly wasn’t the last/only aircraft needed to fight WWII.
Just one, it turns out.
(And that one didn’t require a zoom climb.)
Humor aside,
Thanks for those links!
Did it significantly out-perform the P-61?
I believe the four 20mm M2 canons on the P-61 gave it an edge in weapons but the F-82 was the overall better “fighter”. Their main claim to fame was the onboard radar which gave them a huge advantage at night. Both played second supply-side fiddle to four engine bombers and the P-51. Both were replaced by jets.
F-82 Twin Mustang
Specifications
Manufacturer: Lockheed Aircraft Corporation
Span: 51 ft. 3 in.
Length: 38 ft. 1 in.
Height: 13 ft. 8 in.
Weight: 24,800 lbs. max.
Armament: •Six .50-cal. machine guns,
•25 five-inch rockets, and
•4,000 lbs. of bombs
Engines: Two Packard V-1650s of 1,380 hp. ea.
Crew: Two
Cost: $228,000
Maximum speed: 482 mph
Cruising speed: 280 mph
Range: 2,200 miles
Service Ceiling: 39,900 ft
http://www.globalsecurity.org/military/systems/aircraft/f-82-specs.htm
P-61 Black Widow
Specifications
Manufacturer: Northrop
Span: 66 ft (20.11m)
Length: 49 ft 7 in (15.11m)
Height: 14 ft. 8 in (4.47m)
Weight: Empty: 23,450 lb (10637 kg)
Max. Takeoff: 36,200 (16420 kg)
Armament: •4 X 0.5 (12.7mm) Browning machine guns in dorsal barbette, 560 rounds each
•4 X 20mm M2 canon 200 rounds each
•1,600 lbs (726 kg) Bomb Load on four external pylons
Engines: two 2,000-hp (1678-kW) Pratt & Whitney R-2800-65 Double Wasp 18-cylinder radials
Crew: three
Cost:
Maximum speed: 366 mph (589 km/h) at 20,000 ft (6096m)
Cruising speed:
Range: 1,350 miles (2172 km) at 229 mph
Service Ceiling:
http://www.globalsecurity.org/military/systems/aircraft/p-61-specs.htm
Rockets at that point were just for ground targets, were they not?
I hadn’t realized how fast the F-82 was. Its speed surely must have been a real plus, maybe the plus.
On the other hand, the P-61did have radar. I have no idea, though, how it compared ot that on the F-82.
Regardless, both were great planes.
Yes, the P-61 did have radar. My sentence was poorly worded. :smack:
Both of their main claim to fame was the onboard radar which gave them a huge advantage at night.
Not in the late '40s through the '50s. See FFAR for more details. It was the main armament of interceptors like the F-89 and F-94, while the bugs behind a practical AAM were being worked out. That the Mighty Mouse FFAR sucked as an air to air weapon no doubt hastened the development of the first AAMs.
Because there weren’t anywhere near enough of them.
*
General Henry “Hap” Arnold, commander of the United States Army Air Forces… now became very determined to get his hands on the Mozzie, beginning with a offer to swap P-51 Mustangs for Mosquitos. The British turned him down. The Mosquito was increasingly seen as difficult to replace.*
http://www.airvectors.net/avmoss_2.html#m8
I would have certainly turned to Boeing and said stop making Mitchel bombers and told them to start knocking out mosquitoes. I would also say to anyone making something calling itself a night fighter or a reconnaissance plane to stop immediately and build these. There just wasnt an equal to it in either of those fields. When USAAF did finally get some from Canada, delivered as bombers, they refitted them as reconnaissance planes. If Canada can make 90 in a year without really trying, how many could have Chicago knocked out ?. Just an extra 1,000 of these would have had a massive impact.
Why the USAAF chose not to employ fast bomber tactics is perhaps pretty obvious. It didn’t have any worthy of the task. The British lied to and/or fooled themselves about the effectiveness of carpet bombing, both in the damage it does to an enemy’s infrastructure but also to it’s morale. As has been stated a hundred times already, this bomber blew up 5 times as much stuff as any other bomber per lb of bomb, and had the lowest casualty rate. Speer claimed that the failure to concentrate on what mattered in the bombing campaign could have lost us the war in much the same way as we claim the Germans lost the Battle of Britain. The Germans highlighted the Mosquito as the most feared weapon we had.
As I have said several times, I do not want this to come across as relentless yank bashing. Hundreds of thousands of Americans died fighting for Europe. Mainland Europe, at the very least, would have ended up under either Nazi or Bolshevik control if it werent for Overlord. I in no way wish to denigrate that sacrifice. But I need to know why, when the head of the US air force says “get me some of them”, that someone doesn’t just build the bloody things.
On our side, yes. Some Fw190s were fitted with unguided air-to-air rockets that would explode after a pre-set time. They were inaccurate singly, but a volley of them from a fighter squadron into a mass of bombers could score a few hits and disrupt formation flying, rather like a short well-aimed burst of heavy flak.
The Bachem Natter was intended simply as a delivery system for twenty or so similar rockets - it would take off vertically, make a single firing pass, then land by parachute while the pilot baled out separately - but it never flew operationally or, as it happened, ever with a surviving pilot.
And they’d have said “What?” - the B-25 was made by North American, not Boeing. (Boeing bought them up fifty years after the war ended.) 
sorry.
The point was being made that America was making enough airplanes as it was, wasn’t it. And surely yes, just not the right ones always.
The point has been made about refitting lines, and I accept that it wouldn’t have been as simple as just making a command.