Mosquito Squadron

By Andrew Herd (9 August 2002)

he Mosquito, the "wooden wonder", was the product of a revolutionary design philosophy which held that if a bomber was given the most powerful engines available, but at the same time made as small and as light as possible, then it would be fast enough to evade its enemies and reach its target. In the 1930s, such thinking was at complete variance with official policy, but the result was a plane which could carry a 4000 pound bomb load 1200 miles at 300 mph. Nothing could catch it.

To begin with, there was great scepticism about de Havilland's project, but once the aircraft was in service, it won universal acclaim - the two man crew of the Mossie, as it was known, could take the same payload to Berlin as the B-17. The Mossie was popular with aircrew too, because they lived longer if they flew it. In fact, it wasn't unknown for individual airframes to do 200 sorties before they were pensioned off, an achievement no other bomber could match.

But there was more to the Mosquito than that. As the implications of its performance sank in, the RAF began to take advantage of its fighter-like manoueverability. Soon after its introduction, the plane was being used to sneak in under radar in order to bomb targets as roof-top height - or even to pitch ordinance into the mouths of railway tunnels. The Mossie became ubiquitous: it served with the Pathfinders, whose target marking made precision bombing possible; its high altitude performance was exploited for photo-reconnaissance and weather reporting purposes; it was used as a day and a night fighter; fitted with rockets, it did service as a fighter-bomber; it was used to lay mines; and one even had a six pounder anti-tank gun fitted in it - with which it fought a duel with a frigate. The Mossie won, though every time the gun was fired it took 20 knots off the airspeed and the plane was never quite the same again. Incredibly, there was a also folding wing version which saw service as a deck-capable torpedo bomber.

The design of the Mosquito was largely undertaken at Salisbury Hall, just north of London, based on the concept of a two man unarmed wooden bomber, powered by two Merlins. It is always said that the fuselage design was inspired by a stuffed pike in a case in the Hall, but whatever the truth of this, the hope was that a streamlined airframe with twice the "wetted" area of the Spitfire and twice the power, could be faster than the RAF's single-engined fighter; though the design was still supposed to be for a bomber. The seeds of the Mosquito's versatility were laid in the actions of R.E. Bishop, the chief designer, who made sure that there was enough room beneath the cockpit to shoehorn in four 20mm cannon. The wooden construction raised a few eyebrows, but it had the advantage that it was highly damage resistant and could easily be repaired in the field.

Mosquito Squadron was developed by Blue Arrow FS: the credits list the team as Mike Hambly, Richard Melville, Marc Sigel, Martin Wright, J.L. Stubbs, Ken French and Bruno Duffort. Just Flight market their work in a compact box with appealing artwork, which contains a CD, a 32 page manual in English and various ads, including the Amazing Virtual Sea-Monkeys, which doesn't tempt me even on second viewing (I last saw a promo for it in BAFS/Just Flight's Battle of Britain Memorial Flight). AVSM is available for £24.99 and looks like a bargain, if you are interested in that kind of thing. Apparently you can grow and breed your own population of Virtual Sea-Monkeys (tm) with their own internal biochemistry and a Digital DNA genome. Makes you glad their biochemistry is internal - what would happen if it got on the outside?

Tearing myself away from Sea-Monkeys, the minimum spec for Mosquito Squadron is quoted as Microsoft Combat Flight Simulator 2, Flight Simulator 2000 or Flight Simulator 2002, a Pentium II 450 MHz PC, Windows 95/98, ME, 2000 or XP (but not NT), at least 64 Mb RAM, CD-ROM Drive, 16 Mb 3D video card and a sound card. The install takes 60 Mb of hard disk space. Recommended requirements are a Pentium III 500 MHz or better, 128 Mb or more RAM, a 32Mb or better 3D video card, a 1024 x 768 screen and 3D sound card, although Mosquito Squadron should work in full screen mode with any monitor resolution between 800 x 600 and 1600 x 1200. My test system was a 1.7 Ghz P IV with 512 Mb of RAM, running Windows XP; a 32 Mb nVidia GeForce 3 and a Soundblaster Audigy. I am pleased to be able to report that the add-on went like a rat up a drainpipe and was generally extremely playable, with no stuttering, but I would think that a 450 MHz PII really is the bottom line for playability.

The installation was straight forward - I stuck the CD-ROM in the drive and followed the prompts after autorun brought up the initial screen. I tested the package in CFS2, after checking Just Flight's web site for updates; there weren't any at the time of writing. When the disks had stopped chuntering away to themselves, I had gained a desktop icon for the add-on, so I clicked it and CFS2 launched, taking me to the custom screen shown at top of the review. Battle of Britain Memorial Flight took a similar approach and it all adds to the atmosphere.

While CFS2 was loading, I skimmed the manual. After some basic advice on how to set up your system, the text goes on to describe the operation of the aircraft and the panel. There are several paragraphs on the basics of taxiing, take-off, approach and landing, which are worth reading, because the Mosquito is an interesting plane to fly, although I am sure that most users will just hit the X key the instant they lift the wheels and go straight to where the shooting starts. The middle section of the manual deals with the 21 missions which are included in the package - pass on these and you miss half the point of buying the package. The remainder of the text includes some useful CFS2 hints and tips, a little bit of background on the Mosquito and its pilots and a reproduction of my favorite poem, High Flight, which was written by a Spitfire pilot, but what the hell.

The aircraft depicted in Mosquito Squadron is the FB VI, which was developed from the fighter version, with hard points on the wing for rockets and racks for 2000 pounds of bombs internally. Two Merlin 25s were fitted. BAFS' visual model is quite neat, with moving control surfaces, wheels and bomb bay doors. The undercarriage and bomb doors are animated and the rocket tracks are something else when you fire them. Overall, the sim lies at the upper end of the CFS2 quality ladder; accurate, though not super detailed, with reasonably crisp textures and good frame rates. The canopy, a particularly tricky thing to capture well in CFS2, is well executed and the whole airframe looks suitably battle-aged. The racks of rockets or bombs empty as you use them, as long as you don't have unlimited ammo checked.

The 2D panel is good by CFS2 standards and although a few trivial little bits and pieces seem to be missing compared to the photos I have on hand, it does give a good idea of what it is like to sit in a Mosquito. No, the view forward ain't that great, but then it wasn't in the original either. By way of compensation, there is a hot spot on the upper left panel which lets you toggle on a "hi-vis" view so that you can see out front; but I suspect that many simmers will just hit the W key once they are in combat and clear the panel completely. A bug in CFS2 means that if you hit the W key repeatedly, starting with the hi-vis panel selected, when you get back to the 2D panel view, both panels display at once and there is no way around this.

The main panel bitmap is pretty good, although it seems to be based on a scan rather than a digital photo; the result is that a few small areas aren't too crisp and the exposure is a little variable. There are no less than four other subsidiary panels, including an enlarged compass, a throttle quadrant, fuel gauges and the sort of radio/nav stack that would have made most Second World War aircrew faint with pleasure, unless Bendix-King really were making push-button FS2000 style autopilots back in '44. I shouldn't complain - there is clearly a great deal of custom programming hidden behind this panel and Blue Arrow have done it well. And no, I didn't test the autopilot.

The tunnel at bottom right of the panel leads down to the entrance door, by the way. Theoretically, if the plane had to be abandoned by parachute, the crew had to crawl down that little hole to bail out - the pilot's notes state rather ominously that it was advisable to feather the starboard propellor first. The virtual cockit is, once again, one of the better ones I have seen in CFS2, but it is still nowhere near what is on offer in IL-2 Sturmovik. It will be interesting to see CFS3.

I am going to have to take a punt at the flight model, because I have never flown in anything even remotely like a Mosquito. However, based on background reading, comparing the numbers and asking around, it seems to be broadly correct. It certainly captures the speed and general pace of the Mossie, and it doesn't make the mistake of making it capable of out-turning an FW190, which the Mosquito clearly wasn't inclined to do. The sim also pulls to the left on take off, just like the original - the cure on the original was to advance the port throttle slightly ahead until on full power. On the other hand, while the controls on the real plane were light and it was cleared for aerobatics, it definitely had more of a tendency to lose height in a roll than the sim. But on the whole, I reckon that Blue Arrow have done a reasonable job - speed was the Mosquito's greatest advantage in a dog fight and the missions should be more than enough to convince you that mixing it with single-engined fighters isn't good for your health. Saying that, Mosquitos did engage in successful dogfights with FW190 fighter bombers when the RAF found that their home defence Typhoons couldn't catch up with them. The sim is really fun to fly, especially with on full throttle with WEP engaged; nothing like going into battle with the Merlins rasping on full song, no sir.

The sounds come from Mike Hambly's enormous collection of original recordings and it is pleasing to hear the distinctive bass that only Merlins can deliver. Too often, sound sets for rarer machines like these are simply hacked from recordings of other, more common engines, and while the sound isn't the be-all and end-all of flight simulation, it is good to hear a set which isn't just an approximation of what the developer thinks you ought to hear. In addition to the plane and the missions, the package also includes Methwold airfield, which has a dirt runway, a scatter of hangars and a church; it isn't terribly sophisticated, but then it doesn't need to be.

Now to the adventures. These are the bread and butter of Mosquito Squadron and like the ones in Battle of Britain Memorial Flight, they are very good indeed. In CFS2 the Mossie missions are prefixed with the letters "MSY" so they are easily identifiable: they range from a recreation of the legendary 1944 low-level raid on Amiens prison, which achieved its object of freeing dozens of French Resistance prisoners; through various fighter-bomber missions, including the heroic ground-level bombing of the Danish Gestapo HQ; to air combat missions, including FW190 fighter-bomber and V1 flying bomb interceptions. It is quite clear that not only has a great deal of thought has gone into not only the types of mission which are included, but also into the design of the individual sorties, which are second to none. If you want to get a feel of what wartime Mosquito operations were like, this package is a great place to start, as there is nothing quite like leading a dozen planes into the thick of the action.

Not only are the missions well-crafted and reliable, they manage to be exciting and quite tough to complete; unless you live eat and breathe CFS2, it will take you several attempts to complete most of them. A footnote in the manual says that they have been put together at the CFS2 "easy" level and that this shouldn't be altered - a comment with which I am in complete agreement. It isn't that it is difficult finding the targets, the problem is that achieving the objectives demands good coordination of your squadron; this isn't a "blast your way in" add-on, and success demands a degree of subtlety. The title "Mosquito Squadron" hasn't been chosen accidentally and those other planes aren't there purely for decoration, so review the wingman and targeting commands and commit them to memory before you take to the air. Though the missions are challenging, the payback is that completing one is extremely satisfying. And, in a move which should please CFS2 fans, the wingmen actually have wheels and props when they are on the ground, unlike most add-ons.

I enjoyed all the missions and had great difficulty choosing a favorite, but if I had to come down to it, I would choose the V1 interception. On the face of it, this is the simplest mission in the set; all you have to do is to catch the flying bombs and shoot them down - but when you come to fly it, you will find the whole mission is balanced on a knife edge, because if you misjudge your dive on the rockets, you have to suffer the ignominy of watching them pull away from you, leaving no chance of catching them up again. Real V1s flew at around 2500 feet and travelled at 320 - 350 mph, so that while in practice a Mosquito could easily catch one by diving on it, it wasn't simple judging the distance and deflection needed to shoot it down. The problem was that V1s had to be intercepted either before it reached the AA guns on the coast, or between those and the barrage balloon network which lay behind it, which limited their exposure to attack. To make matters worse, getting any closer than 150 yards was suicidal and many aircraft were damaged or even destroyed by debris when they got caught up in the explosion. Finally, a V1 could take a fair bit of punishment, some continuing to fly on after receiving many hits. The CFS2 mission reflects this and you will need a great deal of practice before you can shoot them down with any regularity - I would hold the V1 mission as a good test of anyone's CFS2 skills. Perhaps the real reason I enjoyed this one so much was that my mother, who lived in Gravesend during the war, still hates V1s with a real passion. V2s, she says, with undeniable logic, were easier to put up with, because you couldn't hear them coming. Makes me glad I was born in 1959.

I liked Mosquito Squadron. CFS2 add-ons don't have a tradition of making a great deal of money for developers, but this one deserves to sell, I think. Sure, you only get one plane, but it is serious fun to fly and the missions are truly excellent. CFS3 is still far enough away that this package would make a good investment while you are waiting for Microsoft to deliver. Give it a try.