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De Haviland Mosquito Museum, Hatfield.

AE501

HONOURED MEMBER RIP
Here are some photos of a real war winner. This did everything. Photo Reconaissance, Night Fighter,Bomber day/night, Ship Buster you name it, it did it.
See the Molins Gun, made by Molins whose peacetime business was the production of cigarette making machinery as it still is today, although they have obviously had to diversify. I think they made 57 of these guns for the Mosquito in its ship busting role, with an army 6 pounder (57mm) gun mounted in the nose which was some beast in those days. Pilots reckoned it nearly stopped the plane. You can see the cartridges are 6pr AP-T.
There is a 4000lb 'cookie' underneath, for its bombing role
The yellow mossie is the one plane on which every wartime Mosquito modification was trialled.

They also had Sir Frank Whittle's first jet engine and a couple more stages. He was revered like the sacred cow at Northrop Aviation just after the war, when he went on a visit to there factory and he saw that they had got their jet concept wrong and told them so on the spot and told them how to correct it there and then.

It must have been about the mid nineties when a friend of mine, who was a pilot, told me about the museum so we went. It was hardly advertised, was being run on a shoestring by a bunch of devoted enthusiasts and there were things outside that were probably going to rot.

It was said that BAe Hatfield wanted it all and once it got inside their security fence it would not be open readily, if at all, to the public.
 

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See the Molins Gun, made by Molins whose peacetime business was the production of cigarette making machinery as it still is today, although they have obviously had to diversify.
Clever bunch, Molins. Real unsung heroes of WWII. They also re-engineered the W&S signal pistol so that it could be make out of cheap steel rather than posh brass. I have several, made by Berridge, in my collection.
 
I have had a look on line and it is still going strong and seems to be doing plenty of restoration work. It is in the same place and still staffed by volunteers. They are open every day except Mondays and Wednesdays and it shuts at 4pm.
 
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