The de Havilland Mosquito, the Wooden Wonder Nobody in Whitehall Wanted, and the Raid That Blew Open a Prison in Amiens to Free the French Resistance

The de Havilland Mosquito was a twin-engine, two-crew wooden bomber that could outrun the fighters sent to intercept it. Twice rejected by the British Air Ministry before it ever flew, the aircraft became one of the most versatile and capable machines of the Second World War. On February 18, 1944, eighteen Mosquitoes flew one of the most precisely executed bombing raids in aviation history - a low-level attack on a French prison designed not to destroy the building, but to open it.

Why the Air Ministry Said No to a Wooden Bomber

In 1938, British military doctrine held that bombers flying over defended airspace needed defensive armament - tail guns, dorsal turrets, belly positions. Crews were going to be attacked, and they needed to fight back. That was doctrine, and that was what the men in the Air Ministry believed.

Geoffrey de Havilland disagreed. The founder of the de Havilland Aircraft Company at Hatfield, Hertfordshire was already a legend in British aviation. He had a gift for clean, efficient design, and in 1938 he walked into the Air Ministry with a proposal that must have seemed nearly indefensible: build a bomber so fast it would not need guns at all.

The Air Ministry said no. De Havilland refined the proposal with his chief designer, Ronald Bishop, and came back. Twin Rolls-Royce Merlin engines, a crew of two - and the airframe built largely from wood. The Air Ministry said no again.

The Logic Behind Building a Bomber from Wood

The objection to wood was instinctive. This was the most industrialized air war in history, and de Havilland was proposing something that sounded like a scaled-up model airplane. But the logic was sound.

Every metal aircraft factory in Britain was already competing for the same aluminum, the same skilled machinists, the same supply chains being fought over by every branch of the military. Wood drew from an entirely separate industrial world. Furniture shops, cabinet makers, and piano manufacturers were largely untouched by the war economy - and they employed skilled craftsmen who could be put to work immediately. The Beatall Piano Company in north London eventually produced Mosquito fuselage components.

The construction that Bishop developed was a sandwich structure: two thin skins of birch plywood bonded to a balsa wood core, glued with a formaldehyde-based adhesive called Resin W that set as hard as stone. The fuselage was built in two halves, each laid up in a wooden mold, then joined. The result was a structure that was smooth, stiff, and lighter than any comparable aluminum design. Weight is everything in aviation, and the Mosquito’s airframe was magnificently light.

How the Prototype Came to Fly

Through 1938 and most of 1939, de Havilland’s proposals were repeatedly declined. Then Poland fell. Then France fell. The men in Whitehall began reading the proposal with different eyes.

In autumn 1939, de Havilland received a cautious go-ahead - not an enthusiastic endorsement, but a limited contract that was later pared down to a prototype study. The team had never really stopped designing. The prototype took shape at Hatfield through the winter and spring of 1940, finished in an experimental yellow color scheme for visibility during test flights. It was designated W4050.

On November 25, 1940, Geoffrey de Havilland Junior lifted it off the Hatfield grass for the first time. His father stood on the ground and watched.

How Fast Was the Mosquito Compared to the Spitfire?

The test results were almost hard to believe. With engines deliberately detuned to protect them during early flight work, the prototype was hitting close to 390 miles per hour. Production variants at full military power would eventually push certain marks above 415 miles per hour at altitude.

The Supermarine Spitfire Mark I - the aircraft that had helped save Britain just months earlier - had a top speed of around 355 miles per hour. The Hawker Hurricane was slower still. The Mosquito bomber, unarmed, was faster than both of them.

If a Luftwaffe fighter came after a Mosquito crew, the answer was not to turn and fight. The answer was to push the throttles forward and leave. The Focke-Wulf 190, one of the finest fighters the Luftwaffe produced, could not catch a fully developed Mosquito. The pursuing pilot would eventually run low on fuel and have to break off.

The Air Ministry that had twice said no was now signing orders as fast as it could.

The Mosquito’s Many Roles in the War

The bomber variant came first. Then photo-reconnaissance. Then a night fighter packed with radar equipment and cannon armament. Then a fighter-bomber with four 20mm cannons and four Browning machine guns in the nose, plus a bomb bay. The same wooden airframe kept producing new capabilities.

7,781 Mosquitoes were eventually built - in Britain, Canada, and Australia.

The bomber crews began doing things that had not been considered possible. In May 1942, six Mosquitoes from 105 Squadron flew at low level to Cologne in broad daylight, just hours after the famous thousand-bomber raid had hit the city. In what was as much a demonstration as an attack, they showed what this airplane could do.

On January 1, 1943, Mosquitoes from 105 and 139 Squadrons hit Berlin just as Hermann Goering was delivering a live New Year’s Day radio address. The broadcast was cut off. Berliners heard air raid sirens and anti-aircraft guns - and then silence, because the transmission was dead. The Mosquito had flown from England to Berlin, hit the target, and returned before the defenses fully understood what had happened.

The night fighter variant earned its own legend. Wing Commander John Cunningham, flying Mosquitoes equipped with de Havilland Airborne Interception radar, became one of the most successful night fighter pilots of the war. The press dubbed him “Cat’s Eyes Cunningham,” implying exceptional night vision. The Air Ministry was willing to let the public believe it was carrots rather than admit the radar existed.

Operation Jericho: The Amiens Prison Raid

By early 1944, the Gestapo had been systematically dismantling Resistance networks across northern France. Amiens Prison, a 19th-century stone fortress approximately 80 miles north of Paris, had become a collection point for captured Resistance fighters. Intelligence placed the prisoner population at over 200, many of them known Resistance members. Reports indicated executions were imminent - not eventual, but days away.

Group Captain Percy “Pick” Pickard was given the mission. Thirty years old, one of the most experienced and decorated low-level attack pilots in the RAF, Pickard had also appeared in a wartime documentary film, Target for Tonight, that had made him briefly famous across Britain. He was exactly the kind of man assigned to something that should not work.

The plan was intricate. Three waves of Mosquitoes, staggered precisely in time. The first wave would breach the outer prison walls at two specific points. The second wave would destroy the guards’ quarters. The third wave would assess the damage and bomb again if necessary. The sequence mattered as much as the accuracy - too fast, and guards would lock down the prisoners before they could run.

The Flight to Amiens

They flew on February 18, 1944. Snow covered the fields. Cloud base sat below 500 feet - the kind of morning that should have grounded the mission entirely.

Pickard led them out anyway.

The formation crossed the English Channel, came up over the French coast, and flew the entire route to Amiens at fifty feet, navigating by roads, railways, and the frozen patchwork of fields below. At that speed and altitude, the margin for error is essentially zero. The landscape scrolls past at over three miles a minute, and a misread leaves almost no time to correct.

The first wave came in on the prison walls and released their bombs at calculated angles. The masonry came apart. Real gaps opened - wide enough for a man to run through. The second wave struck the guards’ quarters directly. When the third wave assessed the damage, the crews held their bombs. The job was done.

What Happened After the Raid

102 prisoners escaped through the breaches in the wall. Some were recaptured within hours. But more than half reached the French countryside and disappeared - Resistance members who had been waiting for a firing squad walking out into the February snow.

Group Captain Pickard did not come home. A Focke-Wulf 190 caught his Mosquito on the egress and shot it down over a French field. He was 30 years old.

Historians have debated Operation Jericho for eight decades. Some argue the intelligence about imminent executions was overstated. Some question the timing. Others point to the men who escaped and lived through the war.

What no historian disputes is the flying. Fifty feet off the ground, in a February snowstorm, with a bombing problem measured in yards and a timing requirement measured in minutes, the Mosquito crews executed something extraordinary by any standard of airmanship. The airplane made it possible.

How Many de Havilland Mosquitoes Still Fly Today?

The wood construction that gave the Mosquito so many advantages also made preservation difficult. Moisture and time have claimed the great majority of the 7,781 built. A small number still fly - Canadian-built examples surviving better in drier climates than in the damp English air where most of them were born.

At airshows, the sound of a flying Mosquito is distinctive. Two Merlins running together produce something busier and more complex than a single-engine aircraft - the harmonics of the two powerplants playing against each other in a way that takes a moment to identify. When the pilot advances the throttles and the airplane accelerates down the runway, it is immediately clear why the crews who flew these aircraft loved them.

Goering, according to a well-traveled quote, once said the sight of the Mosquito made him turn green and yellow with envy. The Air Ministry that rejected the design twice never produced that reaction in anyone. Geoffrey de Havilland did.

Key Takeaways

The de Havilland Mosquito was rejected by the British Air Ministry in 1938 and again before the war before receiving a cautious development contract in autumn 1939
Built largely from wood by furniture makers and piano manufacturers, it flew faster than the Spitfire Mk I and could outrun the Focke-Wulf 190
Production variants exceeded 415 mph at altitude; a total of 7,781 were built across Britain, Canada, and Australia
On February 18, 1944, eighteen Mosquitoes flew Operation Jericho at fifty feet over France, breaching the walls of Amiens Prison and enabling 102 prisoners to escape
Group Captain Percy Pickard, who led the raid, was shot down and killed on the egress at age 30