COBI De Havilland DH-98 Mosquito Set 5735

COBI's De Havilland DH-98 Mosquito is a 1:32 model built from 710 blocks, 39 cm long with a 51.5 cm wingspan. The propellers and ailerons move, the wheels turn on rubber tires, and the cockpit takes the included pilot figure. A display stand, a bomb and a printed nameplate complete the set. No stickers.

It was made of wood, and that was the clever part

The Mosquito's fuselage was a shell of balsa sandwiched between birch plywood, moulded over a concrete form. The wings were spruce and plywood. There was very little metal in it.

The Air Ministry disliked the idea intensely — a wooden unarmed bomber in 1938 sounded like a step back to the previous war. De Havilland built it anyway, privately, and three things turned out to be true.

It used no strategic material. Aluminium was rationed and every aircraft factory was competing for it; a Mosquito needed almost none.

It could be built by people who were not aircraft workers. Furniture makers, cabinet shops, coachbuilders and piano manufacturers across Britain and Canada made components — firms with no aviation experience at all, working in wood they already understood. Around 7,780 were built.

And it was fast. Without gun turrets and their crews and their drag, the Mosquito was quicker than the fighters sent to catch it, which is why the unarmed bomber versions carried no defensive guns at all and had the lowest loss rate in Bomber Command.

RAF crews called it the Wooden Wonder. Göring, in a recorded speech, said he turned green and yellow with envy that the British could build something so good out of wood while German industry could not.

Specifications

Pieces: 710 · Figures: 1 pilot · Scale: 1:32 · Display stand, bomb and nameplate · No stickers
Model dimensions: 39 × 51.5 × 11.5 cm (15.4 × 20.3 × 4.5 in)