During the history of aviation there have been very few aircraft that have achieved immediate success when entering front-line service. The de Havilland Mosquito was one such aircraft. It was not designed to an RAF requirement, but was the result of an initiative of the designers and builders to utilize the skills of woodworkers and the relative abundance of wood in the crisis years of World War II. The result was an airplane that could be built quickly, was extremely fast and extremely versatile. The pilots loved it.

This book describes how it was built and utilizes many hitherto unpublished photographs from the design studio and production lines. It illustrates and explains the many different roles that the aircraft took as the war progressed. Fighter, bomber, reconnaissance, night fighter – there were few tasks that this brilliant design could not adopt.