Mosquito Vets Hold Last Reunion

They were among the gutsiest pilots ever to strap on an airplane -- the UK airmen who flew the de Havelland Mosquito. Sunday, they met for the last time at Britain's Royal Air Force Museum in London. What the Germans and Japanese couldn't do during the war, time is doing to them now. The veterans are succumbing to age and the Mosquito Aircrew Association says there just aren't enough left to make the reunions viable.

By the time the war was over, 7,781 of the wooden aircraft had been built in the UK, Canada and Australia. They were the SR-71s of their time. With a top speed of 400 mph, the Mosquitos could outfly just about any aircraft that flew during the war. And, unlike the Blackbird, the Mosquito could fight.

In fact, after Mosquitos were used during a bombing raid on Berlin in 1943, German Air Marshal Hermann Goering was red-faced angry.

"It makes me furious when I see the Mosquito. I turn green and yellow with envy. The British, who can afford aluminum better than we can, knock together a beautiful wooden aircraft that every piano factory over there is building, and they give it a speed which they have now increased yet again. What do you make of that? There is nothing the British do not have. They have the geniuses and we have the nincompoops."

FMI: www.war-experience.org/mosquito-aircrew