大象传媒

As WW2 progressed there was an increasing shortage of metals for building the warplanes, vehicles and armaments that were so desperately needed. Since my father, Arthur Renn, had been a piano manufacturer for many years, owning Temple Pianos in Stoke Newington, he was an acknowledged expert in the use of various woods to create musical instruments. He was therefore invited by De Havilland Aircraft, based in Hatfield, to work with them on the design of an all-wooden fighter bomber to go into production as soon as possible.

A key part of the technology used was "double curvature plywood" a technique which used newly developed phenolic resins to glue together layers of thin beech veneers, at alternate right angles. They were then placed in autoclaves, under extreme vacuum pressure and shaped around a solid wooden mould. The resultant laminates were extremely strong but very light and could withstand the enormous strains and stresses faced by a warplane in action. The Mosquito was a huge success in the latter years of the war, being extremely manoeuverable and easy to maintain.

One of the most famous exploits in which the aircraft took part was a pinpoint attack on a Gestapo HQ in Copenhagen, Denmark when the bombs were successfully aimed straight through the windows of the building!

From time to time Mosquito air crew used to visit the factory to meet the workers and boost morale. It became a custom for the visitors to be asked to remove their trousers beside the autoclaves and to watch whilst they were placed in the machine under high pressure and pressed! The resultant "knife edge" creases were such a talking point that subsequent RAF visitors would volunteer to remove their trousers as soon as they arrived - much to the delight of the female staff!

The double curvature lightweight plywood technology developed for the Mosquito was also used on Hengist and Horsa gliders , the Vampire fighter and after the war, on parts for the ill fated De Havilland Comet, the world's first jet airliner.

Despite his company's outstanding efforts in two world wars (in WW1 he made wooden propellors), my father was a dedicated "piano man". Post war, apart from making spare parts for the remaining aircraft until they became obsolete, he moved straight back into his first love, making pianos, until he died.

After his death, and as his representative, I was an honoured guest of De Havilland when they opened the Mosquito Museum alongside Nell Gwynn's cottage in Hertfordshire.

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