Recollections of Mosquito RR299 may fade, but are never totally forgotten. We talked to two of its illustrious former British Aerospace pilots about campaigning the much-missed machine around airshows at home and abroad
There seemed no end to it. A Venom accident at Hawarden that could have ended in tragedy, the P-38 Lightning crash at Duxford that killed ‘Hoof’ Proudfoot, the non-fatal Bristol Freighter loss at Enstone — July 1996 had already been a terrible month for British historic aviation. Then it got even worse.
Somehow, to be without Mosquito TIII RR299 was unthinkable. It seemed as permanent a part of our aviation heritage as any museum exhibit, its presence virtually taken for granted. The events of 21 July 1996 changed all that, and claimed two lives. The loss of RR299, of pilot Kevin Moorhouse and engineer Steve Watson during a display at Barton near Manchester sent further shockwaves through a vintage aircraft scene that was already reeling from the events of the past few weeks. An aircraft that, to many, had always been around was gone, along with two popular men closely associated with it.
For the Hawker Siddeley and British Aerospace test pilots who flew the Mosquito, the chance to do …
