The kind offer of C51 has certainly made my day, if not the entire month! Such acts of friendship are truly never forgotten.
The study of the Mosquito vs. the B-17 brings up several interesting aspects.
12.731 B-17's were apparently built, the corresponding numbers for the Mosquito being 7.781. The question to me seems to be; could the plants in Totonto, Hertfordshire, Luton, Coventry, Portsmouth, Chester have built more, had the order been given?
De Havilland was a company specialising in light aircraft designs, relying on speed in stead of toughness and crew protection and as such they had the required experience to pull it off, re. Dux' information regarding the Ta154.
One must also remember that production capacity would probably be stretched to the limit all over the U.K, and the demand for engines to go other aircraft types put a limitation on things as well. The Mosquito was initially rejected on ground of scepticism towards it being built in wood, and it also suffered from the fact that Merlin engines for Spitfires/fighters had priority in the days after the Dunkirk debacle.
The US Army Airforce had plenty of opportunity to see the promise of the Mosquito for themselves during trials in the presence of General Arnold. The Americans seemed to think that the P-38 Lightning would be it's equal, thereby revealing that the Americans were thinking more in terms of Fighter-Recon duties rather than bomber roles.
Perhaps we are also being too dismissive of the B-17: After all, it could fly longer (2000 miles) than the Mossie (900 miles), higher (35.600 ft vs. 29.000 ft.)
Boeing would certainly be able to turn out bombers from their plants at a rate that would not rival the auto industry (although I think that the world record for production of a single bomber was held by the British who turned out a Wellington in less than 48 hours; the previous record). Apparently the aircraft manufacturers were not totally geared for mass production, relying more on engineering skills and developing more advanced aircraft than being able to turn out huge quantities.
Furthermore, the B-17's dropped a frightful lot of tonnes of bombs on targets and as such made a major contribution to the overall campaign.
But still; more was needed that the 12 thousand B-17's so a huge number of B-24's were also built. Sharing the jobs over the country and differenct manufacturers leading hopefully to increased competition and lower cost per aircraft being amongst the political benefits.
The fact that "Strategic Bombing" was not as successful as it was thought to be, by protagonists such ad Gen. Arnold, Trenchard and Billy Mitchell was a lesson that still had to be learned.
In conclusion, I would guess that a) The Mossie was probably being used primarily in the roles in which it excelled b) More Mossies would have been very hard to produce to sustain a bomber force the size of the US Airforce during the Battle of Europe c) The B-17 was in the role for which it had been originally intended, although some of the preconditions for its design proved to carry some tradeoffs when entering battle d) Numbers made the difference
