Mosquito Intruders - Target Europe: The RAF’s First Elite Night Raider Units

It was only the ‘above average’ pilots and navigators who were invited to volunteer for what was some of the most challenging, daring and rewarding flying operations of the Second World War.Their role was to take Mosquitos at low level through the night across Europe to loiter near a Luftwaffe airfield to attack and shoot down returning enemy bombers or night fighters. The Mosquito intruders’ story starts during the Battle of Britain, when RAF planners noticed a few German interlopers ‘hiding’ in the returning bomber streams, so that they could attack landing RAF aircraft.They recognised that this was a tactic the RAF could also employ. To exploit this concept properly, the RAF needed the right equipment, training programme and airmen.Each would take time to establish. It was not until mid-1943, with the superior performance and capabilities of the iconic de Havilland DH.98 Mosquito FB VI, that the intruders’ full impact would at last be felt.The first three intruder squadrons, Nos. 23