The first prototype flew in 1949. The aircraft debuted in 1952 for commercial service. The de Havilland Comet had plenty going for it: a result of the United Kingdom’s “Brabazon Committee” called for a pressurized, trans-Atlantic aircraft capable of holding a ton of payload while cruising along at 400 miles per hour. Most aircraft manufacturers balked, but de Havilland went for broke and got to work. The aircraft, initially known as the D.H. 106, was roughly the size of an early Boeing 737, but only carried 36 passengers in spacious luxury. Except for the tailfin, which looks proper for a 1940s-era airframe and the wing-embedded jet engines, the Comet looks like it could potentially be flying today. Truth be told, the last Comet flight belonged to a Comet 4C, which last flew in March 1997. Many historians like to focus on the airframe failures that plagued early Comets around 1952-1954 but truth be told, the Comet was more advanced than most any other airframe at the time and if it hadn’t been on de Havilland, it would’ve happened to Douglas or Boeing…and they admitted as such in private later on.
The Comet was groundbreaking. Being jet-powered and overall reliable, flaws aside, the Comet basically blazed the trail for commercial jet airliner service and as a result of the early incidents, strengthened aircraft accident investigation techniques, deep-sea salvage operations, aircraft reconstruction techniques, and thanks to the unbelievable testing requirements needed to get the modified Comet forms back into commercial service, airframe testing simulations were also improved.
If you like strange…watch “No Island in the Sky” where Jimmy Stewart plays an British “boffin” ( egg head ) how claims the crash of the “Rutland Reindeer” in Canada was due to a tail failure on it’s 1440 hr. The movie was filmed in 1951, long before the first crash of the Comet.
It’s No HIGHWAY in the Sky, Island in the Sky was an equally good John Wayne flic. Sorry!!!
That movie was based on a book by an ex-De Haviland engineer, Nevil Shute. He wasn’t working for De Haviland at the time they developed the Comet, but had a pretty good idea of what potential problems it might run into. Shute also got a few details about the metal fatigue problem wrong – it was less predictable than either Shute or the De Haviland engineers thought.
On another literature note, this sort of disaster would be why Dagne Taggart’s ordering an entire railroad main line made out of an untested aluminum alloy in Atlas Shrugged was either desperate or insane. If that book took place in the time it was written, her brother would have been well aware of this disaster too, if he’d been keeping up with the industry.
This was a great example of how humanity often learns more through failures than successes.
Holy Cow literary references on Bangshift, will wonders never cease!