Exceptionally well done documentary for a regional TV station

As a 4 year-old in 1969 , I believe flew from Cyprus to the UK in a Comet. My father was RAF and he told me that as the aircraft took off, I was shouting 'Rocket-plane!', because it was a very steep and very fast climb. My father later flew in Nimrods, so he got to have a bit more fun... :O)

Excellent program of how important the Comet was to the whole of aviation today.

I miss the VHS videos. Great to watch.

Thank you for posting this early program about the DeHavilland COMET. This program is from 1990, or back in the days when documentaries were crammed with information and didn't have 68 agonizing commercials shoe-horned in for every half hour of show, with half the content today being teasers and re-hash and little content! Great work!

What a beautifully shaped aircraft. The nose particulary is up there with the B-52 for looks and style with purpose. Thank God for these men that work to preserve these historical greats!

I remember as a child in the late 1950's / early 1960's being eager to fly in the Comet from Geneva, Switzerland, where my family lived, to London. I convinced my mother to book a flight with the Comet rather than one serviced by a Convair Metropolitan 440 propeller aircraft. I was thrilled to become a 'jet-setter' at such a young age. We also flew on a Caravelle from Geneva to Madrid at that time. I've loved flying new aircraft ever since ...

An amazing, wonderful film... Looking back, the British were far ahead of their time with the Comet. As an airline veteran for decades, I never knew before that hydraulics were first introduced for flight controls by deHavilland. The British also pioneered the science of aircraft accident investigation, which no doubt, has helped save countess lives over the past 60 years and beyond.

I think this is one of the coolest planes ever built. It is sooooo nice!!

What a beautiful aircraft. I have never seen one in person but De Havilland Comet line is wonderful achievement. I was fortunate to have travelled on the BEA Viscounts on many occasions when I was a young girl, I remember the huge seats and windows.

I was actually INSIDE this plane in 1986! My buddy worked at O'Hare, for one of the smaller companies. Me and a couple buds went up there and he let us in. This WAS before 9/11, remember! We only had one flashlight that worked well, but WOW! What a premium interior! It was dirty and smelled funky, but it was still all there! Bit of a squeeze getting in the cockpit, I seem to remember. This aircraft was one of the most beautiful machines I have EVER seen. Inside or out! Pity to see her in that condition.

I always loved the look of the nimrod. I remember seeing it at an airshow here in the US i could not get enough of that plane it just looked so awesome.

Well done to everyone involved in the restoration of XA-NAS. Thanks for posting the video.

WTTW Channel 11 Chicago...best documentaries of my childhood.

She is indeed a beautiful aircraft - and certainly a classic. Pity that the O'Hare Comet eventually succumbed to the scrapman, but the example at Boeing Field will be restored back to her original Mexicana colors for aviation enthusiasts to admire. The Dan-Air Comet at Duxford has since been repainted to her original BOAC colors, though a Dan-Air example can be seen in Scotland.

As a youngster I became enfactuated with airplanes and flight. As an older adult I remain amazed that these hunks of steel can get if the ground. Your website and videos are beyond fantastic. Thanks for saving those clips for eternity and others to see what a pleasure it was to fly in past years. Wish the airline CEO'o would view them and provide some of the pleasures of flying that have disappeared forever.

I flew some 61 hours as a passenger in the Comet 4 as a very small child, when I journeyed to Japan, Hong Kong, Australia and back to London in 1960. I had no idea then of the Comet's history, of course, but my father was a Senior Captain (on the Bristol Britannia 312) with BOAC at the time, and had absolutely no qualms about our all travelling aboard the type. the Comet was a remarkable aircraft - so far ahead of everything else at the time of its first flight and entry into airline service - and its operation by BOAC showed all other airlines and aircraft manufacturers that money could indeed be made from jet passenger travel. Up until the advent of the Comet, this had widely been believed not to be possible. Boeing had tried to interest US airlines in the idea of jet travel with its model 473-60C in 1950, after President Bill Allen and his senior executives returned from the 1950 SBAM Air Show at Farnborough in England, where they had witnessed De Havilland's DH.106 Comet performing an aerial display. Bill Allen and his executives also visited the De Havilland's Comet factory at Hatfield in Hertfordshire, on the same visit. But the 473-60C was a purely paper exercise by Boeing, and in 1950, none of the US airlines would 'bite'. Without a significant launch order, Boeing was stymied because of the projected development costs. It was simply too risky to go ahead without either a significant advance order from an airline or US Government funding, and for the time being, Boeing had neither. Boeing persisted with the design on paper, however, and at about the time the Comet entered commercial airline service with BOAC in early 1952, the designs for the 367-80 were complete, and the project was green-lighted. It all looked like it could be a very costly mistake for Boeing when the Comet suffered the two crashes that were later to be identified as the result of metal fatigue. By the time the first 367-80 flew on 15 July 1954, De Havilland's Comet had already been grounded for over three months, subsequent to the second mysterious disintegration crash of the type (South African Airways ('SAA') flight SA201 on 8 April 1954). Intensive investigation of the Comet began, and the answer (metal fatigue) was found on on 24 June 1954. As this US TV documentary indicates, all the data from the Comet metal fatigue investigation were passed by De Havilland, the RAE, BOAC and HMG to Boeing (and all other US and worldwide aircraft manufacturers), to ensure that no other aircraft would suffer the Comet's fate. De Havilland's Chief Test Pilot, John "Cat's Eyes" Cunningham (a nickname he thoroughly disliked!), later reported that, in private conversations with engineers from both Boeing and Douglas when they subsequently visited the De Havilland factory in the UK, both companies' representatives discreetly admitted to Cunningham that if the fatigue problems had not happened with the Comet first, they would have happened with the Boeing 707 or the Douglas DC-8, instead. The first flight of Boeing's 367-80 (on 15 July 1954) was followed by that of the KC-135 on 31 August 1956, and finally by the first flight of the 707 on 20 December 1957. But it was US Government funding for a stop-gap order for 250 KC-135s, placed by USAF Secretary Harold E. Talbott in March 1955, that saved both Boeing and the 707 for posterity. In 1954, the USAF had held a competition for a jet-powered air tanker (for the air-to-air inflight refuelling role). In response, Boeing had offered the USAF its KC-135 design - a widened version of their 367-80 (the fuselage with of the KC-135 was increased by 12 inches/30.5 cm over that of the 367-80) - but Boeing and the the KC-135 was beaten out by Lockheed offering a militarised variant (designated the KCX-LO) of their civil L-193 airliner design, with its rear-mounted engines. Since the L-193 was not projected to be ready until 1959, the USAF made an order for 250 KC-135s (29 in the initial LRIP batch), to tide them over until the Lockheed was due to be ready. Although Boeing had prospered through its US Government contracts for the B-47 and B-52 for the USAF, it had gambled financially - without success, by this stage - on the 367-80, investing US$16 million of the company's money - a huge sum, at the time. Douglas, too, had begun its own jet-transport studies in 1952, and by mid-1953, the design was recognisably the DC-8. But this early Douglas design had only the same fuselage width as the Boeing 367-80 (132 ins), and was aimed - like Boeing's wider KC-135 (144 ins fuselage) - at the USAF's 1954 air tanker competition. When Douglas, too, lost the USAF air tanker competition (and Boeing was preferred over Douglas for the stop-gap order) in early 1955, Donald Douglas was stunned and upset, but decided so much money had already been spent on the DC-8 that he must press on. The DC-8 fuselage was then widened to 147 ins to allow 6-abreast seating in civil airline service. At this point, Boeing was offering a civilianised variant of the KC-135 to American Airlines as a passenger transport, but C R Smith (CEO of American) told Bill Allen & Boeing that American would not buy their aircraft unless the fuselage was widened from 144 ins to 147 ins, to match that of Douglas' DC-8. It aha been very expensive for an over-extended Boeing to widen the fuselage of the 367-80 from 132 ins to 144 ins for the KC-135, and widening it again to 147 ins would be a huge further cost, but Allen and Boeing knew they had little choice. Then the UK announced the Vickers VC7/V.1000 joint BOAC civil airliner/RAF Transport Command project, with a fuselage width of 148 ins. Now, Pan Am's Juan Trippe entered the equation, demanding that Boeing widen the fuselage of the KC-135 design yet again to match that of the 148 ins width of the Vickers design. At first, Allen balked (it was only 1 in different!), and so Trippe flew to the UK in 1955 and negotiated very visibly and very publicly with Vickers, even going so far as to sign a Letter of Interest with Vickers for 10 (ten) VC7s. In the face of this competition, Douglas balked, but Boeing caved, and the 707's fuselage was widened yet again to 148 ins, to match that of the Vickers. The cost of this final fuselage-widening - all of it loaded onto Boeing, yet again - was enormous. Pan Am then placed the very first order for the newly-widened 707 on 13 October 1955, signing agreements with Boeing dated 20 October 1955 (Pan Am hedged its bets very carefully, though, ordering 25 DC-8s from Douglas simultaneously). The Vickers VC7/V.1000 was cancelled by Sir Anthony Eden's Conservative Party Government in the UK just one month later, in November 1955 (for separate political reasons), which project cancellation was then followed by Lockheed later cancelling the L-193 project without a single L-193 ever being built. The first flight of the KC-135 occurred on 31 August 1956, with USAF service entry occurring in June 1957. The first flight of the Boeing 707 did not occur until 20 December 1957, with FAA-certification following on 18 September 1958. But de Havilland and BOAC had persisted with development of the DH.106, through the Comet 2 and Comet 3. First orders for the ultimate Comet 4 came from BOAC (in March 1955), which variant of the Comet type first flew on 27 April 1958, and received its UK CAA C of A on 24 September 1958. This first Comet 4 was delivered to BOAC the very next day. Trial runs by the Comet 4 across the Atlantic then followed,resulting in one Comet 4 aircraft being pre-positioned at New York's Idlewild airport, and another at London's Heath Row airport) by 2 October 1958. BOAC was thus able to inaugurate jet airline service across the Atlantic, both eastbound and westbound (using the two different Comet aircraft) on 4 October 1958. The Boeing 707 followed suit with a non-commercial flight from New York to Paris (for invited guests only) on 17 October 1958, and began its commercial trans-Atlantic service with a first flight open to the fare-paying public on 26 October 1958 (just over three weeks behind the BOAC trans-Atlantic service inauguration with the Comet 4). Before manufacturing ceased in 1964, De Havilland went on to manufacture and sell 114 civil variants of the Comet, which saw service with 23 different airlines and civilian operators. As Hawker Siddley, some 51 examples (including two prototypes) of the military Nimrod ASW/AEW Comet variant were manufactured for the RAF between 1967 and 1986. The Comet remained in commercial service until November 1980 (with Dan Air), and the Nimrod type continued in RAF service until June 2011. Commercial pressure was subsequently kept on the 707 initially by the Douglas DC-8 (which sold 556 of its aircraft) and by the Convair 880 & 990 (65 & 37 delivered of each type, respectively), and later by the Vickers VC10 (Vickers sold only 54 of this latter type, in all). Consequently, although Boeing eventually sold some 1,010 examples of the 707 by the time production ceased in 1979, it barely made any profits at all on the civil airliner (please read: "Boeing: Legend & Legacy" by the American author, Robert J Serling). It was with the sale of some 803 KC-135s to the US Government (USAF) that Boeing made its profits off this design. As with many things in life - but especially in aviation - it is not always best to be first, or to be the global pioneer of a new technology.

Thank you for the great show and memories of WTTW.

Thanks so much for posting this really enjoyed it

I flew in a Comet 4c in 1963, from LA to Mexico City with my parents. It was so smooth my father balanced a nickel on its edge.

Very well done and thorough research of this great and its contemporaries. It even included AVRO C-102 Jetliner (another what could have story in itself), that didn’t share its design and construction oversights as related to metal fatigue. Great video.

Thank-you, sir! This was a wonderful documentary. I am a great aviation enthusiast and very nostalgic. At this time, I do not care about political or social differences. I find virtually all aircraft a work of art and truly love seeing them in operation. Of course, I have seen some pretty ugly designs, but these do not keep me from enjoying the rest. Thank-you again for posting this.

it was fantasci documentary..Thanks for sharing, even if I watched it years later.

Most beautiful airliner ever built. A simply stunning design.. If only they had gone with different windows I am sure the Comet would have become one of the most successful aircraft of all time.. You will notice the latest A350 is taking elements from the comet especially at the rear - as did the Dreamliner with its clear nod to the British beauty's nose.. What a shape..

That was very educational and entertaining. Thank you!

The Comet 1 at RAF Cosford is still preserved and inside a hangar these days. Sadly the rest of their airliner collection was scrapped several years ago, including the only 707 in the UK. Amazing to see Cosford featured in a US produced documentary as it's local to me!

I flew in a number of Comet 4Cs. The Comet incidents taught me to avoid flying brand new aircraft types, so I avoided the Lockheed Electra “whirl mode” wing shedding solved by the LEAP project, the early DC-10s with baggage door blowout / decompression issues, etc. (though I flew in many L188s and DC-10s later).

The brits sure did make the first commercial jet a beautiful one!

Amazing to see the evolution of airliners into the jets we know today. Love this!

Remember, Comet 1 first flew in 1949! So for a 40's design this was truely incredible!

Very beautiful Jetliner.

Excellent film! I hope to one day stand next to one of these beauties.

Another great one, thank you, Dan!

The engines in the frame of the wing for me is the absolute beauty of this plane

Truly an amazing piece of machinery

Wow, the worlds 1st commercial jet liner, great looking aircraft.

One thing I notice immediately about this plane, is the shape of the cockpit/fore-end of it. It seems that modern Airbus and Boeing designs (and other manufacturers), are very similar; Meaning that De Havilland designers/engineers were ahead of their time. I think that engine through wing design (even though not really used today), is still a viable concept and will be used in the future. Engines have actually fallen off aircraft on many occasions, causing a host of fatalities. Engines integrated into the wing, directly connected to the aircraft body, are far less likely to do so.

The date of this video is 1990. When narrator (in video) was saying that some Comets are still in service today that meant none of them is now. There are no any first Comets or their second and third revisions on sky anymore. It is history…

That ORD Comet was a fixture of my youth. It belongs there still.

Merci d’avoir mis en ligne ce document ! Pour information, à découvrir sur la chaîne KZfaq : « PHIL DE RAIL » la vidéo : « La Caravelle figée ». Et si l’avion Caravelle m’était conté…

So sad that the O'Hare Comet was ultimately scrapped despite the dedicated effort to save it. I remember reading that it was the Airport Authority that eventually ran out of patience and scuttled the restoration.

Thanks for posting. Very interesting,

Wow the comet looks very futuristic! 😮

Nice! I flew a comet with DanAir from London ( Gatwick I believe) to Venice. I remember having to stoop when entering the aircraft as the door was not like later planes. This circa 1976 on a school trip!

A lightness designer used a skin of 0.73mm thickness. 1.2mm was the established thickness of the skin by test and convention at that time. The windows needed a larger radius at each corner to reduce stresses there. The operation of fixing the rivets without drilling the holes first caused cracks in the skin to migrate in certain areas of stress. An aeronautical designer told me all this many years ago. He said that the thin skin was used to keep the aircraft light for the DH Ghost Engines yet more powerful engines were available at the time. A great disappointment !.

The Comet looked so good. The mishaps that ensued would have happened to anybody back in the day. Being first is hard and frustrating. Then there was Boeing, seeing what went wrong and overtook DH just like that. Just look at it. Second only to the Constellation as best looking aircraft ever built.

The Comet 4C previously owned by the Everett Community College in Washington State is now owned by the Museum of Flight in Seattle Washington, where it has been substantially restored. It had previously been used as a fire trainer by the local airport fire department.

For those of you who like to see the world's first jet airliner one is just a few miles north of Seattle on display at Boeing plant in Everett wash.

What can you say about the Comet? It was a pioneer in the world of commercial jet transport. There were no computers then to aid in the design, but only the intelligence of the engineers who worked on her. This was a time of learning, and sometimes learning the hard way, as far as design flaws and other things which did not quite work out right. The UK paid the price as far as lives lost go, but it saved many others world wide. Once the flaws were corrected, it became a safe and durable aircraft. The US and Soviet Union studied the Comet and came up with amazing jets themselves. The Boeing 707, Douglas DC-8 and Tupolev 104-124. Tupolev copied the inside the wings concept of engine mounting with just two turbojets. These jets were the workhorse of the early passenger jet age. The flaws built into the Comet 1 were honest mistakes, never the less, still deadly. What we see today in pushing out a new old jet model was monetary greed above anything else in my opinion. The UK has built some remarkable jets in the younger jet age... The Trident, the VC-10, the BAe-146, and the BAC-1-11 and all were good aircraft. Competition in the world market was hard and Boeing, Douglas, and to some degree Lockheed, cut into their sales immensely. This was a good and informative video and I believe after the fatal flaws were dealt with, the subsequent Comet 4C was a very respectable aircraft.

Tex didn't do a barrel roll: he did an ailerons roll which puts no stress on the airframe. For you non-pilots there are three basic types of rolls: slow roll, aileron roll, and barrel roll. Look up how to do these rolls to understand why Tex Johnson was safe doing his roll.

Die Comet war das erste Verkehrsflugzeug mit Düsenantrieb. Es war ein Quatensprung in der Flugzeuggeschichte. Am Düsseldorfer Flughafen habe ich 1966 den für mich ersten Start dieser Maschine gesehen. Eindrucksvoll! Aber dieses Flugzeug hatte eine Schwäche in Ihrer Struktur und so kam es vor, dass sie in Flughöhe auseinander gebrochen ist. Darauf hin wurde die wohl aufwendigste Unter- suchung in der Flugzeuggeschichte durchgeführt um die Ursache aufzuklären. Über Monate hinweg wurde die Comet in ein mit Wasser geflutetes Becken gestellt um so einen Druck auf den Rumpf auszuüben. Letztendlich hat man den Fehler gefunden obwohl kaum noch Hoffnung dazu bestanden hatte.

Dan...Dan Air...I remember the Dan Air Comet 4s at Heathrow. They were the butt of many jokes at the time in the late 70s, Still my favourite aircraft.

The Comet 4 flew daily passenger services (with Dan Air) until 1981 with a good safety record. The Nimrod (still in military service) flies today. The wing design did not allow for the turbofan (bypass) engines that were to come. Striving to be 'first' will always be a risky business!

it really looks ahead of its time in my opinion

Thank you for the upload...without doubt, the de Havilland Comet was a masterpiece of engineering! But I also remember, there were some total failures in the 1950s because of premature material fatigue...dark days for the civil aviation....

Thank you for a most interesting doco

The First passenger jet as the Avro Nene Lancastrian which flew 3 years before the Comet did

Something missed out in this and other Comet documentaries is that the problems with the skin were principally due to the arrogance of Ron Bishop, DeHavilland's chief designer.. He insisted on using DeHavilland's own Ghost jet engine, despite it not being powerful enough for the job and when his engineers suggested that they use a more powerful Rolls Royce unit, he rejected it and told them to make the aircraft lighter instead. The result was a skin which was only 0.5mm thick and was fixed with rivets instead of bonding cement. The cracks in the skin all started at the rivets around the windows and spread from there.The rest is history. Later versions of the Comet were fitted with Rolls Royce Avon engines.

Always loved the comet with it's innovative and futuristic looking design and because it failed the world was left with the clunkier but functional Boeing & Douglas planes. Imagine how cute and beautiful a little 40 seater Comet must have been.

In the early 60's, I don't remember which, working at the UAL terminal gates, a very British accent flight crew arrived there in one of the 3 Mexicana Airlines Comet 4C's as it was delivered to Mexicana folks at ORD. Jumping in a jeep a couple of us guys whipped up to the international terminal- a relatively small building on the north side of Butler Aviation- to look this new plane over. Blast I didn't have a camera along so I'm not sure which one it was, and I've spent the last few years wondering if the same one is at the Seattle Museum of Flight. Lesson learned ALWAYS take your camera along when you go to an airport. Guess the cell phone has taken care of that.

Being first can often put you last.

Sacrilege to think they stopped the funds and she was scrapped. Hats off to those who tried to give her a future. Even if she had been stored at the back of the museum or something until funds for restoration came along.

Beautiful sleek lines with internal engines, much better looking than the bolt on engines of todays aircraft. Tragic though this history was, it highlighted the effects of stress and metal fatigue for the benefit of future aircraft.

It is often forgotten that the AVRO Jetliner, a Canadian designed and built four engined plane’s maiden flight was delayed by two weeks’ work on a Toronto airport runway to allow the Comet to be the first. TheJetliner did several commercial flights to New York and one of the two built became Howard Hughes’ personal plane for a while.

This is extremely good, an American made documentary not claiming they did it first haha. Only joking, this really is fascinating and extremely informative.

It sure was a pretty plane.

0:44, what a beautiful looking aircraft !!!❤️

Really enjoyed watching 👍

It is surprises how futuristic and revolutionary it was by its time. But talking about comercial jets, altough it came later than the 4C, nothing matches the L1011. Confort, noise level, safety and technology. a PROPER aircraft. And so does the 707 till the point saha air operated them (3 units) until 2013. It was a flying jeep.

If only they had used round/oval windows....

Canopus is the *second* -brightest star in the night sky. Appropriate!

Brilliant

People liked the look of these jets, but unfortunately, they were not safe.

Comet looks like a little Dream 🌜Liner 😃

...I still remember seeing Comet 4Cs in Mexicana colours operating in and out of O'hare during the 1960s. The Comet 4A was designed for US carrier Capital Airlines which would have made them the only US operator of the type, however the sale never went though due to financial difficulties at the airline. Capital which already had a fleet of VIckers Viscounts was also interested in the Bristol Britannia, and a Britannia was painted in the airline's livery for its North American tour. Had the airline not experienced the serious financial issues that led to its' consolidation with United, the Washington DC based airline would have operated three British built aircraft types.

Eddie Rickenbacker said to Bill Allen" that guy sure knows how to sell airplanes" referring to Tex Johnston's barrel rolls.

I’ve seen designs of the unbuilt comet 5 that had swept tail fin and more swept back wings engines still in the wing roots if that was built it could of sold well likewise the VC7 the civil airliner based on the valiant V bomber ,but Boeing nailed it with the 707 wow that was ahead of its time especially that all airliners today still follow the same basic planform

The comet “Canopus” is now at Bruntingthorpe, And is the only comet in the world capable of taxiing under its own piwer

The Nimrod maritime patrol aircraft was a militarised and updated Comet. Introduced in 1969 (replacing the Avro Shackleton, itself derived from the WW2 Lancaster bomber) and retired in 2011 after terrible fires and crashes with heavy loss of life. I'm afraid us Brits dont know when something has had its day and should be put in a museum and replaced with new and safer technology.

I flew in a Comet Four from Mexico city to Chicago in the nineteen sixties. It was Mexicana or Aeromexico. I do not remember now.

Hmmm, interesting. Look at the nose design of the Comet, tested on the nose of a WW2 glider instead of a wind tunnel. Then compare it to the nose profile of a Boeing 787 or an Airbus A350. Notice anything?

It’s funny how the nose of the new 787 looks very similar to that of the comet

Howard Hughes was a real character, I remember as a kid going on vacation and seeing those Hughes Motor Lodges everywhere.

I SO miss the good old days of WTTW and Marty Robinson!

Sucks that they didn’t think about the hull issues.

The Comet is so beautiful.

The French Sud Aviation SE 210 Caravelle, was the first short/medium range jetliner.

What a neat video! Thank you!

The Comet's nose was used by the Caravelle which as another marvel. The British and French were aready collaborating together in the 50s.

Flew on the BEA Comet 4. It was narrow inside.

A friend of mine, many a years ago, worked on the Comet. He said it was a real bitch to do anything on the engine. And those engines back in the days required a lot on work.

It turns out the window shape wasn't the issue, it was how the rivet holes were created during the manufacturing process to secure the windows to the fuselage. In 1996 while at the School of Metallurgy and Materials, The University of Birmingham, P.A.Withey wrote a paper for the journal _Engineering Failure Analysis_ (later republished in _Failure Analysis Case Studies II_ (2001) by D.R.H. Jones) that suggested the likely cause of the failures was due to de Havilland's manufacturing process in stamping the rivet holes into the aluminium rather than drilling them. His conclusion came from using analytical techniques that weren't available to the Royal Aircraft Establishment (RAE) investigators (who conducted the tests on the Comet I airframe G-LAYU *Yoke Uncle* which was the airframe used in the submersion pressurisation tests) and in part states: _"The failure of the pressure cabin was due to fatigue crack growth from defects which were probably present from the construction of the aircraft and had not been a problem in earlier designs of aircraft, as the required cabin pressure had been lower. That this problem was not detected by the rigorous testing undertaken by de Havilland was probably due to an unfortunate set of circumstances with regard to the order in which the tests were performed, and could not easily be foreseen at the time."_ _"All the observed cracks in the pressure cabin emanated from bolt or rivet holes near the cut-out areas. It was probably not the shape of the cut-outs that was so damaging to the fatigue life of the cabin, rather the method of fixing the windows and doubler plates into the pressure cabin."_ [see: _Failure Analysis Case Studies II_ (2001) by D.R.H. Jones, pp.185-192]

The Comet was a beautiful and very advanced aircraft, it does concern me that while we sing praises to this leap forward, we can't avoid the fact that so many aircraft blew up or failed to successfully take off, resulting in a great loss of life. Tragically the Comet was not ready to carry passengers. The Comet on display in Seattle looks beautiful, smaller vertical stabilizer and the long thin body, I’d put it up there with 757 for the most bird like aircraft. I think we should give more credit to the Caravelle, the French built a much better aircraft that they do with those gawd awful cars they produce

It will always be the first jet liner

The Comet was on the right track, and truly ahead of its time, but just wasn't throughly tested enough with all the problems worked out before put into service. Not enough was known about high altitude long range passenger jet travel with an aircraft such as the Comet. The Comet was a beautiful jetliner though.

I remember seeing Nimrods in SW England in the early 70s when visiting a base with a P3 Orion

A very sexy looking aircraft even by today standard

Sadly the structural fatigue of pressurization wasn’t understood enough, causing the inflight airframe failures early on on the Comet...

It's insane the 1 choice, having square instead of round windows, sealed the fate for the whole of the British aircraft industry. Saying that, I'm sure we would have found another way of messing it up, we Brits are very good at that, and the Yanks are impeccable salesmen.

"...And the world's fastest passenger jet could take you in complete comfort and relative quiet directly to the ground".