Well that was an interesting read, so much for my earlier post. It was a well spread myth even Air Crash Investigation got it wrong, we are never too old to learn!

If circumstances had not been so cruel to the British then the De-Havilland Comet 2s would get Avon which would have allowed the Comet 3 and 4 to take the 15,000ibf Rolls-Royce RB.106 engine

the FAA according to their website will dispute its not a myth - the windows were a factor

@@speedbird737Have you actually seen any pictures of the De-Havilland Comet 1? They had rounded square windows and it was the way they were installed that was the problem and not the design of the windows because the De-Havilland Comet 1 was actually a very sound design but no one understood about metal fatigue and do not even try to bring up the BS of "De-Havilland did not know about pressurisation" De-Havilland did know about pressurisation but we should remember that no one had built a jet airliner before the De-Havilland Comet

@@Knight6831 correct so in conclusion the windows were an issue (regardless of if a good design or not) even the BAE website said :"It identified that despite extensive testing in the design stage, the cyclical pressurisation and subsequent depressurisation of the fuselage had accelerated the stress levels. This had caused cracks and fissures around the corners of the ADF, and some the main passenger windows, causing disastrous fractures in the structure and an almost instant failure of the airframe."

It looks very 40s. The integrated engines, the square windows. The big landing gear

@@MrJimheerenthe comet 4 has circle windows. Perhaps if it had modern oval windows it would change your perspective

@@ScotlandTheBrave_1 I was thinking about the Comet 1. But yeah the 4 definitely looks quite futuristic and old fashioned at the same time

Reminds me of the young Americans in the 1st Gulf War……. Victors arriving, them thinking it was some new super secret Limey wonder weapon…… ……..again, a sort of Flash Gordon steam punk vibe 🥳

Nothing about this aircraft says "future" maybe in the context of the time it was designed, sure but now, no it doesn't. You're conflating "Futuristic" with "Different".

Actually the Comet has a very distinctive 1920s Art Deco style that was very dated looking for the 1950s... The nose is copied from the Boeing 307 which was introduced in 1937.

It is kind of sad seeing that aircraft land locked forever. The places it's been, the memories made by it. A shell of its former self

What was the experience like

@@Rich72James I was very young at the time but I do remember flying in the aircraft and being shown the cockpit. To my small eyes it was very spacious and comfortable, ofcourse the reality was that it was quite "snug" up front! According to my log book I also flew in G-APDH as well as G-APDB. I believe DH was written off after a heavy landing broke the undercarrage in Singapore.

Are you aware this class of plane had a fatal design flaw that resulted in crashes and hundreds of fatalities?

@@glieseseventen4921 they fixed that. I'm sure it did not help it's credibility. That is probably why the 707 was much more successful

Wow that’s incredible thanks for sharing

Wow. I flew a few times with East African but on VC10s. My father was however in the drawing office of de Havilland from the war on (with a break till 1957) and worked on the Comet.

@@stevenr2463 amazing how these videos can bring people with similar experiences like this together

Excellent...what lovely memories. I lived in Zanzibar in the early 50s and 60s and remember all the Royal Mail DC 3 aircraft of the time. There was the odd DH89a and then F27 Friendship turboprop came later. I purchased a book about the history of East African Airways. 🙌.

@@stevenr2463 🙏👍👍👍👍🙏🙏

if we are in awe in 2023, surely they were in even more awe 70 years ago!

its*

I remember Dan Air comets at Gatwick, way back in the day, seen when disembarking from British Caledonian VC10 and 707s.

Flew to Corfu in 1980 with Dan Air on a Comet.

I flew to Portugal from Gatwick 1979 dan air , felt lucky to fly in it , must have been coming to the end of its service , nice smooth flight

I agree

Dream job, I am sure he had many exciting tales to tell you.

@@stevetaylor8698 Since many neighbours were also flight crew, this was normal, daily life for us as children. It was just a job, like a bus driver, or a train driver. What I noticed as I grew up was that they all seemed to be exceptionally clever, capable people, apparently able to do anything and everything.

@@cdl0 👍👍👍👍👍

@@mal_752 Thanks: you deserve a story from days of yore. As often happened, when we were taken to a museum, such as Duxford, the adults would be reminiscing about the exhibits they has flown, while the children would be laughing their heads off about the fact that that their parents were so old that they had flown these ancient, obsolete machines. That is the way it was. 🙂

He must have flown with my late father Jim Manning, a captain at that time.

I also flew Dan Air Comet about the same time and same age!

Glad to hear. Why do you think it’s the best? I’m always keen to hear co constructive feedback! :)

A truly shameful and humiliating chapter in British aviation history... de Haviland was decades behind in aircraft technology and its collapse in in 1958 was inevitable

Thank you, sir, for commenting on anything your many years of experience may have seen so it can be recorded forever here on KZfaq for prosperity's sake and for the benefit of those younger and less experienced than yourself. Any comment you make can only improve the younger generation's knowledge. Best wishes from Australia.

@@DropBear69 In Washington DC I knew a British Colonial Administrator who grew up in England during WWII and was assigned to Malaysia. He commented that he flew on the Comet and loved the appearance of the design. He was very proud of it. In the 1960s I attended an Strategic Air Command airshow and the flight crew of a Nimrod took my aboard for a tour. Maybe more likely a Hadley Page Victor Bomber. I would of been eleven years old and the British Officers were extremely good to me. I regret I was likely deplorable child. In closing in the 1980s I flew in a 1950s Lockheed Electra turboprop passenger plan. That class of plane at its introduction experienced engines ripping themselves off the wings with I believe the total loss of the planes. I was amazed at just how heavily the fuselage was constructed it felt like a flying tank. The designers were very conservative and regardless had engines flying off the wings. This Lockheed was used by the United States military for a similar purpose as the Nimrod.

​​@@josephpiskac2781 Nimmy's, eh? I worked on an RAF base (now Army) as a civvy worker in one of the Messes that operated Nimrod MR2's. So, very much a regular sight in my area. The house I live at was under one of their landing circuit paths and there was rarely a quite moment, when those old Rolls Royce Spey engines got close. I was in the local ATC back in the Nineties, and went on few Air Experience Flights in them. Very sad day when they stopped operating. Nowadays, our local aviation museum has a forward fuselage/nose section that's open for the public to walk through and a whole Nimrod on the camp, that sits engineless on a dispersal area near the coast, after the MoD had it kicked out of its hanger.

If the engine would catch fire or explode it could out take out the wing. that is the reason they moved away from this design.

Very welcome

That video is coming in a few weeks :)

@@PaulStewartAviation excellent!! Keep up the good work mate 👌👌

Welcome :)

Still loved the little curtains on the square windows. 👍👍👍👍

Boodieman the big problem was they punched the holes in the window frames rather than drill them and punching caused the cracks !!! DUUUUUHHH!!!!!

A friend of mine use to work on the engines. He hated it. Extremely difficult. This compare to the Being engine pylon mounts. This was a few years ago.

Makes me jealous! Are you going to convert and upload some of the footage?

Although the window shape was part of it, the main problem was the machining around the window frame which should have used glue as well as rivets but the way it was riveted weakened the structure.

@@ericadams3428 No square windows ever since though.

"It was a good first effort at a high altitude passenger jet." This, exactly - I think Douglas literally said later that if it hadn't happened to DeHavilland so everyone could learn to avoid it, it *would* have happened to their own first effort at a jet airliner. Whoever went first was basically doomed to be the lesson to everyone who came after. This has happened *so* many times in prestige engineering projects, and yet everyone still wants to be first at something - even though it's typically the *second* person to bring a product to the market who actually makes the money, and the pioneers who led the way for them so often end their days in poverty and obscurity.

The fatigue cracks didn't come from the windows I've heard

Indeed, the first successful airworthy jet airliner, the Boeing 707 changed the world... while failed attempts like the de Haviland Comet were a shameful embarrassment to the British aircraft industry and led to its ultimate collapse

All that work benefitted all other aircraft manufacturers too. It was a real tragedy that metal fatigue in early jets was only understood properly after the crashes. This sadly affected the commercial reputation of the later improved Comets - although these planes flew on for many decades in military service with a very good safety record .

@@frglee there’s a lot of myths that are associated with the comet, which are unfortunately often repeated in most documentaries…. metal fatigue was very well understood by large aircraft makers before the comet, from the 20’s and 30’s when aluminum aircraft production started…. One thing that came out of the post crash investigation was a new process to inspect aircraft for fatigue cracks (fluroscoping) that is widely used to this day…. the issue with the comet was that de havilland had a flawed design, they didn’t understand pressurized aluminum aircraft construction and fatigue…. They made mistakes that no other large metal aircraft maker would have made…. before the comet they had made only wooden small planes…. they produced one of the first jet fighters, the vampire, which had a wooden fuselage and wooden wings… when the design flaws were resolved and the comet iv went into production, it still did not have the range to cross the Atlantic, which was the key parameter for a large passenger jet…. it had to land and refuel in Iceland to get across the Atlantic, so it wasn’t a question of reputation, but of performance…. One thing you often hear in documentaries is that Britain missed its chance to dominate the world jet market, but again this just isn’t the case…. the airlines that ordered the comet 1 were ordering just one or two, they wanted it for prestige, but didn’t really have any economical use for it…. when the dc8 and 707 launched, airlines were ordering in batches of 25, 50 and more…. because the JT8D engines had reached a level of performance that made a large passenger jet aircraft finally realistic… the comet 1 was very slow for a jet, had 0 cargo capacity, small passenger capacity, and short range…. The comet was one the planes in the brabazon committee program, which had failures (brabazon, comet) and some were very successful (viscount, dove, Britannia)…. so Britain did have successful large civil aircraft and continued to have, but dominating the world large pax jet market was too lofty a goal, if anyone actually thought that they could…

I think the film told the story it was the windows, but I've read that a hole cut for a radio antenna caused one of the crashes. Basically any stress riser could have been the point of origin, and certainly square corners are stress risers.

​@alan mac the square windows were definitely the major cause very early on, after they were redesigned the comet proved to be many times more reliable and safe

But they crashed and FAILED !!!

The Comet Disaster remains the worst engineering failure in commercial aviation and a shameful, humiliating chapter in British history. The real tragedy of the Comet Disaster is that it could have been easily prevented if de Haviland had simply followed well-known and understood industry standards for the design and construction of pressurized cabins made from riveted aluminum alloys. The only lesson learned from the Comet was that aircraft manufacturers could no longer be trusted to conduct their own aircraft crash investigations.

Thanks for comment @@WilhelmKarsten

@@SJR_Media_Group It's regrettable that those at de Haviland responsible for the gross incompetence and criminal negligence were never brought to justice although we can all feel safer knowing that de Haviland went out of business in 1958 as a direct result of the _Comet Disaster_ and is no longer killing travellers. There is nothing more disgraceful and insulting to the memory of the 426 victims than someone attempting to whitewash this horrible scandal and attempt to portray this embarrassing failure as some sort of great technical achievement for Britain... truly shameful.

​@@WilhelmKarsten ​ Kharzeestan Krappenz DiktorBummer Jurkzxoffenz etc and co - they should all note good with much awestruckness & extreme wonderment. *UPDATE MORE BREAKING NEWS ETC* *_It's interesting that some of the aircraft on the list should really have been noticeably safer than the Comet due to being a similar type but of much later design & manufacture but they definately were not safer._* How things were back then - *_Accident losses - % of aircraft built._* DeHavilland Comet 4 UK 14% DeHavilland Comet all mks 17% Vickers VC10 UK 5% *_The DH Comet had better safety than or similar safety to many other commercial passenger aircraft of a similar era_* Douglas DC-1 99% Douglas DC-2 47% Douglas DC-3 30% Douglas DC-4 26% Boeing s300 72% Boeing 307 70% Boeing 247 48% Boeing 707 20% Lockheed L-049/149 Constellation 30% Lockheed Electra Turboprop 29% Fairchild FH-227 30% McDonnell Douglas DC-8 14% Sud Aviation Caravelle 15% Canadair CL-44 Turboprop 46% Convair CV-580 Turboprop 22% A comparison of more recent aircraft. Accident losses comparison examples. 1970s - 1980s % of total Aircraft built Similar aircraft type, date / decade, useage, size. Biz Jets BAe-125-800 1.7 % Beechcraft Beechjet 400 2.2 % Cessna 550 Citation II 7.1 % Learjet 35 / 36 12 % Beechcraft 1900 6% Dassault Falcon 10 11.5% Aérospatiale SN.601 22.5% Medium size jets / Turboprops. BAe-146 5.1% Fokker 100 6% McDonnell Douglas DC-9-30 9.5% Fairchild FH-227 30% McDonnell Douglas DC-8 14% Canadair CL-44 Turboprop 46% Convair CV-580 Turboprop 22% Beechcraft, Fokker, McDonnell Douglass, Learjet, Fairchild, Aerospatiale, Canadair, Convair companies defunct. All Comets, including some Comet 1s, had full civilian use certification at some point after 1954, civilian use certification only being withdrawn after commercial flying stopped. Examples were flying until 1997 - one example did a signals research global circumnavigation flight series in 1993 via Australia virtually without a rest travelling 28000 miles, only had an ice warning indicator issue during the flights. *The DH Comet - World Firsts.* 1st gas turbine jet powered airliner. 1st high altitude 8psi pressurised full fuselage length passenger cabin airliner, not a trivial feature as structure strength required for pressurisation considerably exceeded strength required for normal flying stress. Nobody else had done anything similar before the Comet. The b-47 used 2 relatively small, heavily built pressurised modules (the aircraft where 6 had their wings fold up in 2 months while flying & some had their wings fall off while parked). The 1937 Boeing piston engined airliner pressurised passenger cabin was pressurised to 2 psi only - in fact that could easily be done as the normal unpressurized fuselage cabin structure strength for flying stresses only was all that was needed to be adequate so no significant weight increase issues needed addressing. 1st all hydraulically powered flying surface controls & actuators airliner with under carriage wheel disk brakes + ABS. 1st jet airliner to cross the Atlantic. 1st jet aircraft to do a world circumnavigation flights series. *Of course De Havilland had prior experience building many all metal construction airframe aircraft including thousands of jet powered fighter aircraft that were primarily of metal construction with pressurised cockpits & jet engines built by De-Havilland & we know the world's first all metal construction airframe airliner was built in England in the 1920s by Handley Page.* *_De Havilland did indeed always work to better than industry standards at the time, used up to date knowledge for the design & no evidence of negligence or criminal negligence was ever produced in relation to the DH Comet._* The course of De Havilland & the general UK aerospace industry sector was not affected even slightly by the DH Comet. *_Other interesting World firsts_* _World's first turboprop aircraft._ *Vickers Viscount Turboprop Airliner 1947.* *A 1945 Gloster Meteor Aircraft with Turboprop Gas Turbine Engine.* They might like to answer these questions. *Which airline has just ordered* *60 RR England Trent XWB Engines* *& What aircraft are the engines for?* _Bonus question for 10 points._ Which country has the *World's Highest Combined Per Capita* *Nuclear + Defence + Aerospace Sector Activity?* 👍 & 🙂 & of course 😎 indeed. Cheers. _Toodle_ -PIP- *Old* *_Chap._* . .... . ... . ... .. ... .... ... .... Ivcxivcxivcxcxii vxvivcxiccxxcc