De Havilland Comet, Jetliner Story by WTTW Chicago
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- Опубликовано: 1 дек 2015
- This is wonderful documentary titled, "The First Jetliner" produced in 1990 by Chicago's Public Television station, WTTW, with narration by Marty Robinson. It's about the world's first production pure jet airliner, the British built De Havilland DH 106 Comet and the major impact it had on the postwar airline industry. The program presents the complete story of the De Havilland Comet. Comments by people who were instrumental in the making of the Comet are included such as Comet project engineer, David Newman and Comet test pilot, John Cunningham. It also discusses the jet airliners that would compete against the Comet in the late 50's, the American built Boeing 707 and Douglas DC-8.
Finally, the program looks at a group of people, many of them members of the O'Hare Rotary Club, who were dismantling for preservation a former Mexicana De Havilland Comet. This Comet, XA-NAS, had an interesting and very short ownership following its' years with Mexicana from 1959 to 1970. In 1976, Dick Drost, owner of "Naked City", a nudist colony in Indiana, purchased XA-NAS (by now registered N999WA). It was then flown to Chicago's O'Hare Field. Unfortunately, Mr. Drost couldn't afford the payments for the Comet. Consequently, it sat for years on the northeast side of O'Hare near the Illinois Air Guard base eventually becoming derelict in condition (during these years it sort of sat as an unofficial "gate guard" where thousands of people driving to O'Hare every day via the east expressway entrance could view the Comet to the right of their vehicles).
Years later in the late 1980's, the O'Hare Rotary Club came forward in an attempt to save the ailing Comet with hopes of disassembling it and then eventually turning it over to the National Air & Space Museum of the Smithsonian Institution at Washington D.C. for reassembly and display. Sadly, after this program originally aired, this De Havilland Comet would be scrapped in 1993 after plans and especially funds fell through to save her.
My apologies regarding the first few seconds missing from this television program. Anyway, hope you enjoy this well-presented bit of aviation and airline history by Chicago's Public Broadcasting television station, WTTW. Happy Landings! 
Авто/Мото
Exceptionally well done documentary for a regional TV station
Yes, I agree!
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)
I miss the VHS videos. Great to watch.
Excellent program of how important the Comet was to the whole of aviation today.
The Comet important to aviation today? What utter bloody rubbish. Show me ONE design feature of the type which endures in commercial jets.
@@rocketeerPM2500 It was the first bloody Airliner for a start, end of story!
@@stewsretroreviews The Comet Disaster was a colossal failure, the worst engineering failure in aviation history.
@@sandervanderkammen9230 Change the record San van, this is boring! 😴
@@stewsretroreviews Change the record? Wow, you sound really old...
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!
The Comet nose is copied from the Boeing 307, the world's first pressurized airliner.
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.
Mike, I believe you're the first person to comment here who had actually been inside the "O'Hare Comet." Thanks for telling us a bit of that visit!
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 ...
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.
Yes ,an engineering marvel especially the speed with which it fell from the sky was impressive..
*The **_Comet Disaster_** was the worst engineering failure in aviation history.*
@@doktorbimmer Ummm ... how about the 737 MAX debacle? Many more died as a result.
@@awuma In passengers/ miles flown the Comet remains the deadliest airliner in history... 1 out every 4 Comets crashed or were destroyed making it the worst airliner in history.
Well done to everyone involved in the restoration of XA-NAS.
Thanks for posting the video.
It's a shame this De Havilland Comet was scrapped less than three years after the broadcast of this program.
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.
Neat story! That had to have been a Mexicana Airlines Comet 4C.
@@WAL_DC-6B No idea.
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!
Actually, I too thought the same. But then at 23:45 I noticed the Singapore Airlines Airbus A380!
Someone is claiming copyright to a piece of music used in this program. Consequently that copyright owner is taking advantage of the number of RUclips views by allowing ads to be placed within this program. At least it's not a bunch of TV spots every ten minutes!
Ady WadyWoo that's a 747...
Well, at least you're not saying that's a Piper Cub.
Dan Uscian right on my ?..
Thank you for the great show and memories of WTTW.
WTTW Channel 11 Chicago...best documentaries of my childhood.
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.
Alex P aaa
*Sadly de Havilland went defunct in 1959 because it remained decades behind Boeing and Douglas in large transport aircraft design and production... the **_Comet Disaster_** remains to this day the worst engineering failure in aviation history.*
many German bombers in WW2 had fully hydraulic flight controls, i.e. the Focke-Wulf Fw 200 Condor
@@doktorbimmer
"the Comet Disaster remains to this day the worst engineering failure in aviation history"-
I don't see how that statement is justified. If you measure failure as lives lost as a result of poor design, the 737 Max is already 4 times worse. If it is economic loss, the max will probably turn out to have had the highest costs there too (although it is still likely to end up being profitable overall).
If we are trying to assess poor engineering design, well the DC-10 and even the 747 have had their fair share of door failure related incidents and they were not 1st generation jets so have less of an excuse.
What measure of failure were you drawing upon?
@@doktorbimmer Boeing 737 max.
Thanks for posting. Very interesting,
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.
Another great one, thank you, Dan!
Classic Airliners & Vintage Pop Culture
I love your classic video's , i think i watched all of them within 2 weeks. I even took a day of work just to watch you video's, almost needed rehab for my classic plane video addiction. lol
Thank you Avnut, very kind of you to say.
Remember, Comet 1 first flew in 1949! So for a 40's design this was truely incredible!
*But the Comet 1 was an embarrassing failure that killed hundreds of innocent people and destroyed De Havilland... it was truly horrific!*
@@doktorbimmer OKAY WE GET IT YOU HATE THE COMET AND THINK IT'S A FUCKING MISTAKE
@@doktorbimmer Have you heard about net trolls?
Thanks so much for posting this really enjoyed it
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.
You'll love this.
ruclips.net/video/EewAoTVdCVk/видео.html
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!
ste309w I suspect about 90% of the doc was mounted on a British-made doc (edited back then in '90, not on the present day), except for the start and the last few minutes (the change on accent is what gives it away). Which was still great because it completed whatever the British originally made.
This completes the Mustard (on his YT account) 10 minute episode on this very airplane...
The RAF still operating 707s
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.
I flew on that -4C (XA-NAS) during its service with Mexicana. I’ve visited it in the Museum of Flight restoration facility, and hope to see it in fully restored glory.
That was very educational and entertaining. Thank you!
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.
The brits sure did make the first commercial jet a beautiful one!
It was one of the airplanes that just looked right from all angles.
The only thing that looks old, is the non-swept tail
The empennage looks completely antiquated in the jet age.
Sander Van der Kammen well, it had a trapezoidal wing, so the main wing wasn't swept fully in the way we understand it today. But you have to remember, that this was in the very early days of high speed transport, and swept tails (both stabilisers, and fins) were the next innovation to allow jets to fly smoothly at all speeds without drag interrupting buffet flow, and is in part, due to the introduction of modern high speed wind tunnel analysis. This allowed engineers to start to understand air flow using computer analysis and coefficient studies. These early high-speed wind tunnel tests changed the shape of modern airliners throughout the world from the 1950s onwards.
Computational fluid dynamics were the next big leap, which were just starting to make an impact in the 1980s and onwards, which allowed engineers for the first time to fully understand how an aircraft design will fly inside a computer model.
The Comet design is just one evolution of many that has affected the design of aircraft since it's earliest days from the bi-plane to supersonic jets.
@@RB747domme Not really, the Germans pioneered high speed and supersonic wing structures in the early 1940s.
The supersonic wind tunnel in use at the Luftfahrforschungsanstalt high speed research facilities in Braunschweig Germany could test large scale designs up to Mach 1.2 and smaller scale prototypes at 1.5 Mach.
Very beautiful Jetliner.
Thank you for a most interesting doco
Amazing to see the evolution of airliners into the jets we know today. Love this!
*Sadly the Comet represents an evolutionary dead-end that should have never existed... it was the greatest engineering failure in aviation history and it destroyed the de Havilland company.*
@@doktorbimmer Rather like the Boeing 737 max is destroying Boeing. Good job that they have the US government to bail them out.
The De Havilland went bankrupt and Comet was an evolutionary dead end.. its remembered by engineers today as an example of how not to build an airliner.
The engines in the frame of the wing for me is the absolute beauty of this plane
*It is also what made the noise level inside the Comet's cabin intolerable.. and prevented the airframe from being updated to superior high bypass engines.*
@@doktorbimmer Yet they did modify it on the Nimrod to carry RR Speys (though rather low bybass ratio).
@@doktorbimmer Wrong actually, the Nimrod MRA4 had Rolls Royce BR700 turbofans - a very modern high bypass engine. Also, when the Comet was first devised, it was silent in comparison to the noisy vibrating piston powered airliners of the time. There were no high bypass engines in the early jet age.
@@awuma The Nimrod is a different aircraft than the Comet, designed by a different company 2 decades later... and only for military use.
Yes, the Spey is a low bypass engine and although significantly larger than the RR Avon, both are smaller in diameter than the Comet 1 with de Havilland Ghost centrifugal turbojet engines.
The problem is the modern high pass engines like the CFM56 that powers the RAF Boeing E6 and P-8s are twice the diameter of the Avon and the Spey.
@@user-rc1ke1ef3t The MRA4 was intended to use the civilian version of the BMW F130 jet fighter engine, after the merger of BMW-RR the F130 was developed into the 710.
Unfortunately the MRA4 is a moot point as the aircraft developed a fatal design flaw as a result of this engine modification and was grounded, the entire wing had to be completely redesigned at incredible expense, the new wing did not perform as well as promised, in addition to other unexpected development costs the MRA4 was canceled in favor of the Boeing P-8 Poseidon which was upgraded to newer more efficient high bypass CFM56 turbofans with only very minor modifications from its original Boeing 737 configuration and shares interchangeable parts with the RAF Boeing E6 Mercury aircraft which are reengined version of the 707 family.
Cheers mate!
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…
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..
Imagine how stunning it was when it first came out in 1949.
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.
Wow, whát a story! :-). Oh well, I guess Boeing made a lot of profit later on with the 747?
I think so - eventually, once they had solved all the over-weight problems.
Xetalq thank you!
Great history! I flew on a Brittannia and a VC10 when I was a child in the 1960s.
xetalq The Brittannia was a fine aircraft as was the Viscount. Howard Hughes ordered 39 Britannia’s for his TWA airline. This occurred when the Britannia was on a US sales tour visiting every major US city as well as Canadian cities. It boggles the mind why they put so much work into a fine aircraft and did a nice sales job, but when they received the orders they had to turn them down because they were too large. Add that was the fate of Hughes order. Even then most US carriers flew a limited variety of aircraft. If United, American or TWA was going to buy it was for a whole lot more than 5 or 6.
Excellent film! I hope to one day stand next to one of these beauties.
That ORD Comet was a fixture of my youth. It belongs there still.
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.
Wow, the worlds 1st commercial jet liner, great looking aircraft.
First failed commercial jet, the Boeing 707 was the first airworthy jet liner to enter service.
@@sandervanderkammen9230
*Fryed Ryce Muncherz shud note.*
*_What has their comment got to do with the original comment which stated quite factually that the Comet was the world's first commercial high altitude pressurised passenger cabin all metal construction airframe jet powered airliner?_*
_A Comet was also the first jet aircraft in the world to cross the Atlantic & the 1st jet aircraft in the world to complete a global circumnavigation flight series._
*Of course the jet engines used were manufactured in the UK & were the Whittle type internal combustion turbine engine using centrifugal compressor & reverse flow combustors as first in the world demonstrated by Whittle in 1937.*
*_That style of internal combustion turbine engine is still produced & used to the present day of course._*
*We sincerely hope this helps them with their understanding of reality?😂*
@petemaly8950 *Comet 1 is the biggest engineering failure in commercial jet aviation history...*
*It's airworthiness certification was permanently revoked.*
@petemaly8950 *The Jet engine was invented in Germany by Hans von Ohain and Max Hahnn.*
@@sandervanderkammen9230
Chiney Fryed Ryce Muncherz shud remember.
*Of course The gas turbine was invented in Engla🇬🇧nd in 1790.*
_Parsons of England & Ireland without doubt was the first to demonstrate the axial multi stage bladed turbine & compressor & begin investigating the possibillity of the currently ubiquitous axial internal combustion turbine / gas turbine / turbojet engine while also using the technology for steam driven power generation & ship propulsion before 1900. Then also licensing the technology most kindly to many companies around the world._
*_& without doubt it was Whittle of England that first described, first patented & subsequently demonstrated the world's first pure gas turbine aircraft engine._*
_Of course there were people who attempted to copy Whittle & copy other trail blazers with obtained info & of course they weren't particularly successful._
*We hope the truth is acceptable to them & that they take note with due awestruck diligence & great reverence & remember their humble place in the great scheme of things? 😂*
Wow the comet looks very futuristic! 😮
Really enjoyed watching 👍
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.
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.
Boeing had the "Dutch roll" issues with the early 707s leading to a fatal crash or two. This led to the increased size tail on the jetliner along with the ventral fin on the underside of the tail. I agree with some who've called the Vickers VC-10 a handsome airliner.
@@WAL_DC-6B The RAF still flying the Boeing 707s... the Comet and VC-10 went to the scrap yard long ago
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).
Thanks for your comment about waiting for airliners to clear themselves of issues before you'd fly on one. I flew on Lockheed L-188 Electras and Douglas DC-10s, but never a Comet. Lucky you!
*Unfortunately the Comet would go on to continue crashing... it has the worst safety record of any jet airliner in history.*
The lesson is to not fly on British planes... even British airlines refused to buy them anymore.
@@WilhelmKarsten
Chiney Leydeez should note
For example
*British airlines & others airlines bought -*
*DH Comet (4) World's 1st Jet Airliner *
*_Vickers VC10_*
_VICKERS VISCOUNT World's 1st Turboprop airliner_
*BAC 111*
*_BAE 146_*
etc
@@WilhelmKarsten
*UPDATE*
*_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 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, no evidence of negligence ever being produced in relation to the DH Comet._*
. . .. .. .... ...... . .. .
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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!
Thanks for sharing your entryway experience boarding a De Havilland Comet back in the 1970s!
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.
Engines do not fall off aircraft on many occasions and cause, "...a host of fatalities." Engines integrated
into the wing, upon failure, can cause fire or structural problems.
*The choice De Havilland made to place the engines inside the wing roots demonstrates just how far behind they were in jet aircraft design...the failure of the Comet also caused De Havilland to go out of business.*
But for maintenance and repair, engines in the wings were a lot more labor-intensive.
Being first can often put you last.
or as we say in germany: die zweite maus kriegt den käse. (the second mouse gets the cheese.)
*The Comet 1, Tu-110 and the Avro C-102 were among many failed attempts to build a safe, profitable and successful jet liner.... the first to achieve this was the Boeing 707.*
Howard Hughes was a real character, I remember as a kid going on vacation and seeing those Hughes Motor Lodges everywhere.
The Amazing Mr. Hughes ! He is an American icon.
Brilliant
This is extremely good, an American made documentary not claiming they did it first haha. Only joking, this really is fascinating and extremely informative.
The first airworthy jet airliner was in fact the Boeing 707... it's was the plane that revolutionized aircraft travel.
it really looks ahead of its time in my opinion
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.
The worlds first jet airliner was the Avro Nene Lancastrian which flew its first commercial flight in Nov 1946 between London and Paris.
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 !.
Also the engine location was at play too. encased in the wing structure they added to vibration right beside the fuselage. I wouldn't underestimate the importance of mounting engines on pods. I believe had the Comet had this simple - though less elegant solution - it may have escaped the grounding and some of the tragedies that led to it's early retirement. It still is, for me the most beautiful Jet airliner ever made. That stunning nose, wonderful cockpit and beautifully integrated engine cluster has never been equalled...imo
The original design called for using only adhesive, but it deemed too expensive.
@soaringtractor That's correct. Redux bonding was used in the Comet but sadly it was too difficult to use in the windows. DH was used to bonding wood to wood in the Mosquito and then wood to metal in the Hornet. RAF Transport Command used the short unpressurised airframes but the stretched Comet 4C became a beautiful and successful airliner. The later BEA livery was also stunning.
@Ben Daulton Glue-Redux bonding.
Truly an amazing piece of machinery
Without any doubt the worst engineering failure in aviation history... 1 out every 4 Comets built crashed or were destroyed in accidents... a truly shameful chapter in British aviation history.
Sander Van der Kammen well..... you have a good point
Merci d’avoir mis en ligne ce document ! Pour information, à découvrir sur la chaîne RUclips :
« PHIL DE RAIL » la vidéo : « La Caravelle figée ». Et si l’avion Caravelle m’était conté…
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.
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!
Sadly the Nimrod was scrapped a few years ago by the Tory/lib so called coalition. IMO an utter criminal act by filth politicians,
@@GRHDA The Nimrods were scrapped because they had reached the end of the airframes hours in service, they were no longer fit to continue in service without failures due to fatigue.
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.
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.
Wow! Thanks for sharing your encounter at O'Hare Field with one of the Mexicana De Havilland Comet IVs back when it was apparently being delivered. I can think of plenty of times myself of when I wished I had had a camera when seeing something that's now long gone.
@@WAL_DC-6B Working there with UAL stuff 'and others' going on was a bonus with the paycheck. Another time I did happen to have my 'not so hot' camera along on the day the first Caravelle N1001U arrived as delivered from France. It was the first one in our fleet of 20. I did get a shot of it in the distance on approach (but as described) the only picture was a double exposure @!^*$% it which is in my collection but have never taken the time -lots going on these days- to see if it can be fixed. Today I sure wish I'd had a pocket digital then as there were times that really neat shots could have been captured. ie: while driving a truck along the service road parallel to rwy 14R/32L which according to Google earth photos no longer exists nor does the hangar 5/5A I worked in. Anyway driving along I watched a Ford Tri-motor (that was fixed up as one of TWAs parent companies planes -apparently there for some local TWA shindig- taxiing along heading NW toward where TWAs hangar was. Lo and behold there landing on 32R was a TWA 727 with the nose still in the air crossing in my view. What a shot of those two "three holers in essence" at an angle. Camera in pocket NOPE!
Just thought of the co-pilot in the 727 glancing out at the Ford thinking hope that guy has a camera - ha-ha... Those were the early neat days in the industry when so much went on and changed. Lucky to have been there as an observer. Should I assume WAL_DC-6B had something to do with those wonderful Douglas 6B's at Western Airlines which, we (UAL) had lots of when I started. Went to DSM to visit a buddy at Drake over a week end and returned on a 6B at night sitting in the front compartment watching and hearing those great R-2800 grind away, oh that sound. Other stories abound and I'd better get busy on that "book of life" - turned 81 last fall. Maybe we should trade emails to converse in a less public forum? Jim
I think one of the pilots on that trip was John Cunningham.
@@timhancock6626 Cunningham was the pilot of the very first Comet destroyed in a runway overrun excursion during the test program.
He would go on to die penniless after a fruadulent investment scam he was involved in collapsed.
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.
The Comet's nose was used by the Caravelle which as another marvel. The British and French were aready collaborating together in the 50s.
Good "point!"
The French Caravelle was another nice airplane. With its aft-mounted jets, it reminds one of the DC-9.
If I'm not mistaken, United had about 20 Caravelles in its fleet in the 1960s.
Uncle Albert really enjoyed this video.loads of information and brilliantly made.for 1990.also,my old man used to work at vickers back in the day.
0:44, what a beautiful looking aircraft !!!❤️
It sure was a pretty plane.
I agree, it was!
Comet looks like a little Dream 🌜Liner 😃
I have not watched this tv guy for a long time. Channel 11, WTTW Chicago.
The First passenger jet as the Avro Nene Lancastrian which flew 3 years before the Comet did
People liked the look of these jets, but unfortunately, they were not safe.
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.
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.
I remember landing and taking off at Gatwick in '73/74, and there were lots of Dan Air Comets there. I think Dan Air was mainly a holiday charter airline and was based there. They owned at one time or another almost two thirds of the Comet 4's ever built.
Eddie Rickenbacker said to Bill Allen" that guy sure knows how to sell airplanes" referring to Tex Johnston's barrel rolls.
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.
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
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....
The _Comet Disaster_ is without any doubt the worst engineering failure in aviation history... the Comet 1 is the only jet airliner in history to have its airworthiness certification permanently revoked!
The first in a long and shameful line of engineering failures and financial disasters that eventually led to the demise of the entire British commercial aircraft industry.
The Comet is without any doubt the most shameful and humiliating chapter in British aviation history, the result of incompetence, hubris and criminal negligence
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.
On January 10, 1951, the AVRO C102 Jetliner set a record time flying a triangular route from Toronto to Chicago to New York and back to Toronto flying at twice the speed, 520 mph and twice the altitude, 36,000 ft., in comparison to the piston powered airliners of the time. AVRO built only one Jetliner and it was scrapped sometime after its test days were over in 1956 (the nose section survives at Canada's National Aviation Museum at Ottawa, ON). Howard Hughes did get to fly on the Jetliner and he seriously considered it for his airline, TWA. In fact, National Airlines of Miami, FL signed a letter of intent to purchase four Jetliners. But, ultimately, the Jetliner was a victim of Canadian politics as the Canadian Government ordered AVRO to concentrate all work on their new jet fighter for the Royal Canadian Air Force, the CF-100 Canuck.
Canucks .... gotta love their firsts!
It’s funny how the nose of the new 787 looks very similar to that of the comet
*Well, the irony is that is where the all similarities with the Comet 1 and 787 stop... in 10 years the Dreamliner still has a perfect safety record.*
It's not so funny that the 737 max is falling out the sky like
The comet mk1
*The safety record of the 737 speaks for itself...*
@@doktorbimmer Hardly a flawless record...so many fires.
@@doktorbimmer Yeah, crap!
The Comet is so beautiful.
I SO miss the good old days of WTTW and Marty Robinson!
...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.
Northeast Airlines, operating largely in the New England area of the U.S., also expressed interest in the Bristol Britannia and one was even painted by Bristol in NE colors much like the Capital one. But, in the end, Northeast cancelled the order being more comfortable with the Douglas DC-6B for its Boston to Miami route. Northeast would follow in Capital's footprints and also purchase the Viscount, but in much smaller numbers. As for the Comet, yeah, it's too bad that order was cancelled by Capital. A few years later Capital would place orders for seven Convair 880s and five Lockheed Electras. The 880s were never built for Capital, but the five Electras were indeed completed in Capital's last livery markings. I believe PSA would get all or at least some of the cancelled Capital Electras. Thanks for pointing out the Capital - Comet connection.
@@WAL_DC-6B ...I didn't realise Northeast was also looking at Britannias.
Several months before the merger Capital leased 720s from United for their Cleveland to Miami, Cleveland New York, and New Orleans New York routes.
The comet “Canopus” is now at Bruntingthorpe, And is the only comet in the world capable of taxiing under its own piwer
*There are over 400 Boeing 707 type aircraft in still in service in several countries.. they expect to remain in active service until at least 2040.*
@@doktorbimmer The number 400 has to include the Boeing KC-135s still in service with the U.S. and French air forces. Otherwise, I don't know of any 707s still in commercial service.
Flew on the BEA Comet 4. It was narrow inside.
I remember how spacious it felt and how wide the seats were.
The French Sud Aviation SE 210 Caravelle, was the first short/medium range jetliner.
Canopus is the *second* -brightest star in the night sky. Appropriate!
And a Comet is an object that usually explodes before striking the Earth.
Sucks that they didn’t think about the hull issues.
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?
The nose of the Comet was copied from the Boeing 307.
@@sandervanderkammen9230
No, unlike the Yanks the British did not copy anything. The Boeing 307 looks nothing like the Comet.
I remember seeing Nimrods in SW England in the early 70s when visiting a base with a P3 Orion
Thanks for your comment regarding seeing Nimrods. I witnessed an RAF De Havilland Comet IV taking off from Chicago's O'Hare Field sometime in the late 1980s (it caught my attention as it had a louder than usual takeoff sound). That was the last time I ever saw a Comet.
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.
*Jet engines mounted in the wing roots is an example of **_"How not to design a jet airliner"_*
*Then why is it no longer used???*
*No, its not lad.*
*Name a commercial jet airliner in service that uses them*
It will always be the first jet liner
That left a huge, smoking economic hole...
*If only if had been the first **_successful_** jet airliner....*
Vickers Viscount had an excellent record and was popular with US Airlines.
@@gaittr Idiot. Putting an advanced aircraft into the hands of incompetent American pilots is what caused Harrier crashes.
@Alejandra y Alan Bowman *It is apparent from your benighted comments that you are not at all knowledgeable or experienced on this topic...*
Sadly the structural fatigue of pressurization wasn’t understood enough, causing the inflight airframe failures early on on the Comet...
Pressurization was well understood at the time..
Just not by DeHavilland.
That Dan Air comet at duxford is inside the airspace hanger in BOAC colours
Interesting
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
I don’t think DeH had too much to worry about as far as Americans spying on the Comet’s development. The Boeing Dash 50 (the prototype name given what would become the 707) bares nothing in common with the Comet, in fact one could save the opposite occurred. Boeing was planning and designing a 100-200 passenger passenger jet, the Comet was restricted to a mail carrier with less than 25 seats, that was then increased or 75 seats. After the 707 was selling well, DeH extended the Comet to carry more than 100 people.
Exactly if you want to throw around charges of copying aircraft what did DeHav take from Boeing’s 707 to change with later Comet’s 3 and 4? Try seating for well over 100 passenger, even the VC-10’s were in the under 100 seat class along with the Hawker Sidney Trident. The Trident also had competitive problems with the 930 mile range and underpowered Spey engines.
RRs more powerful 178 engines went into later Tridents., Comet seating went from 4 across to the 707/727’s 6 across. BEA wanted 727’s and 737’s for IntraEurope routes the British government said no. Sales Tridents- 117. 727’s- 1832. Comets- 114. Caravelle- 282
The Caravelle use the nose from the Comet...the accidents who occurs on the Comet (caused from metal fatigue) did learn important things to improve the relability/safety from ALL aircrafts
@@leneanderthalien The Comet used the nose of the Boeing 307, the worlds first pressurized airliner.
Boeing was more than a decade ahead of DeHavilland in pressurized passenger aircraft design and construction, aircraft like the B-29, 307, 377 and the B-47 All predates the Comet and the design of Boeing 707 was completed before the findings of the Comet Disaster investigations were completed or implemented. The lesson learned was don't buy a jet airliner from a company that previously made all of its successful aircraft out of wood.
Sander Van der Kammen Had the Comet engineers copied some of B-29's features such as the skin riveting techniques, window shape, and thickness of the aluminum, 100's of lives would have been saved. Boeing used the same thicknesses they used in the B-29 to design the Dash 50, which was 4X the thickness of the original Comet 1. Why would you even think you could produce a pressurized airliner with a skin 75% thinner than what had become an industry standard?
It's crazy that the Comet looked more modern then than the current airliners flying today. What a cool plane (once they worked out the bugs). Tex Johnson was a typical test pilot. Has to show off a little and risk the company's image in order to look macho. Many test pilots have crashed showing off. Not a good move (even though it was a 1G maneuver).
Look at the sleek nose, the swept wing AND the fact that the engines were inside the wings. Amazing.
I'm sorry you don't know a cool airplane when you see it. The Comet was unique and cool. It had some flaws, but so did a lot of other airplanes.
Nobody bought a 707 as a result of a test pilot doing rolls. The Airbus test pilot at the Paris air show was trying to show off too....unfortunately he didn't understand the aircraft systems well enough so he crashed and killed everyone.
Buried engines in the wing root was a design flaw !!!
Not a design flow but very unfortunate choice ... Most aviation experts considered this very risky.. Jet engines and fuel tanks next door neighbours ??? no thanks. Wing mounted looked much safer .
Only a few died, not everyone. Read your history instead of making shit up
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.
Thanks for your comment! You flew from Mexico City to Chicago on a Mexicana Comet IV. Aeromexico never operated the De Havilland Comet.
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.
Thanks for your informative comment! I kind of figured that jet engine maintenance was difficult on the Comet with those powerplants being buried in the inner main wings. I bet many a curse word was uttered working on them!
Dan Uscian My friend was funny. When we worked together on an old B707 JT3D engines, I would always complain. He just smiled. Life could be worse.
A very sexy looking aircraft even by today standard
I agree, the De Havilland Comet jet airliner does have good looks much like the Lockheed Constellation from about the same period in time.
*Very outdated compared to Boeing aircraft at this time...*
Absolutely a delicious looking plane!
*Yes, indeed... Boeing makes the most beautiful looking aircraft.*
alongthebluff - Looking at it from an engineering standpoint, I see the engine placement as complicating maintenance. The idea clearly didn’t catch on.
If only they had used round/oval windows....
Which is exactly the type of windows (oval) that were used on the later, more successful version, the De Havilland Comet 4. A major factor that brought down the two BOAC Comet 1's along the Italian coast in 1954 is the process in which the cabin windows were held in place. The early Comets had a very thin, though apparently well tested, aluminum skin in the fuselage. The cabin windows were riveted in place through this skin (versus, say, using an adhesive glue). That very thin skin, about a mm or less in thickness, developed tiny stress cracks around the rivet holes from cabin pressurization cycles. Those stress cracks grew larger, potentially with each flight, eventually rupturing and causing the catastrophic explosive breakup of the aircraft at high altitude.
Britain had to learn about windows the hard way, and yet the Americans were already ahead of improving on it. They always do with anything british built.
I'm just surprised that the Nazis hadn't even gotten round of inventing the first passenger jet. Jet Fighters yes, but a Passenger Jet? How they've missed an opportunity like that
East Germany had an unsuccesful try with the Baade 152, ff 1958. It was a development of a bomber designed in Russia by former Junkers engineers. Look it up with Google, it is an interesting story. One fuselage, which was not completed and had never flown, survived and is now on display at Dresden airport.
I've seen photos of the Baade 152 years ago. Little was known of this East German airliner back then. It is a bit of an ungainly looking aircraft with its bicycle landing gear and upfront navigator's compartment that looks a bit like a front windshield on a high speed train. I saw a photo of the one remaining Baade 152 at the Dresden airport. Looks to be a fairly complete fuselage. By the way, didn't VEB Plasticart produce a plastic kit of the 152?
It was all about the look, art.
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.
The Comet disaster remains the worst engineering failure in commercial aviation history.
Clunkier? Dont think so, the 707,727, and 747 were elegant AND reliable while able to generate profits.
It's ironic since the nose of the Comet is obviously copied from the Boeing 307...
@@sandervanderkammen9230 Not only that, but the 307 was the worlds first pressurized commercial aircraft.
@@supersixjones8905 And to think pressurized airliners were around for over a decade, how did DeHavilland get it so wrong?
I noticed the nose shape of both Comet and Carvelle: flattened instead of the pointy symetrical ones of the Boeings and most Airbusses. Until of course the introduction of the Boeing 787 and the Aibus A350. Mayby it was ahead of its time?
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.
Well said commentary!
*What can you say about the **_Comet Disaster?_** Well, it was the worst engineering failure in aviation history. A tragedy that could have been prevented if de Havilland was not more than a decade behind in cabin pressurization and large, all-metal aircraft design and construction... bad management and incompetent engineers put profits before the safety of their passengers. If the same thing had happened today no doubt criminal charges would have been brought against the de Havilland personnel responsible.*
doktorbimmer I feel an aircraft that beats the Comet in terms of "worst engineering failure in aviation history" is the Boeing B-29 Superfortress. Look at all the ones that were lost during World War II not from enemy fire, but from engine failures and subsequent engine fires. Don't overlook the Lockheed L-188 Electra of the late 1950's which shed it's left or right main wings in flight leading to two crashes killing all on board Those Electra accidents were attributed to poor engine nacelle and wing designs. To be fair to all these companies, Lockheed, Boeing and De Havilland, the faults of these aircraft mentioned here were a result of aircraft designs that were going into areas of aviation structure and power that had not been tested to any great extent in the past. The Comet, which first flew on 27 July, 1949 "suffered from problems associated with the then little-known phenomena of fatigue failures of the fuselage"...…..a quote from the book "Boeing 707 Group, A History."
*You have to see the irony in comparing the most successful large, high altitude, multi-engine bomber of WW2 with the **_Comet Disaster..._** The Boeing B-29 was a mass produced, all-metal, riveted construction aircraft that featured cabin pressurization at a time when de Havilland was building planes out of wood and fabric! Boeing had more experience building large, all-metal structures and cabin pressurization than any company in the world.... Please tell me how de Havilland could have been on par with Boeing when it had little to no experience with metal fatigue in metal fuselage structures when they had previously only built large planes out of wood*
_"The Comet, which first flew on 27 July, 1949 "suffered from problems associated with the then little-known phenomena of fatigue failures of the fuselage""_
*Certainly the concept of **_metal fatigue_** in fuselage structures would have been very unfamiliar if not completely unknown to a company famous for building aircraft out of wood and fabric!*