Just a reminder that with a bit of luck de Havilland could've been a major passenger jet manufacturer
Posted by imjustarandomsquid@reddit | aviation | View on Reddit | 167 comments
This is the de Havilland Comet, the world's first commercial jet airliner. It debuted in 1952, and within the first year three of them crashed due to metal fatigue, a problem de Havilland couldn't fix in time for Boeing's release of the 707. I like to imagine in an alternate dimension they fixed it in time, and their flagship product is needless to say not the Dash 8.
SlightlyGarrulous@reddit
I had to Google this because of the name, but apparently this man was a cousin to the famous actress Olivia de Havilland
Hot_Net_4845@reddit
After the crashes, a Comet was placed into a big water tank that was drained and filled 2000 times to simulate flight cycles. Eventually, the rivets around an emergency escape hatch failed. The thin skin, mixed with how the rivets were attached, sped up metal fatigue (mainly on 2 ADF antenna cutouts on the roof). The passenger windows weren't the main issue. It was multiple factors, and incorrect calculations that all culminated in ADF windows on the roof
0ttr@reddit
from the wikipedia... a bit eyeraising that this happened during flight tests and everyone thought it was nbd:
"The issue of the lightness of Comet 1 construction (in order to not tax the relatively low thrust de Havilland Ghost engines), had been noted by de Havilland test pilot John Wilson, while flying the prototype during a Farnborough flypast in 1949. On the flight, he was accompanied by Chris Beaumont, Chief Test Pilot of the de Havilland Engine Company who stood in the entrance to the cockpit behind the Flight Engineer. He stated "Every time we pulled 2 1/2-3G to go around the corner, Chris found that the floor on which he was standing, bulging up and there was a loud bang at that speed from the nose of the aircraft where the skin 'panted' (flexed), so when we heard this bang we knew without checking the airspeed indicator, that we were doing 340 knots. In later years we realised that these were the indications of how flimsy the structure really was."
Zwaylol@reddit
“In later years we realized…”
Granted I am an engineer and not a pilot, but I think I’d consider that a pretty immediate cause for concern
IShouldNotPost@reddit
Imagine if every time you got on the highway in your car the hood changed shape with a loud bang like a cookie pan in an oven.
ImJLu@reddit
Also, if your hood structurally fails, you die.
Durmomo@reddit
I have a box truck we use to haul equipment for work and sometimes something about the box or the roof will do this randomly on the highway and it scares the shit out of you lol.
emeraldamomo@reddit
Aviation was incredibly dangerous but nobody cared. Remember that it was actual millionaires, CEOs and high government officials that flew in those day. Not your middle class family on a holiday to Spain/Florida.
In hindsight it is amazing but I guess that dying in a plane crash was just too cool- or maybe WW1 and WW2 created fearless people.
GhostRiders@reddit
Unfortunately the whole "Square Windows" is so entrenched in people's minds and on hundreds of YouTube videos that it will also be what people believe.
0ttr@reddit
sort of like the metal strip on the runway relating to the Concorde crash when the failed repair on the bogey and the overweight issues were more likely causes.
Cappy221@reddit
Were they? The plane had other problems that day, but the tire bursting and the resulting debris hitting the tank were it did were, literally, the detonating factors that made the tank explode.
0ttr@reddit
There's a long discussion of this that the French focused on finding fault, rather than causes, and settled on the metal strip. If you think about it, if it had beenable to puncture the tire, it almost certainly would have been thrown off the runway.
But more importantly, the Concorde's landing gear bogey had been improperly repaired with a missing spacer found on a mechanic's bench at the incident airport. This meant that bogey was going to twist in or out on takeoff like and essentially be dragged down the runway. There's the famous photo taking from the a waiting plane that shows the Concorde on fire. Of note is that it is WAY off centerline of the runway. In other words, it was being dragged off center almost certainly before the tire exploded. In fact, the tires were going to explode whether or not they hit the strip as they were being dragged down the runway off center. That's the kind of force that would do it. Not hitting a flat strip. Couple that with being a few tons overweight and it contributed to the pilots' inability to balance and stabilize the aircraft once airborne.
Shark-Force@reddit
• During the takeoff run, the aircraft would have had a tendency to deviate to the left if the left main landing gear had created abnormally high drag. However, its track was straight before the loss of thrust on engines 1 and 2 and there are no observable right rudder inputs. On the contrary, some slight actions to the left are even noticeable before V1.
• Such abnormally high drag could also have led to an abnormal use of the brakes during taxiing to get to the runway. However, the crew performed the pre-takeoff checklist and, in accordance with this, announced the brake temperature, which was 150°C (the temperature must exceed 220°C for there to be an alarm). Furthermore, it was the same for the left and right bogies. The temperature of the brakes was therefore not at all abnormal.
• The acceleration recorded by the flight data recorder is 0.268 G, which is the normal value for the Concorde when it is at its maximum weight. Furthermore, 34 seconds after the beginning of the takeoff run, the aircraft had rolled 1,200 metres and reached a speed of 151 kt. At MTOW, and with conditions as on that day, the Concorde must roll 1.150 metres and reach a speed of 150 kt in 33 seconds. Aircraft performance was thus entirely in accordance with the design values up until the damage to tyre No 2 by the metallic strip. Furthermore, takeoff performance on the flights that preceded the accident (but after the bogie replacement work) was in accordance with published norms. There is no significant difference compared to takeoff performance on other Concordes.
• Up until the time the aircraft ran over the metallic strip, no remarks or reactions by the crew indicate any abnormal aircraft behaviour. The first tyre marks noted on the runway after the accident were those of tyre No 2 after it was damaged by the metallic strip. There were no identifiable Concorde tyre marks before this point. In addition, a change in bogie perpendicularity might have occurred, preventing gear retraction. As shown in paragraph 1.16.10, this did not happen.
*
In conclusion, nothing in the research undertaken indicates that the absence of the spacer contributed in any way to the accident on 25 July 20
nickleback_official@reddit
Oh wow! I thought I remember the metal strip being the culprit in Cloudbergs write up from years ago and I haven’t heard anything different since. This is interesting.
Met76@reddit
It's BS. Above comments are stating that the drag would've been noticed in the wheel temps before takeoff, which was not the case and all wheels showed equal temp before takeoff.
TheMusicArchivist@reddit
I read that the metal strip basically shaved a scrap off the tyre and the ricochet ignited the fuel. So they added kevlar to the fuel tanks to survive this happening again.
sdannenberg3@reddit
Didn't the engineer make a comment before entering the runway that all brake and wheel temps were even on both sides when the Captain asked? Meaning it was not actually toeing in and out? Otherwise it would have been hotter than the others.
Geist____@reddit
Utter nonsense. What you see in this picture is the trail of burnt particules left by F-BTSC after encountering that metal strip. It is clearly on the centreline for a couple hundred metres afterward.
More information in u/Admiral_Cloudberg 's article.
Quick reminder that the Brits have an entirely one-sided rivalry with France that often colours what they say and think, but because English has become the global language (an unfortunate side-effect to France winning the American independance war), foreigners tend to lap up the British discourse without understanding the cultural context. The Brits themselves are often unaware that the French don't think about them nearly as often, nor as badly, as they do about the French.
Cappy221@reddit
I remember reading about shady maintenance, but this bogey twist is something I had not heard of before. Im not sure I understand the mechanics behind the gear twisting and the plane veering off centerline.
I would assume the picture shows the plane off centerline because both engine 1 and 2 surged and lost power. And the tires exploding would also make sense, considering previous reports of Concorde tires bursting.
eidetic@reddit
If the gear twists, it can cause the tires to angle off center, instead of facing forward, and they will then impart a bit of drag as they're dragged along the runway. This will naturally pull the aircraft in the direction of the faulty gear, and off the center line. The tires don't even have to be drastically off-center for this to have an effect, especially as speeds increase.
Cappy221@reddit
Thanks. For some reason I was thinking about the strut being twisted vertically rather than the wheel assembly rotating relative to the ground.
Regardless, theres a section in the accident report that goes into detail on this exact thing. Basically states that the planes track was straight and no corrective action was taken on takeoff roll before the surges, and that no tire marks were identified before the gear hit the metal strip.
Very interesting read: https://www.faa.gov/sites/faa.gov/files/2022-11/Concorde_Accident_Report.pdf
eidetic@reddit
Oh yeah sorry wasnt trying to imply that's actually what happened, just illustrating how it could be a problem - I honestly don't know enough about the incident to form my own opinion on what happened!
airfryerfuntime@reddit
What? The debris was kicked up into the underside of the wing, rupturing the fuel tank.
More_Sun_7319@reddit
Ultimately the real reason why the comet fails remains the same. The British government rushed De Haviliand to get the plane out before it was ready
erhue@reddit
lol the tank wasn't drained and refilled 2000 times. It was the fuselage that was pressurized and depressurized that many times to simulate the load cycles.
The water tank thing was, I believe, to prevent the shrapnel from the exploding fuselage from, well, causing harm
Onetap1@reddit
Yes, that. Air is compressible, you have to expend a lot of energy to compress it; if you've ever pumped up a car tyre with a foot pump, you'll know that. If the pressure vessel fails, there's an explosive release of energy and bits of metal go flying.
Pipework systems are usually pressure tested at 2x the working pressure and you always use water for such tests, if at all possible.
Hot_Net_4845@reddit
Yeah I misread lol. Thanks!
erhue@reddit
thank you for sharing the interesting story
skitsnackaren@reddit
Interesting fact, after the accidents that doomed the Comet, when it was redesigned with the rounder (safe) windows like in this picture, it proved to be an excellent and reliable aircraft for many years. But the damage was done to the name.
To me, the Caravelle and the Comet had the most beautiful fuselages and noses.
Malcolm2theRescue@reddit
Not to sound angry, but all caps for this: THE WINDOWS HAD NOTHING TO DO WITH THE CRASHES!! NADA, NIENTE, NULL, RIÉN ZILCH! One can read exactly what the cause was in the Lord Cohen Report but basically, the skin was too thin and the use of punch rivets instead of drilling caused tiny cracks that propagated to the rest of the airframe. The actual windows had curved frames just like a DC-8.
skitsnackaren@reddit
Good clarification. I had the old documentary from Discovery in my mind and there it was still kind of blamed on the squarer cutouts.
Malcolm2theRescue@reddit
That’s because they were the same nose! Sud Aviation paid DH for the design. This changed on the Super Caravelle to meet new visibility requirements.
747ER@reddit
TIL that the Caravelle 12 was called the Super Caravelle. I’ve always associated the name “Super Caravelle” with the early prototype for Concorde.
Malcolm2theRescue@reddit
Thanks.
Golgen_boy@reddit
Eventually the nose came back with the 787.
Dangerous-Salad-bowl@reddit
The Caravelle nose being licensed from the Comet.
imjustarandomsquid@reddit (OP)
As the other comments pointed out it's not just the windows it was more just bad (from an engineering standpoint).
zerbey@reddit
The window thing is a popular myth and actually had nothing to do with the accidents.
DecentComparisons@reddit
I'm not sure why the myth of the windows is so prevalent. The windows mentioned in the report was those cut out for the adf.
MathImpossible4398@reddit
Ah the beautiful Comet, I flew London to Singapore in comfortable luxury over 4 days what an experience, then the old girls morphed into the Nimrod surveillance aircraft! British aviation at its best 👍
Texas_Kimchi@reddit
Wasn't luck the killed the Comet, it was the old, wigged hair, pinky up, mentality the Brits had. It was the same reason they got embarrassed when the war started and it lead to really bad times economically for the country. Once that mentality left the Brits their businesses soared and it brought the country back but along the way so many great businesses and ideas were killed by that "British Gentleman" mentality.
FMC_Speed@reddit
You can say anything about the Comet but was an exceptionally good looking airplane, which rare for British machines
collinsl02@reddit
How dare you! Have you not _seen _ the Blackburn Beverley?
NastyHobits@reddit
I raise your Beverly by 1 Fairey Gannet
collinsl02@reddit
Oh come on, the Beverley is much more beautiful! Just look at those lines!
StickingBlaster@reddit
I raise your Gannet by 1 Blackburn Roc.
KiwifromtheTron@reddit
BAC 167 - a triumph of British Engineering over aerodynamics...
FMC_Speed@reddit
Sure there are beauties here and there but the average look extremely functional and ….not good looking
collinsl02@reddit
Whooosh
DutchProv@reddit
Hey man, the Hawker Hunter is a beauty.
Malcolm2theRescue@reddit
Not THAT rare! The VC-10, Trident, BAC 1-11 and Britannia were very handsome. I also liked the Airspeed Ambassador.
1_tommytoolbox@reddit
Great Britain had a tremendously talented aviation sector following WW2, and unfortunately were outmaneuvered politically by Boeing and others. Consolidation was another factor. This was a huge loss.
NF-104@reddit
It was a UK governmental decision to have the UK aviation industry specialize on warplanes, and buy transports from the US. So when the war ended it took the UK too long to pivot to transport planes, and not helped in the least by the Brabazon Report for postwar civil aviation, or the Bristol Type 167 Brabazon, which embodied archaic ideas prioritizing luxury transportation for the wealthy (the plane alotted 140 square feet per passenger, as I remember).
erhue@reddit
being realistic, the US had a lot of influence on whatever your industry was would survive or not. Cases like the one of the Avro Arrow remind us that it's not just about whether a plane was goor or bad, but whether US politics will allow it...
With the Marshall plan, I bet there were a long of strings attached to whatever the British did with the money
1_tommytoolbox@reddit
Yes, this. The US government pressured UK government bc of US defense industry lobbying
Malcolm2theRescue@reddit
Every country tries to protect their own industries. That’s why Air France flies Airbuses and why BOAC/BEA flew VC-10s and Tridents. At the time Great Britain was building all six of the Brabazon Committee’s proposals, the USA Marshall plan was bailing out a ravaged Europe to the tune of Billions of dollars. Ever heard of CARE packages? CARE stands for Cooperative for American Remittances to Europe. We were sending food up through the 50s because folks were still starving. We didn’t want them wasting money on airplanes for the same reason I don’t want people on food stamps (the dole) buying caviar.
1_tommytoolbox@reddit
We didn’t want them “wasting money on airplanes”? How about manufacturing and selling airplanes to the airlines? That was the issue: competition with American manufacturers. We - the US - essentially put one of their industries out of business. I am very familiar with the Marshall plan; this had nothing to do with ‘the dole’ or us being magnanimous. The US gained all the UK’s intellectual property during the war and then put a lot of their people out of work afterwards by being cutthroat. Not a great look.
Malcolm2theRescue@reddit
Outmaneuvered by Boeing? More like “undermaneuvered” by their own government. At the same time they were designing the world’s first jetliner, they were building the world’s most ridiculous, complex lumbering giant eight engine piston airliner (Brabazon) and the world’s biggest piston powered flying boat despite the fact that Pan Am and BOAC were already scrapping their own. Both of the aforementioned were tremendous and expensive failures. Even the government run airlines refused to take them. Imagine if that wasted money had been spent on their commercial jetliner projects! Yes, the British came up with some brilliant and beautiful designs (VC-10 is my fave) and creative ideas (like the first moving map display and autoland), but they were not commercially viable. 90% of the sales of British airliners were to Great Britain or the former colonies. The two profitable exceptions were the Viscount and the BAC 1-11.
StickingBlaster@reddit
The words no businessman wants to hear - "we're from the Government, and we're here to help"
Bomb8406@reddit
The Trident is always a frustrating one to me - had BEA not insisted on making it smaller (and left it at it's original size), it could have been a viable competitor to the 727 and DC9. There's a certain irony that the one-eleven was in turn one of the more successful models precisely because it wasn't aimed directly at the state-owned Airlines.
Kevin-747-400-2206@reddit
To add further insult to the debacle of the Trident story, the One-Eleven could have have been a better success had the Rolls-Royce Medway engines for the larger Trident been built.
With the more powerful Medway engines available the One-Eleven could've had been powered by them, allowing the aircraft to better compete against the later stretched versions of the DC-9 and the Boeing 737.
slavabien@reddit
Love those in-wing engines. So sleek. Is there a name for that design?
andymk3@reddit
I think they are just called embedded engines. It is a beautiful design, pity it's impractical for various reasons.
hcornea@reddit
And makes the airframe very difficult to update for future generations of the aircraft, without starting again.
Luci-Noir@reddit
One of the problems with the B-2 is that since the engines are embedded they can’t be upgraded with bigger, more efficient engines.
hcornea@reddit
They’ll likely need to start again when they re-design it.
But military aircraft operate in a different regulatory and economic environment to civilian airliners.
The relatively recent transition to LEAP engines is testament to some the challenges faced with updating some existing airframes.
Ecthelion-O-Fountain@reddit
A moment in time. This wouldn’t have made it one iteration in bypass increase, and it looks cool but went away for good reasons
slavabien@reddit
For sure. I wonder how they work with this problem on the B2 or the new B21 bombers.
Luci-Noir@reddit
One of the problems with the B-2 is that there wasn’t room for bigger, more efficient engines. Apparently, it’s been addressed in the B-21.
khaelian@reddit
By spending boatloads of government money and caring deeply about the radar cross section as opposed to airlines' concerns of efficiency and uptime
Narrow_Vegetable_42@reddit
That problem won't come up for those aircraft. Basically everything about bypass ratio tradeoffs is already known, and the design for those relatively modern aircraft was chosen very consciously. There will be no sudden increase in engine volume for the performance needed.
Chuppyness@reddit
I mean, they kinda did with the development of the Nimrod MRA4, but there certainly wasn't much room to go any further and, IIRC, that required designing an entirely new wing, rather than 'just' mounting larger engines underneath as with a traditional airliner design.
Hot_Net_4845@reddit
"The mechanics nightmare"
Appropriate-Count-64@reddit
Though the aerodynamics engineer was probably quite proud of it.
Malcolm2theRescue@reddit
It was fine for small turbojets but not for fanjets. Try superimposing a couple of CFM Leap engines on that wing. I have no AI skills but it would be fun to see.
PM_ME_TANOOKI_MARIO@reddit
No AI required
Pretty wild seeing that even 70 years later, the core of the LEAP engines is probably about the same size as the embeddeds. It really is just the fan.
discombobulated38x@reddit
Neato teato things that are impossible with modern engines, also the FMECA for having your engine surrounded by fragile stuff is a horror show from an uncontained failure perspective (we didn't know that in the 50s), and it's a maintenance nightmare too.
Ecthelion-O-Fountain@reddit
All true, but I contained failures are partly I contained because huge fans are difficult to contain.
dpdxguy@reddit
Turbine failures are just difficult to contain, regardless of fan size, especially when the container must fly.
discombobulated38x@reddit
Turbine discs are far harder to contain, have always been as fast as they are now, and the chemistry at temperature does weird unpredictable things to fatigue lives
Furaskjoldr@reddit
Often called integral engines
imjustarandomsquid@reddit (OP)
Wikipedia refers to them as "buried in the roots of the wings". No better name seemingly
Level390@reddit
I think what happened to the comet was bound to happen to the pioneer airframe - they were ahead and they paid the price. If it was another manufacturer it would have happened to them, so it was inevitable.
misunderstoodpotato@reddit
Yep, we had some people from the De Havilland museum come do a talk at work, they quoted a Boeing Engineer saying pretty much what you said.
imjustarandomsquid@reddit (OP)
Right, someone had to be first and the gamble didn't pay off for them
CharacterAd7690@reddit
If by " luck " you mean proper inspection for a first time ever machine on a regular basis to identify possible flaws, then yes luck was needed :/
Brainchild110@reddit
Why must you hurt me so?
Malcolm2theRescue@reddit
It’s fun?
Brainchild110@reddit
Fair
Late-Mathematician55@reddit
Is it me, or is that a bucket-load of 60 degree flap?
lucathecontemplator@reddit
Not really. The 707 and DC-8s success was down to the economy of scale the U.S had rather than the actual planes.
Busy_Ad7030@reddit
👍
Kanyiko@reddit
In an alternate universe, Britain could have been a global player in the airliner industry. Sadly, politics and companies unable to see the future got in the way of that.
The De Havilland Comet had a bright future in front of it - the Comet 1 had been picked up by BOAC, Air France and UAT, the Comet 2 had firm orders of Air India, British Commonwealth Pacific Airlines, Japan Airlines, Lineas Aeropostal Venezolana and Panair do Brasil, and the Comet 3 had firm orders of Capital Airlines, National Airlines and Pan Am, and interests by Qantas.
And then came the accidents.
While the investigation was underway into the accidents and the aircraft were being redesigned, Boeing announced its 707 and Douglas its DC-8. By the time the Comet 4 first took to the air, so had the Boeing 707 and that was that - the trailblazing Comet had turned into an obsolete also-ran.
Meanwhile, the Ministry of Supply had written out a specification for a jet transport aircraft. Vickers responded with a design, the V-1000, capable with carrying an 18900 lb payload trans-atlantic at a 520 mph cruise speed, which was selected over Avro's proposal of the Avro Atlantic, which would have been an airliner built around the Vulcan's wings. Vickers was planning on marketing the V-1000 as the VC-7, but just before the prototype was completed in 1955... the V-1000 was cancelled. On the one hand, Short of Belfast had just been handed a contract for the Bristol Britannia to prevent it from going under, having just lost both the contracts for the Comet 2 airliner (scrapped following the crashes) and Supermarine Swift fighter (cancelled following a problematic service introduction), and the Ministry of Supply considered the Britannia as 'enough to cover RAF Transport Command's needs'. On the other hand, BOAC, intended to be the launch customer of the V-1000, suddenly had the Boeing 707 pushed its way which eliminated the need for an 'unproven design'. Between those two political decisions, the V-1000 was suddenly seen as "surplus to requirements". Meanwhile, Boeing and Douglas had both seen the plans for the V-1000, and... well, it certainly inspired them to change the designs of their 707 and DC-8, that became the airliner the V-1000 could have been - or as Vickers' chairman said at the time: "We have just handed the Americans the entire world market for big jet airliners".
Malcolm2theRescue@reddit
I have read about this fairly extensively but I can’t find any proof that Boeing actually changed their design based on what happened to the Comet. I do know that Boeing designed their fuselage with anti-tear properties that would isolate a crack between rib sections. Not sure it was because of the Comet disaster. Anybody?
Kanyiko@reddit
It was.
Here's the 'Operation Guillotine' publicity film that Boeing issued, to reassure the general public that the Boeing 707 would not suffer the same fate as the Comet had.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z3LkEVIAY2o
Much of the design changes done to the Boeing 707 were drawn from the lessons of the inquiry of the Comet crashes; Boeing made sure that the 707's cabin was of a Failsafe design (i.e. able to fail in a predictably and safe way) rather than the Safelife design of the Comet (i.e. designed with a precalculated lifespan within which it was not expected to fail - the calculations of which were entirely wrong in the Comet 1's case).
Malcolm2theRescue@reddit
What a find! Thank you!
Kanyiko@reddit
At the same time, British European Airways was looking at replacing its Vickers Viscounts with jet aircraft, and they wrote out a specification. Hunting proposed the 30-seat Hunting 107, while Bristol and De Havilland each proposed a 100-seat airliner, the Bristol 200 and De Havilland DH.121.
Bristol realised that 100 passengers was too few and proposed a 120 seat airliner which could be marketed international, but BEA stood with its demands - 'there would be no market for a 120-seat regional airliner'. The 100-seat DH.121 was selected - becoming known as the Trident - but it saw its market stolen from it by the 125-seat Boeing 727 that proved there most definitely WAS a market for a 120-seat regional airliner. De Havilland - by now absorbed into Hawker Siddeley - tried to rectify its mistake in the Trident 2 and Trident 3, but by then it was already too late.
Bristol was also too busy with two other projects - the 188 supersonic research plane; and the project 223 airliner (which evolved into the Concorde), meaning it was forced to give up on the Bristol 200.
While all this was happening, Hunting - absorbed into British Aircraft Company or BAC - had realised that 30 seats was too little, and reworked the Hunting 107 into a 59, then 80-seat airliner. The re-designed aircraft became known as the 111 - or more accurately, the BAC One-Eleven.
At the same time, Vickers was having immense problems trying to convince BOAC to buy its new design, the VC-10. They had marketed the 135-seat VC-10 and the 212-seat Super VC-10; however BOAC's chairman wanted more 707s and tried to block the VC-10 program all along the way, arguing there was simply no need for 200-seat airliners. Eventually Vickers relented and cut down the VC-10s to BOAC's specs - the VC-10 was cut back to a 110 capacity and the 'Super VC-10' to a 150 capacity, putting them at a distinct disadvantage to the Boeing 707 and DC-8. Vickers tried to gain support for their 'VC-10 Superb', a twin-deck 250-seat variant, but given BOAC's lackluster support for the VC-10, that project never came off the ground.
Between the starcrossed Comet, the ill-fated V-1000, the unbuilt Avro Atlantic, the late-to-the-race Britannia, the unbuilt Bristol 200, and the 'to launch-customer but not world market spec' Trident and VC-10, the world market could have looked a whole lot different. The BAC One-Eleven serves as an example of what could well have been...
ackackakbar@reddit
I have heard it was quite loud for the PAX.
imjustarandomsquid@reddit (OP)
Louder than modern jets, certainly, much quieter than the turboprops of the day
Southern-Bandicoot@reddit
I don't think any commercial turboprop aircraft were carrying passengers when the Comet started revenue warning service. But I'm haply to be corrected if that's not the case.
It was certainly much quieter than piston engined aircraft of the day.
TexasBrett@reddit
Vickers Viscount entered service in 1953 around the same time as the Comet.
Overload4554@reddit
Let’s not forget the Bristol Britannia or the Lockheed Electra
Malcolm2theRescue@reddit
Or the Vickers Vanguard!
Minimum_Possibility6@reddit
It's such a great plane.
I've been up in a Nimrod a few times and it's such an amazing plane
chuckop@reddit
In an “alternate dimension” it would have been designed better and not need fixing.
Pressurization wasn’t unknown then. There were piston and turboprop pressurized aircraft flying for many years.
It was never about windows blowing out, but about the skin and structure being too flimsy and light for the loads.
vctrmldrw@reddit
What was unknown was pressurized cabins at high altitude.
Malcolm2theRescue@reddit
The principle of metal fatigue and the effects of temperature and pressure were well understood by engineers and DH tested it for these. Unfortunately, they didn’t have the ability to see the tiny cracks developing. The accidents did not show up until 1,000 cycles I believe.
Lowbodycount01@reddit
Make square windows great again.
imjustarandomsquid@reddit (OP)
Metal fatigue is a scam by Big Jet to put de Havilland out of business
InterestingAnt438@reddit
It's interesting that the Nevil Shute novel, No Highway (later made into a film with Jimmy Stewart) deals with the issues that later faced the Comet.
Malcolm2theRescue@reddit
Absolutely spooky how it predicted an engineering related disaster!
Malcolm2theRescue@reddit
Yes! The USA Marshall plan was pouring billions of dollars into the rebuilding of Europe. The CARE package program (Cooperative for American Remittances to Europe) was set up to feed starving Europeans. We didn’t want countries we were supporting spending money on building airliners just as I don’t expect folks on food stamps (the dole) to be buying caviar.
Bureaucromancer@reddit
I mean honestly, the Comet would have had a brief heyday without crashes but Vickers was in a much better spot with the V.1000. For that matter De Havilland could so easily have had a Trident that was actually equivalent to the 727…
Or the One Eleven that WAS DC-9 competitive, even made it to American operators but was neither stretched nor up engined until it was too late.
hgwelz@reddit
The problem with British airplanes (1950's-1960') is planners were short-sighted and tailored planes to BOAC/BEA and domestic requirements and not to the US & worldwide market.
BobbyB52@reddit
And then, BOAC and BEA twice turned around and said they didn’t want them (VC-10, Trident).
Fourteen_Sticks@reddit
Instead they became the Boeing of the corporate jet world; hanging on to a type certificate for almost 40 years
Malcolm2theRescue@reddit
Are you talking about the Airbus 320? Its type certificate is 41 years old and they are still (rightfully) modifying it.
Fourteen_Sticks@reddit
No.
HS-125.
I fat fingered; it was 60+ years.
Malcolm2theRescue@reddit
Ahh, the good ole De Havilland, Hawker Siddely, British Aerospace, Raytheon, Beech Hawker 125! I flew one for a brief time. It was a 3A/RA early model. It looked like it was designed by Wallace and Grommit but very nice to fly although I missed having thrust reversers. From the passenger/corporate point of view it was a great deal. About the same price as a Sabreliner or Learjet with a much bigger almost stand up cabin. Its range was originally only 900 nm and cruise speed was well below the competition but over those 40 years, it got better and better! The worst thing for the pilots (usually the co-pilot, me!) was having to get up on a ladder to add oil to the Viper engines after every flight.
Fourteen_Sticks@reddit
And TKS all over the hangar floor, and having to remember to turn it off before it freezes on the wing during the climb, and having to slap the MAV switches on as soon as the wheels leave the ground…
Malcolm2theRescue@reddit
Oh. Brings back memories.
Fourteen_Sticks@reddit
Same for me.
Bad memories, but memories nonetheless.
My current shop sold their Hawkers just before I got here. Six months later and we’re flying back and forth across the country three times a week in new G280s. Would have been a nightmare to have to do it in a Hawker and make fuel stops.
BobbyJackT@reddit
Except their DHC-6 and DHC-8 are actually good designs.
bill-of-rights@reddit
Structural epoxy would have also prevented these failures in the Comet, but it was not yet in widespread use in the aviation sector.
ImmediateSmile754@reddit
Making airplanes that didn't catastrophically depressurize would have been a big help.
vctrmldrw@reddit
It was a huge help.
It allowed the entire industry to understand how to make pressurized cabin airliners safe.
kevina2@reddit
Not with square windows or that tail. Slipper tanks are so sexy though.
vctrmldrw@reddit
It wasn't the square windows.
https://youtu.be/-DjnG74DDno
wolftick@reddit
What a difference a window shape makes.
Malcolm2theRescue@reddit
Had nothing to do with windows.
JamieEC@reddit
nothing to do with the shape of the windows
domp711@reddit
The fuselage failures actually were not caused by the shape of the passenger windows.
Cautious_Use_7442@reddit
Isn’t that essentially an urban myth and it was down to deficiencies in the Comet’s structure? I thought that someone recently said here that the 737 had similarly sized windows (just turned 90 degrees)
MelodicFondant@reddit
Not really luck. Fact is,that someone had to learn the hard lessons about jet airliners.
It was them,or tupolev.
sadza_power@reddit
Whilst it is one of my favourite planes, a bit of perspective is gained when compared to modern planes.
It's absolutely tiny and about the size of a modern regional jet! But it could've been a great stepping stone to larger jets if it had been supported better by the government.
beatlz-too@reddit
Such a beautiful plane, too.
thaidrogo7489@reddit
My first flight in a jet (1965 - yeah, I'm old) was in a BOAC Comet - Sydney Australia to Hong Kong.
Overwatchingu@reddit
Just a note on the last sentence; De Havilland, which made the Comet, and De Havilland Canada, which made the Dash 8, are actually separate entities, so the De Havilland that made the Comet is not know for the Dash 8 because that was made by DHC.
While we’re on the subject of what could have been, Avro Canada’s C102 jetliner was in the air just 2 weeks after the Comet, but the program was shut down to focus resources on the CF-100. So in a world where Avro Canada had more resources and the CF-105 Arrow wasn’t the financial death blow to the company we could have had another jet manufacturer.
Stu161@reddit
De Havilland Canada is to De Havilland as A&W Canada is to A&W: an offshoot that is now superior to the original.
hgwelz@reddit
The Avro Jetliner was a missed opportunity. Similar specs as the Comet, but faster, and aimed at the US market. Eight years ahead of the 707.
0ttr@reddit
Beautiful aircraft. If it had been successful, it would've probably ended up as part of Airbus today, but Airbus would've been more dominant more quickly. Probably would've kept US competition more robust.
In truth, I'm sad that Lockheed, McDonnell-Douglas, and Boeing aren't all alive and well today. I wish the US gov't had done more to foster these companies in the commercial air sector. Part of the reason for Boeing's recent troubles, IMO, is that it got large enough to engage in regulatory capture. I think this would've been less likely had it been competing with US companies. If Embraer can exist, why not these other two?
JamieEC@reddit
Honestly, much as I love the comet, it was not a very good design compared to what boeing were doing. The 707 they released was basically the same as a modern airliner. The 2 key things were engines in pods and wings that flex. Boeing would've released this anyway, which was larger and faster, so the comet's days were numbered anyway.
ObservantOrangutan@reddit
The 707 could carry more and go further, a massive benefit.
The Comet would have needed more iterations and upgrades as the years went by to compete.
zerbey@reddit
The design later saw service as the Nimrod which flew into the 21st century.
blindfoldedbadgers@reddit
It really, really shouldn’t have though.
nothatiamhiding_i@reddit
Those engine embedded wings look scary to me. Can't believe that they went with that design.
GhostRiders@reddit
You will not find a better break down on why these accidents happened
https://youtu.be/K5HqEwbp4GA?si=2JRSJd6wQcGP4auu
Korneph@reddit
As windows have already been mentioned, it's worth highlighting that the Comet in-flight break-ups had nothing to do with the shape of the 'square' passenger windows (which were plenty round enough) - it's a common myth.
In fact, the fatigue cracks that brought them down started no where near a passenger window, it was at a cut out in the fuselage for a radio-navigation antenna, and in a subsequent ground test the failure started at an emergency escape hatch.
In actuality, the fuselage was just too thin properly dissipate the peak stress around areas like those you get near fuselage cut-outs like instrument ports, hatches and windows. The understanding of pressurisation and stress pathways at those altitudes just wasn't well understood yet. While De Havilland had predicted a life-span of 18,000 flight cycles, they started failing after just 3,000.
And the fact that the windows become more oval in later models had nothing to do with the crashes - it was for ease of installation during building and came amidst a raft of other structural modifications (including a thicker fuselage) that kept the last comets flying well into the 90's.
There's a fantastic write-up on the Comet saga by u/Admiral_Cloudberg if anyone is interested in digging deeper.
domp711@reddit
Thank you!!
Intelligent_League_1@reddit
Oops square windows!
domp711@reddit
The passenger window shape were not the root cause of the fuselage failures.
GhostRiders@reddit
Nope
Downtown-Act-590@reddit
The truth is that 1950s Europe needed jet airliners less than the 1950s US, because of different travel needs of its inhabitants.
De Havilland was a technical overachiever, but the market was probably going to catch up to it anyway.
When Europeans needed their own jets, they got them. But De Havilland wasn't around at the point.
halfty1@reddit
The problem is that most 1950s European airlines where government owned, as where most of the European aircraft manufacturers. So they ended up designing planes that were hyper focused on the exact needs of their country’s national airline, to the detriment of broader commercial appeal. It didn’t help that those airlines frequently flip flopped on requirements during development.
dpdxguy@reddit
Even with luck it seems unlikely they'd have survived as anything but one of Airbus's ancestors.
imjustarandomsquid@reddit (OP)
Ah well one can dream
Seaburn93@reddit
You can smell the tobacco from here
imjustarandomsquid@reddit (OP)
Hell yeah. The plane crashes probably killed less people than the lung cancer did
Unusual-External4230@reddit
Anyone know why the underside of this aircraft is so dirty? It almost looks like it's leaking from various areas, was that common with these?
Malcolm2theRescue@reddit
You don’t want to see “the dirty underbelly” of aviation! This is the real reason we are told to “keep the shiny side up”! Saves embarrassment.
Hodgetwins32@reddit
It’s common on every airplane.
OkSatisfaction9850@reddit
Are they are folded to Airbus? So they indeed became a major manufacturer
Sad-Umpire6000@reddit
Dehavilland was merged into Hawker Siddley, which after more mergers is today part of BAE - previously British Aerospace. So, not Airbus.
imjustarandomsquid@reddit (OP)
In a very roundabout way I guess?
Important_Ruin@reddit
I'm sure it was said Boeing was going to use non round windows, but after the crashes, they changed their window designed, and everyone went circle windows instead of the square which Comet had and was responsible for the fatigue cracks.
Unfortunately with the Comet being first, it was where a major flaw with square windows was discovered, if it wasn't the Comet it would have been another aircraft.
Would be an interesting alternative universe to see British Aviation industry if the Comet didn't have fatal flaw.
imjustarandomsquid@reddit (OP)
Absolutely
Hawky166@reddit
I wish they had been - they made some truly iconic and beautiful aircraft.