De Havilland Comet

Type: Jet passenger transport. Manufacturer: De Havilland.

First flight: July 27, 1949.

Primary use: Airlines.

T

he De Havilland Comet was the first jet airliner. Its appearance in 1952 caused great interest because of its unrivaled speed, but the Comet success story was interrupted by a series of crashes.

The Comet Project

In 1944, before the end of World War II, the British government anticipated the growth of aviation in the postwar era. It requested airplane manufacturers to plan a new generation of aircraft for civilian use. The government wanted to see designs for a jet airliner able to fly faster than any existing passenger air­craft. The airplane would travel routes between the United Kingdom and the United States as well as to the various nations of the British Commonwealth, such as India and South Africa.

De Havilland was asked to consider the project. This British company was no stranger to high-speed aircraft: In 1934, it had built the Comet, a two-seater rac­ing plane. During World War II, De Havilland had built one of the most suc­cessful Allied warplanes: the very fast Mosquito fighter-bomber.

De Havilland designers started work on a jet airliner in 1946. They decided it, too, would be called the Comet. At this

TECH^TALK

COMET 1

Capacity: 36-44 passengers.

Engines: Four De Havilland Ghost turbojets.

Wingspan: 115 feet (35 meters).

Length: 93 feet (26.4 meters).

Weight: 105,000 pounds (47,670 kilograms).

Range: 1,750 miles (2,816 kilometers).

Cruising speed: 490 miles per hour (788 kilometers per hour).

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stage in aviation history, jet engines were very new technology. Little was known about the effects on airplanes of prolonged high-speed flight at great altitudes. The Comet builders were pioneers-they also were designing an airplane much bigger than any jet plane so far flown. At the time, there were only a handful of jet planes flying, and almost all were single-seat fighters.