The aircraft’s first flight was in July 1949, and it was introduced in May 1952 with BOAC. With no other passenger jets yet in service, the Comet was the envy of the world. On March 3, 1953 a Canadian Pacific Airlines de Havilland Comet was lost taking off from Karachi Pakistan on a flight to Australia. The last Comet to fly was a military example belonging to the Royal Aircraft Establishment. “It even had its own special call-sign: ‘Jet Speedbird’.”. Airlines and other operators have finally put the Comet to its resting place. There is a memorial in the cemetery of Porto Azzurro, where some of the victims are buried and a list of those (20) whose remains were never found. The Comet crashed into the sea near Elba Island, off the Italian coast, killing all 35 people on board. The second problem concerned the rectangular windows. The airplane operated on a return flight from London, UK to Singapore. They had logged 720 flying hours and close to 3,600 flying hours, respectively. In 1954, there were no cockpit voice recorders or flight data recorders (the so-called "black boxes") to assist crash investigators, and there existed no established protocol for aircraft accident investigation at the time. Witnesses to the crash were a group of Italian fishermen who rushed to the scene to recover the bodies and to search for possible survivors, of which there were none. [5] Among the casualties were Chester Wilmot, a prominent Australian journalist and military historian working for the BBC, and Dorothy Beecher Baker, a Hand of the Cause of God for the Baháʼí Faith. Over the equivalent of 9,000 flying hours, the water pressure in the aircraft fuselage was raised and lowered to simulate the conditions it would experience during flight. “It was a huge mystery why these superb and futuristic aircraft were suddenly falling out of the sky.”, “I felt so aggrieved that they put it back into service,” says Duffey, “that I joined [the pilot union] Balpa on a more or less full time basis, determined to make sure we knew what was going on with aircraft we were operating.”. In initial climb at 10,000 feet, it flew into a heavy tropical thunderstorm, and disintegrated. Bull and the same team of engineers later examined South African Airways Flight 201 before its final flight. A few months later, on 13 March 1953, a similar problem occurred on take-off from Karachi. Bodies had been recovered late into the night, and although the search had continued in the freezing water, there was little hope of finding any survivors. “The first four aircraft had faulty seals,” says Duffey. [3], An extensive search for the aircraft was organised, which included the Royal Navy ships HMS Barhill and HMS Gambia as well as the Maltese civilian salvage vessel Sea Salvor. The Engineer Officer was Francis Charles Macdonald, age 27, and the Radio Officer was Luke Patrick McMahon, age 32. “The cause of the accident wasn’t only the wing but the lack of feedback on the controls that allowed you to pull-back as much as you wanted,” says Duffey. The aircraft wreckage was eventually found on the sea floor; it was subsequently raised and transported to the Royal Aircraft Establishment (RAE) for investigation. “It was obvious from the wreckage that the aircraft had explosively disintegrated in some way,” Hodgson says. Incredibly, there was no fire and none of the crew or 35 passengers were injured. Sitting on one of comfy upholstered seats of the First Class apartment, it is easy to imagine what it must have been like to fly in one of these beautiful aircraft high above the weather, maybe reading a magazine or sipping an iced drink. [4], The First Officer on Flight 781 was William John Bury, age 33. Upon examination of the aircraft wreckage by the RAE, it became evident that the aircraft had broken up in mid-air, and there was initially some speculation that the aircraft might have been brought down by a bomb. Looking out of the window, he watched the plane begin its take-off for the flight to London. The first Comet was rolled out of its hangar at the de Havilland factory in Hatfield, some 25 miles (40 kilometres)  north of central London, in July 1949 – only four years after the end of World War Two. “The primary way of travelling long distances was ocean liners.” In fact, many of the passengers of BOAC were civil servants off to run the British Empire. The first commercial flight took place between London and Johannesburg. But there was also a more fundamental problem with the design of the controls. The search effort involved the pioneering use of underwater TV cameras, developed by a team at the UK Admiralty Research Laboratory led by George MacNeice, to help to locate and salvage the wreckage in deep water.[10]. “If you look at a modern no-frills airline, every inch of space is given over to fare-paying passengers but that’s not what air travel was like in the 1940s. There … “There were two fatal flaws with the aircraft,” says Hodgson. The wider-bodied Boeing 707 filled the gap after Comets were grounded (Credit: Getty Images), “We had a series of meetings at Heathrow,” says BOAC pilot Duffey. “It’s amazing what they were doing 70 years ago, they were way ahead of their time.”. Following the war, De Havilland turned his focus to commercial jets, developing the Comet and the Ghost jet engine. He had previously been involved in an accident in 1951, in which a Hermes aircraft was forced to make an emergency landing, and he was later praised for his flying conduct during this accident flight. Seven crew and 14 passengers were killed. Scheduled passenger services ran through to 1981 with Dan-Air, with the last flight by a plane owned by the British Ministry of Technology taking place on 14 March 1997. Fatal crash of de Havilland Comet passenger jet near Elba, 10 January 1954, A BOAC de Havilland Comet 1, similar to the aircraft involved in the accident, Aviation accidents and incidents in Italy. Those in first class were seated around tables – much like in a railway carriage. “They gambled and lost; I was one of the chips.”. “Today’s jet aircraft owe a huge amount to the Comet,” says Hodgson. The de Havilland Comet. Join 800,000+ Future fans by liking us on Facebook, or follow us on Twitter. The investigators examined the final piece of wreckage with a microscope.[8]. Cut-away illustration of de Havilland Comet I G-ALYP by artist Laurence Dunn. The experiment was run 24 hours per day, 7 days per week. The plane's sleek design incorporates its four De Havilland Ghost 50 Mk1 engines inside the wing of the plane. It can be visually identified by its square passenger windows. The Comet had four jet engines – the throttles for which are seen here (Credit: Stephen Dowling). “As pilots we were becoming very concerned,” says Duffey. With unpressurised cabins and propellers powered by noisy piston engines, they had to fly through, rather than above, the weather. “It was a danger handling the aircraft, without a doubt I think that led to one of the accidents.”. Duffey, who had narrowly escaped two fatal Comet crashes, went on to become one of British Airways’ first Concorde pilots. BBC Future examines the legacy of a flawed but far-reaching design. It was piloted by Tom Campbell Black and J. C. McArthur in an attempt on the London- Cape Town record. On the second anniversary of the inaugural flight, G-ALYV on a flight from Singapore to London, crashed in Calcutta, India. To make this possible, a model fuselage was constructed that was similar to that of the Comet. “If you do that, it’s like taking a toy balloon and blowing it up and deflating it constantly – eventually it’s going to tear.”. The Comet crashed into the sea near Elba Island, off the Italian coast, killing all 35 people on board. “We’ve had to start from scratch internally,” he explains. The Comet looked futuristic compared to the propeller-driven airliners of the day (Credit: Getty Images), “I still do not forgive those who restarted the services after the [first] crash,” says Duffey, now retired and living in Canada. Many were converted from wartime bombers or freight transport aircraft and had quaint old-fashioned names such as Tudor, Lancastrian and Argonaut. “If you have a square opening in a sheet of metal, like the skin of an airliner, and you stress it, the place where the crack is going to start is at the corner,” Hodgson explains. Of the 29 passengers, 10 were children.Chester Wilmot, a prominent Australian journalist and military historian working for the BBC, was one of those killed. The Comet's pressure cabin had been designed to a safety factor comfortably in excess of that required by British Civil Airworthiness Requirements (BCAR)—the requirement was 1.33 times P with an ultimate load of 2 times P (where P is the cabin's "Proof" pressure), but the safety factor used in the Comet was 2.5 times P—hence the accident led to revised estimates for the safe loading strength requirements of airliner pressure cabins. Longer – comfortably carrying 92 passengers – stronger, more powerful and with much safer oval-shaped windows, it had a range of 2,500 miles, making it ideal for medium-haul flights. On 10 January 1954, Comet G-ALYP took off from Rome and climbed into the clouds. The only surviving original Comet 1 is being renovated at the de Havilland Museum – a small volunteer-run collection of buildings and hangars in the countryside north of London. You've heard about it. De Havilland DH106 Comet 3 G-ANLO BOAC Air-Air The De Havilland Aircraft Company DH106 Comet 3 (G-ANLO) flew for the first time on 19th July 1954, and was in reality an extensively developed aircraft, derived from the earlier DH106 Comet 1 and 2. A team of experts was assembled at the Royal Aircraft Establishment at Farnborough for an unprecedented investigation into the crashes. Inside there were seats for 36 passengers in two cabins. [6][7], Gerry Bull, a former BOAC engineer, said that when he performed a preflight inspection of the aircraft in Rome he looked for "incidental damage", and as he did not find any, he believed the Comet was fit for flight. Passengers reported a smooth journey, superb service and beautifully presented meals. A handpicked selection of stories from BBC Future, Earth, Culture, Capital, and Travel, delivered to your inbox every Friday. The next time you see a road sign pointing to an airport, you will probably be looking … On 26 October 1952, Duffey was off-shift sipping red wine in Rome’s airport terminal after flying Comet G-ALYZ in from Beirut, Lebanon. However, following the type’s launch, it had some … The New York Times reported on 12 January that BOAC had temporarily withdrawn all of their de Havilland Comet jet airliners from service, as a result of the crash, and that the two French airlines that used the Comet—Air France and Union Aero Maritime des Transports—had also suspended their Comet services. South African Airways Flight 201 ( SA201 ), a de Havilland Comet 1, took off at 18:32 UTC on 8 April 1954 from Ciampino Airport in Rome, Italy, en route to Cairo, Egypt, on the second stage of its flight from London, England to Johannesburg, South Africa. Back in the UK, de Havilland developed the Comet 2 and 3, before releasing the Comet 4 to the airlines by the end of 1958. The process marked the birth of today’s global air accident investigation industry. Shortly after passing Naples, over the island of Stromboli at the southern tip of Italy, the aircraft disintegrated. To find more evidence concerning the cause of the crash, the bodies were brought to the coroner for post-mortem. [2] Its loss marked the second in a series of three fatal accidents involving the Comet in less than twelve months, all caused by structural failures; it followed the crash of BOAC Flight 783 near Calcutta, India, in May 1953, and was followed by the loss of South African Airways Flight 201 in April 1954, which crashed in circumstances similar to BOAC 781 after departing from Ciampino Airport. On 2 May 1953, 43 people died when a Comet crashed shortly after leaving Delhi in India. “The Comet fleet considered themselves the elite in BOAC,” says Hugh Dibley, a pilot with the airline in the 1960s. “It was beautiful to fly and land but it was too late.”. It reached Cairo in a record 11 hr, 18 min, but the next leg of the journey was cut short due to oil trouble while in flight … Crews also reported a host of other problems. On its return leg from Singapore it landed at Calcutta-Dum Dum Airport at 15:10 hrs local time. “All the time, your competitors are looking over your shoulder at what you do,” says Hodgson. “First was the method of construction – the skin of the aircraft was made as thin as possible to save weight.”, “The Comet flew very high, and it needed to be pressurised so the passengers inside can breathe,” says Hodgson. Although the US bound flight had to stop to refuel in Newfoundland, the London flight made the journey non-stop in six hours and 11 minutes. It didn’t take long for the Comet to gain popularity in a time when trains and ships were still the major means of transportation. “What [the captain] had done was raise the nose too much on take-off; it had too much drag on the wings and didn’t get fully airborne,” Duffey says. By the time the flaw had been corrected and the new Comet 4C had been produced, de Havilland's jet had lost its lead to the Boeing 707 and the Douglas DC-8. The de Havilland Comet was first flown in 1949 In 1953 and 1954, three broke up soon after taking off, killing all on board Flights were suspended and production halted De Havilland DH.106 Comet 1 G-ALYY, 1953. The official passenger list was yet to be released, but it was believed that there were no Americans on board the plane. The aircraft, registered G-ALYP,[1] had taken off shortly before from Ciampino Airport in Rome, en route to Heathrow Airport in London, on the final leg of its flight from Singapore. 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