JET AGE: Triumphs And Failures. The Early Battle For Air Dominance: Boeing Vs. De Havilland

The early battle for air dominance after WW2. The Jet Age revolution of post WW2.
De Havilland against Boeing, Tupolev, and many other aviation innovators.
The De Havilland Comet became the first passenger jet airliner in the world, initially powered by Frank Whittle's turbojet, the British inventor who, contrary to popular belief, had a working turbojet before Germany in April 1937.
Some initial mistakes are reminiscent of today's issues with companies like Boeing, who also had initial teething problems, just like De Havilland's notorious issue with their Comet.
The de Havilland DH.106 Comet is the world's first commercial jet airliner. Developed and manufactured by de Havilland in the United Kingdom, the Comet 1 prototype first flew in 1949. It features an aerodynamically clean design, four de Havilland Ghost turbojet engines buried in the wing roots, a pressurized cabin, and large windows. It offered a relatively quiet, comfortable passenger cabin for the era and was commercially promising at its debut in 1952.
Within a year of the airliner's entry into service, three Comets were lost in highly publicized accidents after suffering catastrophic mishaps mid-flight. Two of these were found to be caused by structural failure resulting from metal fatigue in the airframe, a phenomenon not fully understood at the time; the other was due to overstressing of the airframe during flight through severe weather. The Comet was withdrawn from service and extensively tested. Design and construction flaws were ultimately identified, including improper riveting and dangerous stress concentrations around square cut-outs for the ADF (automatic direction finder) antennas. As a result, the Comet was extensively redesigned with structural reinforcements and other changes. Rival manufacturers heeded the lessons from the Comet when developing their aircraft.
Although sales never fully recovered, the improved Comet 2 and the prototype Comet 3 culminated in the redesigned Comet 4 series, which debuted in 1958 and remained in commercial service until 1981. The Comet was also adapted for various military roles such as VIP, medical, passenger transport, and surveillance; the last Comet 4, used as a research platform, made its final flight in 1997. The most extensive modification resulted in a specialized maritime patrol derivative, the Hawker Siddeley Nimrod, which remained in service with the Royal Air Force until 2011, over 60 years after the Comet's first flight.
The Comet was involved in 25 hull-loss accidents, including 13 fatal crashes, which resulted in 492 fatalities.[186] Pilot error was blamed for the type's first fatal accident, which occurred during takeoff at Karachi, Pakistan, on 3 March 1953 and involved a Canadian Pacific Airlines Comet 1A.[82] Three fatal Comet 1 crashes were due to structural problems, specifically British Overseas Airways Corporation flight 783 on 2 May 1953, British Overseas Airways Corporation flight 781 on 10 January 1954, and South African Airways flight 201 on 8 April 1954, led to the grounding of the entire Comet fleet. After design modifications were implemented, Comet services resumed on October 4, 1958, with Comet 4s.
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[@u47mkbg]

first !🏆🎖

[@martinhumble]

Amazing work. Great documentary, editing, upscaling and - well everything. Hats off!!

[@miscbits6399]

Shute's autobiogarphy makes it very clear No Highway was about the Comet. He was fired from de Havilland and gagged using the Cfficial Secrets Act after publishing a memo detailing metal fatigue issues, which is why he migrated to Australia He was also heavily involved in R101 and heavily criticised it before its maiden voyage Comet would have been ok if the workforce had been infoermed of the issues. The punch rivets were forced into slightly too small holes (causing microcracking) and overtightened (exacerbating the issue) - window corners was the easy thing to blame but engineers had actually designed to avoid those stresses. They also designed with heavy use of adhesive bonding due to pressurisation issues - de Havilland manglement insisted on rivets because "they knew best" (never having built a pressurised aircraft before) - this was the crux of Shute's criticisms

[@stevenreyes3680]

I was going to say something… I took a 747 to Hawaii in 1971. I came back 6 months later on a 707. It felt like a race car compared to the family wagon ? More like a Winnebago… PS I didn’t know it started out as a tanker…

[@awuma]

My first flight in a 747 was out of Honolulu circa 1975, sitting at a window at the back on the left, so I could look all the way forward, seeing the long curve of the fuselage inside and the lights of Waikiki on the outside. Unforgettable. Also had many flights in 707s and even a 720, and lots of DC-8s. Even though the 707 and 737-800 carry about the same number of passengers, a recent visit to Dayton and being on board the Presidential 707 at the Air Force museum showed just how much more substantial is the 707 compared with the 737, especially the wing.

[@jadall77]

@@awuma I'm younger missed a lot of these airliners in this video but remember my dad telling me I think if I'm on a dc-10 you can really see the fuselage bend and I was sitting in the back of the plane and was like holy fuck! Also I'm pretty sure kc-135s are still in service I used to live in Topeka they still had them there. It is an air refueling unit. I used to see b2's flying low patterns i could see the color of the pilots eyes they were flying so low. guessing they were doing like landing touch and go's or landing training stuff.

[@mariano7699]

Amazing Constalation

[@jadall77]

I'm on the big section about the connie there is one flying around still and it's gorgeous I think it's called Connie.

[@jadall77]

49:00 or so into the video I think I saw a thing about the dc-8 breaking the sound barrier they took it up high and put it in a dive and it stuck their flight controls for a moment before they got control of it again but yeah they broke mach 1. Also It was I think a test or company flight so had limited persons on board.

[@user-kw5qv6zl5e]

The placement of engines (totally rear or underwiing) is an interesting study. In the end look at if like this...rear engines ...top tail.. thats a lot of stuff to put in a place it "sort of looks like it doesnt balance" You are totally balancing hardware (engines) with consumables (fuel) farther forward. The centre of gravity and the centre of lift are alaays in the move in both cases. So lets say now we have an elevator problem...or an engine out...straight away we see in rear engine ...YAW...big time ..pushed from the back...its better to "tow" a plane from the front (middle) ...think of a shopping trolley...its worse push from the back..drag it from the front ..hard but better...you notice the effort is less. Only until the F16 fighter turned up did we see beautiful "ouf of control " casters"

[@falconprout8857]

What do you mean by casters?

[@user-kw5qv6zl5e]

@@falconprout8857sorry .. not by me ... autocorrect from this end ... astable control..."casters " is a euphemism for where are we going next ...there are graphs for its performance online.. interesting to see how it matches SU27/35...we already know Ukrainian MIG 29s weren't an easy target even though they are a generation behind.

[@williambrasky3891]

What are you on about? In reality, airplanes with the engines, and therefore the center of thrust, closer to the centerline will experience less adverse yaw in the event of an engine failure. This is due to a little slut called Leverage. You see, an airplane is a lot like ur mom, in that any time there’s a change of position she’s gonna move as if she’s balanced on a big pole that runs straight through till it hits her center of gravity. Losing an engine that’s mounted out on/ under the wings is like when you go to spin her around like a top while she sticks both her arms straight out, parallel to the floor, so a buddy can rotate her about her axis by pushing against one of her hands/ forearms. Losing an engine in a plane with engines mounted up against the fuselage is like trying the same move, but this time you have a buddy push against one of her boobies. And I’m not sure who told you that a tractor configuration is always any more or less efficient than an equivalent pusher set up, but they told you wrong. There’s a long answer, but the short answer is, it depends. And I want you to know I’m sorry I had to involve your mom. Truly, I am. It’s just I find it easier making analogies with things that have something in common, and when I imagine planes, I always imagine myself in a cockpit… so….

[@jadall77]

I remember some disaster where the jet was only running it's tail engine with like it's wing or side engines shut down and the engine naturally pushes like nose up or nose down the engine doesn't push strait back maybe they engineered that into the design because it is how it runs with all its engines in normal operation. In the case I'm thinking about with the remaining engine the pilots got the nose up or down handled enough to emergency land I think.

[@awuma]

Lovely film sequences, but quite often the spoken commentary is not about what is being shown (e.g. talk about turboprops when only piston engined aircraft are being shown). Not a single Viscount shown during the first Viscount segment.

[@jadall77]

At about 35:00 minutes the guys shutting off all but 1 engine saw a modern clip from a I think p3 orion shutting off all but 1 engine because they have to keep it out on rotation for anti submarine or radar and to conserve fuel they can fly around on 1 of 4 engines. Which is a different model of a 1950's airliner.

[@brucegibbins3792]

In their rush to be first to fly a passenger jet, the British were doomed to produce a flawed aircraft. In contrast, American aircraft manufacturers, took what time was nessesery to release a more utilitarian design and more reliable airliners that quickly became the preferred choice of Airlines around the world. The British were masters of innovation, yet much less so in implementation.

[@jimczerwinski4951]

Sculldugery played a big part of their downfall

[@drstevenrey]

George Edward, or as I like to call him, the closeted ventriloquist.

[@user-xj6rr3yv8q]

Post WWII Britain aviation 'thrived' what?

[@PeteSty]

Jet Age? Boeing vs de Havilland? This is Lockheed vs Douglas. And they aren't jets!

[@user-kw5qv6zl5e]

The mode of failure you describe is NOT CORRECT!!!!....NOTHING TO DO WITH WINDOWS...The skylight-aerial hole in the top was the origin...it ENDED AT the windows ...rounding square windows was a rectification which LOOKED as if this was the cause

[@_triff]

No need to shout!

[@mizake01]

It's ARCHIVAL film. Teedee : )

[@user-kw5qv6zl5e]

@@mizake01 smartarse

[@mizake01]

@@user-kw5qv6zl5e Well, Thank you :)

[@michaelpielorz9283]

.

[@drstevenrey]

Unbelievable how cocky the British were then and now. When the simple fact of history is, that Britain drove any form of technical industry face first into the ground and today have completely disappeared from the scene altogether. Sad but inevitable.

[@michaelpielorz9283]

the best thing the british did was selling their outdated engines to the russians and made them think of buying the latest technology !!

[@leegibson3710]

At times countries like Germany and the UK were 7/8 years ahead of the USA and Russia with technology. The engine in the airacomet was utter crap, Reverse engineering British technology brought the US up to speed.

[@fireboltjd]

I have a heavily modified g80 m3 that looks EXACTLY the same as this M2 under the hood. These inspections are a joke and waste of both the police and citizens time.

[@jasons44]

Watershed?

[@jasons44]

Things r different now, Boeing is dead

[@daveballin]

Far too long.

[@u47mkbg]

First !