de Havilland: Britain’s Jet Pioneer

In 1952, passengers boarding a flight from London to Johannesburg stepped into the future. There were no propellers on their aircraft. The de Havilland Comet cruised far higher and faster than any airliner before it, so smoothly that passengers reportedly stood coins on their edge on the tables. Britain had built the world’s first jet airliner, years ahead of America. How it lost that lead is one of aviation’s great stories.

Geoffrey de Havilland and the Moth

Geoffrey de Havilland was a self-taught engineer who built and flew his own aircraft before the First World War. On 25 September 1920 he registered the de Havilland Aircraft Company at Stag Lane, north London, later moving to a larger site at Hatfield, Hertfordshire.

His first huge success was the Moth of 1925, a light, affordable two-seater. It made flying accessible to ordinary enthusiasts and launched the flying-club movement in Britain. De Havilland also built small airliners such as the twin-engined Dragon Rapide biplane, which served island and regional routes for decades.

The Comet: the world’s first jet airliner

After the Second World War, Britain set out to lead the new jet age. De Havilland’s answer was the DH.106 Comet, with four jet engines buried in its wing roots and a sleek, pressurised cabin. It first flew from Hatfield on 27 July 1949 and entered service with the British airline BOAC on 2 May 1952.

The difference for passengers was dramatic. The Comet flew around twice as fast as piston airliners and high above much of the weather, cutting journey times sharply. Airlines around the world lined up to order it.

The lesson that changed every aircraft

Then, in January and April 1954, two Comets broke up in flight. The whole fleet was grounded. Investigators carried out one of the most famous experiments in aviation history: they placed an entire Comet fuselage in a giant water tank and pumped the pressure up and down again and again, simulating thousands of flights. Eventually the fuselage cracked, at a corner of an opening in the skin.

The cause was metal fatigue: repeated pressurisation had concentrated stress at sharp corners until the metal failed. Nobody had fully understood that risk before. The findings changed aircraft design forever, leading to rounded windows, rigorous fatigue testing and structures built so a crack can’t spread catastrophically. Every airliner since has been designed with those lessons in mind. We explain the science in our aluminium to carbon fibre article.

Too late to win

A redesigned, larger Comet 4 returned and, on 4 October 1958, BOAC opened the first transatlantic jet passenger service, beating Pan Am’s Boeing 707 by a few weeks. But the 707 was larger, longer-ranged and cheaper per seat. The Comet’s head start had gone. De Havilland’s next airliner, the Trident trijet, was finished under new owners after the company was absorbed into Hawker Siddeley around 1960.

The legacy

The de Havilland name lives on. Hatfield went on to design the aircraft that became the BAe 146 regional jet, and the company’s former Canadian branch, now De Havilland Canada, still builds the Twin Otter. The Comet’s greatest legacy, though, is invisible: it’s inside the structure of every airliner flying today.

Sources & Further Reading

• De Havilland — Wikipedia ↗
• The de Havilland Aircraft Company — RAF Museum ↗
• De Havilland Aircraft Company — Britannica ↗
• Comet’s Tale — Smithsonian Magazine ↗