
The de Havilland Comet - arunmp
http://www.greatdisasters.co.uk/the-de-havilland-comet/
======
NeedMoreTea
I _still_ think the Comet manages to look more futuristic than other civil
planes. Something about the look of those engines in the wing roots with not a
nacelle in sight.

Such a shame it turned out to be doomed due to being first and the now well
known metal fatigue story.

The article, as with everything Comet related, ends with noting that lesson is
why airliners now have very rounded windows. Yet none ever wonder or look at
why cockpit windows remain decidedly rectangular. :)

~~~
arethuza
The Comet did go on in a military role as the Nimrod - I once saw an AEW
Nimrod parked at the edge of RAF Kinloss - a staggeringly ugly beast:

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hawker_Siddeley_Nimrod](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hawker_Siddeley_Nimrod)

~~~
pjc50
They were an amazing example of a legacy system being maintained far beyond
any reasonable expectation of life at gradually increasing cost, to a great
extent because nobody could agree on a replacement and the one-off cost of a
replacement was always a bit more than the endless "maintenance" and
"refurbishment".

If I remember rightly the refurbishment project hit the problem that, because
the original planes were hand-built to 1950s tolerances, building new parts
off the original plans simply wouldn't fit. The only viable approach was
_measure the specific plane you wanted to fit_ , and build a custom part for
it.

Eventually one simply caught fire in the air:
[https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/1528109/Fire-was-
reported-o...](https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/1528109/Fire-was-reported-on-
doomed-Nimrod-just-after-mid-air-refuelling.html)

The destruction of the airframes was controversial:
[https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-
england-12292390](https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-12292390) but I see it
as a symbolic driving of a stake through the heart of a project that should
have been honorably retired a couple of decades previously but instead took on
a vampiric, undead, and ultimately fatal life.

~~~
kevin_thibedeau
The B-52 program is slated to have a 95 year operational time span. Partly as
an experiment in maintaining old aircraft.

~~~
cstross
Yes, but Boeing built 744 of the things, and only 78 (or fewer) are still in
USAF service (I believe NASA has one …). So the ones being upgraded are from a
late production batch (the B-52H) and presumably by that point Boeing had
standardized things properly.

Comet production ran to 114 aircraft in four major versions, of significantly
different size and engine configuration (they started with a 36 seater, and
ended up with 119 passengers in a charter-variant of the Comet 4C). No
individual model of Comet got anywhere close to a triple-digit production run.

Oh, and 26 hull loss accidents!

------
kitd
One amazing story about this is that the film 'No Highway in the Sky' [1],
which (almost) predicts this exact problem, was made a couple of years
_before_ these actual events took place.

[1]
[https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0043859/](https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0043859/)

~~~
garethrees
The film was based on the novel "No Highway" (1948) by Nevil Shute, who had
worked as an aeronautical engineer at De Havilland.

~~~
arethuza
It's good that not all of Nevil Shute's predictions were so accurate:

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/On_the_Beach_(novel)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/On_the_Beach_\(novel\))

~~~
enriquto
How do you know? As far as it goes, this novel might be actually an accurate
prediction (except for the year).

------
dsfyu404ed
The foreshadowing was obvious when they called out the square windows in the
first few paragraphs. Everyone who's ever slept through an engineering class
knows corners cause stress risers.

------
Wildgoose
Chester Wilmot, author of "The Struggle for Europe" who was an Australian War
Correspondent during the Second World War was one of the passengers who sadly
lost their lives in the crash of the Comet over the Mediterranean Sea.

I can recommend "The Struggle for Europe" \- he wasn't just writing about the
history, he was actively taking part.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chester_Wilmot](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chester_Wilmot)

------
ozmaverick72
One story I heard was that one of the production engineers added a rivet in
the skin near the corners of the window. This was added because he thought it
would strengthen the structure. Unfortunately it actually acted as an
additional stress concentrator. I'm not entirely sure there wouldn't have been
an issue without that extra rivet. The guy that made that change thought he
was doing the right things but in fact made things much worse.

~~~
lqet
According to Wikipedia:

> The accident report's use of the word "window" when referring to the
> Automatic Direction Finding (ADF) aerial cutout panel[121] has led to a
> common belief that the Comet 1's accidents were the result of its having
> square passenger windows. In fact, Comet 1's cabin windows were very similar
> in shape, with similar corner radii, to those of the Boeing 377 and Douglas
> DC-7[122], both of which were pressurised aircraft. The windows in Northwest
> Airlines' B-377 were in fact larger and notably more rectangular[123] than
> those of the Comet 1. While stresses in the area of the passenger windows
> were significantly higher than de Havilland had calculated, nowhere in the
> accident report is it claimed that the fatigue failure of the Comet fuselage
> occurred was a result of the shape of the passenger windows, but instead
> from excessively high localised stress at bolt and rivet holes, for which
> insufficient reinforcing (and therefore structural load distribution)
> existed.

------
niffy
Such a shame Nimrod is no longer flying. But it replacement(Rivet Joint) makes
a mockery of regulations introduced because of Nimrod. Basically the MAA would
like more information on adhering to regulations at time of production, they'd
like an idea of when things start to fail. The RAF may not have even fully
qualified for to fly because they were built in the 60s! They don't want the
same mistakes like Nimrod because of fatigue

------
adolph
I wonder why all the planes were names in some variation of Yoke [name,
including Yoke]? Maybe:

yoke: NOUN; Irish informal; A thing whose name one cannot recall, does not
know, or does not wish to specify.

[https://en.oxforddictionaries.com/definition/us/yoke](https://en.oxforddictionaries.com/definition/us/yoke)

~~~
scolby33
It looks like it's based on their registration "numbers" written out in the
phonetic alphabet in use at the time:
[https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/comets-
tale-63573615/](https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/comets-tale-63573615/)

~~~
adolph
Thanks!

 _Comet 1—registration G-ALYP, dubbed “Yoke Peter,” from the phonetic alphabet
then in use in Britain (George-Able- Love-Yoke-Peter)_

------
aquamo
When I first saw the headline I was thinking it was this Komet :-)
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Messerschmitt_Me_163_Komet](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Messerschmitt_Me_163_Komet)

Also an interesting aircraft.

------
Graham24
My Dad was a riveter in the Vickers Viscount factory in the 50s/60s. Ok, not
Comets, but close.

