De Havilland Comet

The RAF s Nimrod MR2 s role was anti-submarine warfare and anti-surface unit warfare. Its airframe was derived from the De Havilland Comet, so the Nimrod s lineage dated back to the 1950s. The Hawker Siddeley Nimrod MRl entered service in 1969, and the upgraded MR2 variant entered service in 1979. Hawker Siddeley Aviation became part of BAE Systems in 1977. 

And it was. For a while it had looked as if the Boeing Company on the other side of the ocean would be the first to put jet planes into regular passenger service across the Atlantic, but in 1958 it was a de Havilland Comet 4 that initiated trans-Atlantic jet passenger service and the plane s name was vindicated. The achievement also underscored the fact that structural failure can indeed lead ultimately to success, though sometimes the process takes a while. Technologists, like scientists, tend to hold on to their theo-... 

Nevil Shute s seemingly farfetched plot is eerily close to what happened with the de Havilland Comets. It is as if Shute had constructed an elaborate scenario based on Murphy s Law and followed it to its logical conclusion. Given that new alloys behave in new and generally unknown ways with regard to fatigue crack... 

The bonding in the de Havilland Comet gives a good example of the types of airframe structures which were being bonded and their overall design. 

This ability to control crack initiation and crack growth is utilised in fuselage construction to resist catastrophic decompression, which could result from a crack initiated by the cyclic pressurisation loads, which are applied during flight. The bonded doublers have the ability to turn the tip of any crack which might have been formed hence preventing catastrophic crack growth which can and, in the case of the de Havilland Comet 1, has led to uncontrolled decompression. 

Statement, just before his death, by RE Bishop, Designer of the de Havilland Aircraft Company s DH106 Comet 1. 

However, in spite of this innovation, the use of Redux Liquid E was retained by de Havilland until 1963 (well into the Comet programme) and by Chance Vought in the United States of America until the termination of the F-7 Cutlass programme. 

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