Many considered the period before the Jet age, a golden era for air travel. But flying aboard a piston-powered propeller aircraft wasn’t always glamorous. These piston-powered flights took a lot longer to travel than they do today, and the relentless noise and vibration from the piston engines; well it was very exhausting and tiring. Most aircrafts at that given time could not fly high enough to avoid bad weather, so the passengers would be in for a bumpy ride.

Seemingly out of nowhere, in 1949, along came a new kind of aircraft. It was quiet, sleek, and almost twice as fast awesome conventional aircraft. It had the ability to cruise at 40,000 feet, so it could avoid messy weather conditions. This was the De Havilland Comet: the first jet airliner. It entirely shattered conventional thinking and proved that jet travel was to be the new future.

However, the excitement would be short lived, because in just a matter of months, flaws emerged, and things started to go seriously wrong. The leap into the Jet age, would not go as smoothly as many hoped.

During the 1940’s, the British set out to change civil aviation. In fact, they had no choice, as after World War 2, American manufacturers had the Civil Aviation market trapped. Ninety percent of the world’s airline passengers were flying aboard the American built Douglas DC-3’s.

The Americans had left WW2 with a lot of experience designing and building military transport aircrafts. After the war with their industry fully intact, the manufacturers could easily switch to producing civil based aircrafts on their military transport designs. But Britain had to rebuild. Much of its focus had been on building heavy bombers. So, it now needed to develop the infrastructure and the expertise needed to compete in the civil aviation market. If the British were to become leaders in aerospace, they had to come up with something extraordinary, like building a jet powered aircraft.

The conventional thinking of the day amongst airliners was that jet engines produce too little power relative to their fuel consumption. Also, they were just too unreliable for civil aviation. But at the same time, piston engines were approaching their limit. They had to squeeze out ever more power; they had grown large and complex with supercharges and dozens of cylinders. This made piston-powered propellers very expensive to maintain. And you can only spin a propeller so fast before its efficiency starts to diminish.

The De Havilland Aircraft Company was awarded the task of building the world’s first jet powered airliner. The aircraft, which would later be named the Comet, was developed in secrecy. In fact, untenable designs were deliberately used to confuse competitors. So, when the Comet was revealed in 1949, it stunned the world.

Its sleek lines, swept wings, and for integrated turbojet engines, well they were just straight out of the future. Even today, a lot of this aircraft looks just a bit modern. The Comet sent a powerful signal to the world, about Britain’s newfound air superiority in aerospace. The Comet could soar at an altitude of 40,000 feet, where the air is thinner, and there’s less drag, allowing the Comet to consume less fuel.

However, to allow passengers to breathe at such high altitudes, the cabin needed to be pressurized. It wouldn’t be the first to have a pressurized cabin, but it would be the first to fly high. The Comet went into service in 1952, and immediately began breaking travel time records. In doing so, it became a point of national pride back in Britain. But, the Comet was a little too ahead of its time. With such a clean sheet design, there were new variables to work with. There were numerous electrical problems as well as hydraulic problems. But when two Comets skidded off the runway in 1952 and 1953, the pilots were blamed. It was suspected that they were still flying the Comet as if it were a piston powered airline, over-rotating the aircraft on take-off. It was later said that the design of the wing needed to be changed, but the public confidence in the comet had not been shaken, and the British remained enthusiastic about jet powered air travel.

However, two months later, another Comet disintegrated through a severe thunderstorm. Eight months later, another Comet exploded shortly after take-off from Rome.

Due to these incidents, the Comet was grounded, and after some minor changes, it re-entered service. Airlines had no trouble selling seats. Yet, just three months later, another Comet disintegrated over the Mediterranean. Now, the entire, worldwide fleet of the Comet had to be grounded as their Certificate of Airworthiness was revoked, and a large investigation began, and it would reveal that the depressurization of the Comet's Cabin was to be blamed for, essentially causing the Comet to suddenly explode apart in midair.

The Comet would never re-enter service again. The Havilland Company tried to solve these problems, like increasing fuselage thickness, and having round windows instead of square ones. But the rest of the world was catching up. Aircraft manufacturers from around the world built their own jet powered aircrafts. In 1958, the Boeing 707 entered service, and the Douglas began producing new DC-8's. The same year, the Comet 4 entered service, but it couldn't compete with the American offerings, which were now larger and faster. Only 76 Comet 4's were delivered to airlines, compared to over 500 DC 3's, and over a 1000 707's.

While later version Comets served airlines reliably, they were outsold by competing aircraft. Boeing and Douglas later admitted that they learned from the Comet's pressurization problems. If the problem hadn't been noticed, they would have made the same mistake. There’s no question however, that the comet paved the way. The British had taken a massive risk and brought the world into the jet age.

Years after this significant revolution in the field of aviation, various improvements and innovations have taken place. The brilliant minds behind such ingenious and creative ideas, who have learnt from failures and moulded these into successes, thus enabling us to build efficient aircraft than can safely travel from long distances as well as short distances.

References:

-DJCLOUD. 2021. Why You Wouldn't Want to Fly The First Jet Airliner: De Havilland Comet Story. [online] Available at:

-Youtube.com [online] Available at:

- Editor, T., 2021. The First Jet Airliner: De Havilland Comet Story – UAS VISION. [online] Uasvision.com. Available at: