Word: cometted
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Behind Sir Lionel's statement was a fantastic amount of painstaking work. The Comet G-ALYY (Yoke Yoke), that went into the sea near Naples on April 8, left no remains that could be analyzed, but when Comet G-ALYP (Yoke Peter) crashed on Jan. 10 off Elba, its fragments fell into fairly shallow water. Armed with underwater television cameras and special "grab" equipment, a flotilla of British naval salvage vessels and Italian trawlers scoured the bottom, about 500 ft. deep, and fished up the twisted fragments. In all, they got 70% of the structure...
Close to the Tiger. The whole catch was flown to Farnborough. where experts fitted the pieces together on a wooden frame, like a 3-D jigsaw puzzle. Meanwhile, crews of courageous scientists were flying another Comet (Able Victor) on a long series of hair-raising test flights. Careless of their own lives, they tried to duplicate the stresses that had destroyed Yoke Peter. As Sir Lionel described it, "they were going as close to the tiger as possible, hoping it would not get them." Able Victor did not crash; neither did Comet Yoke Sugar, whose fuel tanks were pressure-strained...
...same time, a strange structure was rushed to completion at Farnborough. A steel tank (112 ft. long, 60 ft. high, 20 ft. wide) was built around the fuselage of Comet Yoke Uncle. Its wings stuck out at the sides through waterproof rubber packing, and the whole tank, Yoke Uncle and all, was filled with water. Then pumps forced more water into the Comet until the pressure rose to 8¼ lbs. per square inch, equaling the air pressure in a Comet's cabin when it is flying at 40,000 ft. While the pressure was rising, powerful jacks moved...
...cabin near a window yielded to metal fatigue. This gave the essential clue. The scientists found a similar break in the fragments of Yoke Peter near the direction-finder window in the roof. Then they traced, fragment by fragment, what had happened with fearful swiftness to the doomed Comet...
BRITISH AIRCRAFT INDUSTRY whose prestige was hard hit when its Comet I jetliner was grounded after a series of disasters (TIME, May 10), is due for another blow. The government-owned British Overseas Airways Corp., which had hoped to replace its American equipment with new British planes, is negotiating with Douglas Aircraft for ten DC-7s, to be powered by British turboprops, for its future fleets...