Word: havilland
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Britain last week decided to pin its jetliner hopes on the Comet. On the heels of a final report placing the blame for two Comet I crashes off Italy on metal fatigue, de Havilland announced that it will go ahead with construction of the Comet II and III. They will have such improvements as thicker skins, oval instead of rectangular windows, to correct the faulty design that caused the Comet I to explode in midair. De Havilland set no delivery dates, but the first plane will probably not be ready before...
Even so, it is liable to be a long, hard climb. Though none of the foreign airlines, which have 26 Comet II's and Ill's on order, have canceled out, de Havilland will have to renegotiate each contract again, and it has 20 Comet II's already substantially completed in its hangars. To guard against too heavy a loss. Minister Boyd-Carpenter said that "a number of Comet II's in a modified version are being ordered for delivery to the R.A.F. . . as early as the work involved allows...
...unpalatable truth is that the celebrated $1.37 billion-a-year R.A.F. is now depending upon U.S. Sabre jets, plus about 1,500 obsolescent British jets (Gloster Meteors, De Havilland Vampires and Venoms), for the air defense of London. The Fighter Command's swept-wing Supermarine Swift is grounded; its delta-wing Javelins and its PIs are critical months from service, and so are antiaircraft guided missiles. "The R.A.F.," said the Spectator bitterly, "is relatively worse off now than it was at the time of Munich. At least in 1938 it had one Spitfire...
...immense, ten-engined Princess flying boat has been in the prototype stage since 1946, still needs better engines; Bristol's equally large Brabazon, designed to carry 100 passengers across the Atlantic, never got into production, was finally broken up and sold for scrap. And De Havilland's famed four-jet Comet I was grounded after three crashes...
Viscounts in Vickerland. To Britons, Vickers' new Viscount is soothing balm after the blows to their prestige from the De Havilland Comet crashes. British aviation experts make the point that wherever Viscounts have flown on trunk (under 1,000 mile) routes, the turboprop planes have proved tough competition for piston-engined U.S. transports. Their four 1,400-h.p. Rolls Royce jet engines, hooked to propellers, not only make them about 35 m.p.h. faster than competing Convairs, but also much quieter and smoother riding. (British European Airways passenger traffic has gone up about 26% since switching to Viscounts from...