The recent catastrophic loss of the Titan deep-sea explorer shows how man has struggled to conquer the extremes of planet Earth.  Nowadays we take passenger jets flying at up to 7 miles high completely for granted but it was not always thus.  One man and one machine showed the way – Geoffrey de Havilland and his DH106 Comet jet airliner. 

In WW2 the Government had ramped up production of warplanes using many manufacturing companies including that founded by de Havilland (See our article on him at xxxx).  In 1943 it faced the problem of what these companies should produce in peacetime, and set up a Committee to make recommendations.  Its Chair was Lord Brabazon of Tara who had been the first Englishman to make a powered flight in this country (using a French plane). Geoffrey de Havilland was a leading member.

Geoffrey came up with the visionary idea of a pressurised passenger jet liner, capable of inter-continental travel.  Jet engines were developed during the war but only worked efficiently at  altitudes requiring pilots to wear oxygen masks. This was not feasible for passenger planes, hence the need for pressurisation.  Also, at high altitude air temperatures are very low (-65 C) so cabins had to be heated.  The other members of the Committee were sceptical but de Havilland with his wooden Mosquito had shown that he could build successful planes that others had derided.  Brabazon was persuaded and the Government gave de Havilland funding to build at Hatfield what was to be called The Comet. 

There was neither time nor resources to build many prototypes so the first version – Comet 1 – was designed to be capable of commercial use off the drawing board.  Aluminium was chosen for the main material because it was not rationed.  To keep weight down the skin was the thickness of a postcard.  Extensive static tests of material and structure were made, not only because of the extreme flying conditions expected but also because many features of the manufacture and design were novel.  Four Ghost jet engines made by de Havilland were embedded in the wings, two to each side, to aid streamlining.  The result was visually stunning. 

On 27 July 1949 the first Comet made its inaugural flight from Hatfield.  After many hours of test flying, the first commercial flight took off on 2 May 1952 from Heathrow carrying 30 passengers to Johannesburg, in a blaze of publicity.  Britain had produced the world’s first jet airliner – a tremendous achievement.  Work started on versions 2 and 3 using more powerful Rolls Royce Avon engines and so capable of longer flights with more passengers.

At first all went well but accidents started, with planes failing to take off properly.  Initially these were blamed on pilot error but gradually it became clear that the Comet was not easy to take off as it could stall if lifted off at too great an angle.

Then disaster: in early 1954 two Comets mysteriously exploded in flight and crashed – both into the Mediterranean – the first in January the second in April.  After the second loss all flights were halted.  A huge,  difficult and expensive exercise was undertaken to recover fragments from both crashes.  These were taken to Farnborough for study, as a result of which metal fatigue became suspected.  A Comet 1 minus wings was taken to Farnborough and put through pressure tests where it was filled and emptied with water repeatedly to simulate ascending to high altitudes and then descending again.  Eventually, after the equivalent of thousands of hours of flight, suddenly a tear appeared in the skin starting from a corner of one of the large and almost square windows.  In flight this would have depressurised the plane leading to the instantaneous destruction of everything and everybody inside.  (This must have happened in reverse to the unfortunate travellers in the Titan).

Extensive modifications were made: thicker skin, and a redesign of the frame with rounder windows.  After extensive tests the Comet version 4 was put into back into service in 1958. In all 76 were delivered before production stopped in 1964.  The last one flew in 1997.  A version was developed into the Nimrod surveillance plane. 

While Comet production was suspended American producers had been working on their own jet passenger planes, learning from the discoveries made at Farnborough.  The Boeing 707 launched commercially in 1958 and was an instant success.  The De Havilland Company though was hit severely by the loss of prestige and the costs of redeveloping the Comet.  In 1960 it was effectively taken over by Hawker Siddeley. 

So, Geoffrey de Havilland’s vision of an intercontinental jet passenger plane was vindicated – it was what the world wanted.  Unfortunately other airplane manufacturers reaped the benefits, and many people suffered from the Comet accidents.

It is still possible to step inside a Comet 1.  The one that was tested at Farnborough found its way to the De Havilland Museum in London Colney where it was refitted internally to recreate the experience of its original passengers. I was impressed by this Museum during a recent visit; there is something of interest for everyone and is highly recommended.

Hatfield Local History Society has produced a fascinating illustrated 86 page booklet, Taking Off - Memories of de Havilland at Hatfield, edited by its Chairman G Philip Marris .  One reviewer said "a great collection of accounts from people who were actually there." Only £7.50 on Amazon.

One man transformed Hatfield from a small town into an industrial centre of excellence: Sir Geoffrey de Havilland. His working life spanned the earliest days of powered flight, through two world Wars, to pioneering jet passenger planes.

Geoffrey was born in 1882 into an upper middleclass family which could trace their line back to the Normans.  His father was an eccentric, bad tempered, clergyman. He had better luck with his mother and her father, a successful farmer, who subsidised his daughter and grandchildren. Geoffrey and his elder brilliant brother Ivon were both keen electrical and mechanical engineers from boyhood. Together they built dynamos, steam engines, and eventually motor cycles and cars.  Geoffrey trained for three years at Crystal Palace Engineering School, then worked for a couple of engineering firms making engines and cars.

Ivon designed the Iris, an innovative motor car, in 1905 but suddenly died of influenza – the first of several tragedies.

In 1908 Wilbur Wright toured Europe showing his heavier-than-air flying machine.  Geoffrey was enthralled.  “I was seized with an ambition to design and build my own aeroplane and nothing was going to hold me back.”

His grandfather stumped up £1,000 (£150,000 today), and a young apprentice Frank Hearle was hired. Geoffrey created a twin propeller biplane, with an engine of his own design, made out of timber, piano wire and doped fabric sewn by his new wife Louise.  Hangars were bought at Seven Barrows, grass downland in Hampshire near his family home.

In December 1909 all was ready. Geoffrey knew how to build planes but not how to fly them. This ignorance nearly cost him his life: on the first – and only - flight of this plane he pulled back too hard on the control stick causing it to stall and crash. Luckily he was only slightly concussed.

Undeterred he redesigned the plane, making it lighter and simpler.  The following summer he got it to fly safely a few inches above the ground for twenty yards - “the most important and memorable moment of my life.”  After many weeks of trials he managed to take off, climb a hundred feet, circle the field and land.  A little while after he was so confident of the plane and his skill as a pilot that he added a seat and took up Louise his wife with their 8 week old son Christopher in her arms.

This was the beginning of a tremendous career. Within two years a British altitude record of 10,500 feet was achieved in an aircraft of his design piloted by younger brother Hereward. He sold it to the newly created Royal Aircraft Factory, then joined them to design and test planes. He was commissioned into the Royal Flying Corps. In May 1914 he was recruited by Airco, in Hendon, where he designed aircraft, all designated by his initials DH, which were tested in combat in WWI. By 1918 one third of Allied aircraft were designed by him. In 1920 Airco collapsed so he formed de Havilland Aircraft Company manufacturing at Stag Lane Aerodrome, Edgware. He was financed by a wealthy amateur pilot, Alan Butler, who in 1923 became the Company’s Chairman, which he remained until 1950 (when de Havilland employed 20,000 people).  Many airplanes were designed there, tested by Geoffrey, including the revolutionary family of Moth biplanes using its own Gypsy engines.

In 1930 the Company bought farmland near Hatfield, initially for its Flying School. In 1933 it started manufacturing there too with Frank Hearle as Works Manager.

In 1934 the wooden framed DH.88 Comet racer brought tremendous publicity by winning an Air Race from England to Australia.

During WW2 the company developed this Comet into the versatile and rapid DH.98 Mosquito (The Wooden Wonder). At first the RAF were sceptical but when they watched it outpace a Spitfire they were won over. 7,781 were built; 75,000 people including subcontractors worked on DH products during the war.

In 1943 another tragedy: his youngest son, John, died when two Mosquitos collided in clouds over St Albans.

In 1944 a friend Frank Halford who had designed the Gipsy engine joined.  His first gas turbine was the Goblin powering De Havilland's first jet, the Vampire.

In 1946 a third tragedy: his dashing son Geoffrey, who had carried out the first flights of the Mosquito and Vampire, was killed when an experimental jet, the DH.108, broke up in a dive attempting to break the Sound Barrier. (See a biography of Geoffrey Jr at  Remembering the life of daring test pilot Geoffrey de Havilland Jr - 75 years on from his tragic death | Welwyn Hatfield Times (whtimes.co.uk)).

Yet another tragedy followed. After the loss of Geoffrey Louise suffered a breakdown which de Havilland believed led to her death from cancer in 1949. She was buried alongside her two boys in Tewin churchyard.

In 1952 David Lean made a film The Sound Barrier whose leading character (played by Ralph Richardson) was clearly based on de Havilland senior. He was portrayed as a driven man, prepared to sacrifice test pilots including his own son-in-law to break the Barrier.  Doubtless this was an exaggeration but photos of de Havilland always show him unsmiling and focussed.

This determination and ambition created the DH.106 Comet, the world’s first jet powered passenger aircraft introduced in 1952, about which we will write next time.

Geoffrey controlled the Company until it was bought in 1960 by the Hawker Siddeley Group.  He was described as ambitious, and autocratic, but far from arrogant, “driving a Morris Minor and holding doors open for lowly apprentices”.

In 1961 he wrote an autobiography, Sky Fever, which is a good read.   He had been knighted in 1944 and appointed to the Order of Merit in 1962.

He died in 1965 aged 82 of a cerebral haemorrhage; his ashes were scattered from the air over the site of his first flight, Seven Barrows.

His statue – seated and staring into the distance - was erected in 1997 in the College Lane campus of the University of Hertfordshire.  This had started life as Hatfield Technical College, built on land donated to Hertfordshire County Council by Butler.

To find out more about this great man visit the de Havilland Museum at London Colney - a truly fascinating place.

Welwyn Garden City is a brave attempt to create a Utopia – an ideal community.  The word was coined by Sir Thomas More in his political satire of the same name published after his death in 1515.  It is derived from Greek, literally good-place or no-place – ie  impossible ideal. 

In Victorian times several successful industrialists sought to build utopian model villages for their workers, inspired by a combination of religious conviction, guilt, paternalism, and self-interest. The two best known were Port Sunlight on Merseyside and Bournville near Birmingham.

Port Sunlight was founded in 1890 by William Lever, later Lord Lever, for his employees manufacturing Sunlight Soap, which he had made famous by clever advertising.  He created a beautiful and comfortable estate, which combined visual appeal and social purpose. 

Bournville’s creators were the Quaker brothers George and Richard Cadbury, who started building in 1898.  Their father John was a teetotaller who had built up a thriving business in drinking cocoa, motivated by a desire to provide a healthy alternative to alcohol which he saw as a major source of social problems. Gin shops were popular, promising ‘Drunk for a penny, Dead drunk for two pence’.  John believed that the man who abstained from alcohol could afford a joint of beef on a Sunday.   Naturally no pubs were allowed in Bournville.

Interestingly, William Lever had a similar view of alcohol. His parents were strictly observant Congregationalists; his father James was a teetotaller and a non-smoker, who applied his religious principles in his business life as well as in his personal life. William too was a life-long teetotaller.

He ran Port Sunlight on paternalistic lines and workers who lost their jobs could be almost simultaneously evicted. On the other hand, he was keen to allow the residents of Port Sunlight a degree of democratic control. In 1900 he opened the Bridge Inn which of course sold no alcohol. Within two years the workers became restive and sought to change its status to a licensed house. Lever announced that he would not impose his own views, and that the issue would be decided by a referendum; insisting somewhat unconventionally for that time that women would take part. However, he stipulated that the Bridge would only become a true British pub if a supermajority of 75% was in favour. (Very sensible – only a rash person would hold a referendum on a major issue without requiring a substantial majority in favour). He probably felt confident that the outcome would support his abstemious sentiments, but in the event more than 80% voted for an alcohol licence.

 the The World’s End is an apocalyptic science fiction comedy film from 2015.  It tells the story of five middle-aged men on a nostalgic pub crawl which gets disrupted when they discover that the locals have been taken over by aliens. Their aim had been to visit twelve pubs, finishing at one called The World’s End.  The film was shot in Letchworth, Welwyn Garden City, and for internal scenes Elstree Studios. The lead actor and writer, Simon Pegg, lives in Essendon and said that he chose the two Garden Cities as examples of pleasant modern towns.  He must have been aware of the reputation of Letchworth as being a mostly dry town with few pubs but perhaps this was all part of the joke. To make up numbers some buildings including Letchworth Station had to be dressed up as pubs.

Ebenezer Howard devoted a section of his book Garden Cities of Tomorrow to Temperance Reform.  He was not keen on alcohol but did not favour banning it completely, instead suggesting that profits from its sale should be diverted to building “asylums for those affected by alcoholism”. He proposed that the provision of services such as pubs should be decided by public ballot. 

The early settlers in Letchworth (which included Howard) were idealists seeking Utopia and far from conventional.  George Orwell somewhat sweepingly described the new town as attracting every form of “crank: fruit-juice drinker, nudist, sandal-wearer, sex-maniac, Quaker, ‘Nature-Cure’ quack, pacifist, and feminist”. (Road to Wigan Pier, p 152). 

When an enlightened ballot was set up to decide the provision of pubs, in which both men and women took part, a small majority voted against. Women carried the day, perhaps because they did not like to see men drunk.  Letchworth was a dry town until 1960 with just one inn, The Skittles, set up in 1907.  This sold only soft drinks and so was the legendary pub without beer; it was soon also without skittles as the locals shunned the game.

The Directors of the Company building Welwyn Garden were keen to avoid the cranky image of Letchworth, while maintaining its noble objectives. So, a “wet restaurant” was set up called The Cherry Tree. It was a modest wooden structure, designed by Louis de Soissons in 1921, Licenced in 1922. A larger public house replaced it in 1932, which was demolished in 1991.  The facade was retained for the Waitrose supermarket now occupying the site.

There already were pubs in the area. The Beehive in the small village of Hatfield Hyde dated from the early 17^th Century, although it was only given a Licence in 1842. Owned by Lord Salisbury it became a favourite destination for early Garden citizens to walk to across the fields on a nice summer evening. Once the QEII hospital opened it was popular with hospital staff. It closed in 2016 as it was losing money and now looks very sad and empty.

The non-conformist spirit was certainly strong in Welwyn Garden. The Welwyn Times for 21/9/23 reports that, following an enquiry from the WGC Church Council, the Parish Council after a lively discussion agreed to ask the WGC Company to prohibit "calling" bells or other continuous ringing.  There followed a number of letters in the paper; one favoured a ban to " prevent a small minority disturbing the tranquillity or recreation of the vast majority. Continuous bell ringing on a Sunday is anti-social and intolerable to enlightened communities". Eventually all the churches in the area agreed not to ring their bells, which is still generally the position today.

The provision of pubs in the centre of the town remains a sensitive matter. Wetherspoons bought one of the large houses on Parkway, near the Fountain, some years ago and sought a Licence for a pub to be called the Cherry Tree. This was hotly contested by locals, ostensibly as being in the wrong location but more probably as being the wrong sort of pub. Planning permission was refused twice and in 2021 Wetherspoons threw in the bar towel and put the building up for sale. As this newspaper reports on 5th April, the building is now to be a Nursery School – so no danger of underage drinking.