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.

March 2025.  The history of one of Mitchell's finest work, now on the side of a block of flats in a Hatfield side street.

This was the first article written on behalf of the Hatfield Local History Society for publication in the Welwyn Hatfield Times