Just a reminder in case anyone has missed it. There will not be a video next Saturday as we move to a new schedule of producing some bigger videos which will se them released as and when they are completed. I am currently working on the next video right now and it should be a pretty big one, I look forward to sharing it with you. Will drop a community post this coming week to keep you updated. This video went out to my Patrons on Patreon 48 hours before going out publicly. Consider joining here from £1 per month: www.patreon.com/DisasterBreakdown Twitter: twitter.com/Chloe_HowieCB
The end of an era, but I'm sure that you'll still have some wonderful videos to make for us fans to enjoy. P.S. Since you said at the end of the Korean Air Flight 801 video that you believe that you have covered most major accidents, attacks and incidents involving the Boeing B747, I could comment with a list of other cases that are either low profile or have not been dramatised in the "Mayday" documentary series, or since your videos of Korean Air Flight 7 and Pan American World Airways Flight 103 are outdated, maybe you could remake those. P.P.S. If you want to expand the music you use (I love the music you use for Disaster Breakdown, especially "The Stakeout" by Christoffer Moe Ditlevsen), I highly recommend exploring the music of Kevin Macleod as I love his soundtrack and horror music, and he is the go-to choice for people wanting to use licence free music on TH-cam. Well, I'm sure I'll adjust to the new schedule of videos, and I can't wait to see what you bring in the future. Good luck, Chloe. Love from Moray, Scotland!
Love your work and the extra care you put into each one. I can only imagine the amount of time it takes to fully produce a complete video. My favorite part of these videos is the mechanical breakdown you include in each. To me the cause is absolutely the most critical point to make in any crash video. And thank you for the longer (over 15 minutes) videos. When I get my finances in a better place, I hope to become a Patreon support er. Cheers
@@HappyBeezerStudios Also statistically the highest chance you will be killed in a plane crash.. The Comet has the highest loss rate and fatalities per flight, passenger/mile of any jet airliner in history, 1 out of every 3 built crashed or were destroyed in accidents
@@HappyBeezerStudios Quieter? I was thinking all through this video how incredibly loud the Comets must have been, especially toward the rear. Turbojets and early turbofans were insanely loud, and the Comet's 4 engines were built into the structure right up against the cabin instead of being mounted on pylons some distance away. In my own experience, I've never been on a turboprop that was anywhere near as loud as sitting in the back of a 727. I can only imagine how much louder the Comet's configuration might have been.
As a frenchman, I take immense proud in the fact that we managed to unite and work together with the country that birthed the Comet, in order to make the Concord. I have a never ending admiration for the genius of our cousins on the other side of the French Channel ;) Breath taking planes made by the genius of British Engineering.
@@samsngdevice5103 Aw, be fair. They were the first. They were breaking new frontiers, and they didn't know all of the variables. Ford has no excuse, only bean counters.
I think people forget that the pressurized DC-6 and Constellation planes cruised at around 24,000 to 26,000 feet altitude, not the 35,000+ feet of the Comet I. As such, the Douglas and Lockheed piston airliners experienced a lot less of the severe pressurization changes that affected the Comet. As such, when the 707 and DC-8 were designed, Boeing and Douglas engineers had to design the structure to withstand the pressurization changes caused by repeated flights to over 31,000 feet altitude.
The engineers at Boeing and Douglas used the lessons learned from the Comet accidents to make the 707 and DC8 stronger airframes better able to withstand fatigue stressors.
Boing are on record saying that if it hadn't been dehavaland it would have been themselves, metal fatigue in these alloys wasn't a well known subject at the time
Propeller aircraft will fail from pressurization problems have more altitudes not because necessarily of their Metallurgy, but the reciprocating engines also put a lot of frequency stress through the airframe.
The entire aircraft industry has shown to learn from mistakes. Flying is so safe nowadays because of all these losses. And that is the right way to do it. Instead of looking for someone to blame, they work to improve things continuously.
7:17 the reason for the skull fractures was because due to the force of the decompression ripped the seats from the floor causing them to hit the ceiling with a lot of force.
Decompression will usually not rip seats from the floor. Explosive decompression will force air out of the aircraft towards the breach. Thereby creating a very strong wind force hitting the passengers bashing them around. These poor souls would not be able to withstand that.
@@grmpEqweer The damage to their lungs likely killed them first. Head trauma is probably from hitting the water from thousands of feet up and were post-mortem injuries.I wonder if the report is available to read.
Oh yeah the 104 has its own history. One day I'll get round to it. I really don't know a whole lot about that plane either, there will be tons to learn!
The only complete surviving Comet 1 is exhibited at the RAF Museum, Cosford, along with the fractured piece of fuselage from G-ALYU from the pressurisation test at RAE Farnborough. I was fortunate enough to watch the last Comet flying when I worked at Boscombe Down in the 1990s. It was a pleasure to see Comet 4c XS235 "Canopus" in the air. That aircraft is now preserved at Bruntingthorpe airfield which is only about 30 miles from where I now live.
Metal fatigue caused by cabin pressurisation was a totally unknown phenomenon in the 1940s. The accidents did at least change aircraft building methods and improve safety.
It most definitively wasn’t. It is a pressure vessel. Look up submarines, steam locomotives or even tea pots. They had known about this stuff (and their shapes!) for a long time. This was very much incremental, and mostly about bonding techniques for very thin metals.
@@hepphepps8356 It was the square cabin windows to blame. Pressurization fatigue caused the airframe to crack at the corners of the windows. The cure was round port holes, used on airliners ever since
Just had a watch of this video, thanks for sharing this Chloe, its without a doubt one of the biggest watershed moments in commercial aviation! I like to think the Comet Disasters paved the way for modern jet powered Boeing & Airbus airliners as we know them today.
The Comet was an important step forward in aviation history, though that can never compare to the lives lost. I am excited for whenever you do get to the Tu-104 because that is a masterclass in malarkey
Another first class video. Very well researched and put together. The Comet was a trailblazer and the early understanding of high altitude flight just wasn’t there, De Havilland learned from their tragic mistakes but the reputation damage was too far gone. The Boeing 707 was developed in the background and achieved much greater success. I’ll always have a soft spot for the Comet as an early trailblazing innovation. East Fortune is also well worth a visit.
My initial guess was metallurgy of the day. The explanation totally makes sense. I have to tip my hat to the investigators for devising the test bed for finally coming up with a cause of the crash. Another great video Chole. Keep 'em coming! -PhanotmF4G
I love videos like this as well as your regular episodes. I love the idea of breaking down the incidents tied to one type of aircraft. I often get the types confused when they’re all separate videos so these are so interesting. I’d love to see more and perhaps the same format but discussing a specific airport? Keep up the great work Chloe you’re my fav channel❤️ edit: I would also love your take on the story oh MH370. I’ve heard many differing facts and I know your research and presentation is always top notch. It also hasn’t been really talked about in years but new evidence has been found recently showing the landing gear was likely down when it hit the water which raises more interesting questions.
@@chdreturns Yeah it was one of my lifetime dreams to be able to fly in it. But I didn't get the chance to do so. It was a technical marvel. Also from a time of exiting achievements.
Some say it evokes nostalgia, others say it looks futuristic. I think it looks like what people long ago thought the future would look like, almost like a Jetsons cartoon. We were supposed to be driving flying cars, taking pills instead of meals, living on Mars, and communicating by video telephone by now. Ok, we do the video phone thing - when we want to - but the 1950s ideas of what the future would look like was off by a wide margin, thought it was incredibly exciting and fun to speculate.
This thing looks modern on the outside. I can only imagine what people thought when this thing was introduced. Couple that with post WWII optimism about the future and you've got a recipe for awesome. It's really sad that such a pioneering technology was cut short by disaster. However it did make future aircraft much safer so perhaps something good came out of these accidents.
The East Fortune Aircraft museum (j25 miles east of Edinburgh, Scotland), has this Comet and along with many other aircraft, also houses a Concorde indoors - you can step inside and be surprised at how narrow and cramped seems, yet all the seats are First Class.
this was a very interesting video to watch. my family used to work at De Havilland and my great grandfather worked on comet cockpit control panels so these planes have always had a special place in my heart
A truly shameful and humiliating chapter in British aviation history... the real tragedy of the _Comet Disaster_ is that it could have been easily prevented if de Havilland had simply followed well-known and understood industry standards for construction of pressurized cabins made from riveted aluminum alloys. It is vary shameful that those responsible were never punished and that the victims have never been properly honored with an official monument.
I bet your great-grandfather and everyone he worked with were gutted by this. I imagine some of the production workers spent a considerable amount of time replaying their assembly procedures in their minds, wondering if it might have been something they overlooked. (I only hope that's going on now at Boeing.)
The postmortems for the Elba Comet disaster was the responsibility of the Italian authorities. An Italian pathologist found the similarities of injuries amongst the victims.
I'm curious as to why the exploded lungs from comet depressurization didn't seem to really occur on rapid depressurization on modern planes, such as that of the united 747 or aloha 737 incidents
My guess is altitude. The explosive decompression on both of those flights happened not long after takeoff; somewhere around 20,000-24,000 feet for both from what I found According to the video the Comet flew at altitudes up to 42,000 feet. That's almost twice as high up, with the air being a lot thinner to match. If the Comets broke apart at that altitude, that would explain the dramatic lung injuries.
TWA 800 was at just 16000 ft when it exploded and Aloha air was at 26000 ft so both significantly lower than the 36000 ft when the Comet decompressed. Air India 182 exploded (due to a bomb) over the Atlantic in cruise at 31000 ft and passengers near the bomb site suffered similar injuries to those on the Comet.
Great chronicling of the Comet’s evolution and history. Very informative and interesting. It was a beautiful plane. I did not know about the Nimrod or the 4 versions. Thank you.
The comet 4 was the first commercial passenger jet to fly from London to New York in October1958.Before the Boeing 707.Must have been a wonderful flight for the passengers with champagne flowing.!.Much booing in New York on arrival as the Americans didnt do a transatlantic passenger flight first.
Much booing? This wasn't the space race. It was a sales race, sure, but Americans can certainly congratulate our friends when they win an honest victory. We're not that petty. The Comet was never going to recover in the market by 1958, and Boeing knew they had a great plane that would dominate.
@@beenaplumber8379no you americans wouldn't congratulate us. you're threatened even when your own ally does something before you. we made the first supersonic plane and booed us for it. during the cold war you also tried to claim britain having universal healthcare ruined lives. so desperate for superiority that you attack your own allies. typical american mentality and propaganda
@@sandervanderkammen9230 *UPDATE* In fact the Comets nose was no more copied from the 307 than putting a curved & pointed end cap on a tube would be copying. The Comet nose had some significant & unique features which Sud Aviation licensed for use on their Caravelle. They also purchased plan drawings & a section of fuselage nose. *_It's interesting that some of the aircraft on the list should really have been noticeably safer than the Comet due to being a similar type but of much later design & manufacture however they were clearly not safer._* How things were back then - *_Accident losses - % of aircraft built._* DeHavilland Comet 4 UK 14% DeHavilland Comet all mks 17% Vickers VC10 UK 5% *_The DH Comet had better safety than or similar safety to many other commercial passenger aircraft of a similar era_* Douglas DC-1 99% Douglas DC-2 47% Douglas DC-3 30% Douglas DC-4 26% Boeing s300 72% Boeing 307 70% Boeing 247 48% Boeing 707 20% Lockheed Electra Turboprop 29% Fairchild FH-227 30% McDonnell Douglas DC-8 14% Sud Aviation Caravelle 15% All Comets, including some Comet 1s, had full civilian use certification at some point after 1954, civilian use certification only being withdrawn after commercial flying stopped. Examples were flying until 1997 - one example did a signals research global circumnavigation flight series in 1993 via Australia virtually without a rest travelling 28000 miles, only had an ice warning indicator issue during the flights. *The DH Comet - World Firsts.* 1st gas turbine jet powered airliner. 1st high altitude 8psi pressurised full fuselage length passenger cabin airliner, not a trivial feature as structure strength required for pressurisation considerably exceeded strength required for normal flying stress. Nobody else had done anything similar before the Comet. The b-47 used 2 relatively small, heavily built pressurised modules (the aircraft where 6 had their wings fold up in 2 months while flying & some had their wings fall off while parked). The 1937 Boeing 307 piston engined airliner pressurised passenger cabin was pressurised to 2 psi only - in fact that could easily be done as the normal unpressurized fuselage cabin structure strength for flying stresses only was all that was needed to be adequate so no significant weight increase issues needed addressing. Same for the B377 piston engine airliner, only 4 psi pressurisation & not a jet. Boeing did not put high altitude commercial jet airliners into service until 10 years after the Comet first flew. 1st all hydraulically powered flying surface controls & actuators airliner with under carriage wheel disk brakes + ABS. 1st jet airliner to cross the Atlantic. 1st jet aircraft to do a world circumnavigation flights series. *Of course De Havilland had prior experience building many all metal construction airframe aircraft including thousands of jet powered fighter aircraft that were primarily of metal construction with pressurised cockpits & jet engines built by De-Havilland & we know the world's first all metal construction airframe airliner was built in England in the 1920s by Handley Page.* *_De Havilland did indeed always work to better than industry standards at the time, no evidence of negligence ever being produced in relation to the DH Comet._*
There's some morbid, slightly haunted irony about these incidents wherean aircraft called the "Comet" basically broke apart as they came down from high in the sky.
I'm kinda gonna miss the weekly Saturday alert for your videos, but if it's gonna be for a even better content (better than the one you're already producing), so be welcome then 😬 Great work as always Chlöe 👍🏼
Thanks for a great video. East Fortune is a must for any plane enthusiasts. Definitely worth a visit, so much to see including the jewel in the crown Concorde.
If I remember correctly there was a Comet located at O'Hare airport for years. I think someone tried to fly it without proper clearance and the tires were flattened to prevent any future attempts. I think it was painted with reference to nudist flights or something like that.
Chloe, this was super as I believed most of my adult life that it was the window design, though I often wondered why other contemporary aircraft had square winders and didn't crash. Due to your excellent research and gripping presentation now I know! Love every one of your videos as late fan but working through the whole of your back catalogue when I can find them. Also loved your biog video because it clarified things and I 100% admire your openness, a bravery that led your to your career of searching aviation matters. Thank you! Being an old fart, I do not subscribe to any social media other than Utube, so I hope I do't miss any of the productions.! God bless! Rob🥰
I must admit the engine arodynamically location is well designed. Current engine location seems akword, heavy, scarey... I can remember (recently) watching the current engines shake, wabble, etc...when in flight...
@WilhelmKarsten Kharzeestan Krappenz DiktorBummer Jurkzxoffenz etc and co - they should note good with much awestruckness & extreme wonderment. *UPDATE MORE BREAKING NEWS ETC* *_It's interesting that some of the aircraft on the list should really have been noticeably safer than the Comet due to being a similar type but of much later design & manufacture but they definately were not safer._* How things were back then - *_Accident losses - % of aircraft built._* DeHavilland Comet 4 UK 14% DeHavilland Comet all mks 17% Vickers VC10 UK 5% *_The DH Comet had better safety than or similar safety to many other commercial passenger aircraft of a similar era_* Douglas DC-1 99% Douglas DC-2 47% Douglas DC-3 30% Douglas DC-4 26% Boeing s300 72% Boeing 307 70% Boeing 247 48% Boeing 707 20% Lockheed Electra Turboprop 29% Fairchild FH-227 30% McDonnell Douglas DC-8 14% Sud Aviation Caravelle 15% Canadair CL-44 Turboprop 46% Convair CV-580 Turboprop 22% A comparison of more recent aircraft. Accident losses comparison examples. 1970s - 1980s % of total Aircraft built Similar aircraft type, date / decade, useage, size. Biz Jets BAe-125-800 1.7 % Beechcraft Beechjet 400 2.2 % Cessna 550 Citation II 7.1 % Learjet 35 / 36 12 % Beechcraft 1900 6% Dassault Falcon 10 11.5% Aérospatiale SN.601 22.5% Medium size jets / Turboprops. BAe-146 5.1% Fokker 100 6% McDonnell Douglas DC-9-30 9.5% Fairchild FH-227 30% McDonnell Douglas DC-8 14% Canadair CL-44 Turboprop 46% Convair CV-580 Turboprop 22% Beechcraft, Fokker, McDonnell Douglass, Learjet, Fairchild, Aerospatiale, Canadair, Convair companies defunct. All Comets, including some Comet 1s, had full civilian use certification at some point after 1954, civilian use certification only being withdrawn after commercial flying stopped. Examples were flying until 1997 - one example did a signals research global circumnavigation flight series in 1993 via Australia virtually without a rest travelling 28000 miles, only had an ice warning indicator issue during the flights. *The DH Comet - World Firsts.* 1st gas turbine jet powered airliner. 1st high altitude 8psi pressurised full fuselage length passenger cabin airliner, not a trivial feature as structure strength required for pressurisation considerably exceeded strength required for normal flying stress. Nobody else had done anything similar before the Comet. The b-47 used 2 relatively small, heavily built pressurised modules (the aircraft where 6 had their wings fold up in 2 months while flying & some had their wings fall off while parked). The 1937 Boeing piston engined airliner pressurised passenger cabin was pressurised to 2 psi only - in fact that could easily be done as the normal unpressurized fuselage cabin structure strength for flying stresses only was all that was needed to be adequate so no significant weight increase issues needed addressing. 1st all hydraulically powered flying surface controls & actuators airliner with under carriage wheel disk brakes + ABS. 1st jet airliner to cross the Atlantic. 1st jet aircraft to do a world circumnavigation flights series. *Of course De Havilland had prior experience building many all metal construction airframe aircraft including thousands of jet powered fighter aircraft that were primarily of metal construction with pressurised cockpits & jet engines built by De-Havilland & we know the world's first all metal construction airframe airliner was built in England in the 1920s by Handley Page.* *_De Havilland did indeed always work to better than industry standards at the time, no evidence of negligence ever being produced in relation to the DH Comet._* The course of De Havilland & the general UK aerospace industry sector was not affected even slightly by the DH Comet. *_Other interesting World firsts_* *Vickers Viscount Turboprop Airliner 1947* *Gloster Meteor Turboprop Aircraft 1945* They might like to answer these questions. *Which airline has just ordered* *60 RR England Trent XWB Engines* *& What aircraft are the engines for?* _Bonus question for 10 points._ Which country has the *World's Highest Combined Per Capita* *Nuclear + Defence + Aerospace Sector Activity?* 👍 Cheers 🙂
De Havilland had exhaustively tested every component beyond the specs of the time but not as an entire aircraft. Only afterwards was the entire fuselage tested for stressing over multiple cycles in a water tank. Redux bonding (developed for the Hornet fighter) was extensively employed but it appeared too complicated for the window insertion and these had to be punched into the thin skin which weakened the structure and set the scene for future stress cracking.
Not only do i appreciate you meticulously researched videos, but your voice has a mellifluous quality not unlike American narrator and journalist Bill Curtis. I always look forward to listening to them
I'm a new subscriber and I LOVE, LOVE, LOVE your videos! You do a beautiful job on these and have the BEST voice I've ever heard on a TH-cam channel. Also, I learn sooo much from the great comments posted by your viewers. Thank-you so much for these videos. (From Georgia/USA)
Interesting take on this Chloe; I flew in Nimrods in the early to mid 80s. It was a formidable plane, rock solid and a VERY powerful platform, a true multi-role combat aircraft. Until this video I bought into the square window theory, as did everyone I knew on the Nimrod fleet. I lost friends in 2 high profile Nimrod crashes; the Toronto airshow and the Afghanistan mid-air explosion. Both of those crashes would make compelling viewing.
Great video Chloe. I have really enjoyed all of your videos. That being said, I don't like disaster's, it's the detail you go into that I appreciate. Thanks for all that you do, Ronnie
Just found ur channel. Just brilliant. I watch air crash videos alot, but yours are hands down the best I've seen. And more detailed info than all the others. Thank you for your hard work and research. Subscribed....
There are some good disaster videos on TH-cam but I especially love yours they are my favorites. How a person speaks and their voice means a lot to me and you make me see it all in my mind and your voice is so nice to listen to. I was on a SAS plane for the first time in 1968 and I was only 8 years old. I saw the sun rise which was so beautiful. This was at a time when people were served food in planes. We got a menu with drawings of Scandinavians in National clothing, so we could see what we were having. I still have all my menus meaning my mom took us back and then decided to give my dad another chance then it was back again to New York, so 4 menus each. There was also a gift given to my sis and I to do on the long flight which was for me flags from all over the world and coins that were stickers so I had to match them. I still have that too and even our tickets. We also got a bag of peanuts. There was a large screen this was of course before the big tv's and we had to pay a dollar each for earphones but my mom couldn't afford it and since we didn't speak English it didn't much matter. I'm just happy they didn't show Airport which I think came out in 1970. The first flight, there was a snow storm in New York but being a kid I didn't notice. I just wanted to share what it was like in the old days because now it's so different. My mom had all the letters she had sent her sister and written them in a book from first to last and what is wonderful about it is she tells about things Americans wouldn't think of telling and even wrote the prices she paid for things like she bought us dresses for 1 dollar each and they were so nice. I would like to give it all to our immigrant museum one day. I wasn't afraid to fly as a kid but that changed and I was terrified;)
It's very misleading to show thumbnails of the earlier and late model Comets. The Comet 4 in its many sub-marques was totally reliable and must not be confused with the square-windowed early models.
The Comet 4 has the highest loss rate and fatalities statistics of any jet airliner in history except for its predecessor the Comet 1 which had its airworthiness certification permanently revoked in 1958 and never returned to revenue service.
The beautiful comet was way ahead of the field... The world lernt So many lessons from the British first jet liner, and the mistakes were paid for in Human lives 😢 brilliantly told , really enjoyed .. thx you . .
That's a completely false narrative, de Havilland was decades behind in aircraft technology and the real tragedy of the Comet Disaster was that it could have been easily prevented if de Havilland had simply followed well-known and understood industry standards used by other manufacturers.
Hi Chloe, loved this episode and thank you for explaining that the fault was actually not in the square windows. I consider myself an av geek and have read a fair bit on the Comet accidents, but I was also under the mistaken impression that the accidents were purely due to the window design. Your videos are very well presented, especially your very in-depth video on the 737 rudder issues, which must have taken a lot of time and research. Subscribed to your channel.
I am a retired pilot and experienced rapid loss of pressurisation twice. Once at 37000 feet and the second even at 39000 feet. There was no rupture of lungs, hypoxia is the danger that can cause death. That is why we donned oxygen masks and executed an emergency descent.
Thank you. I was just trying to figure out why there's been episodes of sudden depressurization and everyone just grabbed the oxygen masks. I never heard of ruptured lungs before this.
It may play a role how fast the depressurisation happens. If you have a leak or a failed window the pressure change is not that sudden. In the Comet case the fuselage exploded and the pressure change happened very quickly. Ruptured lungs can also happen if you dive and if you return to the surface without breathing out, or if pressure waves of bombs hit people.
I was born in 1971 and at the age of about 5 i had a childrens engineering book that I read to get to sleep. It had a chapter on the Comet and explained the destructive water box test. This meant that I was reading about the ceiling/roof failure point in about 1976 (also the book was published well before that year). There was no mention at all about square windows. As an adult I assumed the window shape theory was a 'new revelation'. Now it seems my children's book got it right from the get go
Interesting, I haven't heard the theory that it was the rivets not the windows. Also, when Nimrod was 'retired' in 2011, they were still building brand new aircraft. These were wheeled out the factory and destroyed.
Really good and informative video. As a child, I had a bit of a fascination with planes. It was from a certain factbook I had on the matter, that I picked up the misconception that the Comet's square windows were the cause of its structural weaknesses, not the manufacturing process and materials used in combination with the altitudes it flew at. Putting that aspect of its design into perspective with other planes of the era, as well as why they were changed on later models, was a very effective debunking of it. So too was the mention of the Nimrod - I knew of the Nimrod too of course, but completely forgot that it was a Comet derivative/variant that flew without issue for decades. You learn (and indeed, re-learn) something new every day :)
The Hawker Siddeley HS. 801 Nimrod is not a Comet, this is a common misconception. The Nimrod was designed by a different company decades later and has a different type certificate. There are no significant parts or assemblies in common between the Comet and the Nimrod, they are completely different aircraft.
@@WilhelmKarsten I know; hence calling it a derivative or variant, as opposed to being the same plane. It is extensively modified from the Comet, but calling it derived from the Comet is a fair assessment imo.
@@WilhelmKarsten The original design for the Comet also took into consideration it's use as a military maritime patrol aircraft. A prototype of the Nimrod was being worked on before 1953 at Dehavilland.
@@sandervanderkammen9230 @WilhelmKarsten Kharzeestan Krappenz DiktorBummer Jurkzxoffenz etc and co - they should note good with much awestruckness & extreme many wonderments. *UPDATE MORE BREAKING NEWS ETC* *_It's interesting that some of the aircraft on the list should really have been noticeably safer than the Comet due to being a similar type but of much later design & manufacture but they definately were not safer._* How things were back then - *_Accident losses - % of aircraft built._* DeHavilland Comet 4 UK 14% DeHavilland Comet all mks 17% Vickers VC10 UK 5% *_The DH Comet had better safety than or similar safety to many other commercial passenger aircraft of a similar era_* Douglas DC-1 99% Douglas DC-2 47% Douglas DC-3 30% Douglas DC-4 26% Boeing s300 72% Boeing 307 70% Boeing 247 48% Boeing 707 20% Lockheed Electra Turboprop 29% Fairchild FH-227 30% McDonnell Douglas DC-8 14% Sud Aviation Caravelle 15% Canadair CL-44 Turboprop 46% Convair CV-580 Turboprop 22% A comparison of more recent aircraft. Accident losses comparison examples. 1970s - 1980s % of total Aircraft built Similar aircraft type, date / decade, useage, size. Biz Jets BAe-125-800 1.7 % Beechcraft Beechjet 400 2.2 % Cessna 550 Citation II 7.1 % Learjet 35 / 36 12 % Beechcraft 1900 6% Dassault Falcon 10 11.5% Aérospatiale SN.601 22.5% Medium size jets / Turboprops. BAe-146 5.1% Fokker 100 6% McDonnell Douglas DC-9-30 9.5% Fairchild FH-227 30% McDonnell Douglas DC-8 14% Canadair CL-44 Turboprop 46% Convair CV-580 Turboprop 22% Beechcraft, Fokker, McDonnell Douglass, Learjet, Fairchild, Aerospatiale, Canadair, Convair companies defunct. All Comets, including some Comet 1s, had full civilian use certification at some point after 1954, civilian use certification only being withdrawn after commercial flying stopped. Examples were flying until 1997 - one example did a signals research global circumnavigation flight series in 1993 via Australia virtually without a rest travelling 28000 miles, only had an ice warning indicator issue during the flights. *The DH Comet - World Firsts.* 1st gas turbine jet powered airliner. 1st high altitude 8psi pressurised full fuselage length passenger cabin airliner, not a trivial feature as structure strength required for pressurisation considerably exceeded strength required for normal flying stress. Nobody else had done anything similar before the Comet. The b-47 used 2 relatively small, heavily built pressurised modules (the aircraft where 6 had their wings fold up in 2 months while flying & some had their wings fall off while parked). The 1937 Boeing piston engined airliner pressurised passenger cabin was pressurised to 2 psi only - in fact that could easily be done as the normal unpressurized fuselage cabin structure strength for flying stresses only was all that was needed to be adequate so no significant weight increase issues needed addressing. 1st all hydraulically powered flying surface controls & actuators airliner with under carriage wheel disk brakes + ABS. 1st jet airliner to cross the Atlantic. 1st jet aircraft to do a world circumnavigation flights series. *Of course De Havilland had prior experience building many all metal construction airframe aircraft including thousands of jet powered fighter aircraft that were primarily of metal construction with pressurised cockpits & jet engines built by De-Havilland & we know the world's first all metal construction airframe airliner was built in England in the 1920s by Handley Page.* *_De Havilland did indeed always work to better than industry standards at the time, no evidence of negligence ever being produced in relation to the DH Comet._* The course of De Havilland & the general UK aerospace industry sector was not affected even slightly by the DH Comet. *_Other interesting World firsts_* *Vickers Viscount Turboprop Airliner 1947* *Gloster Meteor Turboprop Aircraft 1945* They might like to answer these questions. *Which airline has just ordered* *60 RR England Trent XWB Engines* *& What aircraft are the engines for?* _Bonus question for 10 points._ Which country has the *World's Highest Combined Per Capita* *Nuclear + Defence + Aerospace Sector Activity?* 👍 Cheers 🙂
Thanks for another very informative video. I've seen TV documentaries where the square windows were held to be THE SOLE cause of the in-flight break-ups - which as you and others have since disclosed, was not the case. Clearly those TV documentaries were poorly researched. HOWEVER, no such criticism can be levelled at your *Disaster Breakdown* You Tube Channel. It is clear that you ALWAYS take a great deal of trouble, which is much appreciated.
I think the myth about the square windows comes from a need to oversimplify a complex structural failure, the squared nature of the windows did cause stress concentrations and would have served to exasurbate failure but similar failure may have also occurred with circular windows just after more pressure cycles
The redesign of the windows didn't solve the fatal flaws in the Comet 1, despite reinforcement of the windows all Comet 1 aircraft had their airworthiness certification permanently revoked in 1958 and they never returned to revenue passenger service due to the remaining structural flaws.
Luckily for us British our weather doesn't try to casually kill us very often, maybe with depressive thoughts about it, but as I'm writing this it's an absolutely lovely day so one shouldn't complain, especially compared to your weather situation! 😮 Maybe us British just like to complain, full stop!
Addendum. I went to an event today. One participant chose to make scrambled eggs on the sidewalk. It worked, although it took about an hour for the eggs to set.
The television show "Seconds from Distaster" did a great documentary on the Comet tragedies, as well as a detailed investigation of the cause of the accidents. Totally worth a watch if you've not seen it yet. By the way, I LOVE your channel! ♥
Well, they did a documentary... but not a great one, a lot of inaccuracies and unfortunately a heavy pro-british bias the is dismissive of de Havillands criminal negligence and attempts to cover-up evidence.
@@sandervanderkammen9230 @WilhelmKarsten Kharzeestan Krappenz DiktorBummer Jurkzxoffenz etc and co - they should note good with much awestruckness & extreme wonderment. *UPDATE MORE BREAKING NEWS ETC* *_It's interesting that some of the aircraft on the list should really have been noticeably safer than the Comet due to being a similar type but of much later design & manufacture but they definately were not safer._* How things were back then - *_Accident losses - % of aircraft built._* DeHavilland Comet 4 UK 14% DeHavilland Comet all mks 17% Vickers VC10 UK 5% *_The DH Comet had better safety than or similar safety to many other commercial passenger aircraft of a similar era_* Douglas DC-1 99% Douglas DC-2 47% Douglas DC-3 30% Douglas DC-4 26% Boeing s300 72% Boeing 307 70% Boeing 247 48% Boeing 707 20% Lockheed Electra Turboprop 29% Fairchild FH-227 30% McDonnell Douglas DC-8 14% Sud Aviation Caravelle 15% Canadair CL-44 Turboprop 46% Convair CV-580 Turboprop 22% A comparison of more recent aircraft. Accident losses comparison examples. 1970s - 1980s % of total Aircraft built Similar aircraft type, date / decade, useage, size. Biz Jets BAe-125-800 1.7 % Beechcraft Beechjet 400 2.2 % Cessna 550 Citation II 7.1 % Learjet 35 / 36 12 % Beechcraft 1900 6% Dassault Falcon 10 11.5% Aérospatiale SN.601 22.5% Medium size jets / Turboprops. BAe-146 5.1% Fokker 100 6% McDonnell Douglas DC-9-30 9.5% Fairchild FH-227 30% McDonnell Douglas DC-8 14% Canadair CL-44 Turboprop 46% Convair CV-580 Turboprop 22% Beechcraft, Fokker, McDonnell Douglass, Learjet, Fairchild, Aerospatiale, Canadair, Convair companies defunct. All Comets, including some Comet 1s, had full civilian use certification at some point after 1954, civilian use certification only being withdrawn after commercial flying stopped. Examples were flying until 1997 - one example did a signals research global circumnavigation flight series in 1993 via Australia virtually without a rest travelling 28000 miles, only had an ice warning indicator issue during the flights. *The DH Comet - World Firsts.* 1st gas turbine jet powered airliner. 1st high altitude 8psi pressurised full fuselage length passenger cabin airliner, not a trivial feature as structure strength required for pressurisation considerably exceeded strength required for normal flying stress. Nobody else had done anything similar before the Comet. The b-47 used 2 relatively small, heavily built pressurised modules (the aircraft where 6 had their wings fold up in 2 months while flying & some had their wings fall off while parked). The 1937 Boeing piston engined airliner pressurised passenger cabin was pressurised to 2 psi only - in fact that could easily be done as the normal unpressurized fuselage cabin structure strength for flying stresses only was all that was needed to be adequate so no significant weight increase issues needed addressing. 1st all hydraulically powered flying surface controls & actuators airliner with under carriage wheel disk brakes + ABS. 1st jet airliner to cross the Atlantic. 1st jet aircraft to do a world circumnavigation flights series. *Of course De Havilland had prior experience building many all metal construction airframe aircraft including thousands of jet powered fighter aircraft that were primarily of metal construction with pressurised cockpits & jet engines built by De-Havilland & we know the world's first all metal construction airframe airliner was built in England in the 1920s by Handley Page.* *_De Havilland did indeed always work to better than industry standards at the time, no evidence of negligence ever being produced in relation to the DH Comet._* The course of De Havilland & the general UK aerospace industry sector was not affected even slightly by the DH Comet. *_Other interesting World firsts_* *Vickers Viscount Turboprop Airliner 1947* *Gloster Meteor Turboprop Aircraft 1945* They might like to answer these questions. *Which airline has just ordered* *60 RR England Trent XWB Engines* *& What aircraft are the engines for?* _Bonus question for 10 points._ Which country has the *World's Highest Combined Per Capita* *Nuclear + Defence + Aerospace Sector Activity?* 👍 Cheers 🙂
Why is G-ALYP (the Comet involved in flight 781) depicted as a Comet 4?? It was a Comet 1! Also the BOAC livery is the later livery, not the one on the Comet 1.
Pretty inventive lo-tech way to solve the mystery of the break ups. Today, it’d be so much quicker and easier with computers. The 707 pretty much overtook the Comet. I flew on them in the 1960’s.
As someone with an aerospace engineering background, I respectfully disagree. The square windows aren't a "myth" or "confusion", they just aren't the whole story. I suppose it could be said that the disasters were _because of_ the square windows is a myth, but they did contribute. Reality is complicated. Very few things are attributable to a single cause. In modern crash investigation parlance, the square windows would likely be called a "contributing factor" along with the extreme altitude, with the riveting technique and potentially quality issues with the alloy being primary factors. Would the breakups have happened with the same rivet technique and also lower stress concentrations? We just don't know. Possibly they still would have; there still _are_ stress concentrations around rounded windows, but metals are a little counterintuitive to how most people imagine them working. A surprisingly small shift in stress or strain can bring a metallic part from the elastic region to the plastic region or vice versa, so even a small reduction in stress around more rounded windows could have seen these disasters not happen at all, or happen gradually enough for regular maintenance inspections to catch them, maybe through pain flaking off around the rivets or similar. Or... to be sure, it might have happened anyway. This is why the entire aviation industry stopped using even vaguely square windows _and_ improved the way windows are installed and parts joined together _and_ kept researching better and better alloys _and_ pushed for higher quality in manufacturing both of the sheet metal and of the fuselages, and a thousand other things that have made these kinds of accidents much rarer in modern times. Where the confusion arises, I think, isn't so much in the engineering community, as loosely implied in the line about the 'myth' being _why_ airplane windows are much more rounded now. Rather, it's just an early example of media sensationalism and oversimplification. This reminds me quite a lot of the massive "debate" in the armchair aerodynamics community about where lift comes from and what mechanism truly generates it. The real answer is "all of the above" but that doesn't make for a very fun debate about Bernoulli vs. entrainment vs. deflection. Add in that the relative ratios of the strength of those effects change dramatically with speed, stall conditions and other flight conditions, altitude, and flow states (turbulent vs. laminar) and, like most things, the answer to "How, exactly, does a wing generate lift" is simply too simple a question, with the answer, "It's complicated." Or the 'myth' that water is incompressible. It isn't, but it's close enough that for most purposes we can consider it to be, to _vastly_ simplify the math. Anyway, I do recognize the technique of exaggerating a bit to make a more impactful impression on people who truly _are_ under the impression that it was _just_ the extra stress concentrations around the (admittedly quite rounded from an engineering perspective) corners of the windows. And, of course, genuinely squared-off corners would be _much_ worse. Edit: 21:09 Point in case. See how the big fractures are definitely coming from the narrowest radii area of the windows? Not a "myth". Just more complicated.
Square windows were not a factor because the Comet 1 didn't have any, in fact wreckage recovered from the sea confirmed that the windows were not related in any way with the catastrophic in-flight structural failures... it was a clear case of engineering incompetence and criminal negligence on behalf of de Havilland that simply had little to no experience constructing pressurized aircraft made of riveted aluminum alloy, they were still building aircraft primarily from wood and fabric at this time.
@@DoktorBayerischeMotorenWerke Kharzeestan Krappenz DiktorBummer Jurkzxoffenz etc and co - they should all note good with much awe & extreme wonder. *UPDATE MORE BREAKING NEWS ETC* How things were back then - *_Accident losses - % of aircraft built._* DeHavilland Comet 4 UK 14% DeHavilland Comet all mks 17% Vickers VC10 UK 5% *_The DH Comet had better safety than or similar safety to many other commercial passenger aircraft of a similar era_* Douglas DC-1 99% Douglas DC-2 47% Douglas DC-3 30% Douglas DC-4 26% Boeing s300 72% Boeing 307 70% Boeing 247 48% Boeing 707 20% Lockheed L-049/149 Constellation 30% Lockheed Electra Turboprop 29% Fairchild FH-227 30% McDonnell Douglas DC-8 14% Sud Aviation Caravelle 15% Canadair CL-44 Turboprop 46% Convair CV-580 Turboprop 22% The Comet was designed with military use in mind, Nimrod work started at De Havilland in 1953. The committee did not find hundreds of fatal flaws or evidence of design defects, structural defects, defective materials or shoddy workmanship. Ripstop provision was included. Claimed incidents did not involve cracks starting from window corners. The engine & engine intake position had advantages, were not flaws or fatal flaws & were not the cause of any incidents involving any Comet or Nimrod aircraft. Nearly all changes before the Comet 4 were just in case or were previously scheduled improvements. Bow-wing & the 707 story (see b-47 wing folding incidents) is the result of global economics & the well protected & very large domestic US airliner market & active support from the UK with for instance proposed competing airliners from Vickers & DH being blocked by the UK government at the time, cheap & nasty was the requirement with large scale production capability in one place. The 707 was of course a much larger aircraft which as a stressed skin metal airframe aircraft would require a thicker skin anyway. They got lucky at the time essentially. Bow-wing is the result of the large & well protected US domestic airliner market The fate of De Havilland was due to Govt policy Aerospace sector rationalisation & global economics, it was nothing to do with the Comet. A comprehensive, thorough & protracted testing program was carried out on the prototype & it's assemblies. Of course the Comet did indeed have Ripstop stop provision. De Havilland (Of England) Comets were not grounded after 1970 due to structural problems. *_It's interesting that some of the aircraft on the list should really have been noticeably safer than the Comet due to being a similar type but of much later design & manufacture but they definately were not safer._* How things were back then - *_Accident losses - % of aircraft built._* DeHavilland Comet 4 UK 14% DeHavilland Comet all mks 17% Vickers VC10 UK 5% *_The DH Comet had better safety than or similar safety to many other commercial passenger aircraft of a similar era_* Douglas DC-1 99% Douglas DC-2 47% Douglas DC-3 30% Douglas DC-4 26% Boeing s300 72% Boeing 307 70% Boeing 247 48% Boeing 707 20% Lockheed L-049/149 Constellation 30% Lockheed Electra Turboprop 29% Fairchild FH-227 30% McDonnell Douglas DC-8 14% Sud Aviation Caravelle 15% Canadair CL-44 Turboprop 46% Convair CV-580 Turboprop 22% A comparison of more recent aircraft. Accident losses comparison examples. 1970s - 1980s % of total Aircraft built Similar aircraft type, date / decade, useage, size. Biz Jets BAe-125-800 1.7 % Beechcraft Beechjet 400 2.2 % Cessna 550 Citation II 7.1 % Learjet 35 / 36 12 % Beechcraft 1900 6% Dassault Falcon 10 11.5% Aérospatiale SN.601 22.5% Medium size jets / Turboprops. BAe-146 5.1% Fokker 100 6% McDonnell Douglas DC-9-30 9.5% Fairchild FH-227 30% McDonnell Douglas DC-8 14% Canadair CL-44 Turboprop 46% Convair CV-580 Turboprop 22% Beechcraft, Fokker, McDonnell Douglass, Learjet, Fairchild, Aerospatiale, Canadair, Convair companies defunct. All Comets, including some Comet 1s, had full civilian use certification at some point after 1954, civilian use certification only being withdrawn after commercial flying stopped. Examples were flying until 1997 - one example did a signals research global circumnavigation flight series in 1993 via Australia virtually without a rest travelling 28000 miles, only had an ice warning indicator issue during the flights. *The DH Comet - World Firsts.* 1st gas turbine jet powered airliner. 1st high altitude 8psi pressurised full fuselage length passenger cabin airliner, not a trivial feature as structure strength required for pressurisation considerably exceeded strength required for normal flying stress. Nobody else had done anything similar before the Comet. The b-47 used 2 relatively small, heavily built pressurised modules (the aircraft where 6 had their wings fold up in 2 months while flying & some had their wings fall off while parked). The 1937 Boeing piston engined airliner pressurised passenger cabin was pressurised to 2 psi only - in fact that could easily be done as the normal unpressurized fuselage cabin structure strength for flying stresses only was all that was needed to be adequate so no significant weight increase issues needed addressing. 1st all hydraulically powered flying surface controls & actuators airliner with under carriage wheel disk brakes + ABS. 1st jet airliner to cross the Atlantic. 1st jet aircraft to do a world circumnavigation flights series. *Of course De Havilland had prior experience building many all metal construction airframe aircraft including thousands of jet powered fighter aircraft that were primarily of metal construction with pressurised cockpits & jet engines built by De-Havilland & we know the world's first all metal construction airframe airliner was built in England in the 1920s by Handley Page.* *_De Havilland did indeed always work to better than industry standards at the time, used up to date knowledge for the design & no evidence of negligence or criminal negligence was ever produced in relation to the DH Comet._* The course of De Havilland & the general UK aerospace industry sector was not affected even slightly by the DH Comet. The course of national aerospace sectors obviously being similar & inevitable in many countries. *_Other interesting World firsts_* _World's first turboprop aircraft._ *Vickers Viscount Turboprop Airliner 1947.* *A 1945 Gloster Meteor Aircraft with Turboprop Gas Turbine Engine.* They might like to answer these questions. *Which airline has just ordered* *60 RR England Trent XWB Engines* *& What aircraft are the engines for?* _Bonus question for 10 points._ Which country has the *World's Highest Combined Per Capita* *Nuclear + Defence + Aerospace Sector Activity?* 👍 & 🙂 & of course 😎 indeed. *C H E E R S* & without doubt - _Toodle_ -PIP- *Old* *_C H A P._* This line left not blank intentionally. The next line is blank intentionally. . .... . ... .. . . ... .. ... .... .... ............ ..... . Ivcxivcxiv cxcxcvccbcxc xcxiivxccxvcv ccvvcvvvvcvv vivcxiccvccvxxccvvv.
Just had a random question after the mention of this aircraft being grounded at around 15:43 Since this aircraft only had pressurization issues Has there ever been aircraft that were not grounded but forbidden to fly above a sertian altitude where it’s safety couldn’t be guaranteed. Or has it always just been to ground aircraft intirely
Comet 1 had many fatal flaws besides the weak fuselage... de Havilland was unable to make the planes safe and its airworthiness certification was permanently revoked in 1958. The Comet 4, while similar in appearance is a completely different aircraft and was completely redesigned
Other fatal flaws included the placement of the jet engines, wing flaps, hydraulic flight control systems and even the toilets were redesigned to improve safety.
*_Air travel safety often depends on British made and or designed tech or British aerospace advanced technology, R&D, science & Engineering._* *For anybody currently flying on a widebody airliner there's a good possibility that the engines will be RR gas turbine aero engines designed & built in England with those engines being monitored by people in an English county.* England, the home country of RR (aero engine stuff) & it's lands counties & shires will of course be producing the 🎺📯🎺 *_RR Trent Ultrafan_* *The worlds largest gas turbine aero engine.* 👍🎺📯🎺 A typical but very tiny example of what goes in the very internationally orientated British aerospace sector - Boeing Apache Attack Helicopter. AH-64: 75 UK suppliers, 7% UK content, global fleet of 1280+ aircraft.
After the pressurisation cycle fatigue fracture problem was identified some Comets flew at lower altitude without pressurisation for ferrying, testing & research purposes. *_There were no problems with flaps, hydraulics, wings, engine placement, toilets, toilet roll holders, or ash trays in any Comets of any mark._* Any changes made through the marks were mostly developmental changes that were being planned regardless of any incidents. *UPDATE* *_It's interesting that some of the aircraft on the list should really have been noticeably safer than the Comet due to being a similar type but of much later design & manufacture however they were clearly not safer._* How things were back then - *_Accident losses - % of aircraft built._* DeHavilland Comet 4 UK 14% DeHavilland Comet all mks 17% Vickers VC10 UK 5% *_The DH Comet had better safety than or similar safety to many other commercial passenger aircraft of a similar era_* Douglas DC-1 99% Douglas DC-2 47% Douglas DC-3 30% Douglas DC-4 26% Boeing s300 72% Boeing 307 70% Boeing 247 48% Boeing 707 20% Lockheed Electra Turboprop 29% Fairchild FH-227 30% McDonnell Douglas DC-8 14% Sud Aviation Caravelle 15% All Comets, including some Comet 1s, had full civilian use certification at some point after 1954, civilian use certification only being withdrawn after commercial flying stopped. Examples were flying until 1997 - one example did a signals research global circumnavigation flight series in 1993 via Australia virtually without a rest travelling 28000 miles, only had an ice warning indicator issue during the flights. *The DH Comet - World Firsts.* 1st gas turbine jet powered airliner. 1st high altitude 8psi pressurised full fuselage length passenger cabin airliner, not a trivial feature as structure strength required for pressurisation considerably exceeded strength required for normal flying stress. Nobody else had done anything similar before the Comet. The b-47 used 2 relatively small, heavily built pressurised modules (the aircraft where 6 had their wings fold up in 2 months while flying & some had their wings fall off while parked). The 1937 Boeing piston engined airliner pressurised passenger cabin was pressurised to 2 psi only - in fact that could easily be done as the normal unpressurized fuselage cabin structure strength for flying stresses only was all that was needed to be adequate so no significant weight increase issues needed addressing. 1st all hydraulically powered flying surface controls & actuators airliner with under carriage wheel disk brakes + ABS. 1st jet airliner to cross the Atlantic. 1st jet aircraft to do a world circumnavigation flights series. *Of course De Havilland had prior experience building many all metal construction airframe aircraft including thousands of jet powered fighter aircraft that were primarily of metal construction with pressurised cockpits & jet engines built by De-Havilland & we know the world's first all metal construction airframe airliner was built in England in the 1920s by Handley Page.* *_De Havilland did indeed always work to better than industry standards at the time, no evidence of negligence ever being produced in relation to the DH Comet._*
Clarification for the videos: will you be releasing them every 2 weeks or will you release them when they are ready? And do you plan covering soviet aircrafts?
Note: Wrote this when I started watching the video, not after finishing it! Is that the Comet in Edinburgh Museum of Flight? Lovely museum, that. Got chatting to someone there last time I went - turned out he was a Comet Pilot!
I saw a '" Dan--Air" plane there,--on a "Dan-Air"speciaL"--I flew, in 1972,-from Manchester-to Paris,--on a long weekend,-stayed hotel in Mon-Marte,--visited Moulon-rouge--Eiffel Tower-visited heaps of pubs-they flew me back to Manchester Sunday night-with a glass of champagne !--whole trip Fri-to-Sun--all in cost 30 quid !!--about $60 !!---Flight hotel-everything !--I sure miss those Dan Air Specials !!
Gosh, this documentary really, really brings home how brave you would've had to be to travel at the dawn of commercial air flight, despite its reputation for glamour, and how truly enormously things have progressed since then! (Thanks in no small part to lessons learned in such tragic ways... 😔) Did the British government ever compensate the families of those lost due to rushing the aircraft design back into service following tge initial crash....? (Tried some online searching but couldn't find this mentioned, sorry?)
@@sandervanderkammen9230 @sandervanderkammen9230 Thank you for letting me know! Oof 😔 That absence feels a little disrespectful to the loss of life suffered, & the families bereaved, doesn't it. Perhaps at the time not supporting the placement of a memorial was part of the UK govt trying to avoid public focus on the disaster? But one would think in the intervening years that would have waned.
@@anna_in_aotearoa3166 I completely agree, many believe that much of the blame and the cover-ups were the responsibility of the UK government that was desperately trying to promote a domestic aircraft industry that was struggling in a economic collapse.
@@anna_in_aotearoa3166 *UPDATE* *_It's interesting that some of the aircraft on the list should really have been noticeably safer than the Comet due to being a similar type but of much later design & manufacture however they were clearly not safer._* How things were back then - *_Accident losses - % of aircraft built._* DeHavilland Comet 4 UK 14% DeHavilland Comet all mks 17% Vickers VC10 UK 5% *_The DH Comet had better safety than or similar safety to many other commercial passenger aircraft of a similar era_* Douglas DC-1 99% Douglas DC-2 47% Douglas DC-3 30% Douglas DC-4 26% Boeing s300 72% Boeing 307 70% Boeing 247 48% Boeing 707 20% Lockheed Electra Turboprop 29% Fairchild FH-227 30% McDonnell Douglas DC-8 14% Sud Aviation Caravelle 15% All Comets, including some Comet 1s, had full civilian use certification at some point after 1954, civilian use certification only being withdrawn after commercial flying stopped. Examples were flying until 1997 - one example did a signals research global circumnavigation flight series in 1993 via Australia virtually without a rest travelling 28000 miles, only had an ice warning indicator issue during the flights. *The DH Comet - World Firsts.* 1st gas turbine jet powered airliner. 1st high altitude 8psi pressurised full fuselage length passenger cabin airliner, not a trivial feature as structure strength required for pressurisation considerably exceeded strength required for normal flying stress. Nobody else had done anything similar before the Comet. The b-47 used 2 relatively small, heavily built pressurised modules (the aircraft where 6 had their wings fold up in 2 months while flying & some had their wings fall off while parked). The 1937 Boeing 307 piston engined airliner pressurised passenger cabin was pressurised to 2 psi only - in fact that could easily be done as the normal unpressurized fuselage cabin structure strength for flying stresses only was all that was needed to be adequate so no significant weight increase issues needed addressing. Same for the B377 piston engine airliner, only 4 psi pressurisation & not a jet. Boeing did not put high altitude commercial jet airliners into service until 10 years after the Comet first flew. 1st all hydraulically powered flying surface controls & actuators airliner with under carriage wheel disk brakes + ABS. 1st jet airliner to cross the Atlantic. 1st jet aircraft to do a world circumnavigation flights series. *Of course De Havilland had prior experience building many all metal construction airframe aircraft including thousands of jet powered fighter aircraft that were primarily of metal construction with pressurised cockpits & jet engines built by De-Havilland & we know the world's first all metal construction airframe airliner was built in England in the 1920s by Handley Page.* *_De Havilland did indeed always work to better than industry standards at the time, no evidence of negligence ever being produced in relation to the DH Comet._* . ... .. . ... . . iiivcxccxvv
Just a reminder in case anyone has missed it. There will not be a video next Saturday as we move to a new schedule of producing some bigger videos which will se them released as and when they are completed. I am currently working on the next video right now and it should be a pretty big one, I look forward to sharing it with you. Will drop a community post this coming week to keep you updated.
This video went out to my Patrons on Patreon 48 hours before going out publicly. Consider joining here from £1 per month: www.patreon.com/DisasterBreakdown
Twitter: twitter.com/Chloe_HowieCB
The end of an era, but I'm sure that you'll still have some wonderful videos to make for us fans to enjoy.
P.S. Since you said at the end of the Korean Air Flight 801 video that you believe that you have covered most major accidents, attacks and incidents involving the Boeing B747, I could comment with a list of other cases that are either low profile or have not been dramatised in the "Mayday" documentary series, or since your videos of Korean Air Flight 7 and Pan American World Airways Flight 103 are outdated, maybe you could remake those.
P.P.S. If you want to expand the music you use (I love the music you use for Disaster Breakdown, especially "The Stakeout" by Christoffer Moe Ditlevsen), I highly recommend exploring the music of Kevin Macleod as I love his soundtrack and horror music, and he is the go-to choice for people wanting to use licence free music on TH-cam.
Well, I'm sure I'll adjust to the new schedule of videos, and I can't wait to see what you bring in the future. Good luck, Chloe. Love from Moray, Scotland!
@@robertmcghintheorca49 Will say that my next video will involve a Boeing 747, so there are still a few more I could make.
Love your work and the extra care you put into each one. I can only imagine the amount of time it takes to fully produce a complete video. My favorite part of these videos is the mechanical breakdown you include in each. To me the cause is absolutely the most critical point to make in any crash video. And thank you for the longer (over 15 minutes) videos. When I get my finances in a better place, I hope to become a Patreon support er. Cheers
@@DisasterBreakdown
Thanks for all you do. My finances will probably be a bit hairy for a little while, I have some adulting to do.
I’ll run the adds while I make my coffee, so excited for my last Saturday viewing , from Sydney Australia
*The Comet was a beautiful looking jet. Imagine flying on a turboprop one day and the next on the Comet. what a different flight you would have had*
Hopefully not TOO different.
@@angelsaltamontes7336 much quieter and smoother. Also much faster and a much bigger cabin.
@@HappyBeezerStudios Also statistically the highest chance you will be killed in a plane crash..
The Comet has the highest loss rate and fatalities per flight, passenger/mile of any jet airliner in history, 1 out of every 3 built crashed or were destroyed in accidents
@@HappyBeezerStudios Quieter? I was thinking all through this video how incredibly loud the Comets must have been, especially toward the rear. Turbojets and early turbofans were insanely loud, and the Comet's 4 engines were built into the structure right up against the cabin instead of being mounted on pylons some distance away. In my own experience, I've never been on a turboprop that was anywhere near as loud as sitting in the back of a 727. I can only imagine how much louder the Comet's configuration might have been.
As a frenchman, I take immense proud in the fact that we managed to unite and work together with the country that birthed the Comet, in order to make the Concord. I have a never ending admiration for the genius of our cousins on the other side of the French Channel ;) Breath taking planes made by the genius of British Engineering.
i really liked the different structure of this one, following multiple accidents and a single plane type! great video, as always :)
Thank you!
The design looks like something Ford would come up with
@@samsngdevice5103 Aw, be fair. They were the first. They were breaking new frontiers, and they didn't know all of the variables. Ford has no excuse, only bean counters.
I think people forget that the pressurized DC-6 and Constellation planes cruised at around 24,000 to 26,000 feet altitude, not the 35,000+ feet of the Comet I. As such, the Douglas and Lockheed piston airliners experienced a lot less of the severe pressurization changes that affected the Comet. As such, when the 707 and DC-8 were designed, Boeing and Douglas engineers had to design the structure to withstand the pressurization changes caused by repeated flights to over 31,000 feet altitude.
The engineers at Boeing and Douglas used the lessons learned from the Comet accidents to make the 707 and DC8 stronger airframes better able to withstand fatigue stressors.
Boing are on record saying that if it hadn't been dehavaland it would have been themselves, metal fatigue in these alloys wasn't a well known subject at the time
Propeller aircraft will fail from pressurization problems have more altitudes not because necessarily of their Metallurgy, but the reciprocating engines also put a lot of frequency stress through the airframe.
The entire aircraft industry has shown to learn from mistakes. Flying is so safe nowadays because of all these losses. And that is the right way to do it. Instead of looking for someone to blame, they work to improve things continuously.
@@44hawk28Of course, I never thought of that.
7:17 the reason for the skull fractures was because due to the force of the decompression ripped the seats from the floor causing them to hit the ceiling with a lot of force.
That's a merciful death, as opposed to drowning in your exploded lungs.🥺
Decompression will usually not rip seats from the floor. Explosive decompression will force air out of the aircraft towards the breach. Thereby creating a very strong wind force hitting the passengers bashing them around. These poor souls would not be able to withstand that.
Yo scientist!
@@grmpEqweer The damage to their lungs likely killed them first. Head trauma is probably from hitting the water from thousands of feet up and were post-mortem injuries.I wonder if the report is available to read.
@@flexairz Remember that in 1954, 16G seats did not exist. Many older aircraft still had weaker 9G seats until as recently as 2009.
The Tu-104 (First Soviet Jet) had its own fair share of issues pertaining to its bomber origin that would be very much an interesting video
Oh yeah the 104 has its own history. One day I'll get round to it. I really don't know a whole lot about that plane either, there will be tons to learn!
Sadly 1 in 5 aircrafts got destoryed
There was also 4 engined Tu 110 but only 5 were built and last wss scrapped in 1995
@@serverbf100mrthat’s nearly identical to the 707.
A very soviet plane with a very soviet design.
The only complete surviving Comet 1 is exhibited at the RAF Museum, Cosford, along with the fractured piece of fuselage from G-ALYU from the pressurisation test at RAE Farnborough.
I was fortunate enough to watch the last Comet flying when I worked at Boscombe Down in the 1990s. It was a pleasure to see Comet 4c XS235 "Canopus" in the air. That aircraft is now preserved at Bruntingthorpe airfield which is only about 30 miles from where I now live.
Metal fatigue caused by cabin pressurisation was a totally unknown phenomenon in the 1940s. The accidents did at least change aircraft building methods and improve safety.
It most definitively wasn’t. It is a pressure vessel. Look up submarines, steam locomotives or even tea pots. They had known about this stuff (and their shapes!) for a long time. This was very much incremental, and mostly about bonding techniques for very thin metals.
@@hepphepps8356 It was the square cabin windows to blame. Pressurization fatigue caused the airframe to crack at the corners of the windows. The cure was round port holes, used on airliners ever since
The actual failure point was the antenna housing on top of the cabin, not the windows. The other problem was the thin skin that was used.
And I believe the type of riveting used.
Lessons in aviation are usually paid for in blood, unfortunately, as plane crashes very rarely have outcomes that aren't tragic.
Just had a watch of this video, thanks for sharing this Chloe, its without a doubt one of the biggest watershed moments in commercial aviation! I like to think the Comet Disasters paved the way for modern jet powered Boeing & Airbus airliners as we know them today.
This is perhaps my favourite of the accidents because solving the mystery is so fascinating.
She was so beautiful in so many ways and blazed the trail for all future commercial jet aircraft.
The Comet was an important step forward in aviation history, though that can never compare to the lives lost. I am excited for whenever you do get to the Tu-104 because that is a masterclass in malarkey
Tu 104...?
I'll look this one up.
Another first class video. Very well researched and put together. The Comet was a trailblazer and the early understanding of high altitude flight just wasn’t there, De Havilland learned from their tragic mistakes but the reputation damage was too far gone. The Boeing 707 was developed in the background and achieved much greater success.
I’ll always have a soft spot for the Comet as an early trailblazing innovation. East Fortune is also well worth a visit.
Thanks so much for watching!
At least we DID get Comet`s offsring - the Nimrod, ev4entually!
The comet looks absoulutely beautiful
My initial guess was metallurgy of the day. The explanation totally makes sense. I have to tip my hat to the investigators for devising the test bed for finally coming up with a cause of the crash. Another great video Chole. Keep 'em coming! -PhanotmF4G
I love videos like this as well as your regular episodes. I love the idea of breaking down the incidents tied to one type of aircraft. I often get the types confused when they’re all separate videos so these are so interesting. I’d love to see more and perhaps the same format but discussing a specific airport? Keep up the great work Chloe you’re my fav channel❤️
edit: I would also love your take on the story oh MH370. I’ve heard many differing facts and I know your research and presentation is always top notch. It also hasn’t been really talked about in years but new evidence has been found recently showing the landing gear was likely down when it hit the water which raises more interesting questions.
Your content is amazing, we will wait as long as needed for the next video. RIP victims
No matter the flaws it may have, that plane was magnificent. It emanate from the pictures you took a sense of nostalgia for a long lost exiting era.
Agreed, up with the Concorde as one of the prettiest passenger planes ever made.
@@chdreturns Yeah it was one of my lifetime dreams to be able to fly in it. But I didn't get the chance to do so. It was a technical marvel. Also from a time of exiting achievements.
Some say it evokes nostalgia, others say it looks futuristic. I think it looks like what people long ago thought the future would look like, almost like a Jetsons cartoon. We were supposed to be driving flying cars, taking pills instead of meals, living on Mars, and communicating by video telephone by now. Ok, we do the video phone thing - when we want to - but the 1950s ideas of what the future would look like was off by a wide margin, thought it was incredibly exciting and fun to speculate.
Thanks for this video, Chloe! Although I have flight in next 2 days, I’m going to watch this whole video, because I’ve been waiting for this to come.
This thing looks modern on the outside. I can only imagine what people thought when this thing was introduced.
Couple that with post WWII optimism about the future and you've got a recipe for awesome.
It's really sad that such a pioneering technology was cut short by disaster. However it did make future aircraft much safer so perhaps something good came out of these accidents.
The East Fortune Aircraft museum (j25 miles east of Edinburgh, Scotland), has this Comet and along with many other aircraft, also houses a Concorde indoors - you can step inside and be surprised at how narrow and cramped seems, yet all the seats are First Class.
this was a very interesting video to watch. my family used to work at De Havilland and my great grandfather worked on comet cockpit control panels so these planes have always had a special place in my heart
A truly shameful and humiliating chapter in British aviation history... the real tragedy of the _Comet Disaster_ is that it could have been easily prevented if de Havilland had simply followed well-known and understood industry standards for construction of pressurized cabins made from riveted aluminum alloys.
It is vary shameful that those responsible were never punished and that the victims have never been properly honored with an official monument.
I bet your great-grandfather and everyone he worked with were gutted by this. I imagine some of the production workers spent a considerable amount of time replaying their assembly procedures in their minds, wondering if it might have been something they overlooked. (I only hope that's going on now at Boeing.)
A great explanation of the tragic Comet! Well done. Awaiting the new format in 2 weeks. 😊
The postmortems for the Elba Comet disaster was the responsibility of the Italian authorities. An Italian pathologist found the similarities of injuries amongst the victims.
This is probably the best video on this subject. Great effort.
I'm loving the video footage you got of the museum piece. Lovely. Thank you.❤
I'm curious as to why the exploded lungs from comet depressurization didn't seem to really occur on rapid depressurization on modern planes, such as that of the united 747 or aloha 737 incidents
IIRC, those two flights were at much lower altitudes when they depressurized.
My guess is altitude. The explosive decompression on both of those flights happened not long after takeoff; somewhere around 20,000-24,000 feet for both from what I found
According to the video the Comet flew at altitudes up to 42,000 feet. That's almost twice as high up, with the air being a lot thinner to match. If the Comets broke apart at that altitude, that would explain the dramatic lung injuries.
Because this was a not a rapid but an explosive decompression.
TWA 800 was at just 16000 ft when it exploded and Aloha air was at 26000 ft so both significantly lower than the 36000 ft when the Comet decompressed. Air India 182 exploded (due to a bomb) over the Atlantic in cruise at 31000 ft and passengers near the bomb site suffered similar injuries to those on the Comet.
I really enjoyed this longer format !
I cannot wait for the next one
This is the most informative documentary about the fate of the Comet that i've ever seen. A job well done to you Ma'am.
Great chronicling of the Comet’s evolution and history. Very informative and interesting. It was a beautiful plane. I did not know about the Nimrod or the 4 versions. Thank you.
The comet 4 was the first commercial passenger jet to fly from London to New York in October1958.Before the Boeing 707.Must have been a wonderful flight for the passengers with champagne flowing.!.Much booing in New York on arrival as the Americans didnt do a transatlantic passenger flight first.
Much booing? This wasn't the space race. It was a sales race, sure, but Americans can certainly congratulate our friends when they win an honest victory. We're not that petty. The Comet was never going to recover in the market by 1958, and Boeing knew they had a great plane that would dominate.
@@beenaplumber8379no you americans wouldn't congratulate us. you're threatened even when your own ally does something before you. we made the first supersonic plane and booed us for it. during the cold war you also tried to claim britain having universal healthcare ruined lives. so desperate for superiority that you attack your own allies. typical american mentality and propaganda
Interestingly, you mentioned the Caravelle at the end. Sud-Aviation licenced the design of the Comet's nose for the Caravelle.
The Comets nose was stolen from the Boeing 307, the world's first pressurized airliner.
@@sandervanderkammen9230
*UPDATE*
In fact the Comets nose was no more copied from the 307 than putting a curved & pointed end cap on a tube would be copying.
The Comet nose had some significant & unique features which Sud Aviation licensed for use on their Caravelle. They also purchased plan drawings & a section of fuselage nose.
*_It's interesting that some of the aircraft on the list should really have been noticeably safer than the Comet due to being a similar type but of much later design & manufacture however they were clearly not safer._*
How things were back then -
*_Accident losses - % of aircraft built._*
DeHavilland Comet 4 UK 14%
DeHavilland Comet all mks 17%
Vickers VC10 UK 5%
*_The DH Comet had better safety than or similar safety to many other commercial passenger aircraft of a similar era_*
Douglas DC-1 99%
Douglas DC-2 47%
Douglas DC-3 30%
Douglas DC-4 26%
Boeing s300 72%
Boeing 307 70%
Boeing 247 48%
Boeing 707 20%
Lockheed Electra Turboprop 29%
Fairchild FH-227 30%
McDonnell Douglas DC-8 14%
Sud Aviation Caravelle 15%
All Comets, including some Comet 1s, had full civilian use certification at some point after 1954, civilian use certification only being withdrawn after commercial flying stopped. Examples were flying until 1997 - one example did a signals research global circumnavigation flight series in 1993 via Australia virtually without a rest travelling 28000 miles, only had an ice warning indicator issue during the flights.
*The DH Comet - World Firsts.*
1st gas turbine jet powered airliner. 1st high altitude 8psi pressurised full fuselage length passenger cabin airliner, not a trivial feature as structure strength required for pressurisation considerably exceeded strength required for normal flying stress. Nobody else had done anything similar before the Comet.
The b-47 used 2 relatively small, heavily built pressurised modules (the aircraft where 6 had their wings fold up in 2 months while flying & some had their wings fall off while parked).
The 1937 Boeing 307 piston engined airliner pressurised passenger cabin was pressurised to 2 psi only - in fact that could easily be done as the normal unpressurized fuselage cabin structure strength for flying stresses only was all that was needed to be adequate so no significant weight increase issues needed addressing.
Same for the B377 piston engine airliner, only 4 psi pressurisation & not a jet. Boeing did not put high altitude commercial jet airliners into service until 10 years after the Comet first flew.
1st all hydraulically powered flying surface controls & actuators airliner with under carriage wheel disk brakes + ABS.
1st jet airliner to cross the Atlantic.
1st jet aircraft to do a world circumnavigation flights series.
*Of course De Havilland had prior experience building many all metal construction airframe aircraft including thousands of jet powered fighter aircraft that were primarily of metal construction with pressurised cockpits & jet engines built by De-Havilland & we know the world's first all metal construction airframe airliner was built in England in the 1920s by Handley Page.*
*_De Havilland did indeed always work to better than industry standards at the time, no evidence of negligence ever being produced in relation to the DH Comet._*
There's some morbid, slightly haunted irony about these incidents wherean aircraft called the "Comet" basically broke apart as they came down from high in the sky.
I'm kinda gonna miss the weekly Saturday alert for your videos, but if it's gonna be for a even better content (better than the one you're already producing), so be welcome then 😬
Great work as always Chlöe 👍🏼
Thanks for a great video. East Fortune is a must for any plane enthusiasts. Definitely worth a visit, so much to see including the jewel in the crown Concorde.
If I remember correctly there was a Comet located at O'Hare airport for years. I think someone tried to fly it without proper clearance and the tires were flattened to prevent any future attempts. I think it was painted with reference to nudist flights or something like that.
You do a fantastic job with these videos 🛩️
Thank you!
Chloe, this was super as I believed most of my adult life that it was the window design, though I often wondered why other contemporary aircraft had square winders and didn't crash. Due to your excellent research and gripping presentation now I know! Love every one of your videos as late fan but working through the whole of your back catalogue when I can find them. Also loved your biog video because it clarified things and I 100% admire your openness, a bravery that led your to your career of searching aviation matters. Thank you! Being an old fart, I do not subscribe to any social media other than Utube, so I hope I do't miss any of the productions.! God bless! Rob🥰
I must admit the engine arodynamically location is well designed. Current engine location seems akword, heavy, scarey... I can remember (recently) watching the current engines shake, wabble, etc...when in flight...
Absolutely devastating if there's an engine failure, though. Could literally tear the wing off. :/
It’s much easier to replace an engine on a pylon. The man-hours saved would probably outweigh the savings in fuel due to drag, I’m guessing.
@@Rick-ve5lx Yes both of those plus the fact that you simply can't fit a huge modern high-bypass engine in the wing.
*de Havilland Aircraft Company*
*Our Motto:*
*_"50% isnt really that bad is it?"_*
@WilhelmKarsten
Kharzeestan Krappenz DiktorBummer Jurkzxoffenz etc and co - they should note good with much awestruckness & extreme wonderment.
*UPDATE MORE BREAKING NEWS ETC*
*_It's interesting that some of the aircraft on the list should really have been noticeably safer than the Comet due to being a similar type but of much later design & manufacture but they definately were not safer._*
How things were back then -
*_Accident losses - % of aircraft built._*
DeHavilland Comet 4 UK 14%
DeHavilland Comet all mks 17%
Vickers VC10 UK 5%
*_The DH Comet had better safety than or similar safety to many other commercial passenger aircraft of a similar era_*
Douglas DC-1 99%
Douglas DC-2 47%
Douglas DC-3 30%
Douglas DC-4 26%
Boeing s300 72%
Boeing 307 70%
Boeing 247 48%
Boeing 707 20%
Lockheed Electra Turboprop 29%
Fairchild FH-227 30%
McDonnell Douglas DC-8 14%
Sud Aviation Caravelle 15%
Canadair CL-44 Turboprop 46%
Convair CV-580 Turboprop 22%
A comparison of more recent aircraft.
Accident losses comparison examples.
1970s - 1980s
% of total Aircraft built
Similar aircraft type, date / decade, useage, size.
Biz Jets
BAe-125-800 1.7 %
Beechcraft Beechjet 400 2.2 %
Cessna 550 Citation II 7.1 %
Learjet 35 / 36 12 %
Beechcraft 1900 6%
Dassault Falcon 10 11.5%
Aérospatiale SN.601 22.5%
Medium size jets / Turboprops.
BAe-146 5.1%
Fokker 100 6%
McDonnell Douglas DC-9-30 9.5%
Fairchild FH-227 30%
McDonnell Douglas DC-8 14%
Canadair CL-44 Turboprop 46%
Convair CV-580 Turboprop 22%
Beechcraft, Fokker, McDonnell Douglass, Learjet, Fairchild, Aerospatiale, Canadair, Convair companies defunct.
All Comets, including some Comet 1s, had full civilian use certification at some point after 1954, civilian use certification only being withdrawn after commercial flying stopped. Examples were flying until 1997 - one example did a signals research global circumnavigation flight series in 1993 via Australia virtually without a rest travelling 28000 miles, only had an ice warning indicator issue during the flights.
*The DH Comet - World Firsts.*
1st gas turbine jet powered airliner. 1st high altitude 8psi pressurised full fuselage length passenger cabin airliner, not a trivial feature as structure strength required for pressurisation considerably exceeded strength required for normal flying stress. Nobody else had done anything similar before the Comet.
The b-47 used 2 relatively small, heavily built pressurised modules (the aircraft where 6 had their wings fold up in 2 months while flying & some had their wings fall off while parked).
The 1937 Boeing piston engined airliner pressurised passenger cabin was pressurised to 2 psi only - in fact that could easily be done as the normal unpressurized fuselage cabin structure strength for flying stresses only was all that was needed to be adequate so no significant weight increase issues needed addressing.
1st all hydraulically powered flying surface controls & actuators airliner with under carriage wheel disk brakes + ABS.
1st jet airliner to cross the Atlantic.
1st jet aircraft to do a world circumnavigation flights series.
*Of course De Havilland had prior experience building many all metal construction airframe aircraft including thousands of jet powered fighter aircraft that were primarily of metal construction with pressurised cockpits & jet engines built by De-Havilland & we know the world's first all metal construction airframe airliner was built in England in the 1920s by Handley Page.*
*_De Havilland did indeed always work to better than industry standards at the time, no evidence of negligence ever being produced in relation to the DH Comet._*
The course of De Havilland & the general UK aerospace industry sector was not affected even slightly by the DH Comet.
*_Other interesting World firsts_*
*Vickers Viscount Turboprop Airliner 1947*
*Gloster Meteor Turboprop Aircraft 1945*
They might like to answer these questions.
*Which airline has just ordered*
*60 RR England Trent XWB Engines*
*& What aircraft are the engines for?*
_Bonus question for 10 points._
Which country has the
*World's Highest Combined Per Capita*
*Nuclear + Defence + Aerospace Sector Activity?*
👍 Cheers 🙂
. ... ... . . ... . .
xcvcvcvcvcvcvxiiivcxvv
De Havilland had exhaustively tested every component beyond the specs of the time but not as an entire aircraft. Only afterwards was the entire fuselage tested for stressing over multiple cycles in a water tank. Redux bonding (developed for the Hornet fighter) was extensively employed but it appeared too complicated for the window insertion and these had to be punched into the thin skin which weakened the structure and set the scene for future stress cracking.
The very first crash of a commercial jet was a Canadian Pacific Comet in Karachi on March 3rd 1953. Pilot error is suspected in that crash.
The World's 1st Jet Airliner
I was in this comet in February. Great experience. Thanks for the video! ❤
Not only do i appreciate you meticulously researched videos, but your voice has a mellifluous quality not unlike American narrator and journalist Bill Curtis. I always look forward to listening to them
Thanks for another great interesting video!
I'm a new subscriber and I LOVE, LOVE, LOVE your videos! You do a beautiful job on these and have the BEST voice I've ever heard on a TH-cam channel. Also, I learn sooo much from the great comments posted by your viewers. Thank-you so much for these videos. (From Georgia/USA)
Interesting take on this Chloe; I flew in Nimrods in the early to mid 80s. It was a formidable plane, rock solid and a VERY powerful platform, a true multi-role combat aircraft. Until this video I bought into the square window theory, as did everyone I knew on the Nimrod fleet. I lost friends in 2 high profile Nimrod crashes; the Toronto airshow and the Afghanistan mid-air explosion. Both of those crashes would make compelling viewing.
A very well-structured and thorough video into the history of the Comet… brilliant work!
The comet at cosford in its BOAC Livery is absolutely beautiful
Great video Chloe. I have really enjoyed all of your videos. That being said, I don't like disaster's, it's the detail you go into that I appreciate. Thanks for all that you do,
Ronnie
25:10 Nice homage to review brah, Chloe. Your videos are full of surprises.
So sad to see the Saturday vids go but I’ve always wanted to see the comet
Me too but bigger and better videos are already in the works!
Oo exciting
Just found ur channel. Just brilliant. I watch air crash videos alot, but yours are hands down the best I've seen. And more detailed info than all the others. Thank you for your hard work and research. Subscribed....
There are some good disaster videos on TH-cam but I especially love yours they are my favorites. How a person speaks and their voice means a lot to me and you make me see it all in my mind and your voice is so nice to listen to. I was on a SAS plane for the first time in 1968 and I was only 8 years old. I saw the sun rise which was so beautiful. This was at a time when people were served food in planes. We got a menu with drawings of Scandinavians in National clothing, so we could see what we were having. I still have all my menus meaning my mom took us back and then decided to give my dad another chance then it was back again to New York, so 4 menus each. There was also a gift given to my sis and I to do on the long flight which was for me flags from all over the world and coins that were stickers so I had to match them. I still have that too and even our tickets. We also got a bag of peanuts. There was a large screen this was of course before the big tv's and we had to pay a dollar each for earphones but my mom couldn't afford it and since we didn't speak English it didn't much matter. I'm just happy they didn't show Airport which I think came out in 1970. The first flight, there was a snow storm in New York but being a kid I didn't notice. I just wanted to share what it was like in the old days because now it's so different. My mom had all the letters she had sent her sister and written them in a book from first to last and what is wonderful about it is she tells about things Americans wouldn't think of telling and even wrote the prices she paid for things like she bought us dresses for 1 dollar each and they were so nice. I would like to give it all to our immigrant museum one day. I wasn't afraid to fly as a kid but that changed and I was terrified;)
It's very misleading to show thumbnails of the earlier and late model Comets. The Comet 4 in its many sub-marques was totally reliable and must not be confused with the square-windowed early models.
The Comet 4 has the highest loss rate and fatalities statistics of any jet airliner in history except for its predecessor the Comet 1 which had its airworthiness certification permanently revoked in 1958 and never returned to revenue service.
Awesome as usual Chloe 💙
The beautiful comet was way ahead of the field... The world lernt So many lessons from the British first jet liner, and the mistakes were paid for in Human lives 😢 brilliantly told , really enjoyed .. thx you . .
That's a completely false narrative, de Havilland was decades behind in aircraft technology and the real tragedy of the Comet Disaster was that it could have been easily prevented if de Havilland had simply followed well-known and understood industry standards used by other manufacturers.
Great B-Roll footage. Enjoy seeing video of the insides of the planes rather than graphics. Great work as always! ❤
Great, as always. Thank you for these. :)
Good video mate
Thank you!
As soon as I saw (comet) I already knew how they found the default.
I saw this a long time ago on air disasters or one of them shows.
Hi Chloe, loved this episode and thank you for explaining that the fault was actually not in the square windows. I consider myself an av geek and have read a fair bit on the Comet accidents, but I was also under the mistaken impression that the accidents were purely due to the window design. Your videos are very well presented, especially your very in-depth video on the 737 rudder issues, which must have taken a lot of time and research. Subscribed to your channel.
im getting ready for a party rn and this is exactly the background video i needed! have a good weekend chloe 🫶
Have fun!
Keep up your great work
Felt like a history lesson along with the accident and investigation details. Please make more videos Ike this
I have a Classics de Havilland Comet T-shirt from Mentour Pilot (the first aviation TH-camr I followed) … I love this classic bird ❤
I am a retired pilot and experienced rapid loss of pressurisation twice. Once at 37000 feet and the second even at 39000 feet.
There was no rupture of lungs, hypoxia is the danger that can cause death.
That is why we donned oxygen masks and executed an emergency descent.
Thank you. I was just trying to figure out why there's been episodes of sudden depressurization and everyone just grabbed the oxygen masks. I never heard of ruptured lungs before this.
It may play a role how fast the depressurisation happens. If you have a leak or a failed window the pressure change is not that sudden.
In the Comet case the fuselage exploded and the pressure change happened very quickly.
Ruptured lungs can also happen if you dive and if you return to the surface without breathing out, or if pressure waves of bombs hit people.
I was born in 1971 and at the age of about 5 i had a childrens engineering book that I read to get to sleep. It had a chapter on the Comet and explained the destructive water box test. This meant that I was reading about the ceiling/roof failure point in about 1976 (also the book was published well before that year). There was no mention at all about square windows. As an adult I assumed the window shape theory was a 'new revelation'. Now it seems my children's book got it right from the get go
Interesting, I haven't heard the theory that it was the rivets not the windows.
Also, when Nimrod was 'retired' in 2011, they were still building brand new aircraft. These were wheeled out the factory and destroyed.
The Comet 1 was found to have dozens of fatal design flaws.
The Nimrod is not directly related to the Comet, production ended in the 1970s
British Airways Flight 781 + South African Airways Flight 201
The rounded windows reduce the local stress significantly.
Obviously sad, but fascinating story and video!
Can't wait for the new, bigger videos... 😃
Don't forget the Comet on display at Duxford.
Are you planning on doing the 737 rudder hardover accidents
Way cool tie in with 'Ghost' engines and music segment 'Ghosting'..😊
Really good and informative video. As a child, I had a bit of a fascination with planes. It was from a certain factbook I had on the matter, that I picked up the misconception that the Comet's square windows were the cause of its structural weaknesses, not the manufacturing process and materials used in combination with the altitudes it flew at. Putting that aspect of its design into perspective with other planes of the era, as well as why they were changed on later models, was a very effective debunking of it. So too was the mention of the Nimrod - I knew of the Nimrod too of course, but completely forgot that it was a Comet derivative/variant that flew without issue for decades. You learn (and indeed, re-learn) something new every day :)
The Hawker Siddeley HS. 801 Nimrod is not a Comet, this is a common misconception.
The Nimrod was designed by a different company decades later and has a different type certificate.
There are no significant parts or assemblies in common between the Comet and the Nimrod, they are completely different aircraft.
@@WilhelmKarsten I know; hence calling it a derivative or variant, as opposed to being the same plane. It is extensively modified from the Comet, but calling it derived from the Comet is a fair assessment imo.
@@birdbrain4445 The Nimrod is a completely new aircraft.
@@WilhelmKarsten
The original design for the Comet also took into consideration it's use as a military maritime patrol aircraft.
A prototype of the Nimrod was being worked on before 1953 at Dehavilland.
*Here is the complete list of 39 Comet crashes and hull loss accidents.*
G-APDN. 03.07.1970
G-ARCO. 12.09.1967
SU-ALD. 28.06.1963
LV-AHR. 23.11.1961
G-ALYP. 10.01.1954
G-ALYP. 02.05.1953
G-ARJM. 21.12.1961
SU-AMW. 19.07.1962
G-ALYY. 08.04.1954
SA-R-7. 20.03.1963
SA-ALC. 02.01.1971
CF-CUN. 03.03.1953
LV-AHP. 27.08.1959
G-APDH. 22.03.1964
XP915. 19.01.1971
G-ALYZ. 26.10.1952
G-APDL. 07.10.1970
F-BGSC. 25.06.1953
LV-AHN. 24.03.1970
SU-ALE. 09.02.1970
SU-ANI. 14.01.1970
OD-ADS. 28.12.1968
OD-ADQ. 28.12.1968
OD-ADR. 28.12.1968
G-ALYR. 25.07.1953
G-APMD. 16.11.1965
G-APMF. 05.11.1964
G-APDL. 23.12.1959
G-APDN. 09.03.1964
G-ARJN. 02.08.1963
G-APDF. 09.04.1959
XK663. 03.06.1959
G-APDM. 03.08.1962
G-APDA. 08.06.1959
G-APDB. 21.06.1959
G-APDM. 25.01.1961
G-APDB. 22.08.1960
G-APDS. 14.03.1960
LV-AHO. 20.02.1960
Even 60+ years later the comet looks so sleek and futuristic. Such a beautiful aircraft
Beautiful killing machine, it remains the worst jet airliner in history... a truly shameful and humiliating chapter in British aviation history
@@sandervanderkammen9230
@WilhelmKarsten
Kharzeestan Krappenz DiktorBummer Jurkzxoffenz etc and co - they should note good with much awestruckness & extreme many wonderments.
*UPDATE MORE BREAKING NEWS ETC*
*_It's interesting that some of the aircraft on the list should really have been noticeably safer than the Comet due to being a similar type but of much later design & manufacture but they definately were not safer._*
How things were back then -
*_Accident losses - % of aircraft built._*
DeHavilland Comet 4 UK 14%
DeHavilland Comet all mks 17%
Vickers VC10 UK 5%
*_The DH Comet had better safety than or similar safety to many other commercial passenger aircraft of a similar era_*
Douglas DC-1 99%
Douglas DC-2 47%
Douglas DC-3 30%
Douglas DC-4 26%
Boeing s300 72%
Boeing 307 70%
Boeing 247 48%
Boeing 707 20%
Lockheed Electra Turboprop 29%
Fairchild FH-227 30%
McDonnell Douglas DC-8 14%
Sud Aviation Caravelle 15%
Canadair CL-44 Turboprop 46%
Convair CV-580 Turboprop 22%
A comparison of more recent aircraft.
Accident losses comparison examples.
1970s - 1980s
% of total Aircraft built
Similar aircraft type, date / decade, useage, size.
Biz Jets
BAe-125-800 1.7 %
Beechcraft Beechjet 400 2.2 %
Cessna 550 Citation II 7.1 %
Learjet 35 / 36 12 %
Beechcraft 1900 6%
Dassault Falcon 10 11.5%
Aérospatiale SN.601 22.5%
Medium size jets / Turboprops.
BAe-146 5.1%
Fokker 100 6%
McDonnell Douglas DC-9-30 9.5%
Fairchild FH-227 30%
McDonnell Douglas DC-8 14%
Canadair CL-44 Turboprop 46%
Convair CV-580 Turboprop 22%
Beechcraft, Fokker, McDonnell Douglass, Learjet, Fairchild, Aerospatiale, Canadair, Convair companies defunct.
All Comets, including some Comet 1s, had full civilian use certification at some point after 1954, civilian use certification only being withdrawn after commercial flying stopped. Examples were flying until 1997 - one example did a signals research global circumnavigation flight series in 1993 via Australia virtually without a rest travelling 28000 miles, only had an ice warning indicator issue during the flights.
*The DH Comet - World Firsts.*
1st gas turbine jet powered airliner. 1st high altitude 8psi pressurised full fuselage length passenger cabin airliner, not a trivial feature as structure strength required for pressurisation considerably exceeded strength required for normal flying stress. Nobody else had done anything similar before the Comet.
The b-47 used 2 relatively small, heavily built pressurised modules (the aircraft where 6 had their wings fold up in 2 months while flying & some had their wings fall off while parked).
The 1937 Boeing piston engined airliner pressurised passenger cabin was pressurised to 2 psi only - in fact that could easily be done as the normal unpressurized fuselage cabin structure strength for flying stresses only was all that was needed to be adequate so no significant weight increase issues needed addressing.
1st all hydraulically powered flying surface controls & actuators airliner with under carriage wheel disk brakes + ABS.
1st jet airliner to cross the Atlantic.
1st jet aircraft to do a world circumnavigation flights series.
*Of course De Havilland had prior experience building many all metal construction airframe aircraft including thousands of jet powered fighter aircraft that were primarily of metal construction with pressurised cockpits & jet engines built by De-Havilland & we know the world's first all metal construction airframe airliner was built in England in the 1920s by Handley Page.*
*_De Havilland did indeed always work to better than industry standards at the time, no evidence of negligence ever being produced in relation to the DH Comet._*
The course of De Havilland & the general UK aerospace industry sector was not affected even slightly by the DH Comet.
*_Other interesting World firsts_*
*Vickers Viscount Turboprop Airliner 1947*
*Gloster Meteor Turboprop Aircraft 1945*
They might like to answer these questions.
*Which airline has just ordered*
*60 RR England Trent XWB Engines*
*& What aircraft are the engines for?*
_Bonus question for 10 points._
Which country has the
*World's Highest Combined Per Capita*
*Nuclear + Defence + Aerospace Sector Activity?*
👍 Cheers 🙂
. ... ... .. ... . V.... . . .
xcvvxcviviiiviiicvxiiivvcxvvv
Thanks for another very informative video. I've seen TV documentaries where the square windows were held to be THE SOLE cause of the in-flight break-ups - which as you and others have since disclosed, was not the case. Clearly those TV documentaries were poorly researched. HOWEVER, no such criticism can be levelled at your *Disaster Breakdown* You Tube Channel. It is clear that you ALWAYS take a great deal of trouble, which is much appreciated.
Hi I love watching you love your work bye😀
She doesn’t I’m her friend she’s a little lying
I flew on the comet 4 from London to Doha in 1962 , I was in boarding school in Yeovil with my sister
Boac 781 was one I watched on air crash investigation and so it’s good to see it
seconds from disaster*
Oh yes my mistake e
I think the myth about the square windows comes from a need to oversimplify a complex structural failure, the squared nature of the windows did cause stress concentrations and would have served to exasurbate failure but similar failure may have also occurred with circular windows just after more pressure cycles
I wonder if the redesign of the windows reinforced the myth.
The redesign of the windows didn't solve the fatal flaws in the Comet 1, despite reinforcement of the windows all Comet 1 aircraft had their airworthiness certification permanently revoked in 1958 and they never returned to revenue passenger service due to the remaining structural flaws.
"British pastime of talking about the weather."
We talk about weather in Texas. It tries to k1ll you casually, somewhat often.
Luckily for us British our weather doesn't try to casually kill us very often, maybe with depressive thoughts about it, but as I'm writing this it's an absolutely lovely day so one shouldn't complain, especially compared to your weather situation! 😮
Maybe us British just like to complain, full stop!
@@Holly_Zena
Just complaining is a human species standard.😄 A million years ago, they probably complained about the weather.
@@grmpEqweer i think some nationalities have reputation for it though and I think sadly we do over here in the UK 😂🤦
Addendum. I went to an event today. One participant chose to make scrambled eggs on the sidewalk.
It worked, although it took about an hour for the eggs to set.
The television show "Seconds from Distaster" did a great documentary on the Comet tragedies, as well as a detailed investigation of the cause of the accidents. Totally worth a watch if you've not seen it yet. By the way, I LOVE your channel! ♥
Well, they did a documentary... but not a great one, a lot of inaccuracies and unfortunately a heavy pro-british bias the is dismissive of de Havillands criminal negligence and attempts to cover-up evidence.
@@sandervanderkammen9230
@WilhelmKarsten
Kharzeestan Krappenz DiktorBummer Jurkzxoffenz etc and co - they should note good with much awestruckness & extreme wonderment.
*UPDATE MORE BREAKING NEWS ETC*
*_It's interesting that some of the aircraft on the list should really have been noticeably safer than the Comet due to being a similar type but of much later design & manufacture but they definately were not safer._*
How things were back then -
*_Accident losses - % of aircraft built._*
DeHavilland Comet 4 UK 14%
DeHavilland Comet all mks 17%
Vickers VC10 UK 5%
*_The DH Comet had better safety than or similar safety to many other commercial passenger aircraft of a similar era_*
Douglas DC-1 99%
Douglas DC-2 47%
Douglas DC-3 30%
Douglas DC-4 26%
Boeing s300 72%
Boeing 307 70%
Boeing 247 48%
Boeing 707 20%
Lockheed Electra Turboprop 29%
Fairchild FH-227 30%
McDonnell Douglas DC-8 14%
Sud Aviation Caravelle 15%
Canadair CL-44 Turboprop 46%
Convair CV-580 Turboprop 22%
A comparison of more recent aircraft.
Accident losses comparison examples.
1970s - 1980s
% of total Aircraft built
Similar aircraft type, date / decade, useage, size.
Biz Jets
BAe-125-800 1.7 %
Beechcraft Beechjet 400 2.2 %
Cessna 550 Citation II 7.1 %
Learjet 35 / 36 12 %
Beechcraft 1900 6%
Dassault Falcon 10 11.5%
Aérospatiale SN.601 22.5%
Medium size jets / Turboprops.
BAe-146 5.1%
Fokker 100 6%
McDonnell Douglas DC-9-30 9.5%
Fairchild FH-227 30%
McDonnell Douglas DC-8 14%
Canadair CL-44 Turboprop 46%
Convair CV-580 Turboprop 22%
Beechcraft, Fokker, McDonnell Douglass, Learjet, Fairchild, Aerospatiale, Canadair, Convair companies defunct.
All Comets, including some Comet 1s, had full civilian use certification at some point after 1954, civilian use certification only being withdrawn after commercial flying stopped. Examples were flying until 1997 - one example did a signals research global circumnavigation flight series in 1993 via Australia virtually without a rest travelling 28000 miles, only had an ice warning indicator issue during the flights.
*The DH Comet - World Firsts.*
1st gas turbine jet powered airliner. 1st high altitude 8psi pressurised full fuselage length passenger cabin airliner, not a trivial feature as structure strength required for pressurisation considerably exceeded strength required for normal flying stress. Nobody else had done anything similar before the Comet.
The b-47 used 2 relatively small, heavily built pressurised modules (the aircraft where 6 had their wings fold up in 2 months while flying & some had their wings fall off while parked).
The 1937 Boeing piston engined airliner pressurised passenger cabin was pressurised to 2 psi only - in fact that could easily be done as the normal unpressurized fuselage cabin structure strength for flying stresses only was all that was needed to be adequate so no significant weight increase issues needed addressing.
1st all hydraulically powered flying surface controls & actuators airliner with under carriage wheel disk brakes + ABS.
1st jet airliner to cross the Atlantic.
1st jet aircraft to do a world circumnavigation flights series.
*Of course De Havilland had prior experience building many all metal construction airframe aircraft including thousands of jet powered fighter aircraft that were primarily of metal construction with pressurised cockpits & jet engines built by De-Havilland & we know the world's first all metal construction airframe airliner was built in England in the 1920s by Handley Page.*
*_De Havilland did indeed always work to better than industry standards at the time, no evidence of negligence ever being produced in relation to the DH Comet._*
The course of De Havilland & the general UK aerospace industry sector was not affected even slightly by the DH Comet.
*_Other interesting World firsts_*
*Vickers Viscount Turboprop Airliner 1947*
*Gloster Meteor Turboprop Aircraft 1945*
They might like to answer these questions.
*Which airline has just ordered*
*60 RR England Trent XWB Engines*
*& What aircraft are the engines for?*
_Bonus question for 10 points._
Which country has the
*World's Highest Combined Per Capita*
*Nuclear + Defence + Aerospace Sector Activity?*
👍 Cheers 🙂
. ... ... .. ... . ..... . . . . ..... . . . .
xcvxzxccviviiiiicxvicvxiiivcxvv
Well, the comet was a very iconic airplane
Why is G-ALYP (the Comet involved in flight 781) depicted as a Comet 4?? It was a Comet 1! Also the BOAC livery is the later livery, not the one on the Comet 1.
They literally addresed this in the first 5 or so minutes in the video dude
Flew on the Comet 4 of BEA. It was narrow inside.
Pretty inventive lo-tech way to solve the mystery of the break ups. Today, it’d be so much quicker and easier with computers. The 707 pretty much overtook the Comet. I flew on them in the 1960’s.
As someone with an aerospace engineering background, I respectfully disagree. The square windows aren't a "myth" or "confusion", they just aren't the whole story. I suppose it could be said that the disasters were _because of_ the square windows is a myth, but they did contribute. Reality is complicated. Very few things are attributable to a single cause.
In modern crash investigation parlance, the square windows would likely be called a "contributing factor" along with the extreme altitude, with the riveting technique and potentially quality issues with the alloy being primary factors. Would the breakups have happened with the same rivet technique and also lower stress concentrations? We just don't know. Possibly they still would have; there still _are_ stress concentrations around rounded windows, but metals are a little counterintuitive to how most people imagine them working. A surprisingly small shift in stress or strain can bring a metallic part from the elastic region to the plastic region or vice versa, so even a small reduction in stress around more rounded windows could have seen these disasters not happen at all, or happen gradually enough for regular maintenance inspections to catch them, maybe through pain flaking off around the rivets or similar. Or... to be sure, it might have happened anyway.
This is why the entire aviation industry stopped using even vaguely square windows _and_ improved the way windows are installed and parts joined together _and_ kept researching better and better alloys _and_ pushed for higher quality in manufacturing both of the sheet metal and of the fuselages, and a thousand other things that have made these kinds of accidents much rarer in modern times.
Where the confusion arises, I think, isn't so much in the engineering community, as loosely implied in the line about the 'myth' being _why_ airplane windows are much more rounded now. Rather, it's just an early example of media sensationalism and oversimplification.
This reminds me quite a lot of the massive "debate" in the armchair aerodynamics community about where lift comes from and what mechanism truly generates it. The real answer is "all of the above" but that doesn't make for a very fun debate about Bernoulli vs. entrainment vs. deflection. Add in that the relative ratios of the strength of those effects change dramatically with speed, stall conditions and other flight conditions, altitude, and flow states (turbulent vs. laminar) and, like most things, the answer to "How, exactly, does a wing generate lift" is simply too simple a question, with the answer, "It's complicated." Or the 'myth' that water is incompressible. It isn't, but it's close enough that for most purposes we can consider it to be, to _vastly_ simplify the math.
Anyway, I do recognize the technique of exaggerating a bit to make a more impactful impression on people who truly _are_ under the impression that it was _just_ the extra stress concentrations around the (admittedly quite rounded from an engineering perspective) corners of the windows. And, of course, genuinely squared-off corners would be _much_ worse.
Edit: 21:09 Point in case. See how the big fractures are definitely coming from the narrowest radii area of the windows? Not a "myth". Just more complicated.
Square windows were not a factor because the Comet 1 didn't have any, in fact wreckage recovered from the sea confirmed that the windows were not related in any way with the catastrophic in-flight structural failures... it was a clear case of engineering incompetence and criminal negligence on behalf of de Havilland that simply had little to no experience constructing pressurized aircraft made of riveted aluminum alloy, they were still building aircraft primarily from wood and fabric at this time.
@@DoktorBayerischeMotorenWerke
Kharzeestan Krappenz DiktorBummer Jurkzxoffenz etc and co - they should all note good with much awe & extreme wonder.
*UPDATE MORE BREAKING NEWS ETC*
How things were back then -
*_Accident losses - % of aircraft built._*
DeHavilland Comet 4 UK 14%
DeHavilland Comet all mks 17%
Vickers VC10 UK 5%
*_The DH Comet had better safety than or similar safety to many other commercial passenger aircraft of a similar era_*
Douglas DC-1 99%
Douglas DC-2 47%
Douglas DC-3 30%
Douglas DC-4 26%
Boeing s300 72%
Boeing 307 70%
Boeing 247 48%
Boeing 707 20%
Lockheed L-049/149 Constellation 30%
Lockheed Electra Turboprop 29%
Fairchild FH-227 30%
McDonnell Douglas DC-8 14%
Sud Aviation Caravelle 15%
Canadair CL-44 Turboprop 46%
Convair CV-580 Turboprop 22%
The Comet was designed with military use in mind, Nimrod work started at De Havilland in 1953.
The committee did not find hundreds of fatal flaws or evidence of design defects, structural defects, defective materials or shoddy workmanship. Ripstop provision was included. Claimed incidents did not involve cracks starting from window corners.
The engine & engine intake position had advantages, were not flaws or fatal flaws & were not the cause of any incidents involving any Comet or Nimrod aircraft. Nearly all changes before the Comet 4 were just in case or were previously scheduled improvements.
Bow-wing & the 707 story (see b-47 wing folding incidents) is the result of global economics & the well protected & very large domestic US airliner market & active support from the UK with for instance proposed competing airliners from Vickers & DH being blocked by the UK government at the time, cheap & nasty was the requirement with large scale production capability in one place.
The 707 was of course a much larger aircraft which as a stressed skin metal airframe aircraft would require a thicker skin anyway. They got lucky at the time essentially. Bow-wing is the result of the large & well protected US domestic airliner market
The fate of De Havilland was due to Govt policy Aerospace sector rationalisation & global economics, it was nothing to do with the Comet.
A comprehensive, thorough & protracted testing program was carried out on the prototype & it's assemblies. Of course the Comet did indeed have Ripstop stop provision.
De Havilland (Of England) Comets were not grounded after 1970 due to structural problems.
*_It's interesting that some of the aircraft on the list should really have been noticeably safer than the Comet due to being a similar type but of much later design & manufacture but they definately were not safer._*
How things were back then -
*_Accident losses - % of aircraft built._*
DeHavilland Comet 4 UK 14%
DeHavilland Comet all mks 17%
Vickers VC10 UK 5%
*_The DH Comet had better safety than or similar safety to many other commercial passenger aircraft of a similar era_*
Douglas DC-1 99%
Douglas DC-2 47%
Douglas DC-3 30%
Douglas DC-4 26%
Boeing s300 72%
Boeing 307 70%
Boeing 247 48%
Boeing 707 20%
Lockheed L-049/149 Constellation 30%
Lockheed Electra Turboprop 29%
Fairchild FH-227 30%
McDonnell Douglas DC-8 14%
Sud Aviation Caravelle 15%
Canadair CL-44 Turboprop 46%
Convair CV-580 Turboprop 22%
A comparison of more recent aircraft.
Accident losses comparison examples.
1970s - 1980s
% of total Aircraft built
Similar aircraft type, date / decade, useage, size.
Biz Jets
BAe-125-800 1.7 %
Beechcraft Beechjet 400 2.2 %
Cessna 550 Citation II 7.1 %
Learjet 35 / 36 12 %
Beechcraft 1900 6%
Dassault Falcon 10 11.5%
Aérospatiale SN.601 22.5%
Medium size jets / Turboprops.
BAe-146 5.1%
Fokker 100 6%
McDonnell Douglas DC-9-30 9.5%
Fairchild FH-227 30%
McDonnell Douglas DC-8 14%
Canadair CL-44 Turboprop 46%
Convair CV-580 Turboprop 22%
Beechcraft, Fokker, McDonnell Douglass, Learjet, Fairchild, Aerospatiale, Canadair, Convair companies defunct.
All Comets, including some Comet 1s, had full civilian use certification at some point after 1954, civilian use certification only being withdrawn after commercial flying stopped. Examples were flying until 1997 - one example did a signals research global circumnavigation flight series in 1993 via Australia virtually without a rest travelling 28000 miles, only had an ice warning indicator issue during the flights.
*The DH Comet - World Firsts.*
1st gas turbine jet powered airliner. 1st high altitude 8psi pressurised full fuselage length passenger cabin airliner, not a trivial feature as structure strength required for pressurisation considerably exceeded strength required for normal flying stress. Nobody else had done anything similar before the Comet.
The b-47 used 2 relatively small, heavily built pressurised modules (the aircraft where 6 had their wings fold up in 2 months while flying & some had their wings fall off while parked).
The 1937 Boeing piston engined airliner pressurised passenger cabin was pressurised to 2 psi only - in fact that could easily be done as the normal unpressurized fuselage cabin structure strength for flying stresses only was all that was needed to be adequate so no significant weight increase issues needed addressing.
1st all hydraulically powered flying surface controls & actuators airliner with under carriage wheel disk brakes + ABS.
1st jet airliner to cross the Atlantic.
1st jet aircraft to do a world circumnavigation flights series.
*Of course De Havilland had prior experience building many all metal construction airframe aircraft including thousands of jet powered fighter aircraft that were primarily of metal construction with pressurised cockpits & jet engines built by De-Havilland & we know the world's first all metal construction airframe airliner was built in England in the 1920s by Handley Page.*
*_De Havilland did indeed always work to better than industry standards at the time, used up to date knowledge for the design & no evidence of negligence or criminal negligence was ever produced in relation to the DH Comet._*
The course of De Havilland & the general UK aerospace industry sector was not affected even slightly by the DH Comet. The course of national aerospace sectors obviously being similar & inevitable in many countries.
*_Other interesting World firsts_*
_World's first turboprop aircraft._
*Vickers Viscount Turboprop Airliner 1947.*
*A 1945 Gloster Meteor Aircraft with Turboprop Gas Turbine Engine.*
They might like to answer these questions.
*Which airline has just ordered*
*60 RR England Trent XWB Engines*
*& What aircraft are the engines for?*
_Bonus question for 10 points._
Which country has the
*World's Highest Combined Per Capita*
*Nuclear + Defence + Aerospace Sector Activity?*
👍 & 🙂 & of course 😎 indeed.
*C H E E R S* & without doubt -
_Toodle_ -PIP- *Old* *_C H A P._*
This line left not blank intentionally.
The next line is blank intentionally.
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Just had a random question after the mention of this aircraft being grounded at around 15:43
Since this aircraft only had pressurization issues
Has there ever been aircraft that were not grounded but forbidden to fly above a sertian altitude where it’s safety couldn’t be guaranteed.
Or has it always just been to ground aircraft intirely
Comet 1 had many fatal flaws besides the weak fuselage... de Havilland was unable to make the planes safe and its airworthiness certification was permanently revoked in 1958.
The Comet 4, while similar in appearance is a completely different aircraft and was completely redesigned
Other fatal flaws included the placement of the jet engines, wing flaps, hydraulic flight control systems and even the toilets were redesigned to improve safety.
*_Air travel safety often depends on British made and or designed tech or British aerospace advanced technology, R&D, science & Engineering._*
*For anybody currently flying on a widebody airliner there's a good possibility that the engines will be RR gas turbine aero engines designed & built in England with those engines being monitored by people in an English county.*
England, the home country of RR (aero engine stuff) & it's lands counties & shires will of course be producing the 🎺📯🎺
*_RR Trent Ultrafan_*
*The worlds largest gas turbine aero engine.* 👍🎺📯🎺
A typical but very tiny example of what goes in the very internationally orientated British aerospace sector -
Boeing Apache Attack Helicopter.
AH-64: 75 UK suppliers, 7% UK content, global fleet of 1280+ aircraft.
After the pressurisation cycle fatigue fracture problem was identified some Comets flew at lower altitude without pressurisation for ferrying, testing & research purposes.
*_There were no problems with flaps, hydraulics, wings, engine placement, toilets, toilet roll holders, or ash trays in any Comets of any mark._*
Any changes made through the marks were mostly developmental changes that were being planned regardless of any incidents.
*UPDATE*
*_It's interesting that some of the aircraft on the list should really have been noticeably safer than the Comet due to being a similar type but of much later design & manufacture however they were clearly not safer._*
How things were back then -
*_Accident losses - % of aircraft built._*
DeHavilland Comet 4 UK 14%
DeHavilland Comet all mks 17%
Vickers VC10 UK 5%
*_The DH Comet had better safety than or similar safety to many other commercial passenger aircraft of a similar era_*
Douglas DC-1 99%
Douglas DC-2 47%
Douglas DC-3 30%
Douglas DC-4 26%
Boeing s300 72%
Boeing 307 70%
Boeing 247 48%
Boeing 707 20%
Lockheed Electra Turboprop 29%
Fairchild FH-227 30%
McDonnell Douglas DC-8 14%
Sud Aviation Caravelle 15%
All Comets, including some Comet 1s, had full civilian use certification at some point after 1954, civilian use certification only being withdrawn after commercial flying stopped. Examples were flying until 1997 - one example did a signals research global circumnavigation flight series in 1993 via Australia virtually without a rest travelling 28000 miles, only had an ice warning indicator issue during the flights.
*The DH Comet - World Firsts.*
1st gas turbine jet powered airliner. 1st high altitude 8psi pressurised full fuselage length passenger cabin airliner, not a trivial feature as structure strength required for pressurisation considerably exceeded strength required for normal flying stress. Nobody else had done anything similar before the Comet.
The b-47 used 2 relatively small, heavily built pressurised modules (the aircraft where 6 had their wings fold up in 2 months while flying & some had their wings fall off while parked).
The 1937 Boeing piston engined airliner pressurised passenger cabin was pressurised to 2 psi only - in fact that could easily be done as the normal unpressurized fuselage cabin structure strength for flying stresses only was all that was needed to be adequate so no significant weight increase issues needed addressing.
1st all hydraulically powered flying surface controls & actuators airliner with under carriage wheel disk brakes + ABS.
1st jet airliner to cross the Atlantic.
1st jet aircraft to do a world circumnavigation flights series.
*Of course De Havilland had prior experience building many all metal construction airframe aircraft including thousands of jet powered fighter aircraft that were primarily of metal construction with pressurised cockpits & jet engines built by De-Havilland & we know the world's first all metal construction airframe airliner was built in England in the 1920s by Handley Page.*
*_De Havilland did indeed always work to better than industry standards at the time, no evidence of negligence ever being produced in relation to the DH Comet._*
In case anyone else is wondering, at 5:00 when they talk about the Argonot, it’s a reengineered licensed built DC-4
Your videos are very nice to watch
Clarification for the videos: will you be releasing them every 2 weeks or will you release them when they are ready?
And do you plan covering soviet aircrafts?
I think videos will come usually between every 10 to 14 days. We'll see how it goes though
@@DisasterBreakdown Ok thanks for the info🙂
Note: Wrote this when I started watching the video, not after finishing it!
Is that the Comet in Edinburgh Museum of Flight? Lovely museum, that. Got chatting to someone there last time I went - turned out he was a Comet Pilot!
At 16:59 the look on that guys face says alot….he just wants to be on the ground safely…😁
Fascinating - thank you
I saw a '" Dan--Air" plane there,--on a "Dan-Air"speciaL"--I flew, in 1972,-from Manchester-to Paris,--on a long weekend,-stayed hotel in Mon-Marte,--visited Moulon-rouge--Eiffel Tower-visited heaps of pubs-they flew me back to Manchester Sunday night-with a glass of champagne !--whole trip Fri-to-Sun--all in cost 30 quid !!--about $60 !!---Flight hotel-everything !--I sure miss those Dan Air Specials !!
Gosh, this documentary really, really brings home how brave you would've had to be to travel at the dawn of commercial air flight, despite its reputation for glamour, and how truly enormously things have progressed since then! (Thanks in no small part to lessons learned in such tragic ways... 😔)
Did the British government ever compensate the families of those lost due to rushing the aircraft design back into service following tge initial crash....? (Tried some online searching but couldn't find this mentioned, sorry?)
No, in fact there is not even a official memorial site for the victims of the Comet Disaster...
@@sandervanderkammen9230 @sandervanderkammen9230 Thank you for letting me know! Oof 😔 That absence feels a little disrespectful to the loss of life suffered, & the families bereaved, doesn't it. Perhaps at the time not supporting the placement of a memorial was part of the UK govt trying to avoid public focus on the disaster? But one would think in the intervening years that would have waned.
@@anna_in_aotearoa3166 I completely agree, many believe that much of the blame and the cover-ups were the responsibility of the UK government that was desperately trying to promote a domestic aircraft industry that was struggling in a economic collapse.
@@anna_in_aotearoa3166
*UPDATE*
*_It's interesting that some of the aircraft on the list should really have been noticeably safer than the Comet due to being a similar type but of much later design & manufacture however they were clearly not safer._*
How things were back then -
*_Accident losses - % of aircraft built._*
DeHavilland Comet 4 UK 14%
DeHavilland Comet all mks 17%
Vickers VC10 UK 5%
*_The DH Comet had better safety than or similar safety to many other commercial passenger aircraft of a similar era_*
Douglas DC-1 99%
Douglas DC-2 47%
Douglas DC-3 30%
Douglas DC-4 26%
Boeing s300 72%
Boeing 307 70%
Boeing 247 48%
Boeing 707 20%
Lockheed Electra Turboprop 29%
Fairchild FH-227 30%
McDonnell Douglas DC-8 14%
Sud Aviation Caravelle 15%
All Comets, including some Comet 1s, had full civilian use certification at some point after 1954, civilian use certification only being withdrawn after commercial flying stopped. Examples were flying until 1997 - one example did a signals research global circumnavigation flight series in 1993 via Australia virtually without a rest travelling 28000 miles, only had an ice warning indicator issue during the flights.
*The DH Comet - World Firsts.*
1st gas turbine jet powered airliner. 1st high altitude 8psi pressurised full fuselage length passenger cabin airliner, not a trivial feature as structure strength required for pressurisation considerably exceeded strength required for normal flying stress. Nobody else had done anything similar before the Comet.
The b-47 used 2 relatively small, heavily built pressurised modules (the aircraft where 6 had their wings fold up in 2 months while flying & some had their wings fall off while parked).
The 1937 Boeing 307 piston engined airliner pressurised passenger cabin was pressurised to 2 psi only - in fact that could easily be done as the normal unpressurized fuselage cabin structure strength for flying stresses only was all that was needed to be adequate so no significant weight increase issues needed addressing.
Same for the B377 piston engine airliner, only 4 psi pressurisation & not a jet. Boeing did not put high altitude commercial jet airliners into service until 10 years after the Comet first flew.
1st all hydraulically powered flying surface controls & actuators airliner with under carriage wheel disk brakes + ABS.
1st jet airliner to cross the Atlantic.
1st jet aircraft to do a world circumnavigation flights series.
*Of course De Havilland had prior experience building many all metal construction airframe aircraft including thousands of jet powered fighter aircraft that were primarily of metal construction with pressurised cockpits & jet engines built by De-Havilland & we know the world's first all metal construction airframe airliner was built in England in the 1920s by Handley Page.*
*_De Havilland did indeed always work to better than industry standards at the time, no evidence of negligence ever being produced in relation to the DH Comet._*
. ... .. . ... . .
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