If the De Havilland Comet had no issues with its structure and it was fixed before it entered service, where would De Havilland be now and would it have affected the sales of the 707 and dc-8, with its issues solved or would they be in the same boat as Convair 880/990 due to the seating layout?

Anonz263x wrote:

If the De Havilland Comet had no issues with its structure and it was fixed before it entered service, where would De Havilland be now and would it have affected the sales of the 707 and dc-8, with its issues solved or would they be in the same boat as Convair 880/990 due to the seating layout?

If I am not mistaken didn't the Comet 4 still enter service before the 707. I think overall the Comet was two small of an aircraft with just 2-2 seating while the 707 and DC8 were 3-3 this alone I think doomed it's chances of ever being mass produced.

More important than the seating layout would have been the ability to scale production. That is where Boeing and Douglas won out against De Havilland and the other British manufacturers. It was effectively a mass-production factory versus a cottage industry, and no matter how good the cottage industry was, it was never going to be able to compete on the world stage with a mass-production factory, except perhaps to carve out a small niche.

V/F

Clipper73 wrote:

Anonz263x wrote:

If the De Havilland Comet had no issues with its structure and it was fixed before it entered service, where would De Havilland be now and would it have affected the sales of the 707 and dc-8, with its issues solved or would they be in the same boat as Convair 880/990 due to the seating layout?

If I am not mistaken didn't the Comet 4 still enter service before the 707. I think overall the Comet was two small of an aircraft with just 2-2 seating while the 707 and DC8 were 3-3 this alone I think doomed it's chances of ever being mass produced.

Then in that case where would they be if they had 3-3 seating?

I think the answer lies in the Caravelle.

They would probably have sold under 300 Comets, and De Havilland would have ended up disappearing just as Sud Aviation did.

GalaxyFlyer wrote:

Nouflyer wrote:

I think the answer lies in the Caravelle.

They would probably have sold under 300 Comets, and De Havilland would have ended up disappearing just as Sud Aviation did.

Well, DH did build 125s until awhile ago.

DH/BAe (DH’s ultimate successor company) were largely uninvolved with the 125 other than being a supplier since the early 90s when it was sold to Raytheon then later spun off with Hawker Beechcraft. Final assembly of the plane wasn’t even in the UK for most of its last 15-20ish years.

What if ... what if?

Comet, VC10, 1-11, Trident ... Britannia, Viscount, Vanguard, Herald, 748 ... Jetstream, 146 ...

Britain could have been a serious rival to US manufacturers. But ...

Read this.

https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/941 ... the-clouds

I don't see how an answer to this could be anything other than fan-fic..... there's just no way of knowing how the market would've been affected or reacted.

The limitations of the design, would still be a problem. The pax capacity is still smaller and the embedded engines make it a lot harder to modify the design for newer engines.

The Comet was uncompetitive against the 707 and DC-8 in more ways than just the fuselage cracking. As the very first commercial jet, it shared many technologies and design concepts with contemporary props. DH would've been forced to design a new jet in any case by the late 50s / early 60s.

Most likely, it would've been merged into British Aerospace and later Airbus much like what happened to DH direct successor, Hawker Siddeley.

You might as well ask where Germany would be had they not had Hitler. History is history, and you can’t change it. Little was understood about metal fatigue when the Comet was built, and unfortunately they found out about it the hard way. It was perhaps inevitable that someone would push the limits too far, and deHavilland drew the short straw.

Nouflyer wrote:

I think the answer lies in the Caravelle.

They would probably have sold under 300 Comets, and De Havilland would have ended up disappearing just as Sud Aviation did.

Sud Aviation did not disappear: it was merged into Aerospatiale, and then Airbus.

Anonz263x wrote:

If the De Havilland Comet had no issues with its structure and it was fixed before it entered service, where would De Havilland be now and would it have affected the sales of the 707 and dc-8, with its issues solved or would they be in the same boat as Convair 880/990 due to the seating layout?

We would have seen the Comet in service with more airlines, for example Pan American had placed orders for the Comet 3.

No doubt it would likely have been an interim aircraft for the 1950s, and US airlines especially would likely have switched to the locally made products. Even so, DH would have had more cause to develop the aircraft if it was in service with more airlines, so we'll never know. Either way, jet service would have taken off and been more common in the 1950s rather than essentially waiting for the 1960s. Also, it could be argued that airlines who liked the Comet would have kept it and not gone American.

It was a fantastic technical achievement all round, in spite of the issues. Contrary to what people think DH did test the aircraft for fatigue and so on, as they were not stupid, it was just that the way it happened was not considered by them, or anyone to that date. The British aviation industry was always technologically proficient - from a production and marketing standpoint, they were not always great at all.

I think had there been no issues it could have been interesting . With a head start sales could have allowed more cash to flow into dh for further development . Funds could have allowed investment in larger more efficient factories to fulfil large orders. Also t
Dh next installment the trident would have been built to global requirements not to a bea one . But history is history

f4f3a wrote:

I think had there been no issues it could have been interesting . With a head start sales could have allowed more cash to flow into dh for further development . Funds could have allowed investment in larger more efficient factories to fulfil large orders. Also t
Dh next installment the trident would have been built to global requirements not to a bea one . But history is history

The cash flow, in particular a PanAm order would have changed everything.

What ever happened to those efficient WW2 factories?

But as noted, history is history.

The Comet's cruise speed was a fair bit slower than the 707 and DC-8, so I doubt it'd have survived past 1962. The Comet 4 was also about the end of the road as far as size was concerned, so I think they'd have had to do a clean-sheet after that. A me-three would have done as well as well as the CV-880....