The corner of a square hole in a flat plate has 4x the stress of the surrounding material. It's called a "stress riser". If you look at a concrete slab with such an inside corner, there's usually a crack there.<p>Boeing solved the problem by using rounded windows, and riveting on a forged doubler around the window frame. The skin was also organized so a crack will not propagate far. The success of the latter has shown itself in various incidents where an airliner has lost a panel in flight, but went on to land safely.
The other problem the Comet had was economic. It could only carry 36 passengers. The 707 could carry 140.<p>The larger number of passengers meant the 707 per-passenger cost made it cheaper to operate. The 707 could do 5 times the work of a piston powered DC-6 at only double the cost. It was a huge money-maker for airlines.<p><a href="http://generalatomic.com/jetmakers/chapter7.html" rel="nofollow">http://generalatomic.com/jetmakers/chapter7.html</a>
When I read the headline, I was really hoping this article was about the de Havilland DH.88 Comet.[1] That really was a beautiful aeroplane.<p>[1] <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/De_Havilland_DH.88" rel="nofollow">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/De_Havilland_DH.88</a>
Peter Duffey first flew during WW2
<a href="https://www.buckinghamcovers.com/celebrities/view/127-captain-peter-duffey.php" rel="nofollow">https://www.buckinghamcovers.com/celebrities/view/127-captai...</a><p>he also wrote a book about his flying experiences
<a href="https://www.amazon.co.uk/Comets-Concordes-Peter-Duffey/dp/1888962100" rel="nofollow">https://www.amazon.co.uk/Comets-Concordes-Peter-Duffey/dp/18...</a>
My biggest "surprise" always is how little we have progressed if you just look at how the planes look and how fast they fly (6h11m NY->London in 1958, that's pretty much what they do today, not?). It seems like the airline industry got a lot of stuff just right the first time and since then just has been doing performance tweaks (where I take "performance" to be very broad to include things like safety, economy, ...).
It's indeed a beautiful aeroplane.<p>But what's striking, and indeed rather UFO-like, are the small engine intakes. Anyone know what's up with that?
There is a "square windows" Comet 1A in the <a href="http://www.dehavillandmuseum.co.uk/" rel="nofollow">http://www.dehavillandmuseum.co.uk/</a> , next to the northern stretch of the M25. Well worth a day out to this quiet little museum (home of the former De Havilland factory) if you live in or around London.
I like the De Havilland story in how it made the managers look like fools: 2 crashes in bad weather, +1 in good weather, a worldwide suspension of operations, resumed a fortnight later with reassuring words from the management, +1 another crash, then a more serious stress test (which should have been done since the beginning), with negative results, then a bankruptcy... Fortunately, that's what happens to the wrong companies.<p>Another aircraft story I love is the Tu-144, the copy of the Concorde: "Critical alarms were so routine that pilots had to borrow pillows from passengers to stuff the cockpit siren". The full Wikipedia article is worth reading (or the Mayday episode worth watching), it's a good laugh.<p>Each time I fly, I internally laugh at how crazy humans are, throwing a can of the most inflammable liquid we can find, at 900km/h. "Play with fire, mum says, ..." and play with fire we do.
The British Nimrod, a submarine hunter, as well as other roles, was based on the Comet and was in service until 2012.<p>Modified Comets apparently flew until 1997.