WHBM

Oh dear, that sounds like me, and I didn’t think we’d done the Comet 1 yet (or disqualified anybody). In fact I’ve just been back through the thread and can’t find it. But it’s a big thread !

The three full airline operators of the Comet 1 were BOAC, UAT of France (UTA didn’t come into being until much later, when UAT and TAI merged) and Air France. BEA just looked enviously on.

UAT used them on Paris to Dakar service, and later extended these down their extensive African route network. When they were grounded their two remaining aircraft sat dumped at Le Bourget for about 7 years until scrapped in the early 1960s. Air France also operated Comets from Paris Le Bourget out to the Middle East, and were on the brink of further expansion. After withdrawl, they sold their fleet back to the UK where they were used for a range of experiments. One of these aircraft is the sole Comet 1 survivor, at the Cosford museum near Birmingham, UK, where it masquerades in a BOAC livery that it never really carried.

BOAC were of course the prime operator, from London they developed the first jet routes, to Johannesburg and Tokyo. BOAC’s development was really hamstrung by the accidents, of the initial fleet of 9, no less than 5 were lost in accidents in less than two years of operation (they also took the second Canadian Pacific one which CP cancelled. As well as the three structural breakups, BOAC lost two in runway accidents which, together with the Canadian Pacific one, and one of UAT’s at Dakar, showed what a handful the aircraft was to operate.

Now for the bits for us to argue over . Canadian Pacific did indeed take delivery of one, which crashed on its delivery flight at Karachi, and they cancelled the second one, so it never entered commercial service with them – among other things the crash had killed a number of the key members of the CP Comet project team. It’s a strange way you may think to deliver from Britain to Canada, via Karachi, and the reason is that the aircraft was not going to be operated from Canada, it was going to take up duty on CP’s Vancouver to Sydney, Australia route. However, it didn’t have the range to do Vancouver to Honolulu, nothing you could do about that, so this sector was to be left to DC-6Bs, and the Comet was to only operate onwards from Honolulu to Sydney. An unusual arrangement.

The Royal Canadian Air Force took two, but they’re not really an airline. They were however the only operator to do the modifications after the grounding, which involved complete remanufacturing of the fuselage (including substituting round windows for the original rectangular ones, and really cannot have been worthwhile). It took several years, they came back to RCAF service in 1957, but were withdrawn in 1964. One of them then passed down through dealers, with little success, and ended up being scrapped at Miami in 1975. Did anyone see it there ? Here she is, with a very 1975 US car alongside.

http://www.airliners.net/photo/De-Ha...8717683b894a47


South African Airways never ordered the Comet, but they had Comet 1 service because they hired one from BOAC, with SAA crews, and small SAA stickers on the aircraft. It was actually the SAA leased aircraft which crashed near Rome in April 1954 which finally finished the type’s service.

Did the RAF use the Comet 1 ? It’s a fine point. The three Air France aircraft were returned to the UK where they passed through the hands of various military research organisations, but not really used by the RAF as such.

Now, for anybody interested in the Comet 1 flights, here’s a whole lot of the timetables they were operating/expected to operate, here. What a lot of near-misses are here; Canadian Pacific across the South Pacific, or Air France from Paris to Stockholm.

http://www.timetableimages.com/ttimages/comet1.htm

Lots of fun reading there !