Such have been the advances in aircraft technology since the beginning of the twentieth century that it is sometimes difficult to realise that there are people living today who were once acquainted with the pioneers of aviation. One of the earliest British aviators and designers was Sir Geoffrey DeHavilland, and it was the story of this man and his achievements that was the subject of a talk to the Bakewell and District Probus Club. On this occasion, the speaker was club member Brian Barry, who in the late-1950s was an apprentice at the DeHavilland factory in Hatfield where he occasionally found himself in the great man’s presence.
Opening his talk with a brief outline of his own early career, Brian continued by describing that of DeHavilland who was born in 1882 and, after serving an apprenticeship in the emerging motor industry, started to make aeroplanes in the first decade of the new century. Unfortunately, his first attempt, completed in 1909, crashed on its maiden flight but, undaunted, DeHavilland learned from this experience and went on to design and manufacture some notable aircraft types such as the Tiger Moth (of which almost 9,000 were built), and the Mosquito (a combat aeroplane introduced during World War II).
After the War, came the DeHavilland Comet which was the world’s first commercial jet airliner. The prototype first flew in 1949, and the production models entered service in 1952. Initially commercially promising and successful, within a year of their introduction, no fewer than three of these aircraft were lost in mid-flight. Subsequent investigations concluded that the cause of these accidents was metal fatigue – a little-understood phenomenon at the time. The entire fleet was withdrawn from service and, following extensive testing, the aeroplane was re-designed and manufacturing processes were improved. These culminated in the Comet 4 series which was introduced in 1958 and remained in commercial service until 1981. Adapted for military use, the type continued in the role of a maritime surveillance aircraft, the Nimrod, which remained in service with the RAF until 2011.
It was while the Comet 4 series was in production that the speaker worked in the DeHavilland factory, and he showed a number of photographs of aircraft under construction taken at the time.
Details of the Bakewell and District Probus Club, including reports of earlier meetings, can be found on its website at www.bakewell probus.org