De Havilland DH.88 Comet

This article covers the De Havilland Comet racing aircraft. For airliners see De Havilland DH.106 Comet .

De Havilland DH.88 Comet
Type:	Racing plane
Design country:	United Kingdom
Manufacturer:	de Havilland Aircraft Company
First flight:	September 1934
Number of pieces:	5

The De Havilland DH.88 Comet was an aircraft of the British aircraft manufacturer de Havilland and was specially designed and built for the Victorian Centenary Air Race , an air race from Mildenhall , England to Melbourne , Australia , from 1934. Although the aircraft had two engines with a relatively weak power of only 234 hp each, it won the race (a Dutch team with a Douglas DC-2 came second ). The second »Comet« took fourth place, the third was eliminated (normal car fuel was filled in during a refueling stop and the engines were damaged as a result).

In total, only five copies were built to order. Desperate for the Victorian Centenary Air Race trophy to go to the UK, Geoffrey de Havilland advertised that he could build a £ 5,000 raceplane. The orders were received “blindly” because up until then there was not even a design drawing.

The planes ultimately cost more than £ 50,000 each, so de Havilland had to see the whole thing as a good image advertisement - only a few copies were sold. A DH.88 has been preserved in the Shuttleworth Collection , Old Warden, UK.

construction

cockpit

The Comet was made entirely of wood; the outer skin was designed to be load-bearing. The machine had a long, aerodynamic hull that had received the fuel tanks, because the non-targeted wings high stretching it were too thin. Two-stage controllable pitch propellers and a retractable landing gear were used. The interpretation was very advanced for the time.

The aircraft was difficult to fly due to its extreme design; it had a high landing speed, which was not far above the demolition speed (approx. 120 km / h). The controllable pitch propellers could only be reset to the starting position on the ground using a bicycle pump as a compressed air source. At 150 mph the propellers should switch to high speed; however, this process was not synchronized between the two engines and practically never happened simultaneously.

Further development

In 1934, de Havilland tried to interest the Royal Air Force in a high-speed bomber version of the DH.88, which could bring a bomb load of 1000 lbs (454 kg) to the target with a crew of two. Since the RAF at that time preferred the concept of the heavily armed large aircraft, the proposal was rejected. De Havilland later took up the concept of the wooden, unarmed high-speed bomber again, despite the still lack of interest from the RAF, and developed the successful De Havilland DH.98 Mosquito .

Technical specifications

Three-sided view (English labeling)

Parameter	Data
crew	2
length	8.84 m
span	13.41 m
height	3.05 m
Empty mass	1288 kg
Takeoff mass	2431 kg
Top speed	381 km / h
Cruising speed	354 km / h
Service ceiling	5790 m
Range	4700 km
Engines	two de Havilland Gipsy Six R with 234 hp each

Whereabouts

G-ACSP

First Comet flew in Hatfield in September 1934. Took part in the England-Australia race as Black Magic painted in black. Sold as Salazar to the Portuguese government in March 1935 .

G-ACSR

finished fourth in the race and flew straight back to England. Painted green, but no name. Sold to the French government in April 1935 as F-ANPY Reine Astrid . Used there for the transport of express mail.

G-ACSS

Race winner. Painted red and named Grosvenor House . First flight on October 9, 1934. Went to the RAF in June 1935 with registration K5084. Restored again from 1973 to 1987.

F-ANPZ

French government mail plane.

G-ADEF

was called Boomerang and crashed in Sudan in September 1935.

See also

• List of aircraft types

Web links

Commons : De Havilland DH.88 Comet  - collection of pictures, videos and audio files

• Comet DH88. Private website (English) ( Memento from 1 August 2008 at the Internet Archive ).
• De Havilland DH-88 Comet Pages. Private website
• Flying Legends - de Havilland DH 88 Comet. Photos of the Comet Grosvenour House
• de Havilland DH88 Comet Racer. de Havilland Aircraft Museum, London Colney, Hertfordshire (English)

Individual evidence

1. ↑ JM Ramsden: The Comet's tale , Part 3, in Airplane Monthly, June 1988, p. 350.