Robert DuHamel
Published 13 Aug 2019You’ve heard about it. You’ve read about it. You’ve watched the television documentaries. The de Havilland Comet. Two mysterious crashes in the Mediterranean near Rome. 56 people dead. The planes exploded in mid-air when their pressure cabins ruptured at the corners of the square windows. A hard lesson learned about pressurized airliners, square windows, and metal fatigue. But you haven’t heard the whole story. Find out what really happened in this first video in the series Aircrash Minority Report.
Thumbnail: a Convair XF2Y-1 Sea Dart breaking up after exceeding the stress limit of the airframe. The crashes of the de Havilland Comets would look similar.
References:
FAA Lessons Learned: de Havilland DH-106 Comet: https://lessonslearned.faa.gov/ll_mai…
Failure-Analysis-Case-Studies-II – David R. H. Jones: https://vietnamwcm.files.wordpress.co…
