Science: Screaming Challenge

With its four jet engines screaming like tortured banshees, Britain’s De Havilland Cornet, the world’s only jet airliner, took off on its first test flight last week and flew for 31 minutes over Hertfordshire. Test Pilot Captain John Cunningham made a cream-smooth landing and reported the flight “entirely successful.”

The Comet is Britain’s most ambitious challenge to the present worldwide supremacy of U.S.-built commercial air transports. British attempts to compete with the U.S. in long-range, propeller-driven airliners have been notable flops. Even her own overseas airlines fly U.S. aircraft. But a successful Comet could change all this by giving Britain the edge in high-speed commercial flying. U.S. manufacturers, who have not even started to build jet airliners, are not likely to have anything to compete with the Comet for several years.

Four Ghosts. The Comet was designed and built in secrecy; De Havilland has not yet released many of its details. It is about as big as a DC-6, with its four Rolls-Royce Ghost jet engines looking sleek and slim on its moderately swept-back wings. Its claimed cruising speed is 500 m.p.h. at 35-40,000 feet. At this speed and altitude, each Ghost develops thrust equivalent to 10,500 h.p. The Pratt & Whitney Double Wasp reciprocating engines that power the DC-6 develop only about 2,100 h.p. at full throttle.

Chief disadvantage of jet engines is their enormous thirst for fuel. At cruising speed and altitude each Ghost drinks 120 imperial gallons (144 U.S. gallons) of kerosene per hour. To get her safely across the Atlantic and allow a three-hour safety margin, the Comet will have to carry something like 6,000 gallons of fuel (the DC-6’s load: 4,248 gallons). Fully loaded, the Comet will probably carry only 20 passengers on a long flight (the DC-6 can carry 44).

Six Hours Across. The Comet can, however, cut the long, boring flight across the Atlantic almost in half. It is expected to make New York nonstop from London in six to seven hours; it would be no trick at all to make a round trip in a day. Four hops could get it to Australia in 36 hours. De Havilland hopes that many passengers in a hurry will gladly pay extra for speed.

De Havilland has orders for 14 Comets from British Overseas Airways Corp. and British South American Airways Corp but it does not expect to see any of them in actual passenger service for two or three years. Like all new aircraft, the plane must undergo elaborate flight tests. But De Havilland claims to have licked one great problem: noise. The scream of the jet engines is for innocent bystanders only; it is hardly heard on board.