Comet The World's First Commercial Jet Airliner

t was a sensation! The World’ s first jet airliner flew for the first time barely four years after the end of the Second World War...and it was British. It revolutionised commercial air travel. It was the fastest airliner in the World and it inspired a post-war public with its pioneering jet engines and sleek design. Star-struck celebrities and royalty flew in it. The World’ s airlines were queuing up to order. And then triumph turned to tragedy. Packed with rare and unseen images and memorabilia, Comet delves into this amazing aircraft from the dark days of WW2 when it was conceived by Sir Geoffreyde Havilland, through its design and manufacture and introduction to service with BOAC amid cheering and flag waving. It covers in depth the tragic Comet crashes, the exhaustive work done on solving the crash mysteries and its successfu reincarnation, both for civil airlines and for the military, as the Comet 4 and eventually the RAF’ s Nimrod, the ultimate and final variant of the Comet design. This book also gives the reader a flavour of the excitement of air travel in the 1950s and provides an invaluable reference work to every Comet built.

Bruce Hales-Dutton’ s professional involvement in aviation goes back a long way. Having started as a newspaper journalist in the 1960s he became a senior press officer at the Department of Trade and Industry, a role which involved him in the development of major news stories such as the start of Concorde services to North America and the debate about London’ s third airport. Later he moved to the British Airports Authority as a media relations specialist and then to the Civil Aviation Authority. He was the CAA’ s head of public relations when he retired in 2000.