Death of the Comet I

A downward column of smoke and a few bits of floating debris last week severely set back the world's bravest post war experiment in civil aviation. One more British Comet, the third of the swift jet liners in less than a year, crumpled in mid-air and plunged into the Tyrrhenian Sea, killing all on board.

Operated by South African Airways, a partner of BOAC, the Comet Yoke Yoke was on its regular scheduled flight from London to Johannesburg. Barely 16 days had elapsed since BOAC lifted the ban that had grounded its Comet fleet following the last fatal crash (TIME, Jan. 18), but Yoke Yoke's 21 passengers were brimming with confidence. Waiting for take-off at Rome's Ciampino Airport, one of the three Americans, a Massachusetts shoe-parts manufacturer named Ray Wilkinson, said to his companion: "This is progress. Sure, they've had accidents, but everything is O.K. now."

At 7:25 p.m., in perfect flying weather, the Comet took off. Thirty minutes later its radio advised the airport: "Air speed 360, altitude 26,000, making altitude." Nothing more was heard of Comet Yoke Yoke until the message flashed around the world: another Comet is down.

Boom, Boom, Boom. At latitude 39DEG 12 min. north, longitude 15DEG 28 min. east, some 30 miles north of Stromboli and less than 360 miles southeast of Elba, the scene of the last Comet crash, a search plane sighted a spreading oil slick. Hours later a U.S. pilot radioed his base: "One after the other, boom, boom, boom, three bodies came up quick . . ."

From a British naval helicopter an airman was lowered into the water to pick up what looked like a body. "Got it," he said, but all he had was a pair of trousers shorn off at the knees. A motorboat crew threw a grappling hook at what looked like another body. It was a shark and two pilot fish. Five bodies were recovered, three men and two women, and doctors who examined them were struck by the similarity of their injuries to those suffered in the Comet disaster off Elba. There were no significant burn marks, no sign of oxygen lack. The faces showed no sign of fear: death had come too suddenly for that.

In Britain there was consternation, for the Comet was a heady symbol of Britain's postwar comeback. For the second time in 13 weeks, the Comet fleet was grounded. Civil Aviation Minister Lennox-Boyd announced that the Comets' certificate of airworthiness would be withdrawn "pending further detailed investigations." No one in Britain would admit it. but the writing on the wall was plain. Comet I, after flying 55,000 passengers more than 7,000,000 miles, was unlikely to carry passengers again.

The Trouble. What was wrong with the Comet? Last week's crash was identical with that off Elba. Both occurred in the same sudden fashion, in the same area, just as the aircraft were climbing to cruising altitude at 40,000 feet. Some Britons leaped to the theory that there might have been sabotage. But engineers on both sides of the Atlantic more realistically suspected structural defects. U.S. engineers have argued all along that the Comet was put into commercial service prematurely, and questioned details of its design. Chief question: How safe is the British practice of embedding jet engines in the wing roots of multijet aircraft? Embedding improves the streamlining, but for safety's sake, U.S. jet builders prefer to suspend their engines in jet-pods hanging below the wings. Boeing 6-47 jet bombers have been landed safely after losing a disabled jet, but in the Comet's case, a fire or explosion in the engines would be likely to damage the wing. At the time of the Elba crash, De Havilland was in the process of modifying its Comets to guard against this danger--adding armor-plated shields to prevent loosened blades from the turbine from being thrown into the fuel tanks, improving the "engine breathers," installing more fire detectors. These recent changes apparently made no difference in Yoke Yoke's case.

In its bigger and faster Comet IIs (due to be put into service later this year), De Havilland intends to install more safety devices. Its long-term hopes are still centered on the Comet III, which is on order for Pan American, but which will almost certainly be redesigned in the light of last week's disaster.

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