Interesting how much positive comment about de Haviland types. Add mine for the Chippie. Also I’m biased because my Dad was a DH draughtsman at Hatfield after the war.
One that hasn’t been mentioned so far is the De Haviland 121 otherwise known as the Trident - also of course the “Ground-gripper”, but this thread IS about handling qualities not performance! The T1 in particular did have excellent handling provided you were only going level or down…. Very little trim change with speed and configuration changes on approach, close rear engines so little swing engine out. Super roll response.
The contrast with its replacement B757 was remarkable – that had lots of power of course but I recall an early demo flight when a Boeing test pilot was stunned that we were not impressed by the 757 handling. It seemed you could rotate the wheel to the limits in each direction and back to centre, and the aircraft sort of looked over its shoulder and said “oh, are you talking to me??”. And the continual trimming especially engine out. But it did go up fast on a LHR-MAN shuttle on a cold day!