The de Havilland Comet airliner first flew on the 27th of July 1949 in the hands of Group Captain John "Cat's Eyes" Cunningham. Three years later, on 2nd May 1952, it changed the world. On that day Comet 1 G-ALYP carried fare-paying passengers from London to Johannesburg and the jet-age was born.
Do you
really think that a totally new airliner could go from first flight to being in service in just over 2 months, PN?
To be precise, the first prototype G-5-1 first flew on 27 Jul 1949 and was later re-registered as G-ALVG for its customer, the Ministry of Supply. The first production Comet 1 aircraft for BOAC, G-ALYP, first flew on 9 Jan 1951 but wasn't delivered to BOAC until April 1952. It later crashed in Jan 1954 after taking off from Rome.