OK here's the full AOPA magazine story:
CHANNEL 4'S COMER COVER-UP
Past editor of Flight International, J M (Mike) Ramsden worked on the Comet 1 as a de Havilland apprentice, and appeared in Channel 4's recent documentary on the worldıs first jetliner. Here he challenges its truthfulness.
Channel 4's Secret History series about the Comet 1 disasters, broadcast on 13 June, was wilfully untrue. Entitled Comet Cover-Up, the documentary alleged that de Havilland and its chief designer R. E. Bishop didnıt just put an unsafe aircraft into passenger service. They did so knowingly, and didnıt test it properly, in pursuit of profit.
Principal Films had invited D H veterans to help them mark the 50th anniversary of jet passenger transport, to be screened by Channel 4 on 2 May 2002. Director and interviewer Steve Ruggi, producer David Coward and sound and cameramen met us in our homes and other locations around Hatfield, birthplace of the jet airliner. John Cunningham, retired de Havilland director and chief test pilot, agreed to meet them in the de Havilland Museumıs Comet 1 cockpit. Ralph Hare, retired Comet structures engineer, also met them on location and gave hours of his time and expertise.
Their smilingly deferential questions ranged over the whole history of the Comet project. One or two questions seemed rather suspicious. Was de Havilland arrogant? Well, we had made some very good aeroplanes, but arrogant? Sir Geoffrey de Havilland drove a Morris Minor and would hold doors open for lowly apprentices.
We knew that the programme was going to be about tragedy as well as triumph questions and sent them photographs, films and documents without charge documentary.
They set the scene truthfully enough. One after the other in 1954, two BOAC Comet 1s broke up over the Mediterranean with the loss of more than 50 lives. The world-beating British jetliner fleet was grounded while the Royal Navy, the Royal Aircraft Establishment and a public inquiry painstakingly investigated and established the cause. They found that window or hatch frames in the Comet's pressurised fuselage had failed
from fatigue.
We had made manufacturing and design mistakes, and these mistakes - all in Lord Cohen's thorough published 1955 report - were splashed on every newspaper front page. Well, we had been pioneering jet passenger transport, solving problems
never posed before, and there were no excuses. We got it wrong. But we most definitely had not neglected to fatigue-test the Comet 1, as the documentary alleged. Here are three of its many mendacious quotes:
*Senior de Havilland executives knew that the plane was susceptible to metal fatigue, yet so desperate were they to be the first to fly a jet airliner that they chose to ignore repeated warnings and postponed crucial safety testing.
*The secret compromise by the Government, de Havilland and BOAC to postpone full-scale fatigue testsS is recorded for posterity in the confidential letters we have discovered
*None of the executives involved in the Comet ever went on record about the secret fears they shared before the accidents, and the relatives of the passengers who died in the accidents were never compensated
*'Secret letters' are cited in support of these grave allegations. Secret letters from whom, dated when, saying what exactly? Fleeting glimpses of old files and lingering close-ups of the word 'fatigue', accompanied by doom-laden music and voice commentary, prove nothing.
Video pause and replay buttons catch a bit of a 1951 Royal Aircraft Establishment internal memo about fatigue-testing the Comet's wing. Hang on - the Comet's wing never suffered a fatigue failure. It was the fuselage that fatigued.
The documentary's core allegation, said to be proven by the secret letters, is that de Havilland was warned that the fuselage would fail from fatigue but refused to fatigue-test it.
We asked the programme's senior producer, Richard Sattin, for copies of the secret letters proving this. It seemed curious that Ralph Hare, the de Havilland structures expert whom they had interviewed, hadn't been shown them, though the letters had been biked round to an aviation editor for his opinion.
Mr Sattin has yet to keep his telephone promises to show us the secret letters and to reply to our letter of complaint.
In 1949 we built two full-scale test sections of the Comet 1 fuselage for testing in the Hatfield pressure tank (using water instead of air to avoid explosive decompression). Chief designer Bishop's objectives were to prove bursting strength ('static' strength) and then to test fatigue strength with repeated loads. These tests, from 1949 to 1952, were a world first.
In those days professional structural engineering opinion was that fatigue strength could be demonstrated by static strength. That's still basically true, but now we know that fatigue has a mind of its own, and must be treated accordingly. History Rule No 1 _ Don't judge the past in the light of the present.
First we proved fuselage static strength. We pumped up one test section to 2P, twice normal working pressure, without failure. We believed we had demonstrated the Comet's fatigue strength by proving its static strength.
Chief designer R E Bishop went further. He said 'Show me 2.5P'. We did that too. Bishop then ordered 16,000 repeat loadings or 'flight cycles' of 1.25P. That was a world-first fatigue test, and it went beyond the professional structural engineering practice of the day. Carried out in 1952, two years before the disasters, the test suggested a fuselage fatigue life of at least ten years.
Bishop went even further. He ordered the repeat-loading of individual windows to 1P every day for three years, and their static loading to a frightening 10P - ten times normal working pressure. We did that too (behind a thick brick wall). An apprentice in the structural test department at Hatfield had to polish the individual test windows each morning with Ajax to check whether daily window-cleaning in airline service would affect the transparency's strength. Far-fetched, but a measure of Bishopıs conscientiousness.
In 1949 and 1950 we also tested a full-scale Comet wing, attaching it to a fuselage section and applying thousands of fatigue reversals before loading it to destruction.
We explained all these tests in filmed interviews with Mr Ruggi and Mr Coward. Too technical and boring, perhaps. They edited it all out. But then to state as fact that de Havilland refused to fatigue-test the Comet 1 is just wilful untruthfulness. It makes you wonder how much you can believe of any Channel 4 documentary.
Yes, the Comet 1 window frame failed catastrophically from fatigue. Why, if it had been fatigue tested so thoroughly? Because, as we explained on camera, the production window frames were riveted to the fuselage skin hand-made test section.
Bishop had agreed to riveting, which would be stronger than Reduxing if heavier, because the production people could not get consistently good glued joints on the production line. Forty years later Bishop called that 'my biggest mistake'. But it was a perfectly sound engineering decision, and still would be. All 15,000 jetliners built since have had riveted window frames.
There was another 'causal factor' test section used for fatigue-testing had been toughened by the 2.5P load applied to it before its 16,000 'flights'. That was a new structural discovery.
Engineers who try to do things that have never been done before will sometimes make mistakes. Bishop accepted complete responsibility. A lesser man would have blamed the production or structures departments, or both.
Comet Cover-Up will doubtless be profitably sold, repeated and believed all over the world for years to come. Beware the lesser men who so cheaply denigrate the great.