Originally Posted by
Modern Elmo
Once British Leyland Aerospace and your Air Force found out that individual Comets had bespoke* wingboxes, the only sane course of action was or is to abandon ship on the Comet/Nimrod aircraft.
What had those airframes been doing previously? Were they Nimrod I's or II's or former airliners which had been parked for years, or what?
That is the way they were made. The Victor, and Comet were all made the same way and the Vulcan too to some extent. It is actually remarkable that the Spitfire wings are interchangeable.