Around this time Lord Douglas of Kirtleside made a visit to America where unrest over Pan Am’s enthusiasm for the DH 121 was growing. During this visit he was informed that Boeing were considering producing an aircraft in competition with the De Havilland design and so, for some insane reason which remains unexplained (and mention of things like ‘bribery’ and ‘corruption’ would be without any foundation in terms of supportive evidence) he suggested reciprocal visits between Seattle and Hatfield for ‘an exchange of ideas’.
The really remarkable thing was that instead of all the alarm bells ringing, the Hatfield team reacted with amazing enthusiasm to this suggestion and invited a top level team from Boeing to see everything they had on the DH 121 at Hatfield. Boeing were pretty gobsmacked at this, but naturally accepted with good grace and so it was that De Havilland freely handed over all its research to its closest rival while, at the same time, barring the British press from the factory for reasons of ‘security’. If you can figure that one out, let me know. ‘cos I can’t.
original Medway powered, 111 seat DH.121 as shown to Boeing
Immediately after this, in 1958, the UK then scored its second own goal. Having monitored the traffic levels of the previous three years, BEA got cold feet and thought the 121 was going to be too big. It was quickly scaled down to only 97 seats (as BEA’s word was the industry’s command in those days) and re-engined with the smaller R-R Spey, the emasculated version then appeared in 1962 as the Hawker Siddeley Trident 1, so close, but yet so far.
In 1959 Boeing gave the full go ahead to the 727, its spec matching that of the *original* DH 121 almost exactly. This might even be a coincidence, but even if it was, all that DH material exactly confirming their own findings must have helped enormously in the decision making process. When Boeing returned the favour, in 1960, they were very careful to make sure that the visiting De Havilland team, although well and courteously looked after, saw nothing of the 727 at all. The net result of all this was then when the world markets looked at the two aircraft the 727 was the clear winner every time and it ended up outselling the Trident by a factor of about 10 to 1, and deservedly so I might add.
Even *if* Boeing did pilfer the design concept, it was nobody’s fault but our own that we had the perfect rival, but bottled it.