My first and last flight in a Caravelle was with Air France from Heathrow to Nice in the summer of 1959, and it was my first experience of jet flight. (To put it into context, the Comet 4 and B707 had only been in service about 9 months, and IIRC only on the North Atlantic, although the Comet 1 had preceded both all-too-briefly in the early 1950s.)
The Caravelle's climb performance was a revelation after the piston and turboprop aeroplanes in which I'd flown previously, and the cabin was - of course - remarkably quiet by comparison.
I'd never seen or felt airbrakes before, and on that flight they were used a lot in the descent. IIRC, they slid out vertically from the wing and may have had holes in them.
Cymmon and other possessors of the John Wegg book may be able to correct me on that?
We watched the a/c depart from Nice while waiting for our onward flight (by DC-6B) and were duly impressed by its T/O.
I think the (smaller) BAC 1-11 was a more elegant design with its T-Tail, but at least the Caravelle -
AFAIK - didn't have the propensity to deep-stall.