Originally Posted by
pax britanica
I dont think Sud Aviation copied the Comet nose design as much as they used exactly same design with DH agreement since it was a proven design why change it.
As for the poor old DP it would have looked Ok without that ludicrous bulge cum fin at the back.
The original Caravelle nose design was not only with DH "agreement", it was a design subcontract to DH, and the first couple of Caravelle noses were actually built at Hatfield and shipped over.
This lasted through the production of the Caravelle III and VI-N. The VI-R was developed for the United Airlines order, with thrust reversers, where the FAA had a fit about the prospect of braking parachutes blowing around US airports (I wonder if the likes of Varig, who ran the earlier versions to JFK etc, ever dared to deploy them there). The FAA also took against the nose design, on the grounds of insufficient visibility for the flight crew, so the VI-R, and subsequent models, had a restyled nose with much larger windows and also changes to the contours a bit.
The ventral fin on the Deux-Ponts, like many such on aircraft, was not there on the prototype until it was discovered that the fin/rudder gave insufficient authority under engine failures, etc, so it was added to address this. It does of course also add to drag. A perpetual feature of designs in the 1930s-50s was developing the prototype with an inadequate tailplane, and having to make production changes to address this.