de Havilland DH-88 Comet

Recordings

DH 88 Comet Grosvenor House

A sound recording of the DH 88 Comet 'Grosvenor House' G-ACSS starting up at Old Warden.

The aircraft is not currently flown but they do a fast taxi along the airfield prior to some displays.

The de Havilland DH.88 Comet was a twin-engined British aircraft that won the 1934 MacRobertson Air Race, a challenge for which it was specifically designed. It set many aviation records during the race and afterwards as a pioneer mail plane.

Despite previous British air racing successes, culminating in 1931 in the outright win of the Schneider Trophy, there was no British plane capable of putting up a challenge over the MacPherson course with its long overland stages. The de Havilland company stepped into the breach by offering to produce a limited run of 200 mph (322 km/h) racers if three were ordered by February 1934. The sale price of £5,000 each would by no means cover the development costs. In 1935, de Havilland suggested a high-speed bomber version of the DH.88 to the RAF, but the suggestion was rejected. (De Havilland later developed the de Havilland Mosquito along similar lines as the DH.88 for the high-speed bomber role.)

Three orders were indeed received, and de Havilland set to work. The airframe consisted of a wooden skeleton clad with spruce plywood, with a final fabric covering on the wings. A long streamlined nose held the main fuel tanks, with the low set central two-seat cockpit forming an unbroken line to the tail. The engines were essentially the standard Gipsy Six used on the Express and Dragon Rapide passenger planes, tuned for best performance with a higher compression ratio. The propellers were two-position variable pitch, manually set to fine before takeoff and changed automatically to coarse by a pressure sensor. The main undercarriage retracted upwards and backwards into the engine nacelles. The DH.88 could maintain altitude up to 4,000 ft (1,200 m) on one engine. - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/De_Havilland_DH.88

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