Curing the Comet
The position of the Royal Aircraft Establishment—which does not itself undertake aeronautical 'design—as the doctor of sick aircraft is an historical accident, but it is an accident which enables immense resources to be directed upon vital problems. All the great aircraft of the war benefited from doctoring at Farnborough; some would not have survived with- out it. In the diagnosis of faults in aircraft structures the record of the RAE is especially outstanding, and it is not likely to decline now under the leadership of Sir Arnold Hall, FRS, who, although he is still under forty, has long been a commanding figure in aeronautical science. We may then await with an ultimate confidence the solution of the problem of the Comet. But we must still wait. It is premature to believe that we have yet, to use the aircraft designers' term, got the bugs out of ' this fine aircraft. It may well be that the accidents were caused by a collapse of .the cabin, over- strained and fatigued' by the alternation of compression and decompression. This is indeed thought by the experts to be the likeliest explanation. But the RAE, even if it has, as is reported, obtained significant results in a destruction-test of a particular cabin, will wish to link these results to the evidence supplied by the wreckage of the crashed aircraft, and will in any case continue to investigate all the alternative or comple-
Wntary possibilities. This process will take time, because it Will be pursued with all the scientific thoroughness which is the RAE tradition.
Previous page
