de HavillandComet

Web Site Note: - The main objective of this file is to provide detail pertaining to Cunningham's association with the Comet aircraft.

Group Captain John "Cat's Eyes" Cunningham, who has died aged 84 on 23 July 2002, was a consummate test pilot whose name guaranteed the reputation of British aviation.

Cunningham piloted the maiden flight of the Comet, which became the world's first passenger jet airliner.

When the plane was involved in a series of dramatic crashes, Cunningham took a model off the production line, and tested it to the point of destruction. He then ushered its amended successors into both airline and service use.

Work had started on the Comet in the late 1940s, and Cunningham, accompanying BOAC crews on five transatlantic flights and two round trips to Australia, also began to gain experience of the requirements of airline crews.

On July 27 1949, his 32nd birthday, he was conducting taxiing trials when, with no fuss, he made an unannounced 35-minute maiden flight. But within three years de Havilland began to pay the price of hastening the Comet into service.

On October 26 1952, a BOAC Comet taking off from Rome failed to become airborne; there were no casualties, but the aircraft was damaged beyond repair.

Although the pilot was wrongly blamed, Cunningham was not satisfied. But his exhaustive take-off tests proved fruitless; and the accident was repeated the following March when a Canadian Pacific Airlines Comet was destroyed at Karachi.

In each accident, as Cunningham was to discover, the nose had lifted too high too early, resulting in a great increase in drag. Following further tests, the leading edge of the wing was revised, along with Cunningham's advice on take-offs to pilots.

Despite a further take-off accident in May, when a BOAC Comet crashed shortly after take-off from Calcutta due to poor weather, all was fairly plain sailing until January 1954, when the first production Comet disintegrated at 35,000 feet off Elba.

In April a similar break-up took place south of Naples over the volcanic island of Stromboli, and it was decided to test an entire Comet fuselage for fatigue in a water tank at the Royal Aircraft Establishment, Farnborough.

Although Farnborough's findings centred on the fatal flaw of metal fatigue in a pressurised hull, the likelihood of potential disaster had arguably been heightened by design shortcuts and economies which had been made to ensure that the Comet became the world's first passenger jet.

Cunningham immediately busied himself with remedial action. He flew to Canada to bring back two RCAF Comet 1As; and after their fuselages were rebuilt took them home again.

In December 1955, Cunningham made a world tour, in which Comet III's performance was flawless. The next year President Eisenhower presented him with the Harmon Trophy, the highest American honour for services to aviation, in recognition of his contribution to jet transport.

Honour was slower at home; and he was not elevated to the de Havilland Board until 1958 when BOAC put Comet IV on to the London-New York route.

When, during this period, de Havilland became a division of Hawker Siddeley, Cunningham, always ready to get on with the job in hand, was not fazed. Sir Geoffrey de Havilland noted that Cunningham, a bachelor, was "test pilot, demonstration pilot and ambassador all in one and has made some sensational flights. He can do thousands of miles for many days and at the end of the flight can be charming, unruffled and apparently as fresh as ever when discussing points raised by a host of officials, Pressmen and others."