PROOF POSITIVE
After a series of high-profile Comet I crashes the previous year, de Havilland had a lot
riding on the lengthened and strengthened Comet 3, the sole flying example of which
was sent on a whistle-stop global tour in late 1955. Using rarely-seen and previously
unpublished photos, COLIN HIGGS takes us aboard G-ANLO for the trip of a lifetimeI
T WAS A COLD Wednesday morning
in December 1955, just three days after
Christmas, when the one-off de Havilland
Comet 3, with the company’s chief test pilot
John Cunningham at the controls, landed
at London’s Heathrow Airport to complete a
record-setting and potentially commercially
vital world tour. There to meet it were the chief
architect of the Comet programme, Sir Geoffrey
de Havilland, President of his company, and
one of the aircraft’s strongest supporters,
BOAC Chairman Sir Miles Thomas.The success of this tour was crucial to the
future of the Comet. Sir Geoffrey had put his
seal of approval on the new Comet 4 when it
had been announced the previous March and
BOAC’s order for 19 examples had been placed
soon afterwards. Sir Miles Thomas had been
the Chairman of BOAC since 1949 and had
presided over one of the most difficult periods
in British commercial aviation history. Now he
was irrevocably pinning BOAC’s future on the
Comet 4. The de Havilland company, however,
needed export orders too, and a high-profileDE HAVILLAND COMET 3 WORLD TOUR, DECEMBER 1955
The sole flying de Havilland Comet 3, G-ANLO,
arrives to a suitably Hawaiian reception at
Honolulu on December 13, 1955. The majority of
the photographs presented here are from the de
Havilland Collection, part of the BAE Systems
archive at Farnborough. The author and Editor
would like to thank Trevor Friend and Barry
Guess at the archive for their invaluable help
with the preparation of this article.
BAE SYSTEMS CN