13 December 1955: The first landing of a commercial jet airliner on United States territory took place when a de Havilland DH.106 Comet 3, G-ANLO, flown by de Havilland’s chief test pilot, John Cunningham, with co-pilot Per Buggé, arrived at Honolulu International Airport, on the Island of Oahu, Territory of Hawaii.
The Comet 3 was on an around-the-world tour. The 3,212 mile (5,169 kilometer) flight from Nadi, Fiji (NAN) to Honolulu (HNL) took 6 hours, 41 minutes. The Comet remained at Hawaii for two days and gave a series of demonstration flights before continuing on its journey. The next leg, to Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada, a distance of 2,771 miles (4,460 kilometers), took 5 hours, 40 minutes.
The de Havilland DH.106 Comet 3 was a further development of the Comet 2 series. It was 15 feet (4.572 meters) longer with a length of 111 feet, 6 inches (33.985 meters), a wingspan of 115 feet (35.052 meters) and overall height of 29 feet, 6 inches (8.992. The area of the wings and tail surfaces had been increased. It was powered by four Rolls Royce Avon 521 turbojet engines, rated at 10,000 pounds of thrust, each.
The airliner was designed to carry 58–76 passengers on flights ranging to 2,600 miles (4,184 kilometers). In addition to the increased length, visual differences from the previous Comets were the circular passenger windows, and wing tanks extending forward from the wings’ leading edges.
Only two Comet 3s were built and one was used as a static test article. Production continued with the Comet 4, which had even greater improvements. G-ANLO remained a development prototype and was modified several times. It was turned over to the Ministry of Supply and re-registered XP915. The airplane was used in instrument landing tests and later converted to a mockup of the Hawker Siddeley Nimrod MR1 maritime patrol aircraft. It was taken out of service in 1973.
Group Captain John Cunningham C.B.E., D.S.O. and Two Bars, D.F.C. and Bar, A.E., was the highest scoring Royal Air Force night fighter pilot of World War II, credited with shooting down 20 enemy airplanes. He was responsible for the myth that eating carrots would improve night vision.
© 2015, Bryan R. Swopes
Carrots are indeed good sources of lutein and beta carotene, which are antioxidants that benefit eye health and protect against age-related degenerative eye diseases. Your body converts beta carotene into vitamin A, a nutrient that helps you see in the dark.
The carrot story was deliberately propagated to disguise the rapid development of radar technology in night fighters, with some plausibility, as Dirk points out. Carrots are good for you! The Comet 2 resolved the structural weaknesses of the original Comet 1 and proved that the original aerodynamic design was sound. However, it was only sold for military use, serving with the RAF for many years. The Comet 3 improved the commercial prospects by increasing passenger numbers and range, these advantages being fully exploited in the further developed Comet 4, with transatlantic capability. However, by then the Boeing 707 was on the scene, and the Comet could never have matched the capacity of that. The advantage in time achieved by the early service of the Comet 1 was lost. The real competitor for the 707 would have been the Vickers 1000/Vanjet. It was under construction and not far away from first flight when a typically short-sighted government withdrew support and the project was cancelled. Military orders for the V1000 would have underpinned the commercial airliner, in the same way as USAF orders for the KC135 did for the 707. British governments have since WW2 consistently made wrong decisions that eventually wrecked a great industry.