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The Trouble. What was wrong with the Comet? Last week's crash was identical with that off Elba. Both occurred in the same sudden fashion, in the same area, just as the aircraft were climbing to cruising altitude at 40,000 feet. Some Britons leaped to the theory that there might have been sabotage. But engineers on both sides of the Atlantic more realistically suspected structural defects. U.S. engineers have argued all along that the Comet was put into commercial service prematurely, and questioned details of its design. Chief question: How safe is the British practice of embedding jet engines in the wing roots of multijet aircraft? Embedding improves the streamlining, but for safety's sake, U.S. jet builders prefer to suspend their engines in jet-pods hanging below the wings. Boeing 6-47 jet bombers have been landed safely after losing a disabled jet, but in the Comet's case, a fire or explosion in the engines would be likely to damage the wing. At the time of the Elba crash, De Havilland was in the process of modifying its Comets to guard against this danger—adding armor-plated shields to prevent loosened blades from the turbine from being thrown into the fuel tanks, improving the "engine breathers," installing more fire detectors. These recent changes apparently made no difference in Yoke Yoke's case.
In its bigger and faster Comet IIs (due to be put into service later this year), De Havilland intends to install more safety devices. Its long-term hopes are still centered on the Comet III, which is on order for Pan American, but which will almost certainly be redesigned in the light of last week's disaster.