Jet-age trail-blazer

The interest created overwhelmed the airport’s ability to cope. When people moved into active areas, spilling onto the runway, the pilot in command – de Havilland’s chief test pilot Group Captain John Cunningham – abandoned the landing and climbed briskly away with undercarriage and flaps still down.

The Comet then circled the city until order was restored and landed to an enthusiastic welcome.

Thousands gathered around the parked aircraft, looking resplendent in BOAC livery.

Your writer ventured to Mascot as a schoolboy, armed with his trusty Kodak Box Brownie camera on his first visit to the airport after moving from Brisbane. Mascot was a welcoming location for aviation enthusiasts.

‘A Perth to Sydney record … of four hours and seven minutes.’

Rooftop viewing areas were available on both the ANA and TAA terminals. Gazing from the latter location, my first sight was of an imposing Pan American Boeing Stratocruiser, glistening in its blue and white livery, taxiing past with the rumbling sound of its four Pratt & Whitney R-4360 Wasp Majors, so close you see clearly into the expansive cockpit. In the distance were Qantas Super Constellations in their white and carnation-red livery.

All were soon to be replaced by the next airliner generation.

The Comet had departed from Hatfield on December 2, overnighting at Cairo before continuing with refuelling stops at Bombay, Singapore and Darwin. Cunningham was accompanied in the cockpit by second pilot Peter Bugge. Also on board were company technicians, senior executives and guests.
The aircraft was fitted with 56 seats in two compartments, 24 forward and 32 aft, with two seats on each side of the fuselage..

Prior to the Sydney arrival, publicity had created increasing awareness in what was seen as a revolutionary change in air travel.
Earlier Comet accidents were fresh in people’s minds and G-ANLO, c/n 06100, was the sole completed Comet 3, a version intended as development aircraft for the subsequent, definitive Comet 4 family.
It first flew on January 6 1954, later becoming XP915 at the RAE Bedford Blind Landing Experimental Unit in 1961 for auto-land trials.

It was involved later in several projects, including Nimrod development, until finally scrapped in 1992.
One other Comet 3, c/n 0601, was built as the first production aircraft for BOAC but the order was cancelled and the airframe used for structural tests. Other Comet 3s on the production line, c/n 0602-06110, were not completed when orders were cancelled.

Demonstrations were performed by G-ANLO around Australia during its tour.

After departure from Sydney on December 6 it circled the de Havilland Bankstown plant at about 1000ft before climbing to 15,000ft and continuing to Canberra where it flew circuits around the aerodrome and Parliament House.

It then climbed to 20,000ft for a final one hour and 43-minute flight to Melbourne.

It flew to Perth on December 8, returning to Sydney on the same day and establishing a Perth-Sydney record for a commercial aircraft of four hours and seven minutes.

Additional demonstrations were performed at Melbourne and Sydney before it left for Auckland on December 13 before heading “home” via North America, becoming the first jet airliner to cross the Pacific and circumnavigate the globe.

There had been interest in the Comet from British Commonwealth Pacific Airlines, Qantas and TAA. However, for a variety of reasons, it did not prove attractive to Australian operators.

Thirty years after the Comet’s Sydney arrival I had the pleasure of meeting John Cunningham at his home not far from the de Havilland Hatfield factory which played such a pivotal role in his extensive flying career. I asked him about the Comet 3 visit to Australia and he explained how the departure ran later than expected.

He had driven to Hatfield about midnight in thick fog for a planned early morning departure. He doubted he could leave before daylight and the weather outlook was for the fog to be likely similar in 24 hours.

He said: “Later that afternoon, or maybe it was nearer to midday, there was a slight clearance, enough to see two lights ahead on the runway. And that was sufficient for me to go off and go to Cairo. I stopped the night in Cairo and left the next day to continue to Bombay, Singapore and Darwin to arrive in Sydney in the afternoon, 24 hours later than I originally intended.

“I had Qantas pilots who came all the way to England to come out on this flight with me. The captain, who is only fairly recently retired, was Ian Ralphe. He had never flown in a jet aircraft before because Qantas were, at that time, flying the Constellation and I think he was rather astonished. He sat in the cockpit in the spare pilot’s seat behind me and his first takeoff was in thick fog where you could only see a very short distance down the runway.

“We were rushing down the runway and he could not see anything at all and then bursting up into what was, in fact, a nice blue sky a short distance from the ground. He remained with me to Sydney. I think he survived the whole business.”

On July 29 1959, Captain Ian Ralphe commanded the first Qantas Boeing 707-138 to San Francisco: VH-EBC City of Canberra, launching the jet airliner age for Australia.