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http://surf.to/comet: Comet crashes and accident reports

All Comet crashes : Summary of all De Havilland Comet accidents.
All hull-losses : Summary of all De Havilland Comet incidents.
Descriptions : Detailed descriptions of all Comet accidents and incidents.
Available Comet accident reports : List of available De Havilland Comet accident reports.

http://surf.to/comet: Article about the accident of Comet IA CF-CUN

Table of contents

This article is taken from Ronald Keith's book "Bush Pilot with a Briefcase" published by Doubleday, Canada 1972. The book is a biography of Grant McConachie who ran Canadian Pacific Airlines from the 1940's until his death from heart failure. The information contained is this article remains the property of Ronald Keith and may not be distributed without his written approval.

Comet C-U-N. You are cleared for take- off." The rasp of tower control in his earphones snapped Captain Charles Pentland out of his pre-dawn drowsiness and the fatigue of yesterday's flight from London. He knew he would need all his powers of skill and concentration for the critical task of taking off in darkness from a strange runway with this unfamiliar type of aircraft with a maximum load, including nearly two tons of kerosene in the wing tanks. On board with Pentland were four other crewmembers and six technicians from the DH factory. They were on a rather unusual delivery run.

In planning the first jet air service across the Pacific, McConachie had been forced into a compromise because of the Comet's limited range. He had conceded he would have to base the jet airliner in Australia and operate it up the line as far as Honolulu to connect there with the piston-powered DC-6B for the long shuttle to Vancouver. The Empress of Hawaii, the first of the two CPA Comets, would have to be ferried from England to Australia to start the service. But it was not intended to be a simple delivery flight. McConachie ballyhooed it as a record-setter---the Comet was to establish a new elapsed-time air record from England to Australia. Great publicity---but, as Pentland put it, "bloody rough on us cockpit help."

The captains he chose for this assignment were tops in their trade, both veterans of twelve years at the controls: Pentland with Imperial Airways and British Overseas Airways, Sawle as a bush pilot in the rugged Canadian north. Pentland was CPA's manager of overseas operations. Sawle was chief pilot, overseas.

At the de Havilland aerodrome, Hatfield, England, the CPA captains took a crash course in flying the Comet They were annoyed to find themselves regarded as old-fashioned "windmill jockeys," and novices in the mysteries of jet flight. Some of the new procedures, they discovered, clashed with flying instincts formed by many thousands of hours at the controls of conventional planes. However, after a short course of ground study and flight instruction, Pentland and Sawle were pronounced qualified for Comet command. Neither had experienced a night take-off in the jet, nor had they flown it heavily loaded. They made preparations to depart from London airport for the flight to Australia.

Thus, Captain Charles Pentland found himself reaching for the throttles in the gloom of the Comet flight deck on a runway of Karachi Airport a few minutes after three in the morning of March 3. As he pushed the throttles forward to take-off position he set the brakes against the surging thrust of the four Ghosts submerged in the Comet's wing roots. Conserve runway by starting the roll at full bore. Without the air-bite of the big props, these gassers were sluggish on initial acceleration, especially when fuelled to the gills like this. In seconds the luminous gauges were clocking take-off rpm. The Comet shuddered with restrained power. Pentland released the brakes. The Empress of Hawaii lurched forward to roll down the runway into the pitch blackness that enveloped Karachi Airport.

What happened then inside the cockpit of the CPA Comet? The evidence included a tyre scuff mark on the runway surface 1,250 yards from the starting point, and tire tracks in the hard sand of the overrun strip between the far end of the runway and the perimeter fence. This was enough to piece together the story.

As the heavily-loaded jet picked up speed Pentland concentrated his attention on steering a course between the runway lights. Sawle called off the airspeed readings. At 85 knots Pentland exerted firm back pressure on the control column to reduce ground friction by raising the nose wheel off the runway. At this point he made his first error. He should have levelled the plane until the forward wheel was almost skimming the surface. Instead he continued to roll nose-high. The design of the Comet 1A wing and the shape of the jet's air intakes were such that in this nose-high position the wing drag increased and the jet thrust diminished. Instead of accelerating to the 122-knot take-off speed, the Comet rumbled on at less than 100 knots, using up precious runway but gaining no more speed. Pentland had ignored the procedure he had been taught during his Comet check-out at de Havilland. At 1,250 yards along the runway the situation was desperate. Pentland tried to hoist the Comet into the air by pulling the nose up sharply. The Comet continued to hug the ground. Then the captain must have recognised his error. He pushed forward on the controls. The plane levelled. The nose wheel came down leaving a tyre scuff mark on the runway. The Comet picked up flying speed. But there was no more runway. Tire tracks on the sand beyond showed the imprint of the nose wheel as well as the main undercarriage. Then the tracks skipped. The Comet was ready to fly. Three seconds more and it would have been up and away. But time had run out for the Empress of Hawaii and for the eleven people on board.

A wheel on the starboard undercarriage struck the culvert of a perimeter drainage ditch. The airliner swerved, staggered, then plunged into a dry canal used for the run-off of monsoon rainwater. At a speed of more than 138 mph, the Comet shattered against the forty-foot embankment on the far side of the canal. The explosion lit up the entire airport and several miles of surrounding countryside.

IMPORTANT NOTE : The information contained is this article remains the property of Ronald Keith author of "Bush Pilot with a Briefcase" published by Doubleday, Canada 1972 and may not be distributed without his written approval.

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