Tragedy Witnesed by the 58th Entry Brats.
A DH110 Breaks up at 1952 Farnborough Air Show.
The DH110 was one of the new breed of aircraft that captivated the minds of young lads at the time. Swept back wings, delta wings, reheat, supersonic flight and sonic booms were new exciting concepts. Amongst our heroes were test pilots John Derry and Neville Dukes. Many schoolboys, like myself, were determined to get involved in this aircraft revolution and one way was to become an RAF Apprentice at Halton.
Unfortunately it was a group of these Apprentices, from the 58th Entry, that witnessed a tragic event involving the DH110. At the end of the day out to the Farnborough Air Show all the Apprentices arrived safely back at Halton. Sadly the bus driver who took them had been killed.
The coach returning to Coventry with a group of Armstrong Siddeley apprentices had nine empty seats!
The Crowd Parted Like the Red Sea.
(But not fast enough!)
Thousands of spectators watched as a de Havilland 110 aircraft broke the sound barrier and then disintegrated in the sky above them and fell to earth.
Thirty-one people, including pilot John Derry, were killed. Dozens more were wounded at the Farnborough Air Show in Hampshire on 6 September 1952.
(John Derry had become the first British pilot to break the sound barrier, during a record attempt exactly four years before.)
After a delay test pilot Neville Dukes took off in a Hawker P1067 Hunter and diving from 40,000 feet over Salisbury Plain arrived with a very large double sonic bang. He then straightened, and swooped past in a victory-roll as a salute to a fallen friend.
58th Entry Brats Witnessed the Tragedy.
The New Zealand ex-RAF Apprentices Association Newsletter online contains the Halton Apprentices' story of that sad day in 1952.
The Post Mortum.
The Press and hence the general public were to blame a faulty engine for the accident. The aircraft Derry had intended to fly had a history of over-heating in one of the engines, but it was later reveiled that this aircraft was u/s (unserviceable) on the day.
So another aircraft was collected from Hatfield Airfield for the air show flight. It was this DH110 that broke up. Nothing to do with the engines and subsequent investigations showed that a wing had failed because it had only 64 per cent of its intended strength. A fact that was not realised at the time with the limited technology and knowledge available in those days.
How the DH110 Became the Sea Vixen.
The de Havilland DH110 was in competition with the Gloster Javelin to provide the RAF and Navy with a powerful radar and missile equipped all weather fighter capable of catching the new generation of fast jet bombers. There was an urgent need to replace the antiquated night-fighter version of the Gloster Meteor and de Havilland Venom and provide something more sophisticated than the Hunters.
The Sea Vixen first flew as the DH110 in September 1951 and soon found favour with admiralty over the Javelin. The 1952 accident, where prototype DH110 disintegrated over Farnborough, helped the RAF to choose the arguably inferior Javelin. The Navy stuck with the DH110 (de Havilland Sea Vixen) however, and the first proper Vixen flew in June 1955, with a first arrested deck landing in April 1956. The FAW1 entered service in 1958 armed with Firestreak missiles giving the Navy its first missile armed interceptor. 119 FAW1s were built.
Let's Hear Your Stories.
I would be pleased to hear from anyone who has any stories about this aircraft; humorous, technical or historical. Please use the Feedback Form to contact me briefly, in the first instance.
Joe Bosher (74th).