One year before Boeing announced the go-ahead of the Boeing 727 program on 5 December 1960, there were serious reservations within the manufacturer about whether or not to proceed with the 727. At the time Boeing's commercial division was still quite a bit smaller than the military aircraft division and the company's desire to have wide customer base resulted in numerous variations in the Boeing 707/720 family that stretched the company's resources to the point that for every 707 delivered, Boeing was taking a $1 million loss. At this point, the De Havilland in Britain was about a year ahead of Boeing on work on its own trijet, the DH.121 Trident which was designed to broadly meet a similar set of specifications as that of the 727.

De Havilland saved itself a lot of time as it was specified from the start to have three engines while Boeing's design studies alternated between four and two-engined designs before settling on three engines. Before a T-tail design was settled upon for the 727, a group of Boeing engineers visited De Havilland's Hatfield factory to review the progress on the Trident and the visit was reciprocated shortly afterwards when a group of engineers from De Havilland visited Boeing's Seattle facilities to review the progress on the 727. At this point, the British firm suggested an Anglo-American alliance with Boeing building the Trident under license and worldwide sales markets divided between the American Trident team and the British Trident team. De Havilland would have a bigger customer base and lower unit price for its Trident design and Boeing wouldn't have to commit what was estimated to be $100 million to get the 727 program to completion of the prototypes and first flight.

As surprising as it may sound today, Boeing was very unsure of itself in the commercial market and the De Havilland proposal offered a low-risk way of getting into the short-haul market and there was a considerable amount of convergence in the two designs. However, Boeing wanted the capability to operate from a 5,000 foot runway, a specification that didn't factor into the Trident design (as a matter of fact, the Trident's early versions had a reputation amongst pilots as "ground grippers"). The two teams then looked at the possibility of putting the 727's high lift wing on the Trident, but the costs of the engineering required were identical to that of proceeding with the 727 program. The proposal for the alliance quietly died and to many at De Havilland came as no surprise.

When the 727 was rolled out, there were accusations in the British press that it was copied from the Trident, but De Havilland's engineers were adamant in interviews in dismissing the furor and reminded a skeptical public that Boeing did have first-class wind tunnel facilities and some of the finest aerodynamicists and engineers in the world would would have arrived naturally at some of the conclusions that resulted in the layout of both aircraft!

Source: Boeing 727 (Modern Civil Aircraft:13) by Peter Gilchrist. Ian Allan Press, 1996, p7-16.

It was in the late 1970s that analysts at Cessna realized that the vast majority of utility aircraft used in remote areas were either unsuitable for the role or were, in the case of the Douglas DC-3 and the De Havilland Beaver/Otter series, aging with no ideal replacement in the works. So on 20 November 1981 the Cessna Model 208 Caravan was launched, John Berwick, the chief engineer at Cessna's Pawnee Division in Wichita, Kansas, brought on board two men who were instrumental in design and development of the De Havilland Canada Beaver- the first individual was Russ Bannock, who first flew the Beaver on its maiden flight in August 1947 and later rose to De Havilland Canada's sales director after having demonstrated the Beaver worldwide.

The other addition was Dick Hiscocks who was the head aerodynamicist on the Beaver and later became De Havilland Canada's VP for engineering. Both Bannock and Hiscocks had recently retired from DHC and were brought in regularly to advise Cessna and review the program on a monthly basis. Two years after launch, the Caravan made its first flight on 9 December 1982.

At about the same time, Federal Express was looking at a small cargo aircraft as a feeder to replace trucks that were used to fly packages to/from small towns to larger feeder cities that transferred them to the larger jets in the cargo fleet. The founder and president, Fred Smith, initially wanted only twin-engined aircraft for the feeder role but was convinced by Cessna to a flying demonstration- Smith was sold and in 1985 ordered 30 Caravans featuring an underfuselage cargo pannier developed for Federal Express (but now offered to all Caravan customers). In their first six months of operation with the company, the Caravans had a 99 percent dispatch rate in over 2,000 hours flying time. FedEx also drove the development of a stretched Caravan, the Grand Caravan Model 208B which had four additional feet of fuselage for more cargo capacity. The first 208B went into service for the company in October 1986 and by 1996, the Caravan fleet had flown over 1 million hours for the company, by which point they had 300 Caravans in service. The 500th Caravan built would go to FedEx.

Source: The Legend of Cessna by Jeffrey L. Rodengen. Write Stuff Enterprises, 1998, p205-212.

Although the USAAF used the De Havilland Mosquito PR.Mk XVI primarily in the photo-reconnaissance role in Europe, there were two lesser-known types of missions flown by the two squadrons of the 25th Bomb Group at were equipped with the Mosquito.

"Mickey ships" were specially-modified Mosquitos that were equipped with the H2X radar set used on the B-17 Flying Fortress. A bulged nose housing held the H2X scanner with the amplifier and electronics crammed in the nose and bomb bay. The radar scope itself, though, was in the rear fuselage. Before the approach to the target, the observer had to climb over the equipment in the bomb bay and into the rear fuselage where he either photographed the radar display or filmed it with a movie camera. The purpose of the "Mickey ships" was to get radar navigation images of the approaches to German targets. These images would be then correlated with maps to provide the B-17 navigators with poor-weather approaches to high-priority targets in Germany.

The H2X drew a current that often was more than the electrical system of the Mosquito and the equipment often arced, aborting the mission. If bailout was necessary, the observer had to climb over the equipment and jump out the bomb bay- assuming of course, the crew remembered to open the bay doors.

The other lesser-known USAAF Mosquito mission was code-named "Red Stocking" and were done in conjunction with the OSS, the CIA's predecessor. Equipped the special equipment, the Red Stocking Mosquito flights flew deep into Germany to detect and record UHF transmissions from OSS agents in the field. The bomb bay was modified to take the receiving equipment, an oxygen system, and accommodations for the observer who operated the receiving set.

The OSS agent carried what was called the "Joan-Eleanor" device, which was a four-pound radio set that beamed the agent's reports on a very narrow beam that was nearly impossible for German counterintelligence to detect via triangulation. A Red Stocking Mosquito would fly overhead a predetermined point at a particular time so the OSS agent could point the Joan-Eleanor antenna in the right direction. The missions were flown singly and at high altitude, often at night. In one mission, a Red Stocking flight circled over Berlin at over 30,000 feet to communicate with several OSS agents in the city.

Source: Wings of Fame, Volume 18. AIRtime Publishing, 2000, "de Havilland DH.98 Mosquito (Bomber and PR Variants" by Martin Bowman, p84-87.

In 1936 the RAF issued Specification T6/36 for an aircraft designed from the outset for crew training. At the time, air crew training was often carried out retired aircraft types. T6/36 required the new design be a monoplane with retractable undercarriage, side-by-side seating with dual controls, a radio compartment for the training of navigators and radio operators and a manually-operated gun turret. There was to even be provision for a forward firing gun and practice bomb carriage as well. The RAF indicated that well over 100 aircraft would be required.

De Havilland was selected to built its design, an elegant looking aircraft powered by a single 525-horsepower Gipsy King 1 12-cylinder engine. The De Havilland DH.93 Don made its first flight on 18 June 1937. Initial flight testing showed the need for several modifications, including the addition of auxiliary fins under the horizontal tailplane but an order for 250 aircraft went forth.

Once the training equipment including the gun turret was installed, it was found the DH.93 Don was underpowered and suffered from continued stability issues. The order was revised to only 50 aircraft which were to be fitted out as light transports seating four to six individuals. A "turtleback" was fitted in place of the radio compartment and the dorsal gun turret. Of the 50 aircraft delivered, only 30 were delivered as airworthy and distributed quietly across several RAF station flights. The remaining 20 went straight into service as engineless ground instructional airframes.

The RAF's crew training needs shifted over to a design that was not tendered for the T6/36 specification- the Avro Type 652A first flew the year before the issuance of Specification T6/36 and would go into production as the vastly superior Avro Anson while the DH.93 Don faded into obscurity.
Source: Air Enthusiast, May/June 2003. "Out-Moded Teacher- De Havilland's Don Crew Trainer" by Daniel Ford, p74-75.

In 1957 the last of the Auster liason aircraft were retired from the Royal Air Force with great reluctance. The British Army, however, keen to replace the unique capabilities of the Auster with the de Havilland Beaver, came up against a government limit on the size of aircraft the Army Air Corps could operate- 4000 lbs. Anything larger was to be operated by the RAF. However, the AAC wasn't deterred by this regulation and managed to get a waiver to allow them to order 46 DHC-2 Beavers delivered from 1960-1967. No other type of aircraft was even considered.

However, as early as 1952 de Havilland Canada was considering a British-built Beaver. The 550 horsepower Alvis Leonides radial, already in use with the Percival Provost and Percival Pembroke twin engine communications aircraft, offered 100 more horsepower for an additional weight of 98 lbs. One of the engines was shipped to de Havilland's plant in Downsview (Toronto) for testing on a Beaver. Aircraft CF-GOE-X was fitted with a longer nose cowling to accommodate the Leonides engine which drove a larger three-bladed propeller. The vertical fin required redesign with a taller design with straight leading and trailing edges and more dorsal fin fillet area.

The Leonides Beaver (also known as the Beaver Mk.2) first flew at Downsview on 10 March 1953 and demonstrated improvements in top speeds and time-to-climb. However, the cost of the conversion outweighed the additional performance and the British Army Air Corps ended up ordering standard Wasp Junior-powered Beavers. During flight testing in Britain, the AAC even landed one of their Beavers on a Royal Navy carrier deck.

Source: The Immortal Beaver- The World's Greatest Bush Plane by Sean Rossiter. Douglas & McIntyre, 1996, p104-106

Now entering service, the Hawker 900XP business jet is the latest variant of a line of business jets that have been in continuous production since 1962, longer than any other civilian jet. Only the Boeing 737 comes close, having been in production since 1968.

The original production version, the Hawker-Siddeley HS-125, was built and designed with the airframe failures of the De Havilland Comet in mind (the HS-125 design originated with De Havilland) had a robust structure that was even approved for operations from unpaved and sod runways. No airframe in this family of aircraft has ever suffered a failure as a result.

The first HS-125s were powered by Rolls-Royce Viper turbojets which were loud and not only fuel-thirsty, but also oil thirsty as the oil wasn't recovered from the bearings of the engine and one of the tasks of the copilot was to pour more oil into the turbojet before each flight. The first big leap in the design came in 1976 when Garrett TFE731 turbofan engines were added to the 125-700, making it, along with the Lear 35 and Falcon 10, one of the first turbofan applications in business jets.

The next leap that made the design a commercial success came in 1983 when the 125-800 rolled out with new longer span wing and a wrap around windshield to reduce drag.

There is an apocryphal story that when they were designing the cabin cross section for the HS-125, De Havilland engineers went to the London clubs frequented by executives that they expected to form the market for the aircraft and measured them to be sure the cabin was sized properly.

Source: Flying, October 2009. "Hawker 900XP- The newest version of a first generation business jet is the best one yet" by J. Mac McClellan, p43-45.

In 1955 De Havilland began work on the Blue Steak, a medium-range ballistic missile that would have been based in underground silos in eastern England. Powered by two Rolls-Royce RZ.2 liquid-fuelled engines (which were based on the earlier RZ.1 which themselves were based on the US Rocketdyne S-2 engine), it would have been armed with a single nuclear warhead. Several complete systems minus the warhead were live-fired at test stands at RAF Spadeadam and were shown to be very robust and reliable.

In 1960 the Blue Streak was cancelled in favor of the Douglas Skybolt air-launched ballistic missile which was to have been carried by Avro Vulcans in RAF service. Work on the Blue Streak continued as a space launcher, though, with its proven live-fire reliability an asset as a satellite launcher. However, later that year it was cancelled altogether, but all was not lost. The Blue Streak formed the basis for the Europa booster which in turn led to the Ariane launcher used by the European Space Agency.

Source: British Secret Projects, Hypersonics, Ramjets, & Missiles by Chris Gibson and Tony Buttler. Midland Publishing, 2007, p125.

In 1943 a DeHavilland Mosquito in BOAC markings landed at RAF Leuchars in Scotland carrying a valuable passenger- Danish physicist Niels Bohr, the 1922 winner of the Nobel Prize in physics. In a conference in Washington DC in 1939, Bohr detailed how the uranium isotope U-235 could be used to create a chain reaction in an atomic bomb. By 1943 the Nazis were rounding up and deporting the Jews in Denmark and as his mother was Jewish, Bohr was at risk. Word got out that he was about to be arrested and given the choice between joining Hitler's atomic weapons project or be sent with his family to a concentration camp.

With the help of the British secret service, Bohr was smuggled to Sweden and then flown in an improvised bunk in the bomb bay of the Mosquito from Stockholm to Scotland. From there he was flown onward to England and then the United States to join the Manhattan Project.

The Mosquito flew approximately 200 flights in BOAC colors between Stockholm and the UK during the war conveying clandestine personnel and war materiel. Only the Mosquito was fast enough to evade patrolling German fighters over the North Sea.

Source: Aviation History, September 2009. "The Magnificent Merlin" by Nicholas O'Dell, p32.