The dawn of the jet-age

Part 3 — The Yanks join the party

The first part of this series is here — I suggest you begin there

The final report of the Cohen Commission was delivered in February 1955, and the cause of the Comet accidents was clear. Accumulated stress on the passenger cabin had led to catastrophic failure of the fuselage. It was a terrible indictment of the design team, who had constructed the skin of the aircraft from aluminum alloy less than 1 mm thick — “as thin as a postcard” to quote the exact words of one engineer on the project, in order to save…