Recession Road: The Comet
This post is from our Recession Road series, part of our special report on the global downturn.
We've made a brief stop in Hatfield, home of the de Havilland Comet, the world's first commercial jet airliner to make it into production. The first prototype took to the skies just over 60 years ago, on 27 July 1949.
Following a number of accidents caused by metal fatigue, the Comet had to be re-designed. The original Comet can be identified by its square windows, but following testing this was found to be one of the factors that led to the accidents.
The picture of a model outside the Comet pub is taken on the edge of the well-known landmark the Comet Roundabout.
Update 1350: Thanks to many of you for pointing out that we had badly described the model - it does indeed sport a pair of propellers and is not a jet plane. Many apologies - our next post from the road will hopefully be error-free.
You can read an explanation of our Recession Road series here.
I'm 
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It is indeed the Comet pub, but the model is a Mosquito, designed at Salisbury Hall and built at Hatfield. The propellors are a bit of a giveaway that it isn't a jet plane!
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Sorry - that isn't the Comet airliner - that's the original Comet from the 1920's, winner of the first air race from London to Australia. It's a twin propeller airplane, not a 4-jet pressurised airliner!
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Sorry to spoil the story, but the model isn't of the Comet airliner, but of the earlier Comet racer, which won the England-Australia Air Race in 1934.
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That's the Comet racer, not the jet airliner !
Adjacent is the new Uni campus on the site of the De Havilland factory. Lots of students but no proper jobs anymore.
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Silly Sausage! It's a model of the DH88 Comet Racer - which flew from London to Australia in the 1930s - not the DH106 Comet jet airliner!
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It is not a Comet Airliner or a Mosquito - it is a DH88 de Havilland Racing Comet
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What, exactly, has a brief dissertion into 1950's airliners got to do with the current recession and its effects on or near the A1? Why do you then compound it with a duff bit of aircraft recognition?
The deHavilland Comet clearly isn't going to be your Specialist Subject so perchance you should progress a bit further up the Great North Road. See for yourself the thousands of men and women who find themselves on the dole because of the gross misjudgements of a bunch of financiers in London, New York and elsewhere.
Meanwhile reflect on the fact that you appear to hold a privileged position which allows you to "explore the world of photojournalism" - one assumes at licence-payers' expense. This is going to go down a bundle with the unemployed and dispossessed you will meet on your travels. Reflect on the contrast between their lot and your own and between their lot and the increasingly-rehabilitated financiers and you may just start to understand the anger and cynicism currently afflicting the nation.
Please try to convince me this isn't just another expense account jolly to the Working Class Zoo
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@Britishsubject: presumably the 3000 or so University employees don't have 'proper' jobs, then?
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You don't need to go much further up the GNR. If you turn round and face away from the Comet (which was not a pub but a hotel, last time I looked), you should be able to see the headquarters of T-Mobile UK. I worked there until a couple of months ago, when my job and a lot of others were exported to India.
When I started, the DH airfield was still visible, even a last lonely plane (which you can still spot on Google Earth). It was gradually built over, replaced by a Business Park, an expanded University and houses. Now the Business Park jobs are disappearing, not just from my old workplace as it goes Orange, but from all its neighbours whose businesses expanded in the good times only to discover now that they are not as recession-proof as they thought. Without all that business, what happens to the University, and to the people who live in the houses? There are two programmes to be made, right there - and can I be "Creative Consultant" please?
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Quite a few have noted that the model shown here is the DH88 Comet racer. Of course, a little further up the A1 at Old Warden just off the A1 at Biggleswade is the real thing, and it's still airworthy too. It's at the Shuttleworth Collection, open every day for all to see.
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What happens to the univerity?
It carries on as it did before when British Aerospace shut down and companies like T-Mobile moved in.
I worked for British Aerospace, on the former DH site for 14 years. The T-Mobile building stands where the building that I used to work in, once stood.
In the early 1990s production of the BAe 146 at Hatfield stopped and was moved to BAe Woodford,near Manchester. Thousands of workers were made redundant so that a BAe subsidiary company, Arlington (aka British Housingspace) could turn the site into a business park.
I was lucky and walked straight into another job with an IT company.
Some employees were given the opportunity, and chose to relocate to Woodford, but many, like me were made redundant. Those that relocated lost their jobs a few years later, when production of the 146 ceased altogether in 2001/2.
Today it has been announced that BAe Woodford will now close completely.
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As has been commented the comet DH88 was the Grosvenor House racing plane that won the London to Australia race and can be seen at Old Warden. My contribution if of interest is that when I was an apprentice at British Aerospace we were tasked with replacing many parts of the Comet to make it airworthy once again including the joystick and much of the undercarriage only to see it collapse on landing at the Hatfield airshow.
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