Word: transportation
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Dates: during 1940-1949
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...airmen were not worried about the Brabazon; they thought it too big, slow' and expensive. But the Comet was a bird of a different feather and stood an excellent chance to cut into the transport market now dominated by U.S. planemakers. As one U.S. airman said: "America is going to have to produce something within one year. If the jets hold up to expectation, Comet will sweep the board...
...feeder-lines, it had both De Havilland's reciprocating engined Dove (eight to eleven passengers) and Handley Page's 22-passenger turboprop, the Mamba Marathon.* But the star of the show at Farnborough was De Havilland's 36-passenger Comet, the first four-engined jet transport, which took off and then flashed overhead at better than 500 m.p.h...
...turned out some of Britain's best-known military planes (Mosquito, Vampire). It was his firm that developed the famed Ghost jet engine that shot a De Havilland fighter to the world's altitude record (56,400 ft.) and started Sir Geoffrey thinking about a jet transport...
Nevertheless, the threat was enough to cause U.S. planemakers to sound an alarm. They had no commercial jet planes under construction, or even on order, although their drawing boards were full of sketches. U.S. airlines could not afford the immense cost of a new transport estimated as high as $50 million. Both planemakers and airlines looked to Washington for help, but Washington had not made up its mind what to do. Last year, when the planemakers first woke up to Britain's challenge, they had tried to get Congress to pass a "prototype" bill under which the Federal Government...
...aircraft builders were ready to go whenever anyone placed an order. Lockheed, whose Constellation is a prime target for the Comet to shoot at, has plans for a 40-passenger jet transport which it thinks could keep pace with the Comet and cost no more than a Connie to operate. Douglas also has commercial jets, stalemated at the paper stage. So does Boeing, which said, perhaps overoptimistically, that it could produce a 500-m.p.h. transport within 18 months of receiving a contract. But Boeing's Vice President Wellwood E. Beall warned that Congress would have to act soon. Said...