AP 118 · No. 10 Section II · Aircraft Plate 43 / 200

Plate 43 of 200 · Between the wars · Long-distance racer

de Havilland DH.88 Comet

DH.88 Comet, painted as G-ACSS ‘Grosvenor House’, the Shuttleworth Collection’s de Havilland DH.88 Comet (c/n 1996), which C. W. A. Scott and Tom Campbell Black flew from Mildenhall to Melbourne in 71 hours to win the MacRobertson England–Australia air race of October 1934, later tested by the RAF as K5084, flown again as ‘The Burberry’ on Arthur Clouston’s long-distance record flights of 1937–38, restored to fly at Hatfield in 1987 and flown from Old Warden since 2002: the two-seat wooden racer that de Havilland designed and built in nine months, 44 ft in span, with a thin cantilever wing, a long slender fuselage seating pilot and navigator in tandem under a framed canopy, two 230 hp de Havilland Gipsy Six R engines in slim nacelles and a main undercarriage that retracted by handwheel, shown standing tail-down on its wheels and tailskid: gloss red overall with a tapering white cheat line along each side, ‘Grosvenor House’ in white small capitals on the nose, a white ‘G-ACSS’ on the rear fuselage, a black race number ‘34’ on a white oval on both sides of the fin, large white registration letters across the upper and lower wings, polished spinners and two-blade propellers with yellow tips, as it flies today (the undercarriage linkage is simplified, and the stations of the underwing letters are estimated from photographs).

3D model

Turn it over

A procedural model built in Blender from published dimensions, drawings and photographs, painted as G-ACSS ‘Grosvenor House’, the Shuttleworth Collection’s de Havilland DH.88 Comet (c/n 1996), which C. W. A. Scott and Tom Campbell Black flew from Mildenhall to Melbourne in 71 hours to win the MacRobertson England–Australia air race of October 1934, later tested by the RAF as K5084, flown again as ‘The Burberry’ on Arthur Clouston’s long-distance record flights of 1937–38, restored to fly at Hatfield in 1987 and flown from Old Warden since 2002: the two-seat wooden racer that de Havilland designed and built in nine months, 44 ft in span, with a thin cantilever wing, a long slender fuselage seating pilot and navigator in tandem under a framed canopy, two 230 hp de Havilland Gipsy Six R engines in slim nacelles and a main undercarriage that retracted by handwheel, shown standing tail-down on its wheels and tailskid: gloss red overall with a tapering white cheat line along each side, ‘Grosvenor House’ in white small capitals on the nose, a white ‘G-ACSS’ on the rear fuselage, a black race number ‘34’ on a white oval on both sides of the fin, large white registration letters across the upper and lower wings, polished spinners and two-blade propellers with yellow tips, as it flies today (the undercarriage linkage is simplified, and the stations of the underwing letters are estimated from photographs). Drag to orbit, scroll or pinch to zoom · download .glb (1.3 MB)

Data plate

Specification

First flight, number built and top speed are for the whole family (); engine, crew and dimensions are for the DH.88 Comet modelled here.

History

The DH.88 Comet

In 1934 the Australian businessman Sir Macpherson Robertson put up the prize money for an air race from England to Melbourne, to mark the centenary of the state of Victoria. No British aeroplane then flying could hope to beat the fast American transports likely to enter, so de Havilland offered to build a purpose-made racer for any British entrant who ordered one by February, at a fixed price well below what it would cost. Three were ordered. The DH.88 Comet was designed and built in about nine months: a slim two-seater of wood, with a thin cantilever wing skinned in spruce, pilot and navigator sitting one behind the other, two Gipsy Six engines tuned for racing, variable-pitch propellers and a main undercarriage that retracted into the nacelles by a handwheel in the cockpit. The first flew at Hatfield on 8 September 1934, six weeks before the start.

The race left Mildenhall on 20 October 1934. Jim and Amy Mollison in the black G-ACSP ‘Black Magic’ led the field to Baghdad but retired with engine trouble in India. C. W. A. Scott and Tom Campbell Black in the red G-ACSS ‘Grosvenor House’, entered by the hotel’s managing director A. O. Edwards, flew on through Karachi, Allahabad, Singapore and Darwin and crossed the line at Melbourne in just under 71 hours, nursing an engine whose oil pressure had failed over the Timor Sea. A KLM Douglas DC-2 airliner carrying passengers and mail came second, and the third Comet, G-ACSR, finished fourth and then flew straight back to England with film of the race.

Two more Comets were built, one for the French government and one, ‘Boomerang’, for a record attempt to the Cape, so five in all. None was a commercial success, but the Comet showed what a clean, light wooden aeroplane with two good engines could do, and its methods led through the DH.91 Albatross airliner to the Mosquito. Two survive, both in Britain: G-ACSS, which still flies with the Shuttleworth Collection at Old Warden, and the remains of ‘Black Magic’, brought back from Portugal and under long restoration at the de Havilland Aircraft Museum near St Albans.

This airframe

DH.88 Comet G-ACSS ‘Grosvenor House’

G-ACSSThe airframe modelled

G-ACSS (constructor’s number 1996) was the third Comet, painted red for A. O. Edwards and named after his Park Lane hotel, and it won the 1934 race. The Air Ministry then bought it for trials as K5084 at Martlesham Heath, where it was damaged in landing accidents. Rebuilt as a civil aircraft and renamed first ‘The Orphan’ and then ‘The Burberry’, it was flown by Arthur Clouston on long-distance records: to the Cape and back with Betty Kirby-Green in 1937, and in 1938 with Victor Ricketts to New Zealand and back as ‘Australian Anniversary’. After the war it was restored by de Havilland apprentices for the Festival of Britain and passed to the Shuttleworth Collection. A team at Hatfield made it airworthy again and it flew in May 1987, and after a landing accident that year it was rebuilt once more and has flown from Old Warden since 2002. The model shows it as it flies today: gloss red overall, with a tapering white cheat line along each side, ‘Grosvenor House’ in white small capitals on the nose, a white ‘G-ACSS’ on the rear fuselage, a black race number 34 on a white oval on both sides of the fin, large white registration letters across the wings, and polished spinners and propellers with yellow tips.

See it at The Shuttleworth Collection

Where to see one

In the gazetteer

The gazetteer records the DH.88 Comet in 2 UK collections. The airframe modelled here is marked.

Every airframe and serial All 200 plates

Profiles and models are procedural interpretations built in Blender from published dimensions, three-view drawings and photographs of each airframe. Treat the museum aircraft as the reference.