Comet XM823

Never heard of XM823 being painted black, or seen any photos of her in that colour. Believe Cosford are going to repaint her back in the scheme shown in your link and may possibly add “RAF Transport Command” titles under ‘poetic licence’!

They don’t need the poetic licence bit – fits right in to their R&D Collection.

If only they’d preserved Viscounts XT661 or XT575

Oh WOW!

Many, many thanks Arthur, exactly what I was looking for!

Anyone else think the dayglo carries on across the engine bays?

Blimey – a black and dayglo Comet!! Now that would be interesting if Cosford put her back into that scheme!!!:eek:

I knew I had seen it somewhere. This is from the Ian Allan book Classic Civil Aircraft, De Havilland Comet by Peter J Birtles.

Hope this helps

AP

There is a picture of XM823 in the Story of the De Havilland Comet by Scoval.

It is in the standard Transport Command livery, without titles. The caption says: ”Ex Air France Comet 1A F-BGNZ was converted to 1XB standard by de Havilland in 1957 for the Ministry of Supply as G-APAS, and transferred to de Havilland Propellers as XM823 in whoose service this shot was taken in October 1963”.

Quite what de Havilland propellers were using a Comet for is anyones guess!

Like Wamwig I have seen pictures of a black Comet in a book. I can’t remember which one though. It will come to me – or my father may remember.

I’ll get back to you!

AP

I was an apprectice with DH/Hawker Siddely from 1957 to 1962 at Hatfield and saw XM823 which was based at the Propellors side of the site. Then, it was (from memory) painted matt black with the centre section of the fuselage a ‘dayglow’ yellow colour. I believe it was there for trials involving guided missiles.

My certainly father remembers it being black and remembers working on it at Hatfield as well as we were talking about it only last weekend. I remember seeing at least one photo of it in black in a published book but cant remember which one. I have some old de Havilland Gazettes in the loft, if I can remember I will try to find them and maybe there will be a picture in there.

Regards

Anthony

Never heard of XM823 being painted black, or seen any photos of her in that colour. Believe Cosford are going to repaint her back in the scheme shown in your link and may possibly add “RAF Transport Command” titles under ‘poetic licence’!

Bump just in case!