I have an old VHS video of this story buried away somewhere, kindly sent to me many years ago by one of the team. A very sad tale indeed.

Hallibags, Stirling and Hornet have to top the list of UK types unrepresented. It’s not like the Hornet was even a massive thing to store. As individual a/c, the Spit’ prototype, yes…and a Dams Lanc’. Umm….a few Typhoons, so we’d have had a chance of a flier would have been nice too…..:-)

Airmanship isn’t just about following rules though, it’s about judgement. Aviation in, for example the 1930’s, was much less proscribed, but overall, good airmanship was similar to today. We are just circumscribed by rather more rules…..sadly.

Of course, if your pilot was flying over the Sea of Timor in a headwind, non-radio in the 1930’s, flying very low over the oggin would have made perfect sense…;)

…ooooooh YES…. Seeing the Comet back in the air is the best news for a long time… Seriously looking forward to seeing this legendary original fly……! Well done to all at OW.
This machine looks so perfect in the air and the sound of the twin six’s is as perfect as her lines. Now – when’s the next show……:cool:

Phew, I’m glad that’s sorted…. Year’s ago, correctness was the norm. Today, we have to suffer the indignities of ‘iPhone’, ‘esure’ and ‘Toys R Us’ (No idea how to reverse my ‘R’ here…) the latter a very poor example for children. I’m sure there are many more blurred lines. However, the branding issue is similar to the DH issue.

DH themselves could be a little confusing with ‘correctness’. Their pre-war airscrews (Their literature of the time favoured this pre-war term.) were made by de Havilland Propellers Ltd. The demise of the term ‘airscrew’ term was hastened during the war, so runs the possibly apocryphal story, when an RAF base ordered a quantity of ‘Airscrews’, and received instead a busload of ‘aircrew’…..! Some argue that ‘airscrew’ is still the correct term for a tractor propeller, and that the term ‘propeller’ is only correct for a pusher propeller. I think they lost that battle about seventy years ago however…!

(My late Grandfather’s pet hatred was the term ‘WWI’, either written or abbreviated. As a combatant, to his generation, it was always either the ‘Great War’, or ‘First (World) War’. ” ‘WWI’ sounds like a Corporation bus” he would say. ‘World War 1/One’ is, after all, writing an abbreviation out long hand isn’t it…? ‘First World War’ etc, seems far more respectful of the cataclysmic magnitude of the event than ‘WW1’. Just my opinion of course.)

James reminds me of a little mystery of no consequence;- I wonder if anyone knows how, or why, the DH engines came to be named ‘Gipsy’, rather than the more standard ‘Gypsy’….? Perhaps the spelling was less settled back in those days? One for James there I think…!

I watched the program referred to. In fairness, it was more of a quickie which seemed to be aimed at kids. I don’t have any problem with Dan Snow whatsoever, but on a wider scale, presentation of aviation-related subjects on TV tends to be poor. The problem is that it’s a specialist subject in it’s own right. Presenters can be good general historians, but know zip about aviation. I’d much rather have aviation programs presented by aviation people who aren’t going to make glaring errors and who can mug-up on the history. After all, folks would soon kick up a fuss if F1 was being presented by the ‘One Man And His Dog’ team….
Some of the output of the BBC over the years has been astonishingly good. I do think, however, that they try and do too much at times and don’t always play to their strengths. Over recent years there has been a huge proliferation of BBC channels. Most people seem to feel that they’d rather the BBC leant towards quality rather than quantity. That said, the BBC iPlayer site is excellent now. It’s great to be able to choose content at will and look at stuff that one has missed.
Someone mentioned above that the Beeb could be funded directly by the Government, which would make a lot of sense, – just so long as it didn’t become further politicised….

Obviously, the family name was de Havilland.

‘Evidence’. Indeed.

I have a large archive of original DH material covering most of it’s existence. Within normal blocks of narrative, in brochures and manuals, they do indeed occasionally refer to themselves as the ‘de Havilland Co., Ltd.’ etc.

However……..in every single manual, brochure, handbook etc, that I have, they style themselves as ‘THE DE HAVILLAND AIRCRAFT COMPANY LTD.’ . In fact, if testimony were required of how the company themselves preferred to be styled, – then one need look no further than their offices at Hatfield. In large capitals above the main head office entrance it stated ‘DE HAVILLAND AIRCRAFT’, surmounted by a flagpole, from which fluttered a flag emblazoned with their ‘DH’ (Note, not ‘de H’) monogram. This is all illustrated, for example, in their full page advert in the program for the 1935 Kings Cup. Here again, their name is all in capitals, – as it is in every single period manual, handbook, brochure etc that I have – without exception.

Thus, as a trading entity, they never styled themselves ‘de Havilland Aircraft’.

Therefore, it would appear that the nit-picking about ‘correctness’ of the company name is a trifle academic. The company styled itself ‘THE DE HAVILLAND AIRCRAFT CO. LTD.’ on it’s printed material.