The De Havilland Aircraft Company

The De Havilland Aircraft Company

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This book tells one of the great stories of British engineering excellence in the twentieth century. Beginning with a two-man and two-woman family enterprise to build a primitive 'stick and string' aeroplane, financed by a far-sighted grandparent, the story unfolds rapidly. Within six years the aeroplane's designer, Geoffrey de Havilland ('D.H') was able to create the D.H.2 fighters that helped to end the dominance of German Fokker monoplanes then shooting Britain's Royal Flying Corps from the skies France in 1915-16. When the fighting ended, his D.H.9s operated the world's first sustained daily international airline services. Six more years and D.H.60 Moths established the worldwide club movement that put fun and adventure into flying. The D.H.88 Comet won the greatest ever air race, across the globe, in 1934. When was returned in Europe, the D.H.98 Mosquito introduced new concepts of bombing - so fast that fighters could not catch it; so precise that it was possible to open doors of prisons for patriots to escape. After the war, the D.H.106 Comet airliner survived disaster to open the way to an age of jet travel when no tow peoples on earth need be more than twenty four hours apart. We can be proud that an English company, led by people with vision, achieved so much on one man's lifetime.