James Matthew Weber wrote:
> >The aircraft manufactures have learned a great deal since the development
> >of the Concorde. Like the British Comet, the Americans have sit back and
> >learned by the mistakes of others.. The Boeing 707 was a safer aircraft
> >because of the Comet experiences. The 707 also took advantage of the bad
> >press that the Comet received during its development and became a huge
> >success in its time.
>
> This really isn't accurage. The problem was De-Havilland had no
> experience in building large pressurized aircraft, or large  jet
> aircraft. By the time Boeing built the Dash-80, they had already built
> several large pressurized aircraft, as well as  the B-47 and B-52.

James, I have to confirm that 'The Boeing 707 was a safer aircraft
because of the Comet experiences.' To set-up my Comet webpages I made a
lot of search and found out that during the accident investigation of YP
and YY there were regular safety meetings which were held between DH and
Boeing. The philosophy was (and is the same today) that competition
stops when safety is the main focus. Boeing was well informed about the
investigations and the related findings, so that results could already
be implemented in the 07 design. I would say that the 07 was the first
a/c to benefit from the negative DH experience. Of course Boeing had
already experience as you state, they didn't start from scratch.

> (SNIP)Boeing didn't need the Comet experience, they already
> knew from other experience.

You should say : Boeing already knew from other experience and in
addition had the results of the negative Comet experience.

> Also the American were probably better
> engineers than the British by that time,  may well have had access to
> better design tools even then.

Let's try to be objective ...

Rgds,
...........................................................
Marc Schaeffer, Luxembourg // mailto:marcmsc@geocities.com
WWW  http://www.geocities.com/CapeCanaveral/Lab/8803/
De Havilland COMET and aircraft orders homepage