In 1933, when Sir Macpherson Robertson put up the £10,000 prize money for the Victorian Centenary Air Race from England to Melbourne, existing aircraft with the necessary performance were all American. The DH88 Comet was born solely of the de Havilland company's patriotic determination to counter this threat and to build a winner, even at a financial loss to themselves.

Their willingness to build a 200 mph racer was therefore advertised with the proviso that orders must be placed by February 1934, a mere nine months before the race.

Three were ordered at once - by Jim and Amy Mollison (the former Miss Amy Johnson), racing driver Bernard Rubins and A.O.Edwards, managing director of the Grosvenor House Hotel.

De Havilland's were as good as their word, and the first Comet - G-ACSP - was flown at Hatfield by Hubert S.Broad, de Havilland's chief test pilot, on September 8th 1934, six weeks before the start of the race.

It was a small, low-wing, cantilever monoplane of all-wood construction, having a very thin wing section planked with laminations of spruce strip. The two crew members sat in tandem behind two large fuel tanks which - with a third smaller tank behind the cabin - gave an ultimate range of 2,925 miles at 220 mph. Power was supplied by two special high-compression Gypsy Six R engines giving 230 hp each at take-off.

These in turn drove Ratier two-position airscrews which automatically changed to coarse pitch when, at 150 mph, the disc on the spinner was pushed back to release their internal air pressure, the airscrews being returned to fine pitch with a bicycle pump before each flight. Other notable contributions to success were the split flaps and manually-retracted undercarriage, then considered novel features.

The three Comets were painted in distinctive colours - the Mollisons' G-ACSP Black Magic was black and gold; Bernard Rubins' nameless G-ACSR was green and flown by Owen Cathcart Jones and Ken Waller; while G-ACSS, flown by C.W.A. Scott and Tom Campbell Black, was resplendent in red and white and named Grosvenor House.

The race started from Mildenhall in Suffolk at dawn on October 20th 1934. The Mollison and Scott/Black Comets both made Baghdad non-stop, but 'SR became lost and force-landed in Persia. It finally overtook 'SP in Allahabad where the Mollisons had retired with engine trouble. Meanwhile Scott and Black were beyond Singapore with the KLM -entered Douglas DC2 in hot pursuit. But only after superhuman efforts to overcome mechanical faults and fatigue did they arrive first in Melbourne to win the speed prize in 70 hours 54 minutes. Cathcart Jones and Waller arrived fourth, but immediately collected newsreels and photographs of the winners and set off again for England.

They arrived at Lympne 13½ days after leaving Mildenhall to set an out-and-home record.

More flights, more records

On December 20th G-ACSR, suitably renamed Reine Astrid, left Evere, Brussels, piloted by Ken Waller and Maurice Franchomme, to carry the Christmas mail to Leopoldville in the Congo, arriving back on December 28th.

It was then sold to the French government as F-ANPY and lowered the Croydon-Le Bourget record to 52 minutes during delivery by Hubert Broad on July 5th 1935. In the course of experimental work for a projected South Atlantic mail service, Jean Mermoz made Paris-Casablanca and Paris-Algiers high-speed proving flights in this machine in the following August and September.

A fourth Comet, F-ANPZ, was built for the French government with a mail compartment in the nose. In their experiments with high-speed aircraft providing a mail service to far-flung colonies, the French also produced the Caudron C641 Typhon, an aeroplane that bore an uncanny resemblance to the Comet.

The Portuguese government had similar mail-carrying ideas, and acquired the Mollisons' Black Magic for a projected flight from Lisbon to Rio de Janeiro. Renamed Salazar and re-registered as CS-AAJ, it was ferried from Hatfield to Lisbon on February 25th 1935 by Senor Carlos Bleck and Lt Costa Macedo, who covered the 1,010 miles nonstop in six hours five minutes. A return trip was made in the following September, and in 1937 Macedo again brought the aircraft back to Hatfield for overhaul; he made an outstanding return flight to Lisbon in five hours 17 minutes in July of that year.

The last Comet

A fifth and final Comet named Boomerang was built to the order of Cyril Nicholson, who planned a series of attempts on the major long-distance records. Piloted by Tom Campbell Black and J.C.McArthur it made a record Hatfield-Cairo non-stop flight of 2,240 miles in 11 hours 18 minutes on August 8th 1935 during the first stage of an attempt on the Cape record. This was abandoned because of oil trouble, and the machine returned non-stop in 12 hours 15 minutes and established a new out-and-home record to Cairo.

Although entered in the round-Britain King's Cup Race of September 7th 1935, Boomerang was a non-starter and left a fortnight later for a second attempt on the Cape record; airscrew trouble over the Sudan on September 22nd compelled the crew to abandon the aircraft by parachute.

Grosvenor House

Grosvenor House went to Martlesham for RAF trials in 1935 and, painted all white as K5084, was a memorable feature of the 1936 Hendon display. It was subsequently damaged when landing with a full load and disposed of as scrap. F.E.Tasker then acquired it and Essex Aero Ltd rebuilt it at Gravesend with Gypsy Six series II engines driving DH variable pitch airscrews. In pale blue and renamed The Orphan, G-ACSS was flown into fourth place in the 1937 Marseilles-Damascus-Paris race by Flg Off A.F Clouston and George Nelson.

Bearing a third name, The Burberry, the aircraft left Croydon on November 14th 1937 piloted by Clouston and Mrs Kirby Green, who succeeded in lowering the out-and-home record to the Cape to 15 days 17 hours. Carrying its final name, Australian Anniversary, it left Gravesend on February 6th 1938, but broke no records after the undercarriage collapsed in Cyprus. The last historic flight by 'SS was one of its greatest. Flown by Clouston and Victor Ricketts, it took off from Gravesend on March 15th 1938, reached Sydney in 80 hours 56 minutes, crossed the Tasman Sea to Blenheim, New Zealand, in 7½ hours, stopped overnight, then returned to Croydon on March 26th.

The 26,450 miles had been covered in 10 days 21 hours 22 minutes to set a record which still stands. The Comet then returned to Gravesend where it remained under tarpaulins until rediscvered in 1951. The DH Technical School then restored it to its original MacRobertson condition for display at the Festival of Britain Exhibition, after which it was preserved by the makers at Leavesden until handed over to the Shuttleworth Trust in 1965.

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