ALLEGATIONS that Hatfield aircraft manufacturer de Havilland's was to blame for a series of crashes that killed more than 100 people have provoked mixed reactions from the former work force.

Channel 4's Secret History, broadcast last Thursday (June 13), claimed, with the help of newly-discovered documents, that senior company managers, along with the Government and the national airline BOAC, knew the Comet One was flawed and chose to ignore repeated warnings.

The Comet One, the world's first jet airliner, was built in Hatfield and launched in 1952.

After four catastrophic accidents, the fleet was grounded in 1954.

However, a massive investigation cleared the makers of the Comet, de Havilland, of responsibility.

Mr Reg Willoughby, of Selwyn Crescent, Hatfield, who was a safety inspector working on the Comet One, said: "I worked as an apprentice from 1942. I think the programme was a bit unfair.

"It was a bit exaggerated against the company.

"One of the pilots said he was amazed how thin the aircraft's skin was, but relatively, the skin of a Jumbo Jet is thin.

"Metal strength doesn't depend on thickness."

But Mr Martin Brennan, 79, of Ellenbrook Crescent, Hatfield, said: "It was criminal - 100 people died unnecessarily.

"They didn't listen to the RAF establishment. It was just asking for trouble."

Mr Brennan worked for many years as a pilot before joining British Aerospace, de Havilland's successor at Hatfield, in 1970, and remembers seeing bits of one of the crashed Comet One aircraft being tested at Farnborough.

A friend of his, Harry Foot, was at the controls of one of the pioneering aircraft as it crashed on take-off, but survived.

Mrs Maureen Borrie of Lemsford Village, who worked on later versions of the Comet as an engineer, said: "I did believe the programme. The manufacturers were in too much of a hurry."

But Mr Don Carnell of Marshalswick Lane, St Albans, who worked on the Comet Three and Comet Four versions from 1956, did not accept that the makers were at fault.

He said: "I saw the programme it alleged it did not have enough testing.

"But my personal view is that the problem was not wing metal fatigue, but fatigue on the fuselage caused by the pressure changes.

"I don't think anyone knew about that at the time."

June 19, 2002 18:00