de Havilland
6 types · 1 airframes
Pre-1950 Narrative
The de Havilland Aircraft Company Limited (pronounced , də HAVI-lənd) was a British aviation manufacturer established in late 1920 by Geoffrey de Havilland at Stag Lane Aerodrome Edgware on the outskirts of North London. In January 1920, Geoffrey de Havilland was working for Airco as technical director and chief designer. With Thomas's help, de Havilland took modest premises at the nearby Stag Lane Aerodrome and formed a limited liability company, de Havilland Aircraft Company Limited, incorporated 26 September 1920. They survived until 1925 when de Havilland's own design, the Moth (first flown 22 February 1925) proved to be just what the flying world was waiting for. In 1928, de Havilland Aircraft Company Limited went public. Amy Johnson flew solo from England to Australia in a Gipsy Moth in 1930.
Aircraft Types
de Havilland Comet
The de Havilland DH.106 Comet was the world's first jet airliner. Built at Hatfield and first flown in 1949, it entered BOAC service in 1952, flying higher and faster than any airliner before it. In 1953 and 1954 two Comets broke up in flight, and the investigation traced the cause to metal fatigue in the pressurised cabin, a failure mode the industry had not understood. Grounded and redesigned with a stronger structure and oval windows, the Comet 4 returned in 1958 and opened the first transatlantic jet service, but larger American jets took the market it had created. Comets flew on with airlines, the RAF and research agencies until 1997, and the type's descendant, the Nimrod, served until 2011.
de Havilland DH.50
The de Havilland DH.50 was a British single-engined biplane transport of 1923, designed as a successor to the wartime DH.4 and DH.9 and carrying four passengers in an enclosed cabin. De Havilland built only 17 at Stag Lane; the other 21 of the 38 built were licence-produced in Australia, Belgium and Czechoslovakia. Alan Cobham's long-distance flights to Cape Town and Australia made the type's reputation, Qantas built and operated it in numbers, and one became the first aircraft used by the Royal Flying Doctor Service. The last examples were lost during the Second World War, and the DH.50 displayed at Longreach today is a replica.
de Havilland DH.91 Albatross
The de Havilland DH.91 Albatross was a four-engined British wooden airliner of the 1930s, designed to an Air Ministry specification for a transatlantic mailplane. Just seven were built: two mailplane prototypes and five production aircraft seating 22 passengers. First flown in May 1937, the type entered Imperial Airways service in 1938–39, set inter-city speed records, and flew wartime routes from Bristol to Lisbon and Shannon while the RAF used the two mailplanes on the Iceland run. Accidents and an air raid reduced the fleet steadily, and after a July 1943 crash was traced to deterioration of the plywood wing structure, the last two aircraft were scrapped that September; none survives.
de Havilland Dove
The de Havilland Dove (DH.104) was a British twin-engined short-haul airliner built to the Brabazon Committee's Type VB feederliner requirement as the all-metal successor to the Dragon Rapide biplane. It first flew on 25 September 1945 and entered service with Central African Airways in December 1946. Production, as the sources scope it, totalled 544 aircraft built between 1946 and 1967, including 127 Devons for the RAF and 13 Sea Devons for the Royal Navy. Civil Doves flew feeder, executive, air ambulance and survey work around the world, the type served with the armed forces of more than 20 countries, and examples were still reported airworthy in 2025.
de Havilland Hornet
The de Havilland Hornet was a British single-seat, twin-engined fighter that carried the Mosquito's wooden construction into a smaller, faster airframe built for long-range operations in the Far East. It first flew in July 1944 but entered service only after the war, equipping RAF day fighter squadrons at home before fighting as a strike aircraft during the Malayan Emergency; a naval version, the Sea Hornet, served with the Fleet Air Arm. De Havilland built 209 Hornets and 178 Sea Hornets, the type was withdrawn by 1956, and no complete example survives.
de Havilland Mosquito
The de Havilland Mosquito was a British twin-engined combat aircraft of the Second World War, built largely of wood and powered by two Rolls-Royce Merlin engines. Designed as an unarmed bomber that would rely on speed for protection, it proved adaptable to bombing, night fighting, reconnaissance and strike work, and more than seven thousand were built in Britain, Canada and Australia.