The Ghost

Government policy accelerated the demise of de Havilland

The Ghost jet engine was manufactured by de Havilland, not Rolls-Royce as stated by Brian Cowell (Letters, PE May). It was a more powerful version of the Goblin, which was used in the Vampire fighter aircraft.

The Ghost powered the Comet 1 and the Venom fighter. I was an apprentice at de Havilland from 1949 to 1954 and at the time of the Comet disasters was working in the engine stress office. An initial thought was that engine failure – loss of turbine blades – had caused the crashes, but investigation, including the retrieval of two engines from the sea off Elba, found this was not the case.

Government policy accelerated the demise of de Havilland. Several Blue Streak intercontinental rockets were built before the project was cancelled, leaving the field open to the French Ariane rocket.

Then the Gyron Junior axial-flow jet engine and the Spectre rocket engine, both of which were being built at de Havilland to power the Saunders-Roe fighter, fell by the wayside when that plane was cancelled. The aeroplane and the power plants can be seen at Cosford aircraft museum.

Ian Bearne, Milford, Staffordshire

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