de Havilland (Jump to photos)
The de Havilland Aircraft Company was a British business founded in 1920, when Airco of which Geoffrey de Havilland had been chief designer and owner was sold to BSA. de Havilland then set up a company under his name in September that year in Edgware. It later moved to Hatfield, in Hertfordshire, England.
Initially de Havilland concentrated on single and two-seat biplanes, essentially continuing the DH line of aircraft built by Airco, but engined with de Havilland\'s own Gipsy engines. These included the Gipsy and Tiger Moths. These aircraft set many aviation records, many piloted by de Havilland himself. Amy Johnson flew solo from England to Australia in a Gipsy Moth in 1930, the flight taking 19.5 days.
The Moth line of aircraft continued with the more refined (and enclosed) Hornet Moth and Moth Minor, the latter being a low-wing monoplane constructed of wood.
The DH.84 Dragon was the first aircraft purchased by Aer Lingus, who later operated the DH.84B Dragon Express and the DH.89 Dragon Rapide. de Havilland continued to produce high-performance aircraft including the high-speed twin-piston-engine DH.88 Comet mailplane, one of which became famous in its red livery as the winner of the MacRobertson Air Race from England to Australia.
The high-performance designs and wooden construction methods culminated in perhaps the most famous de Havilland aircraft - the Mosquito, constructed primarily of wood because of the shortage of aluminium during the war.
After the Second World War de Havilland continued with leading-edge designs in both the military and civil field, but several public disasters doomed the company as an independent entity. The de Havilland Comet was put into service in 1952 as the eagerly-anticipated first commercial jet airliner, twice as fast as previous alternatives and a source of British national pride. The Comet suffered three tragic and high-profile crashes in two years. Less well known, but equally disastrous, was the explosion of the DH.110 Sea Vixen prototype during the 1952 Farnborough Air Show, which also killed members of the public.
de Havilland was bought by Hawker-Siddeley before incorporation into British Aerospace. In this period many designs started by de Havilland came into production, including the Trident, HS-146 (later BAe-146), HS-125 (later BAe-125).
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/De_Havilland
