By Bill Gunston A little over four years after the war had
ended, the most significant creation to evolve from the Brabazon
Committee's 1942 transport aircraft development plan would take
to the air, and with it usher in a revolution in civil aviation
that remains to this day. On 27 July 1949 de Havilland chief
test pilot John Cunningham, previously a famed night-fighter
pilot, celebrated his birthday by leading his flight-test crew
aboard the all-silver prototype DH106, the world's first jet
airliner, and taking off on its maiden flight. The de Havilland
Ghost-powered DH106 was soon afterwards named Comet. Earlier
during that year of the Comet's debut, on 21 April, French
inventor René Leduc's concept of an aircraft whose fuselage was
a giant ramjet made a major advance, when the O.10 was released
from the Languedoc parent aircraft. Pilot Gonord put the unique
aircraft into a climb at 346kt (640km/h). A later Leduc aircraft
exceeded Mach 1, but his long effort got nowhere. When the first
British jet bomber,