de Havilland Aircraft Company
3 types · 0 airframes
Pre-1950 Narrative
Narrative coming soon.
Aircraft Types
de Havilland DH.34
The de Havilland DH.34 was a single-engined biplane airliner built by the de Havilland Aircraft Company, first flown on 26 March 1922. It was designed around its operators' requirements: a Napier Lion engine, wooden two-bay wings and a cabin for nine passengers between them. Daimler Airway put it into service on the Croydon–Paris route a week after the first flight, and it was flown intensively by Daimler, Instone Air Line and, from 1924, Imperial Airways. Eleven were built, including one for the Soviet airline Dobrolyot. Six were lost in accidents in four years of service, and Imperial's fatal Purley crash of December 1924 prompted Britain's first public inquiry into a civil air accident. Imperial retired the type in March 1926, and no example survives.
de Havilland DH.86
The de Havilland DH.86 Express was a four-engined biplane airliner designed and built in four months in 1933 for the Empire Air Mail Service between Singapore and Australia, and first flown in January 1934. It launched Qantas's overseas operations and served Imperial Airways and other Empire operators, but a series of fatal accidents in Australia and Europe exposed stability flaws that investigations traced to its rushed design, and Australia briefly suspended its certificate of airworthiness. Sixty-two were built before production ended in 1937, and impressed aircraft served the RAAF, the RNZAF and British forces during the Second World War. The last was written off in 1958, and only wreckage remains survive, at the Qantas Founders Museum at Longreach.
de Havilland DH.88 Comet
The de Havilland DH.88 Comet is a British two-seat racing monoplane built by the de Havilland Aircraft Company for the 1934 MacRobertson Air Race from England to Australia. Only five were built. The privately entered G-ACSS Grosvenor House won the race in under 71 hours, and Comets went on to set long-distance records and to be evaluated by governments as mail planes. Two survive: Grosvenor House, flown by the Shuttleworth Collection until it was damaged in an August 2026 incident, and Black Magic, under restoration.