Spiv wrote:

This is balls. The most extensive research into aircraft frames and metal
fatigue was the Comet after one fell from the sky. It was solved )(square
windows were replaced by oval windows and other changes. ALL this
research was given to the USA. They implemented in in their bombers
and commercial planes.


Boeing didn't learn from DeHavilland's mistakes, their transport design was
finalized and construction well underway before the first in-flight breakup
of a Comet. Boeing engineers selected an aluminum skin that was more than
four times the thickness of the Comet's. The US CAA also expressed
reservations about the squared-off windows of the Comet and the buried
engines in the wing roots. They preferred oval or round windows and podded
engines in the event of an in-flight engine disintegration. The Boeing
367-80, prototype for both the 707 and the KC-135, made it's first flight on
July 15, 1954. The cause of the Comet in-flight breakups was determined on
June 24, 1954. Three weeks was hardly enough time for Boeing to have
learned from DeHavilland's mistakes.

As for the Boeing bombers, the B-47 made it's first flight a year and a half
before the Comet made it's first flight and six and a half years before the
cause of the Comet failures was revealed. Nearly 1000 B-47s had been built
by the time the Comet's flaw had been revealed. The first flight of a B-52
was on October 2, 1952, the first flight of a production B-52 was on August
5, 1954.