http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/virgin/195780_virgin19.html As much as companies like to attribute their success to their own brilliance in developing a product or reading the market correctly, more often than not they can also attribute success to forces far beyond their control. Examples: Would-be competitors who don't pay attention to shifts in consumer tastes. Who don't develop new technology. Who develop new technology but don't not know what to do with it. Or who introduce a product that no one wants or doesn't work. These "out of our hands forces," in their most dramatic and tragic form, figure into the five-decade dominance of commercial aviation by our homegrown plane manufacturer, as marked by the 50th anniversary of a significant if somewhat overlooked event: the Comet crashes. If any plane is most closely associated with the launch of the commercial jet age, it's Boeing's 707. But Boeing wasn't the first commercial passenger jet transport in regular service. That distinction goes to the British-built de Havilland Comet, which entered service in 1952. "The Comet was an incredible piece of engineering," says Bob Hood, retired from the transportation electronics industry and now a volunteer on a Museum of Flight restoration of a Comet 4C. "It looked almost like a Buck Rogers airplane." One feature that gave it that futuristic look was that instead of the now-familiar configuration of suspending the engines from the wings, the Comet incorporated the engines in the wings themselves, using small oblong portholes rather than the gaping intakes common on jets today. But appearance alone wasn't what intrigued the airlines about jets in general and the Comet in particular. Jets promised faster and more comfortable travel than what the prop-driven planes of the day could hope to provide. The Comet "opened the market for jet airplanes," Hood says. "It was faster than fighters of its day." But there's a reason why the Comet is a footnote to aviation history and Boeing, not de Havilland, is one of the two surviving players in large commercial transports. The Comet had a fatal flaw -- metal fatigue brought on by the repeated pressurization and depressurization of the cabin at high altitudes, leading to spreading cracks and the eventual break-up of the plane. In January 1954, a B.O.A.C. flight plunged into the Mediterranean, killing all 35 aboard. In April of that year a second Comet crashed, also in Italy, with another 21 fatalities. The Comet was withdrawn from service. One month after that second crash, Boeing rolled out from its Renton plant the Dash-80, what the world came to know as the 707. Did the Comet crashes irreversibly hand domination of the passenger jet industry to American manufacturers? What's fascinating in reading various histories of Boeing about the period is how much uncertainty there was within the industry and at Boeing about passenger jets. Everyone had a sense that jets would be the future, but much less certain was when jets would be economical to fly and whether Boeing could afford the huge financial gamble necessary to launch a new model. The introduction of the Comet certainly helped spur Boeing's decision to go ahead, and the Comet's problems helped shape the 707's marketing. Robert Serling's book "Legend and Legacy: The Story of Boeing and Its People" suggests that Boeing had already addressed the metal-fatigue and cracking problem with such measures as rounded-corner windows. But just to emphasize the point, Serling writes, Boeing prepared for its sales pitches a movie demonstration showing that even if the 707's fuselage were punctured the plane would not violently disintegrate. Interestingly the updated model of the Comet (the 4C, same as the Museum of Flight's plane) made it to trans-Atlantic service ahead of the 707 in 1958. But as Hood and others note, the 707 had greater range and carried more passengers. Eugene Rodgers' book "Flying High" puts it starkly: "The 707 (and later the DC-8) proved so superior to the Comet that the de Havilland airplane sank into oblivion." That suggests that Boeing and Douglas might have won pre-eminent positions in the industry regardless of the original Comet's problems. Still, four years is a long time with an emerging technology, a long time in which de Havilland could have been locking up contracts with customers (Pan Am, which initially ordered Comets, switched to the 707) and making the refinements necessary to produce a more competitive plane. The Museum of Flight's Comet 4C flew for just 10 years (1960-1970) for Mexicana. It's now the museum's restoration center at Everett's Paine Field, where work began in 1995. "We're more than halfway there," Hood says. When restoration is complete the Comet will go on display as a static (non-flying) display (you can find out more about the project and monitor its progress at www.dhcomet.org). It will go on display primarily as part of the timeline-in-metal through which the Museum of Flight explains the history of aviation. It will also serve as a winged-but-grounded reminder of two important business lessons. Being first is good for the history books but doesn't have a lot to do with long-term success. And often that success has less to do with your own achievements and more with someone else's failures and mistakes. =20