The directors were de Havilland, Arthur Edwin Turner who had come from the War Office, and chief engineer Charles Clement Walker.

The fledgling enterprise was lucky to be approached the next year by a man wanting a new aeroplane built for him, Alan Samuel Butler.

[7] They survived until 1925 when de Havilland's own design, the Moth (first flown 22 February 1925) proved to be just what the flying world was waiting for.

One of de Havilland's trademarks was that the name of the aircraft type was painted on using a particularly elegant Roman typeface, all in capital letters.

De Havilland continued to produce high-performance aircraft including the twin piston-engined DH.88 Comet racers, one of which became famous as the winner of the MacRobertson Air Race from England to Australia in 1934.

On 3 July 1942 two Ju 88 bombers attempted a low-altitude bombing raid, using the Rivington reservoir chain to navigate but the mission went off course.

[11][12] After the Second World War de Havilland continued with advanced designs in both the military and civil fields, but several public disasters doomed the company as an independent entity.

A large additional aircraft factory was acquired in 1948 at Hawarden Airport at Broughton near Chester, where production supplemented the Hatfield output.

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.

[1] Operated by British Overseas Airways Corporation, on 2 May 1952 the flight registered G-ALYP took off with fare-paying passengers and inaugurated scheduled service from London to Johannesburg.

Sir Arnold Hall led the RAE research team that made the discovery that the rivets punched into the metal caused a minute fatigue crack.

Because of the structural problems of the Comet, in 1954 all remaining examples were withdrawn from service, with de Havilland launching a major effort to build a new version that would be both larger and stronger.

In that year it became the de Havilland Division of Hawker Siddeley Aviation[13] and all types in production or development changed their designations from "DH" to "HS".

In flight tests, the Blue Streak performed well but the upper stages, built in France and Germany, repeatedly failed.

When World War II arrived, this set-up was ready made to expand production to augment British aircraft factories, without any possible threat from enemy bombers.

In November 2018, Longview Aviation Capital Corp. acquired the Dash 8 programme and the de Havilland Canada brand from Bombardier, adding them to the rights and type certificates for all of the out-of-production aircraft (DHC-1 through DHC-7) already sold to its subsidiary Viking Air in 2005.

Aircraft design and full manufacture by de Havilland Australia (DHA) did not take place until the Second World War, when the company began production of the DH.82 Tiger Moth primary trainer at Bankstown, NSW.

[20] After World War II, the company undertook maintenance and refurbishment work until taken over by Hawker Siddeley International NZ Ltd in 1964.

This went against usual practice: usually engines are designed and produced by a dedicated company though in the UK the Bristol Aeroplane Company had a substantial engine business and Armstrong Whitworth Aircraft was part of the same business as Armstrong Siddeley[23] The successful "Gipsy" and the later developments such as the Gipsy Major were successful and popular power units, being used in nearly all of de Havilland's light designs and several aircraft from other manufacturers.

The de Havilland company was also a competitor to Rolls-Royce and Metrovick in the early years of jet engine development.

A company set up in 1935 for the manufacture of Hamilton Standard propellers under licence, and which later produced guided and other missiles such as the Firestreak and Blue Streak.