de Havilland

Unlike Dave Goldfinch, I will eventually get your name right.

He's a real fan of the Mosquito aircraft, the De Havilland DH-98 World War II wooden wonder Mosquito.

And we were talking...

In regard to one of the things that I always found deficient in all the Mosquito kits is the back half of the canopy, there aren't metal frames like there are in what you see in a quote-unquote normal World War II cockpit.

Other reasons.

In fact, speaking of other reasons, tell me about the de Havilland comet, the world's first commercial jetliner.

This thing just started exploding in midair, which is terrifying.

Yeah, so it didn't so much crash as it exploded.

It blew up.

Everyone died in the air instead of underground.

So the de Havilland Comet was one of the, I think of as like the British Empire's last big swings.

Oh, man.

When we were in Alaska, we had a great trip, but probably the highlight of the trip for most of us was the flight out to the Bears.

And the guy that flew us there was in an otter, a de Havilland otter, and his name was Don Watrous.

And I had one of the coolest communications, one of the coolest interviews, talks—I don't know the right word— But Don has such a cool history.

And we gave a little glimpse on the Alaska video about that.

knew? In association with the Leatherland, not Litherland, Leatherland Flying Training Trust.

Coachmakers also have De Havilland Flying Scholarship, which is up to 10,000 quid towards

learning to fly in Tiger Moth.

Wow.

You learn the landscape the way a ship's navigator learns a coastline, by feel and repetition, and the kind of attention you pay to things that will kill you if you get them wrong.

She flew de Havilland Leopard Moths, various Percival singles, light aircraft with limited range, and limited instruments.

She accumulated hundreds of flight hours over Kenya, Tanganyika, Sudan, Ethiopia.

She flew in conditions that would have sent most European pilots back to the hangar.

The airplane they arranged was a Percival Vega Gull, a clean low-wing monoplane.

Graceful lines.

Six-cylinder de Havilland Gypsy engine producing around 200 horsepower.

Good airplane for its era.

They were trying really hard to beat the comet to market and they didn't.

De Havilland was trying to do the same thing in Canada and they actually beat them to flying, but they did not beat them to market.

Their airplane never made it to market anyways.

The Caravelle is a jet aircraft.

Imagine you're a British Air Ministry official in the autumn of 1939.

A soft-spoken aircraft designer named Jeffrey de Havilland sits across from you and slides a proposal across the desk.

He wants to build a bomber out of wood, no guns, no gunner positions, no turrets, no armor plating, two crew, two Rolls-Royce Merlin engines, and an airframe built from balsa, sandwiched between birch plywood shaped by cabinet makers and furniture craftsmen in converted barns and workshops across the English countryside.

You tell him, no, I'm tail-dragger.

The Bristol Blenheim, the Vickers Wellington, these were capable aircraft for their time.

They managed somewhere around 250 to 270 miles per hour at altitude, and they were dying over Germany.

Geoffrey de Havilland's argument was this.

Strip all of that away.

For instance, we're leading the country in GDP growth, in average weekly earnings, in new housing starts, in workforce participation, and in private sector expansions, including new investments.

I can talk, uh, a little bit later about where we are going with oil and gas and traditional energy investments, but we've seen a brand-new aerospace and aviation industry develop, with WestJet being the anchor and then de Havilland as well, building water bombers.

But Lufthansa Technik refurbishing engines and CAE doing training.

We also, in the Calgary area, have a huge number of fulfillment centers, uh, whether it's Walmart or, uh, Amazon or HelloFresh or a few others.