The topic that will be discussed and reflected upon is: “why did the De Havilland Comet planes inexplicably destroy themselves during flight? The topic is related to events that occurred in the early 1950s, when planes called “De Havilland Comets” mysteriously broke up in mid-flight. The purpose of this essay is to investigate and reflect on why these planes crashed. The main points that will be discussed will be why the "De Havilland Comet" planes broke up during flight, ideas about stress concentration, engineering reflection on what went wrong, how the engineering of the future can learn from This and what it might take to be an engineer in today's world. On March 3, 1953 the first comet De Havilland near Calcutta. The reason behind this accident was believed to be excessive fatigue stress on the aircraft body from a tropical storm (WITHEY, 1997). However within 3 months there were two more planes that crashed and had similar cabin damage to the first plane (James, n.d.). After these incidents the entire fleet remained grounded until the problem was discovered. Tests were conducted in which the Comet G-ALYU cabin was pressurized using water and the wing loading was simulated using hydraulic cylinders (WITHEY, 1997). These tests helped speed up the flight situation, so testing would be quicker. After 3057 flight cycles at 11 psi, cracks were found to be observed in the corners of one of the windows, causing 15 feet of cabin wall to be removed (WITHEY, 1997). This would cause depressurization in the cabin, thus creating an explosion with a bomb force of 220 kg (Lienhard, 1997). The wreckage of the first crashed plane has been reconstructed... middle of paper... categories: basic engineering, energy conversion, energy resources, engineering and technology management, environment and transport, manufacturing, materials and structures , systems and design (Careercornerstone.org, n.d.). The role of an engineer in society is to take a mathematical or scientific problem and solve it in a way that improves the quality of life within society as a whole. In conclusion, it turned out that the reason why the De Havilland Comet planes broke apart in mid-flight was due to the poor design choice of using square windows instead of round windows in the plane. This is because during testing a fatigue crack was detected in the corner of one of the windows at the spot hole, causing a crack to appear. This led to the removal of 4.5 m of wall causing depressurization in the cabin, hence the cause of the plane being torn apart by an explosion.