The tragedy is knowing that if Boeing had gotten their 707 in the air first, or Douglas their DC-8 (not that either was ever likely to have happened), or if the fatigue issues had been learned during development & testing, the Comet would have had oval windows from the initial production run & the British aviation industry would have had a much better post-war start.
There's an interesting hypothetical: What if... Boeing, Douglas & Lockheed had all beaten the British to get the first jet airliners into the air within a year of each other but all had suffered the same fate as the Comet... Where would modern civil aviation be now?
