 Derry was killed in the 1952 Farnborough Airshow DH.110 crash (the DH 110 went on to become the de Havilland Sea Vixen) when his aircraft broke up because of a design fault resulting in catastrophic structural failure, with 31 fatalities including himself, his flight observer Tony Richards, and 29 spectators.The jury at the inquest returned a verdict that the pilot and observer died of accidental death and the deaths of the spectators was also accidental.Derry's DH 108 test flight was fictionalized in the 1952 film "The Sound Barrier", directed by David Lean, in which John Justin plays Philip Peel, a test pilot who breaks the sound barrier by reversing the controls.