The story behind the best aircraft ever build

Childhood

Concorde is the result of the merge beetween British BAC 223 and French Super Caravelle, two supersonic projects. France and England completes one another, with an advance in aerodynamics for France while England had the best engines thanks to the Avro Vulcan. Concorde had a difficult childhood, with both technical and politics issues but the result was fantastic and meet expectations. However, let’s be honest, Concorde is not really environment-friendly, burning two tonnes of fuel just during for taxiing and consuming more fuel to carry fewer passengers than a Boeing 747...

Brotherhood

Concorde had one brother, the soviet Tupolev Tu-144. Unlike Concorde, the russian supersonic had a short life and many engineering problems. The US also tried to built a competitor at the same period, the Boeing 2707, without success. Since Concorde is no longer flying, there are no remaining SSTs (supersonic transport) in commercial service and you won't see any SST flying soon... Yes, it’s the first time ever that an airplane has never had a successor.

An amazing piece of engineering

To build such an aircraft, British and French engineers had no chose but to innovate in order to reach expected performance. For example, Concorde was the first airliner to have a fly-by-wire flight-control system, carbon-based brakes, a common thing nowadays in civil aviation.

Genius ideas

In addition to propell the aircraft, fuel has also two main jobs: the first is to cool down the fuselage (up to 127°C) and the second is to trim the aircraft depending of the flight situation. Indeed, when Concorde passes the mach, the centre of pressure shifts rearwards and to compensate this change, some fuel is moved.

Build to race

Cruising at mach 2, Concorde is faster than a bullet and catch the sun while flying west thanks to its four Olympus 593 made by Bristol Siddeley (Rolls Royce). New-York was only from 3 hours and half from Paris while the boeing 747 takes 7h40…

An amazing piece of engineering

The legacy is huge, creating many jobs, bringing both France and England to the front of aeronautique innovation. Without Concorde, Airbus would never have been born.

“The idea of Concorde was bigger than Concorde itself.”

French Bonus

If you speak french, here is an old but by far the best documentary about the legend.

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