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In 1962, a treaty was signed by the French and British governments: they would pool resources
and knowledge and work together to build the world’s first supersonic commercial airliner.
Both countries had already independently begun working on designs: one from the Bristol Aeroplane
Company and one from Sud Aviation, and both had reached a stage where they were ready
to build a prototype by the early 1960s.
The Second World War had stimulated huge progression in aviation resulting in the post-war jet
age and the birth of supersonic flight.
Money was pouring into commercial aviation in the 1950s, yet despite this industry boom,
the cost of designing a supersonic airliner was more than the BAC or Sud Aviation now
called Aérospatiale could manage.
Thus, the treaty between France and Britain was signed, and the Concorde project was born.
It was now up the engineers and experts to turn this ambitious concept into a reality.
So how did these teams possibly reach this stage?
Other similar project worldwide from the United States and the Soviet Union had both been
ended either in the production stages or soon after launch.
Indeed the construction of Concorde was one of the most complex operations ever undertaken
in the aircraft industry, and it was developed across two countries in two languages.
And yet despite these huge complexities, by 1969 two prototypes were ready to take their
first flights.
Concorde 001 completed her maiden flight from Toulouse in 1969.
The world's first sight of a supersonic airliner.
Sleek, purposeful, imposing.
A supersonic airliner that will give Britain and France an assured and profitable place
in the vast civil aviation market of the '70s.
The debut of Concorde.
But the prototype aircraft were far from ready to be opened up for supersonic passenger flights.
It would be another 8 years until Concorde would take her first commercial passenger
flight in 1976.
And that’s where Concorde 101 and 102 came in.
These pre-production aircraft were the third and fourth Concordes built – their purpose
was for testing and refinement of all of Concordes problems, from how to deal with ice build
up on the wings, to seeing how Concorde would cope travelling at Mach 2 in thin desert heat.
The testing of Concorde went on for 7 years.
So how was Concorde 101 equipped to test this supersonic airliner to the extremes, and what
did she accomplish?
So this particular Concorde is the fastest by far, by 100 miles an hour.
It found when you went that fast, it got too hot and the metal wouldn't stand it for too
long, so the airline ones go slower.
It developed the engine intake system because a jet engine won't take in supersonic air.
And I guess by far the most interesting feature of it is the droop nose.
Because when you look at Concorde, it's very aerodynamic - it looks really good.
Unfortunately the pilots can't see the taxiway or the runway out the window in that form,
so the nose droops and then you can see to take off.
Coming into land is a different matter.
Regular airliners come in at a fairly shallow head-up angle, Concorde comes in a bit like
a swan, landing with its head held high.
So the nose needs to go down even further, and that's one of the things that this aircraft
worked on.
And when you go on board this aircraft you'll find it's it's full of test equipment, it
doesn't look like an in-service airline Concorde, and you'll see there are I think eight seats
on it because it carried its own engineers around the world with it when it was doing
the test flying.
John Dunlevy is one of those engineers who used to fly around the world with it, and
that went on from early '70s right through to '75 when it finished the test program.
After two decades of working on Concorde, John Dunlevy is now a volunteer engineer for
Heritage Concorde, an organisation that maintains these historic aircraft.
Among other achievements, in 2014 they enabled the nose of Concorde 101 to droop again, making
it the first Concorde to lower its nose since the retirement of the fleet in 2003.
When we caught up with John, the team were in the middle of testing the nose droop’s
hydraulics.
We’ll take a look at the nose in action later on.
From the outside, there is little visible difference between 101 and the production
models of Concorde.
But this aircraft was fully equipped to test the Concorde to its limits.
So what was it like to be one the test engineers?
Every test flight was an experienc,e and just travelling from say Filton to Moses Lake in
Washington would not be straightforward, it'd be classified as a test flight.
So we'd be cruising across the Atlantic at mach 2 and all of a sudden we lose him 20,000
feet with an engine fail - which was done deliberately, just to check the recovery procedure.
And we use to say, those guys up the front are trying to kill us every time we get onto
this aeroplane!
Although there was a plan, it always went outside the plan on the flight.
My name is john dunlevy and i've had 28 years on Concorde, the only aeroplane I've ever
really worked on.
I started my career on Concorde in September 1965 when i was so high, and eventually they
trained us up to be engineers for the supersonic age.
The testing program really would have been about 12 months but with Concorde there was
so much technical information coming back from these sensors - all this orange cable
leads to a sensor somewhere on the aeroplane like temperature, vibration, stress and strain
- and all this feedback is analyzed and they thought we've got a lot of problems here we
need to sort out... so the original 12 months went on for seven years.
And this is the most interesting piece of equipment on the aeroplane.
This actually holds the air intake control units, these two racks, and that is the first
digital computer fitted to a civilian airliner - but your mobile phone would have more memory
and capability of controlling things than these.
One of the most critical aspects tested by Concorde 101 was its ability to de-ice.
Ice can change the shape of the wing and tail which could increase weight and drag or even
prevent the aircraft from generating lift.
Improper de-icing can be fatal.
So how would Concorde deal with this issue?
These TVs are for monitoring the icing conditions on the outside of the aeroplane.
So on the outside of the aircraft we had three cameras and the idea was to see how the ice
would stick to the wing because ice is a bit dodgy.
So on a particular test flight in Moses Lake we were following aeroplanes going into Seattle
airport and they're reporting heavy icing conditions.
So say okay, we'll follow with the Concorde.
Nothing, nothing at all.
Well the aeroplane's so slippery it's not really sticking, which is good.
Anyway we've decided to throttle back and increase the angle of attack and go into an
ice bearing cloud and it was, well look at this!
And these monitors showed the build-up of ice underneath the wing and on this bottom
lip of the engines.
They switched on the de-icing system of course the ice breaks away and goes shearing into
the engine and flying off the wing and in the process all four engines were slightly
damaged to say the least.
So that was scary.
But that just shows you the dangers of icing on aeroplanes.
The testing crew were flew some of Concorde’s most dangerous flights, trialling new conditions
for the aircraft to see how she would react.
So what if something went wrong?
Most importantly but never used - the escape shoot.
And in fact it can be used at mach 2, which sounds unbelievable.
So how do you save a person who's jumping out of an aeroplane at mach 2 when his legs
are going to be the first to exit?
When the red beacon is lit there, it's time to abandon ship.
And the crew will probably say let's go.
So the process of this - thankfully it's never been used in anger - this hatch explodes back,
the outer hatch explodes out, and this shoot or blade slides down.
And the idea of this shield is to stop your legs getting whipped away from you as you
exit the outer hatch and getting dragged towards the engine.
So you can actually escape from this aeroplane at mach 2.
Concorde’s flight deck was operated by three crew members – the pilot, first officer
and the flight engineer.
Concorde’s streamlined nose resulted in a narrow cockpit.
It was particularly small for a passenger airliner as well as incredibly complex.
The space is packed with instruments and panels cover most of the walls and roof.
But John was able to make some sense of it for us.
Okay so here is the master warning system.
So anything red is probably a no-go for takeoff.
So we obviously have important things like flying controls engine, throttles, electrics
doors aren't closed, stability of the aeroplane is wrong, inertial navigation system is telling
us it's not loaded properly...
We ignore those.
Four engine throttles.
Full power.
Idle power.
Reverse thrust.
And the reheat switches.
Which as you go towards mach 2, you actually select the inboards first, followed by the
outboard, so you get a smooth transition and you don't get this jolting effect.
The later instrument fitted or the last one fitted was the traffic collision avoidance
system, but virtually, the layout of this is exactly the same as you would see on a
production Concorde.
On the prototype, the visibility forward was terrible, it was just a small window both
sides there and almost like looking through a distorted periscope, and eventually Pilkington
Glass Company came up with this glass, and it's heat resistant, impact resistant, even
at mach 2.
If you encountered a high flying bird, which is possible apparently in winter, that glass
is so tough it could withstand that impact.
It's also heated with a very thin gold film so the technology of the glass was fantastic
and the problem of lack of visibility disappeared on this areoplane.
Obviously the forward visibility during the landing phase is important.
So on the landing phase: the visor goes down, droop nose to five degrees.
Are you ready?
Right.
First thing, hydraulic pump on.
Right.
First selection is to bring the visor down.
That increases the visibility for landing.
Now we can droop the nose to five degrees which is the immediate middle position.
And on this one we can go all the way down to 17 and a half, which is the furthest the
Concorde droop nose will go.
It's kind of ridiculous because you cannot can't actually see any reference point in
front of you at 17.5 degrees, so on production aeroplanes it was reduced to 12 and a half
degrees.
So we're indicating fully down and locked.
Now reverse the process by coming back up.
That's 12 degrees, now we go to five.
Zero, all the way up.
It's working after 40 plus years on the original seals.
I worked on Concorde for 28 years and I'm still coming back to enjoy it, so we're now
what 30, 30-plus years probably, and I'm still working on it, I still can't escape.
I haven't found the escape door or the escape hatch!
The test programme finished in 1975 and in 1976, Concorde’s first scheduled supersonic
passenger service took off.
British Airways initially flew from London to Bahrain and Air France from Paris to Rio
de Janeiro, both adding flights in Washington DC and New York soon after.
Concorde was the height of luxury and excitement in air travel.
Peter Archer was lucky enough to fly on Concorde as a passenger.
What was really noticeable, the difference about it from other airliners is when you're
sitting on the runway and it starts, they put the engines to full power no matter what
the loading.
Full power and the afterburners and you get pushed in the back.
It takes off faster than other airliners, considerably faster, and climbs more steeply.
The afterburners, they shut them off after about a minute and then you feel like you're
falling backwards when you're a passenger.
Off you go and when it gets out over the Bristol Channel or thereabouts, and they go supersonic
again they turn the afterburners or the reheat on and then you feel two pumps in the back
as they come on as it accelerates very aggressively to climb up to sixty or thousand feet.
Once it's flying along it is very steady.
You're higher than other airliners, you're about sixty thousand feet and the others are
30- 35,000 feet so you can see them below you appearing to go backwards because you're
going at least twice as fast as them.
So it does look very different from flying on, in those days, a 747 or or whatever.
But the allure and triumph of Concorde were not enough to keep the dream alive.
The project had in fact faced great obstacles before the commercial flights even began.
Concern over the environmental issues presented by a supersonic aircraft—the sonic boom,
take-off noise and pollution—had produced a shift in public opinion.
Interest from airliners reduced, and in the end only Air France and British Airways took
up their orders.
Service was also limited right from the start of its commercial flying due to concerns.
The resulting financial losses led both British Airways and Air France to make New York their
only regular destination.
Then in 2000, an Air France Concorde’s engine failed, killing all 109 people on board and
4 people on the ground.
It was another blow for Concorde, and just three years later, the aircraft was retired.
But the appeal and romanticism of the world’s first successful supersonic airliner has never
disappeared.
Nearly all Concordes built are now on public display around the world.
The pre-production aircraft 101 never flew commercially.
After the end of the test programme in 1975, it was decided the aircraft should be donated
to Duxford.
It was for a while I think, it was at Fairford or Bristol it's based, and then the government
decided to donate it to Duxford, and it came here in 1975, just a few weeks in time because
a few weeks later the M11 motorway took away about a third or a quarter of the runway and
it wouldn't have been long enough for it to land.
So it came here then used its parachute to break on the still relatively short runway
and then taxied round for the the crew to dismount.
At which stage they found they hadn't got steps tall enough to reach it so there are
some nice pictures around of a platform with a step ladder on top of it and the crew sort
of dangling down from the door to descend for the presentation.