Hello everyone, welcome back to Seeker Plus and our series on Supersonic Transports, I’m
your host Julian Huguet and in this episode we’re going to take a look at the 3 big
players in the first era of SSTs. If you missed our first episode that was all about the physics
of sound and why it’s so dang hard to break the sound barrier, go back and check it out
because it’s going to make a lot of this make a lot more sense. Part 2 of our story
involves gorgeous engineering, soviet espionage, and terrorizing citizens of Oklahoma so let’s
get into it. The first sonic boom from an aircraft rang out over the Mojave Desert in
southern California in October of 1947. Piloting the rocket-powered Bell XS-1, Chuck Yeager
broke the sound barrier and joined an exclusive club of which he was the first member. Better
known by its later designation of “X-1”, the XS-1 was built for speed, with a body
shaped like a .50 caliber bullet, wings that were thin but very strong, and control surfaces
at the tail that could move as one big unit so they’d work despite the shock waves.
That last innovation was a major breakthrough for high speed flight that was kept top secret,
and it would give early American fighter jets an edge over their Soviet-made opponents in
the Korean war. Less high tech was the broom-handle Yeager needed to close the cockpit door. You
see, the night before his history-making flight, Yeager was in a horseback riding accident
and broke two of his ribs. He kept his injury a secret from his superiors so he wouldn’t
be replaced, but when he realized he couldn’t shut the door inside the cramped space, he
came up with this crude solution, which I hope someone at some point called “a sonic
broom”. Crazy as that is, it’s not the only story I have about a pilot hiding broken
bones so he could fly a dangerous supersonic aircraft, but I’ll get to that later. The
sound barrier was officially shattered, and by the 1950s military jets started routinely
breaking the sound barrier, and not just small fighters but big bombers too. So the next
logical question was, when would the public go supersonic too? When could anyone be like
Chuck Yeager? Racing to establish themselves at the forefront of what was thought to be
the future of air travel, three big players emerged: the United States, the Soviets, and
a cooperative effort between the French and the British. And yes I listed those in order
from least successful to most successful. So let’s start with the Americans. Being
the first to break the sound barrier you’d think they had a head start, but they were
caught flat footed in 1963 when the airline Pan American ordered 6 SSTs the French and
British were developing. As a matter of national pride the US launched its own government funded
program and ultimately selected a design submitted by Seattle-based Boeing in 1966. Fun side
note, the next year Seattle got an NBA Franchise and the fans voted to name the new team the
SuperSonics after Boeing’s flagship project. The basketball team would fare better than
the plane. A major part of Boeing’s design was a variable geometry wing, otherwise known
as a swing-wing. At low speeds the wing pivots forward, providing better stability and slower
takeoff and landing speeds. At high speeds the wing pivots back, with the high sweep
angle lowering drag for more efficient supersonic flight. Plenty of smaller fighter jets and
even some larger bombers have had swing wings. But Boeing's design called for an enormous
wing, which in turn needed a complicated, heavy, and expensive swing mechanism to match.
Before long the project was over budget and behind schedule, and Boeing ended up redesigning
the plane from scratch. In 1971 the project was canceled and the American SST was dead.
Congress pulled the plug partly for cost reasons but also largely because of growing public
outrage over sonic booms. Shortly after entering the SST race, the US Government tested the
effects of sonic booms on residents of a few American cities, and the place that had it
the worst was Oklahoma City. For 6 months in 1964 the US Air Force pummeled the city’s
residents with 8 sonic booms every day the weather was nice enough to fly. The
people of OKC were not amused. The FAA received as many as 500 daily complaints and a quarter
of residents said they could not live with regular sonic booms. In a strange twist of
what I can only describe as cosmic sports justice, in 2008 the Seattle SuperSonics,
the NBA team named for a project that necessitated the sonic boom tests, relocated to Oklahoma
City of all places and was renamed the Thunder, which is a sonic boom made by lightning. Can’t
make this stuff up. Anyway the tests showed people just wouldn’t tolerate regular sonic booms
so in 1973 the FAA banned supersonic flights over land. Backlash to
sonic booms was growing overseas too, which was fine by Boeing; the company had moved
their focus to a project that they previously thought SSTs would make obsolete, a little
plane called the 747. So not a little plane. A jumbo jet actually.
But the ban was terrible news for the world-leading supersonic transport of the time,
the French and British made Concorde. If nothing else, Concorde may be the single most beautiful
airliner ever made. It was shaped like a dart, with a long slender body and sharp nose and
tail. At speed, the heat from friction with the air made it even longer and it would stretch
up to 25 centimeters. It’s large specially shaped triangular wing, known as an ogival delta,
gracefully curved out like a billowing cape or gown. To slow down enough for landing,
it had to approach pointed up at a fairly steep angle, so to see the runway the plane’s
entire nose would droop, giving it the appearance of a graceful swan. Still it came in so fast
it needed advanced carbon brakes to slow it down, and special fans to cool the brakes.
Because of that wing it also needed to get moving very fast to get off the ground, so
its engines had a feature otherwise only found on military jets: afterburners. An afterburner
essential dumps jet fuel right into the exhaust. It provides a huge boost in power but isn’t
fuel efficient at all. When Concorde was in development jet fuel was cheap and this
wasn’t a concern, but by the time it was ready for service in the mid 70s fuel prices
shot up and made the plane much costlier to run. The stress of high-speed flight also
made Concorde expensive to maintain. And because overland supersonic flights were banned, there
were only a handful of transoceanic routes left available to it. Every airline that initially
showed interest in the Concorde canceled their orders, except for 2: British Airways and
Air France, and only then they took the jet because they were forced to by their governments
that had sunk so much money into the project. While over two hundred were planned, just
14 Concordes were delivered into service. Still what seemed like an embarrassment eventually
became a source of national pride. The two airlines realized they could charge thousands
of dollars per ticket and actually run it profitably, and the jet became a favorite
of the rich and famous who would zip between New York and London or Paris in under 3 hours.
But the good times wouldn’t last. Fuel was getting more expensive and maintenance costs
of the aging airframes were on the rise. The beginning of the end came in 2000 when an
Air France Concorde struck a piece of debris on takeoff and crashed, tragically killing
113 people. Concorde flights were paused and safety issues were addressed. Concorde was
scheduled to return to service in late 2001 and did so just months after the 9/11 attacks.
With the airline industry in a slump and it’s reputation damaged, both Air France and British
Airways retired Concorde in 2003, and with it the Era of SSTs came to a close. Concorde
was the most successful SST, but it wasn’t the only one and technically it wasn’t the
first. The Soviet Union also decided that it was a matter of national pride they too
created an SST. Their plane, the Tupolev Tu-144, was bigger and more powerful than Concorde,
but there was no denying it bore a strong resemblance to its western rival, so much
so that some dubbed it Concordski. While the soviets did come up with plenty of their own
engineering solutions, they weren’t opposed to, shall we say, borrowing some from the
French and British. In fact French intelligence arrested multiple soviet operatives. One was
caught red handed with documents about Concorde’s advanced brakes in his briefcase. His name
was Sergei Pavlov, which might ring a bell but it’s not who you’re thinking of. I
don’t think his arrest set the Russians back much because another spy, Sergei Fabiew,
ran a ring of operatives that went undetected for 15 years before being charged with stealing
NATO secrets.. When he was caught the French decrypted messages from Moscow congratulating
him for stealing the entire set of blueprints for the Concorde prototype. By hook or by
crook, the Tu-144 beat the Concorde into the air by a few months, and again just beat out
the Concorde to supersonic flight. But the aura of Soviet technological supremacy was
shattered when a Tu-144 broke apart and crashed at the 1973 Paris airshow. After years of
delays the Tu-144 was placed into service in 1977 but only flew 55 flights with passengers
before another fatal crash in 1978 grounded it for good. Or so it seemed. In the 90s
NASA was interested in bringing back SSTs and wanted to run some tests, but because
no Concordes were available, NASA brokered a deal with a cash-strapped Tupolev to lease
a mothballed Tu-144. NASA decided to send their own pilot, Rob Rivers, who also had
experience flying Concorde. He was set to be the only person ever to fly both, but a
few weeks before his trip to Russia, Rivers was hiking in Wyoming when he fell and broke
his leg and ankle. It was too late to send someone else but it would be an embarrassment
for NASA and the Russians if the press saw a pilot from the west limping aboard the iconic
plane in a cast or on crutches. So Rivers hid his injury and walked on his broken leg
and ankle in front of the cameras, causing him excruciating pain. All so he’d be allowed
to fly a 70’s era superfast jet that had a history of breaking and killing multiple
people. Test pilots are a different breed I tell ya. That NASA study into SSTs ended
in 1999 but in the last few years the agency and a few startups have decided to take another
look at bringing them back. We’ll look into how the glory days of supersonic airliners
might be coming back in the next episode but for now that’s where we’ll leave it. This
was a longer than usual episode because if you couldn’t tell this is a topic I’m
particularly passionate about. But I want to hear about what excites you! Let us know
in the comments and we may do a series on it. Thanks so much for watching and I'll see you for the next Seeker+.