Concorde Part Deux

a reply to: Zaphod58

Stop getting annoyed, Zaphod.

You Yanks called your proposed ship "THE SST."

We called our SST Concorde.

See the difference?

a reply to: PheonixReborn

No, they didn't. It didn't have a name yet. The PROGRAM was called SST. It didn't get far enough to have a name of any sort when it was canceled.

a reply to: Zaphod58

We

Beat

You

To

It!

a reply to: PheonixReborn

So what. That doesn't have crap to do with anything except you wanting to bash the US.

Technically the Russians did theirs first :-P
Plus it wasn,t a purely UK design as the French had a hand in things as well.

a reply to: Blackfinger

Yeah, we let them paint it.

Joking of course. Concorde was a combination of the Bristol 220 SST and the Sud Est Super-Caravelle SST. In a foretaste of things to come, we conceded the first flight to Toulouse. In a similar vein a lot of people don't realise that the Airbus A300 was designed by Hawker Siddeley and the name Airbus itself was a classification used by BEA (British European Airways) for whom it was designed in competition with the BAC Two-Eleven and De Havilland DH134 (Boeing 757 clone in concept and evolution but over a decade earlier).

So, British designers coming up with Concorde, A300 and (effectively) the 757. Boasting? Not really. It annoys the hell out of me what an incompetent bunch of knobs we are. We even presented the DH121 to Boeing in 1958 , only for the 727 to emerge along similar lines and wipe the floor with it, the best Harriers were developed by McDonnell Douglas while Hawker Siddely did nothing but draw nice pictures. And not forgetting we scrapped the Miles M.52, presenting its flying tail technology to Bell for the X-1. I wish we could have made something by ourselves.

So near, but always so far.


PS, As for the Russians doing it first, I know what you mean, except theirs never carried a fare paying passenger as it was too dangerous, Concorde served for 26 years, no comparison.

it's been a while, but every so often the military jets flying in and around the cascade mountains occasionally broke the sound barrier.

I also remember that happening once @ the Reno air races / air show during an F-18 fly by.

originally posted by: PheonixReborn

originally posted by: Sammamishman
a reply to: PheonixReborn

Sounds like there was plenty of whinging from your side of the pond:

hansard.millbanksystems.com...

Cornwall is South West UK. No transatlantic flights would go over there. They go over the North West of the UK and follow the Great Circle route.

Any flights over Cornwall would have been test flights.

Commercial flights did not create any sonic booms at ground level.

Phoenixreborn, I can absolutely confirm that sonic booms were regularly heard in Cornwall in the 80's. As a kid I used to stay with my family near St Austell and we used to sit out and wait for the booms coming in, it was a regular occurrence.

Please stop trolling, you are being incredibly disrespectful to members of this community that actually contribute, without whom this board would not survive. As a fellow Brit and Concorde fan you are making me cringe with your anti-u.s rhetoric and pedantry.

Zaph, I wish I had your patience!

If anyone is looking to apportion blame for the loss of Concorde blame terrorism! 9/11 was the final straw that broke the back of Concorde's marginal operating profit when several of the regular customers who commuted from London to New York on a daily basis were killed in the WTC attack.

Cheers
Robbie