It is on March 2, 1969 that is to say 50 years ago that the Concorde made its first flight.
But how much effort it took to get there.
Both the French and the British had been working since the 1950s on the design of a supersonic commercial aircraft. Given the costs of development they were very close to throwing in the towel in the 1960s until they decided in 1962 to join forces.
The project then became a true cooperation that is not unlike the Airbus program today. If Concorde was a commercial failure, it laid the foundations for European cooperation in aeronautics.
The genesis was not without pain between multiple partners, each with a vision and interests to defend. The fact that the English wanted a long haul aircraft and the French a medium haul did not help.
The protagonists of the story were:
– British Aircraft Corporation (BAC) and Sud Aviation on the design of the aircraft.
– Bristol Aero Engines (bought by Rolls-Royce in 1966) and SNECMA for the engines.
The excellent “Concorde, Essais et Batailles” (Concorde, Tests and Battles) by André Turcat, the test pilot of Concorde, tells in detail all the quarrels which marked the conception of the aircraft and continued even after the flight of the first test aircraft.
The first test aircraft registeredF-WTSS was born in 1967 but it is only on March 2, 1969 that it will make its first flight. It took place over Toulouse and lasted 29 minutes. Gear down, nose down, it was not a question of testing the performances of the aircraft, just to validate that it flew without taking the least risk.
Thanks to the INA we can relive this first flight “in live conditions”. One will notice the prowess, for the time, to make a live with images taken from the following planes.
Even better, this flight is told to us by Mr. André Turcat himself.
The first commercial flight of Concorde will take place on January 21, 1976. 16 Concorde will be produced, as well as four prototypes. It will end its career precipitously in 2003 following the tragic accident of Gonesse in 2000.
But that’s another story and we will have the opportunity to talk about the Concorde on TravelGuys.
