The Mammoth Book of Air Disasters and Near Misses by Paul Simpson

Author:Paul Simpson [Simpson, Paul]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: history, Military, Aviation, Transportation
ISBN: 9781780338293
Google: jk7oBAAAQBAJ
Publisher: Little, Brown Book Group
Published: 2014-10-16T23:31:21.359184+00:00

DEATH OF A DREAM: GOING SUPERSONIC

It was a symbol of the “white heat of the technological revolution”, an example of Anglo-French cooperation, a glorious reminder of the days when aviation was about beauty – Concorde was all these things, as well as a money pit, and regarded by some as an environmental hazard. Schoolchildren would make sure they were looking out of the windows as it flew over, with its distinctive shape and dropped nose. But one crash and fire was enough to bring its days to a close – and it followed in the less than illustrious footsteps of its Soviet rival, the “Concordski”, the Tupolev Tu-144.

The Tu-144 was actually the first to fly of the two rival supersonic transports (SSTs), with the prototype taking off on 31 December 1968, going supersonic for the first time on 5 June 1969, and exceeding Mach 2 (twice the speed of sound) on 26 May the following year – the first commercial transport to do so. Although there were many similarities between the Tu-144 and Concorde, the often-repeated myth that the Soviets “stole” the technology from the West is simply not true: because of restrictions on sales of equipment to Communist countries which could be used for military purposes, many of the control mechanisms couldn’t be purchased by the Soviet designers, and they had to find their own work-arounds. Aeroflot’s representative in Paris was arrested in 1965 with plans for the Anglo-French Concorde, but these were early designs, and certainly the Soviets benefited from industrial espionage, but the two aircraft grew further apart the more they were developed.

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