26th November: Concorde

On this date in 2003, Concorde was retired. First flown in 1969, Concorde entered service in 1976 and continued commercial flights for 27 years until 2003. It is one of only two supersonic transports to have entered commercial service; the other was the Tupolev Tu-144. Here are ten fact you may not know about Concorde.

1. Only 20 of them were ever built, and six of those were prototypes. Air France and British Airways had seven each.
2. In the UK, if you saw one of these aircraft flying overhead, you'd say "there goes Concorde" rather than, "there goes A Concorde". In France and the USA, however, they would refer to it using an article.
3. There was a political storm over whether the name of the aircraft would have the "e" on the end or not. The word concorde is French and means agreement, harmony or union. The English word with the same meaning is concord. Harold Macmillan dropped the "e" because he was annoyed with Charles de Gaulle. Later, the then British Government Minister for Technology, Tony Benn, announced that he'd decided to put the "e" back. This upset British nationalists until Benn told them the "e" stood for "Excellence, England, Europe and Entente (Cordiale)." This satisfied most of them, but an angry Scotsman wrote and complained that "E" for England was a snub to the Scottish engineers who'd produced the nose cone. Benn had an answer to that. He pointed out that the French word for Scotland was 'Écosse'.
4. The first Concorde made its first test flight from Toulouse on 2 March 1969, piloted by André Turcat, and first went supersonic on 1 October that year. The first UK-built Concorde flew from Filton to RAF Fairford on 9 April 1969, piloted by Brian Trubshaw.
5. At supersonic speeds, the fuselage of the aircraft heated up so much that Concorde would expand by almost a foot (300mm) in flight. This was also the reason Concorde was always painted white. The white finish reduced the skin temperature by 6 to 11 degrees Celsius.
6. Concorde flew much higher than other commercial aircraft, with a maximum cruising altitude of 60,000 feet (18,000 m) (subsonic airliners typically cruise below 40,000 feet (12,000 m)). At this height, it was possible to see the curvature of the Earth as if you were on the edge of space. Due to the lack of other aircraft at that height, and the fact they were flying above the weather, Concorde's routes across the Atlantic never varied. In the early days, people were concerned that flying so high exposed passengers to extraterrestrial ionising radiation and that flying Concorde could cause skin cancer. However, due to the shorter flight times, Concorde passengers would be exposed to less radiation than their sub-sonic counterparts. Nevertheless, Concorde's flight deck was equipped with a radiometer, so that if the radiation level did rise, the pilots could descend to a safer altitude.
7. Concorde had an adjustable nose cone. In flight, the nose would be straight to make it more aerodynamic, but it would be lowered for take-off and landing to maximise visibility from the cockpit.
8. Vital statistics: Concorde could carry up to 128 passengers. It was 202 ft 4 in (61.66 m) long and its wingspan was 84 ft 0 in (25.6 m). Its height was 40 ft 0 in (12.2 m). Concorde had a maximum cruise altitude of 18,300 metres (60,039 ft) and an average cruise speed of Mach 2.02. The average time it took to fly across the Atlantic on Concorde was just under 3.5 hours. The fastest transatlantic flight was from New York JFK Airport to Heathrow on 7 February 1996, taking 2 hours, 52 minutes, 59 seconds.
9. There is a Transformer which turns into Concorde. The Aerialbot Silverbolt, leader of the Aerialbots, which combine to make one giant robot known as Superion, turns into Concorde. Silverbolt is the torso of the robot. Strangely, given that Concorde flies higher than any other aircraft, Silverbolt is afraid of heights and was made leader so that responsibility for the others would make him forget his fear. However, it makes sense when you realise the rest of the robot was made from spacecraft. His motto is: Don't look down, look straight ahead. He is voiced by Charlie Adler.
10. In September 2015, the Concorde Club announced that they had raised over £160 million to buy the Concorde currently on display at Le Bourget airport and make it airworthy. A tentative date of 2019 has been put forward for the first flight - so watch this space.