Development
In July 1952, the steamship SS United States crossed the North Atlantic in 3 days, 10 hours and 42 minutes averaging 35.59 knots (66kph/41mph). At the same time, the aviation industry was looking to the day when commercial airliners would fly faster than the speed of sound - supersonically - and able to cross the Atlantic in under five hours.
During the early 1960s the British, under the auspices of the British Aircraft Corporation, and the French as Sud Aviation, were separately developing plans for a supersonic passenger aircraft. By November 1962 both governments signed an agreement to jointly design, develop, and manufacturer the world's first supersonic airliner. The benefits of this co-operation would be shared costs in terms of development and ultimately aircraft construction, and reduced time for the supersonic project to come to fruition.
In a similar way to today's Airbus consortium which has operations in Britain, France, Germany and Spain building specific parts of each aircraft prior to final assembly, the Concorde project utilised BAC and Sud-Aviation sites in Britain and France to build parts of Concorde, followed by final assembly of the aircraft in France at Toulouse and in Britain at Filton near Bristol.
British factories produced the front of the aircraft including the cockpit and the rear fuselage including the tail and rudder and various systems including the electrics. The French factories produced the central fuselage, wings, landing gear and remaining systems.
Her engines too were a co-operation between Bristol-Siddeley (later Rolls-Royce) and Snecma. The engine was a revised version of Bristol-Siddeley's Olympus engine, a jet engine originally intended for military aircraft but adapted for the commercial Concorde project.
The first Concorde was unveiled on 11th December 1967 at the Sud-Aviation Toulouse factory. Some ten months later the first British prototype was unveiled. Both prototypes were visually different to the final design for Concorde, for example they didn't have the extended tail cone that made final production.
The first flight of Concorde took place on 2nd March 1969 at Toulouse, while by 1st October 1969 Concorde had undertaken her first supersonic flight, reaching Mach 1 for nearly ten minutes.
In the following years four development aircraft were manufactured in Britain and France although the latter two were essentially production versions of Concorde used for extensive testing. Scientists and engineers refined and perfected the design as much as possible; boundaries were pushed in order to maximise the potential of the airframe, engines and flight systems for commercial supersonic flight. The development aircraft undertook an exhaustive testing programme to prove the reliability of the aircraft in order to obtain a certificate of airworthiness prior to commercial flight.
Once the production aircraft entered service, the prototype and development fleet were retired to different locations in France and Great Britain.
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