Building the Fastest Passenger Jet Ever

Transcript

Pathe News:

Bristol, London to New York in three hours, 17 minutes. That's the promise of the Concorde, taking shape at Filton, in the Brabazon hangar. The Anglo-French supersonic airliners are pushing ahead towards completion. One here, one in France. They were the first faster-than-sound airliners in the world. 1450 miles an hour, most of the way at 11 miles high. The present estimate, Concorde will give Britain and France a three year lead over America.

Nastaran Tavakoli-Far:

Wow, there's a lot to unpack in that 1967 news report, and not all of it is entirely accurate either. For instance, Concorde wasn't the first supersonic airliner in the world or for that matter, the first one to suffer a tragic crash. 

And that three year lead over America? Well, it didn't really turn out that way either. We're also going to visit the Brabazon hangars he talks about, where the British Concorde aircraft were assembled, and hear for ourselves how it all happened. From someone who was there. 

Oh right, and there's espionage. Yeah, like real James Bond-type stuff.

On this episode of “Making an Impossible Airplane, the Untold Story of Concorde,” engineers face a mountain of challenges to get the two prototypes in the air; Soviet spies infiltrate a Concorde factory; and the US plans to build the biggest supersonic jet ever. 

I'm Nastaran Tavakoli-Far and this is Teamistry, an original podcast from Atlassian, makers of collaborative software, including Jira, Trello, and Confluence. 

We're at Aeroscopia Museum, just outside Toulouse in France, and it's nestled between the airport and a bunch of aviation companies. Now, the first thing you see when you approach Aeroscopia is an Air France Concorde gleaming white in the sun. The museum itself is this huge curved hangar, and there are dozens of planes inside it. My producer Pedro and I are here with Concorde Designer Dudley Collard.

Pedro Mendes:

Whenever we see Concorde, it's been all week, we keep seeing it, have the same initial reaction, which is to just be overwhelmed by the beauty of it. Do you see that?

Dudley Collard:

No.

Pedro Mendes:

What do you see?

Dudley Collard:

I see all the problems.

Nastaran Tavakoli-Far:

We heard about some of these problems in episode one. So how do you design wings that work well, both above and below the speed of sound, or how do you power such a plane? And how do you deal with the intense heat caused by flying super sonically? Oh yeah, and then there's the problem of trying to build it across two different countries with different languages and different measuring systems. But before we get to know how the teams tackle these problems, something cool happened as we were walking through Aeroscopia, a British tourist came up to us…

British tourist:

I'm guessing you've got a close relationship with this type of airplane.

Dudley Collard:

Yes, we are about the same age.

Pedro Mendes:

This is Dudley Collard, he was one of the first air dynamicists. And worked on the entire history of Concorde.

Dudley Collard:

I worked on it from nine ...

British tourist:

Did you really?

Dudley Collard:

Beginning of September, 1962, before it was launched.

British tourist:

Yeah, really?

Dudley Collard:

Up until it ended.

British tourist:

You're a British man, I imagine, I'm guessing?

Dudley Collard:

I am British, yeah. You noticed I got funny accent.

British tourist:

Yeah. Okay. You live here? Do you live in France now?

Dudley Collard:

Well, I think so. We've been here for the last, since 1962.

British tourist:

I'm guessing, like me, you're retired now, are you?

Dudley Collard:

I think at one time I used to have to work for a living.

British tourist:

Yeah.

Dudley Collard:

And I'll tell them one thing I said to one of my bosses, when you look on back on it, it is amazing. We had this lovely time playing at designing airplanes, and a very difficult one, but nevertheless, a super time. And you know what the company did? At the end of every month, they used to give us money.

Nastaran Tavakoli-Far:

This concept of loving your job so much that it doesn't seem like a job is something that came up with so many people who worked on Concorde.

John Britton:

Well, it was unique, wasn't it? And to work on a prestigious project like that was amazing. It was a thing that everyone wanted to work on, really.

Nastaran Tavakoli-Far:

That's former Concorde Chief Engineer John Britton, we met him in episode one. Back in the '60s, he worked in the design office at British Aircraft Corporation. Everyone there knew that this was the most ambitious, most exciting and most challenging job in aviation that had ever existed. And engineers, well, they love taking on the impossible.

John Britton:

There were just hundreds of chaps stood up on drawing boards, no computers. We never had even a small calculator, no scientific calculators until later on. So everything had to be done by hand, calculated long hand.

Nastaran Tavakoli-Far:

Now for his part, Dudley feels that doing things the long way, by hand, well, that's something that he actually loved. He says that it was key to the project's success. Yes, it was tedious, but it conditioned your mind to using careful, step-by-step methods. And it also helped to quickly spot any errors.

Dudley Collard:

Knowing if you got it wrong, you would have to do it again, you thought about things.

Nastaran Tavakoli-Far:

Something that required serious thought were measurements. Not just getting them right, but figuring out how to combine Britain's approach in imperial, with France's Metric system.

John Britton:

All our drawings were dimensioned in imperial units, inches, right? But you had to convert them, and in brackets on every drawing, you had the millimeters. The French drew everything in millimeters, and on their drawings in brackets, they put the inches. So it was double dimensioned.

Pedro Mendes:

Doesn't that open the possibilities for a couple of mistakes? A couple of ...

John Britton:

Well, it seemed to work all right.

Nastaran Tavakoli-Far:

Okay, so I'm going to be honest. When I heard about the two measuring systems, I thought this was going to be one of the biggest sticking points in designing Concorde, but it actually really wasn't. Everything was done with so much care and consideration that of course they converted the numbers correctly. 

Another advantage of the way the teams worked was serendipity. 

As John tours us through the Aerospace Bristol Museum, he explains the benefit of everyone working in an open office.

John Britton:

Where the office was split up into different disciplines, like structures, mechanical systems, fuel systems, et cetera. You could walk through the office and through the different areas. Say you were working on a fuel system, you could walk past the structures guys who might be drawing a rib, and you could spot that where your fuel pipe was going to go, they'd put a stiffener on the rib. And you could say, "Hey, hey Roger, you've forgot to put an access hole in for my fuel pipe." So that was good. Working in teams, you could just overlook people's shoulders, and it was good for communications.

Nastaran Tavakoli-Far:

It seems very modern, the open office, which is meant to encourage collaboration, but this wasn't actually planned. The project was basically so huge that you needed all these different people to be working at once, and the open office was an unintended byproduct. Another unintended, but very modern approach came with team building. Chief Design Engineer Ted Talbot wrote a memoir in 2013. One of the things he talked about was how the fluid work environment extended to how roles were assigned.

Ted Talbot:

Others, although not formally in the group, became absorbed, and were regarded by all disciplines as full members for the duration. Each member of the technical nucleus was a superb individual in his particular discipline, who had earned by dint of his efforts, the quiet respect of his fellows. This respect was derived from the fact that without exception, each one had not only a profound understanding of their own particular subject, but could also give as much as they received in discussions with experts in other fields.

Nastaran Tavakoli-Far:

There was a lot of back and forth between the British and French teams. There were regular weekly flights between Toulouse and Bristol, with groups of engineers traveling to sort out problems face-to-face. John Britton explains how these meetings usually played out.

John Britton:

It was lovely because whenever we went for a meeting in France, every lunchtime, where we would sometimes stop and eat our sandwiches at our desk, they always had a lunch break. And you always went to the canteen and you had what they called a "plate", like a main course, but they had a carafe of wine. So quite often if there were any tricky decisions to be made, they would hold them back, not have them in the morning meeting part, but they would hold the tricky decisions until after lunch, in the hope that the Brits would be a bit squiffy and we'd nod it through. But we got wise to that.

Nastaran Tavakoli-Far:

Yep, that's how Concorde was designed. Face-to-face meetings and lots of wine, or in other words, being "strategic" in how you present and deliver ideas to your coworkers. But let's get to all the problems that needed to be dealt with before they could even start building the two prototypes. One of the biggest ones was the shape of the wings. And as Concorde historian, Jonathan Glancey tells us, initial research involved something right out of school, paper airplanes.

Jonathan Glancey:

The thing in the classroom, when you throw it at the back of the teacher's head, or the boy in front of you, or the girl sitting across there. But constantly bending those wings and making little changes to tabs, ailerons and so on. You learned a heck of a lot about flights if you concentrated. And eventually you could make an aircraft that would fly right across the classroom, with one easy move and thought, "Yay!" And it's that understanding is just what the real engineers did as well.

Nastaran Tavakoli-Far:

Yes, seriously. Engineers used paper airplanes and then papier-mâché models, to test things like lift, drag and stability. Now, these eventually evolved into large steel models, which were used for testing in wind tunnels. When we visited Dudley at his home in Toulouse, he had one of these steel models high up on one of his bookshelves. And Pedro couldn't help himself, but to get it down.

Dudley Collard:

Yeah, lift it by there, and up in the forward fuselage.

Nastaran Tavakoli-Far:

Oh, wow.

Pedro Mendes:

God, it's so heavy.

Dudley Collard:

Well, that's right. Yeah, you see?

Pedro Mendes:

So heavy.

Dudley Collard:

So I'll tell you what, we can dust it off. And ...

Nastaran Tavakoli-Far:

It looks a lot like the final Concorde. The wings are a bit different because right now they're pretty much flat, whereas on the Concordes that flew, the wings curved down towards the edges. With this one, what were you trying to focus on?

Dudley Collard:

It would measure the lift. And you've got the chance of comparing theory and test. So he ran lots and lots of different wings, different shapes, square tips and so on, to try and find the best one. That had to be design, but a bit of guesswork as well on that stuff, really.

Pedro Mendes:

So, how did you get that?

Dudley Collard:

Well, I was given it as a parting present when I went to retire. They'd gone and bought me all sorts of nice goody goodies, as a parting present. But I can't really say, perhaps it was cause they were pleased to get rid of me, but I don't know. Don't think so. And then, my boss said, "I got something here for you." And what did I say?

Nastaran Tavakoli-Far:

Speechless.

Dudley Collard:

I didn't say anything, because my mouth dropped open. And very lucky. Lucky boy.

Nastaran Tavakoli-Far:

It's funny, because the Concorde engineers we spoke to for this series, including Dudley, they tend to mostly focus on the facts and the numbers and the maths in designing and building the plane. They don't really talk about the emotions that much, but the emotions are definitely there in the background. For now, back to the wings. So first, let's look at how Concorde's triangular delta wing created lift, and that is the force that's needed to lift the plane into the air. It did this by creating these sorts of whirlwinds over the wings. Jonathan Glancey.

Jonathan Glancey:

And you could see those on rainy days, particularly when the aircraft was taking off at Heathrow. Remember watching the aircraft gunning down the runway, and you'd see these great whirling vortex forces of wind and rain above the wing, and you'd think, "What the hell is that?" They're like little tornadoes. And indeed they are, and they're helping to pull the aircraft up.

Nastaran Tavakoli-Far:

But to create these vortices, the wing needs to be at a high angle of attack, with the nose of the plane way up in the sky. 

Now, like we heard in episode one, this means that the pilots can't actually see the runway. So they borrowed an idea from British test aircraft at the time, and this led to one of the most famous parts of Concorde's look, the "droop snoot". The entire nose of Concorde was a separate piece that would actually pivot downwards, like a bending finger, for takeoff and landing. And then it would slide back in place for flight. 

Speaking of sliding, remember how Concorde would actually get up to 10” longer during supersonic flight? Well, to help deal with that, the floor of the cabin, under the carpet, was actually separated into panels that could slide back and forth every so slightly. That way, the floor wouldn’t crack during flight. 

The other major problem to deal with was heat. Aviation journalist Michel Polacco experienced this firsthand, as a Concorde passenger.

Michel Polacco:

The aircraft had two windows, an interior and an exterior window. And between both, you could see water vapor, which would eventually start boiling. And when you were a Concorde passenger, you would sometimes see boiling water in the windows of your plane, which was a normal phenomenon. 

Nastaran Tavakoli-Far:

In fact, if you touch the wall around the windows, it was warm. So regular materials weren't going to cut it, and heat-resistant titanium and steel, well, they were just too heavy. But the Brits had an advantage. They had a material they developed before the war, Hiduminium R.R. 58, a special aluminum alloy, so "aluminum" in North America, that could withstand heat just above twice the speed of sound. And this became the speed limit for Concorde. But you needed something crucial to achieve those speeds.

Michel Polacco:

Engines posed a problem to the French. They didn't have any reserves and couldn't upgrade the current engines they had. They wouldn't have been able to build engines that would be able to propel a plane that weighed close to 200 tons. Luckily, the British had an engine that fit into a bomber that was called the Olympus Engine. 

Nastaran Tavakoli-Far:

That engine, built by Rolls Royce and originally used in the Avro Vulcan bomber, created the thrust Concorde needed to take off and achieve supersonic flight. But there was a serious challenge. The air entering that engine couldn't be going at supersonic speeds. If it was, it would really reduce the engine's efficiency and cause damage. 

Ted Talbot's team, which included John Britton, developed the power plant. These are big rectangular boxes that include the engines. 

The fronts of the power plants deflected, slowed down and compressed the air, before it would enter the engine. This was key to Concorde's success, next to the wings of course. 

The power plants made the engines so efficient, they could purr along at Mach 2, without the use of reheats. The team not only solved a major problem, they innovated a remarkable new technology, as Ted Talbot wrote about in his memoir.

Ted Talbot:

The team's total dedication produced technical feats beyond even the normal expectations of intensive work projects, which knocked on the door of the frontiers of knowledge. And they did so without any external pressure.

Nastaran Tavakoli-Far:

In other words, this wasn't a top-down project. Here's Katie John, Concorde enthusiast and magazine editor.

Katie John:

It wasn't just people from on high dictating what was going to be done. Because there were so many technical challenges that had to be faced and overcome, time after time after time, they had to listen to the technical guys and put them first.

Nastaran Tavakoli-Far:

In June of 1963, while the British and the French were busy designing Concorde, the United States announced their own plans to go supersonic. Historian Jonathan Glancey.

Jonathan Glancey:

It was John F. Kennedy, of course, loved these big projects. He was good at them, wasn't he? He was the man, of course, announced the man on the moon by the end of the decade. And they could also, therefore, get a supersonic airliner up.

Nastaran Tavakoli-Far:

The Brits offered their help to the US, given that they were close allies in World War II.

Jonathan Glancey:

The Americans just bluntly, and quite forcibly said "no". They wanted to do their own thing, and they wanted to step way beyond what the British were doing.

Nastaran Tavakoli-Far:

The US government eventually called on Lockheed Martin and Boeing to come up with a plane that could hold dozens more passengers than Concorde, and a plane that wouldn't be flying at twice the speed of sound, but at three times the speed of sound. The US wanted to take this bold step because they were afraid that their aviation industry wouldn't be able to compete with Concorde. The Americans were caught up in the space race, and they were most worried about another competitor in the supersonic race, the Soviet Union.

Just weeks after Kennedy's announcement in 1963, the Soviet Council of Ministers approved a similar program, the Tupolev-144. Kennedy hoped that the development of an American plane by private industry would show up both the nationalized British and French project, as well as communist Russia.

Jonathan Glancey:

The US wanted to get into supersonic flight to beat the Russians, and to beat in a less aggressive way, the British and the French.

Nastaran Tavakoli-Far:

Meanwhile, back in Britain and France, work began in the mid '60s building two prototype Concorde aircraft. But this work wasn't caught up in some kind of political race for supremacy. The only concern the engineers had was working together to get it right. In our first episode, when I got to take that simulated flight, it was at Brooklands Museum in Weybridge, which is just outside London. That's also the site where some of the major components of the plane, like the entire front and back ends, were originally built, before being sent to Toulouse and Bristol to assemble into full airplanes.

Michael Evans:

There's always competition between sites, between people. If you speak to anybody who worked on Concorde at Weybridge, "Well, Bristol just put it together, that's all they did. We did most of the work."

Nastaran Tavakoli-Far:

That's Mike Evans, he joined the Weybridge Design Office in 1964. We met him inside Brooklands' huge airplane museum, which was a factory back in the '60s. At that time, Mike worked on the rear of the plane.

Michael Evans:

I think it was really a dream job. It was something very special, it was something new, there was a lot of new techniques being put into it.

Nastaran Tavakoli-Far:

As much as there was a friendly rivalry between Weybridge and Bristol, we wanted to know about the relationship with the teams in France.

Michael Evans:

One thing they got very upset about, there's something I did, we put in a reinforcing member between the frames onto some of the stringers where there was some excess load, and had a little phosphor bronze bearing in there, a slider. And I actually called it a "slipper" on the drawing. And they got very upset in France, because they converted that to a "soft bedroom shoe" and they were quite upset about it and wanted it changed. And no, I wasn't going to. It slipped in a slot, so I was quite happy.

Nastaran Tavakoli-Far:

You see, in French, "slipper" translates as "pantoufle" a word that has nothing to do with slipping. It's one of Concorde's many lost-in-translation moments. So at this point in the mid '60s, parts for both prototypes are being built all over Britain and France. The engines, the body of the plane, landing gear, everything being made at different sites by different teams. But of course, to build the prototypes, all these bits needed to be assembled in Toulouse and in Bristol.

Pathe News:

What a heck of a thing to meet if you're touring France. Slow as a tortoise here, but built to fly faster than sound, it's a part of the Concorde airliner on the way to Filton, near Bristol. Some tricky navigating took the big load from Toulouse to Le Havre, to be shipped over the Channel.

Nastaran Tavakoli-Far:

Pedro and I are on our way to the Brabazon hangars, which are just north of Bristol. This is where all British Concorde aircraft were assembled in the '60s and '70s. Pedro calls it "Concorde Holy Ground". As we drive up, we can see that Brabazon is three connected hangars, and they're the biggest hangars I've ever seen. They're about to be completely redeveloped into an event space, but we're lucky enough to get in while they're still exactly like they were back in the day. We're here with Nigel Ferris, who told us about the Concorde name in episode one. He worked here as a clerk in the '60s while the prototype was being assembled and rolled out. We're brought into the space by the folks who are currently looking after it.

Nigel Ferris:

…my office up there.

Alan:

Yeah, your office would've been up there. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Nigel Ferris:

Ah, good.

Eric:

So yeah.

Hannah:

When we bring people in here for tours, they always say, "Now did you work on the shop floor or were you one of the posh ones up in the offices?"

Nigel Ferris:

Oh, not a posh one. Good grief, no.

Eric:

Yeah, he says that.

Hannah:

Yeah.

Eric:

He says that, but he was.

Hannah:

There's a definite divide I'm sensing.

Nigel Ferris:

What they paid me at the time, I think it was about £7 a week.

Hannah:

Oh, really?

Nigel Ferris:

Yeah, but then I was just a youngster then.

Nastaran Tavakoli-Far:

This is such a cool space, it's massive. And I saw a bird fly by.

Nigel Ferris:

Oh, yeah, lots of those, yeah.

Nastaran Tavakoli-Far:

There's a bird in here.

Nigel Ferris:

Lots of droppings.

Nastaran Tavakoli-Far:

So we're in a hangar, it's huge. I don't know if it's the size of a football field, but it feels like it. It's really-

Nigel Ferris:

Oh, it's more than that.

Nastaran Tavakoli-Far:

Is it?

Nigel Ferris:

Yes, yeah.

Nastaran Tavakoli-Far:

It's really big.

Nigel Ferris:

Probably four times, even.

Nastaran Tavakoli-Far:

Yeah.

Nigel Ferris:

Yeah.

Nastaran Tavakoli-Far:

Or it feels like about 30 tennis courts or maybe even more.

Nigel Ferris:

Yeah.

Nastaran Tavakoli-Far:

Really high ceilings.

Nigel Ferris:

Yep.

Nastaran Tavakoli-Far:

There's just loads of lights in the ceilings. And there's a mezzanine level, which I understand-

Nigel Ferris:

My office was, yeah.

Nastaran Tavakoli-Far:

Your office, cool.

Nigel Ferris:

I was up there and I could see everything that was happening down here, from the very, very first piece of the aircraft that came, one of the fuselage sections. And then over the months and years, all the other pieces came in here from Weybridge and also from France, and they were all joined together.

Nastaran Tavakoli-Far:

So in front of us, there's a photo of this space that we're standing in. The photo is from the '60s. There is a Concorde, which it looks like it's being assembled. There's lots of scaffolding around it, there's rows and rows of desks. So I'm seeing some people at the desks.

Nigel Ferris:

Yep.

Nastaran Tavakoli-Far:

So what are they doing down there?

Nigel Ferris:

Well, they're basically the designers, draftsman, or the fitters, or mechanics. And the paper you can see is all their descriptions and instructions, and the schedule and the program of what to do. Now it's all computerized nowadays.

Pedro Mendes:

I've always thought of it as sort of like, now we have computer programs-

Nigel Ferris:

Oh, gosh yes.

Pedro Mendes:

... management, that's basically a human computer program.

Nigel Ferris:

I think, yeah. Absolutely, yeah.

Pedro Mendes:

Sitting out on there.

Nastaran Tavakoli-Far:

Now, you'd think that with two assembly lines - each putting together the exact same airplane - you'd have two learning curves. So, you know, the folks here in Bristol and over in Toulouse having to each figure out how to get all the wires and pipes and things into the bits of Concorde they hadn't built. 

But that’s where they came up with a brand new innovation for the airline industry: each piece would be delivered fully equipped. 

In other words, the work of installing systems was done at the component build stage, not at the assembly stage. 

So there'd only be a learning curve in connecting it all together. This was such an important and new way to work, it became the basis for Airbus operations decades later.

So I wanted to know, can you give an example of this process taking place?

Nigel Ferris:

Sure. Let's just imagine that the French are building a center fuselage section, which is the fuselage itself and a bit of the wing sticking out. Now, within that section, there will be hundreds of wires, hundreds of pipes, et cetera, for fuel and electrical and air conditioning, water, et cetera. So all those pieces would be put into that actual section in the place that they should be, so when it then arrived over here, you had all these wires and pipes hanging on.

There's another section here that we built with all the wires, so you get the wire, number one goes into number one, exit 25 to 25, great. Pipe 37 to pipe 37. And that actually speeded up the build and the construction. With all these people, the clever engine people and so on, they knew what had to be done. Although I think to myself, "Well, I was only a clerk, so was it important?" But yes it was, everything came together.

Pedro Mendes:

Reminds me of a great line during the Apollo mission, when Kennedy was touring.

Nigel Ferris:

Yeah.

Pedro Mendes:

And he ran into a janitor and he said, "Oh, what is it that you do here?" And he said, "I'm going to put somebody on the moon."

Nigel Ferris:

That's fair enough, yeah.

Nastaran Tavakoli-Far:

That's good.

Nigel Ferris:

Yeah, I follow on that. Yes, absolutely.

Nastaran Tavakoli-Far:

It wasn't just Nigel, of course. Everyone here at Brabazon, and at dozens of other sites around Britain and France, were all part of something bigger, all contributing to a huge shared goal.

Pathe News:

Visiting the British Aircraft Corporation factory at Filton, near Bristol. The Queen was to see for herself how the Anglo-French Concorde Project was shaping, to the delight of the crowd. But it was during her tour the news came that increased cost for developing the 1500 mile an hour jetliner, had rocketed to an estimated £500 million.

Nastaran Tavakoli-Far:

That’s about 10 Billion US dollars today, a massive amount and more than three times the initial estimate. Not only were there alarm bells about the soaring costs, but British politicians were beginning to doubt the project altogether. It was taking longer than projected, and most importantly, was it even going to fly? Chief Design Engineer Ted Talbot wrote about this in his memoir at the time, about how all these external pressures really affected his team.

Ted Talbot:

Throughout the formative years of the project and beyond, the designers were sustained by two common factors, a dry, goon-like sense of the ridiculous, and a complete dedication to the project. The humor was worn as armor against incessant attacks on the British side, from politicians, the press, and trial by television “experts.”

Nastaran Tavakoli-Far:

So even though the politicians had these concerns, the legally-binding pact between Britain and France, which we heard about in the first episode, meant that the project would have to continue. All this time, while the Concorde prototypes are being designed and built, something else political was happening behind the scenes. Sometimes in the dead of night and sometimes right under the watchful eye of company directors, espionage. Concorde historian, Jonathan Glancey.

Jonathan Glancey:

If you think of that period, this was the, as it were, the golden age of the spies, wasn't it? It's the sort of James Bond era, and there's spies everywhere. And in reality, there were. Sometimes Russian diplomats were expelled from London in their hundreds, because of suspected spying.

Nastaran Tavakoli-Far:

The history of Concorde is full of mostly unsubstantiated, but nevertheless tantalizing tales of espionage. Everyone we spoke to had a story, like this one from aviation journalist, Michel Polacco.

Michel Polacco:

There was the visit of a Russian dignitary in Toulouse that had glue under his shoes, in order to collect samples of the aluminum that was developed for the Concorde. It was an aluminum that was able to resist high temperatures. 

Nastaran Tavakoli-Far:

John Britton had his own suspicions of espionage.

John Britton:

We had this one Eastern European chap, and he often used to work overtime, and he was often in the drawing store because we had all the Concorde drawings on 35 mil microfiches. And I'm, in hindsight thinking about it, convinced that he was taking copies of some of this stuff and supplying it to our Eastern European friends.

Nastaran Tavakoli-Far:

There's other stories, right out of an Ian Fleming novel. It's 1966, and Jean Sarrady, who's Czech, has been arrested, and he's disguised as a Catholic priest. He's suspected of infiltrating the Concorde factory at Toulouse, and of smuggling out plans. Those plans had been handed over to Soviet agents, who've transferred them to microfilm. These agents, posing as tourists, board the Belgium to Warsaw express train. But the authorities are onto them. A search of their cabin turns up nothing, until someone thinks to look inside a toothpaste tube, inside are plans for Concorde.

Something that appeared to confirm that there was espionage taking place, was the Soviet prototype of the Tupolev-144 itself, a long thin white plane, with delta wings and a droop nose. My producer Pedro asked designer Dudley Collard about this resemblance.

Pedro Mendes:

The funny thing is because at the time, there's a British Pathé News article where they say the Tupolev looks suspiciously just like Concorde.

Dudley Collard:

Rot. Doesn't look like Concorde at all. Well, it does rather, like a DC-8 and a 707.

Nastaran Tavakoli-Far:

And Dudley's absolutely right, of course. In the same way that two cars might look similar, the general design of the TU-144 is similar to Concorde's, but once you take a second look, there are just so many differences. One of the big ones is that, where Concorde is sweeping and elegant, the TU-144 is boxy and crude, and this was something that was not going to bode well for the Soviet jet.

But part of this belief in espionage is also based on a rather close-minded idea that the Soviets, on their own, wouldn't be able to build a supersonic jet, and that they would have to rely on treachery. Ted Talbot refutes this in his memoir. Here's what he wrote about the TU-144 prototype.

Ted Talbot:

The power plant configuration was unsatisfactory. And in an admirably short time, they had separated the intakes into pairs, and realigned the engines and intakes around the landing gear. To knowledgeable engineers, these were feats of considerable technical and engineering brilliance. These people were to be taken seriously.

Nastaran Tavakoli-Far:

Meanwhile, the United States was busy working on their own supersonic jet. Lockheed Martin's proposal, which was similar to Concorde, was rejected in place of Boeing's, which was a far more audacious concept. Michel Polacco explains.

Michel Polacco:

The Americans had a project called the Boeing 2707, but this plane was the type of plane that we call a swing way, meaning that the angle that is created by the wings with the fuselage could change. This would mean that the wings could be very perpendicular to the fuselage during takeoff and landing, with a strong lift. And during flight, the wings could fold back to have less lift and less air resistance. In order to have these types of wings that could change shape during flight, a ton of machinery is needed. And this machinery is extremely heavy and complex, which can in turn cause some dangers when in use.

Nastaran Tavakoli-Far:

As John Britton points out, British and French engineers had already ruled out such a plane. Traveling at three times the speed of sound would create intense heat, and this would require much heavier materials.

John Britton:

As soon as you start building aircraft out of stainless steel and titanium, the weight goes up dramatically. And you need a bigger aircraft to accommodate more fuel, and then the aircraft gets heavy, you just end up chasing your tail.

Nastaran Tavakoli-Far:

International airlines had placed pre-orders on over 100 of these massive planes, including the forerunner of British Airways, who were, you know, supposed to be committed to another project. That project, Concorde, took its first major step towards completion on 11th December, 1967.

Pathe News:

Toulouse, the giant hangar at SUD Aviation's headquarters was the focal point of the world, for inside was the most exciting new thing in the world of aviation, Concorde number 001. The giant gleaming white dart, which points the way to the supersonic future of intercontinental transport, was about to make its public debut.

Nastaran Tavakoli-Far:

The world could finally see the first Concorde prototype, fully assembled and ready for ground testing, and eventually, hopefully, flight testing. 10 months later in September, the British prototype, called “002,” emerged from the Brabazon hangars. John remembers that day, as does Nigel.

John Britton:

We were all told that we could go down, and the first time that it was pulled out of the hangar ...

Nigel Ferris:

Just about everybody that worked out here, I think, was out here to watch it.

John Britton:

So, when the aircraft was rolled out ...

Nigel Ferris:

We could just see the nose there as well, then a bit wider. "Oh, are those wings? Oh, there's the engines. Oh look, there's the whole thing!" As it came out.

John Britton:

We were all stood round, clapping and cheering.

Pathe News:

English and French technicians proudly watched the result of their work being admired. Theirs was cooperation on a grand scale

Nastaran Tavakoli-Far: 

Concorde magazine editor Katie John.

Katie John:

I think the fact that two such old proud nations, and two nations that had lost a certain amount of their previous power. And we haven't had the easiest history, over the last 1000 years. I think the fact that we collaborated at all, was a source of amazement to the rest of the world.

Nastaran Tavakoli-Far:

And not just amazement. A number of airline companies, starting in 1963, were so convinced they put in orders for supersonic jets. 16 airlines from around the world put in orders for almost 100 Concorde aircraft. Well, actually, they didn't fully commit, because they put options on those aircraft, not paid orders. But just a few months after the debut of Concorde, when the prototypes were still going through ground testing and hadn't yet tried to fly ...

Pathe News:

Russia, the world's first supersonic passenger airliner to actually fly, the TU-144, was rolled out of its hangar at a Moscow airport. In appearance and apparently in performance, it's very similar to Concorde, even to its drooped snoot. So much so, that it has earned the nickname "Concordski".

Nastaran Tavakoli-Far:

Yep, that's right, the USSR beat them to the skies. The Soviet government was aware that Concorde was close to completion, so they demanded that their engineers get the Tupolev-144 airborne by the end of 1968, whether it was ready or not. Pedro asked Dudley about this moment.

Pedro Mendes:

When they debuted the TU-144 just before Concorde, did you and your teammates think to yourselves, "Oh, bloody hell, they trumped us."?

Dudley Collard:

No, we didn't bother.

Nastaran Tavakoli-Far:

Why?

Dudley Collard:

Because we were busy working on our aircraft, and we were doing it, we thought, the proper way. And you can't hurry it up. They had a deadline to fly before the end of the year, they flew on the 31st of December. I don't think the aircraft was finished.

Nastaran Tavakoli-Far:

Dudley hit on something key there with the TU-144, and that's to do with rushing it to completion. Because of the top-down political pressure to finish the plane ahead of the Brits and the French, Soviet engineers just didn't have the time to carefully develop and test the plane. The biggest flaw was in the power plants, which often had to use reheats or afterburners for a considerable amount of the time. This meant that the plane ended up using absurd amounts of fuel. Now, not only did that limit how far it could fly, but it was also so loud in the passenger cabin that people couldn't actually talk to each other, they had to pass written notes.

But a tragic result of this political meddling and rushing occurred on June 3rd, 1973 at the Paris Air Show. The TU-144 takes to the air in impressive fashion and begins a daring maneuver. The pilot pulls the plane into a steep climb, which wows the thousands of people watching. The plane then begins a frightfully fast dive towards the ground. The pilot tries desperately to pull the plane out of the dive, but just as it's leveling off, the plane breaks into pieces, catches fire and slams into the ground. All six crew are killed, along with eight people on the ground. Even though Concorde is technically in competition with the TU-144, there's nothing but commiseration from the British and French teams. Journalist Michel Polacco.

Michel Polacco:

Aviation is actually a big family, and when something goes wrong for someone someday, it can also go wrong for someone else another day. Contrary to what people might believe, these are the kind of professions where no one benefits or rejoices from the misfortune of others. 

Nastaran Tavakoli-Far:

And Dudley agrees.

Dudley Collard:

If there's something wrong with your competitor's airplane, you never say anything. And that's because everybody knows anyway, and the second thing is, it might be your turn next.

Nastaran Tavakoli-Far:

Due to a terrible safety record and the high cost of operation, the TU-144 went on to make only a handful of passenger flights in the '70s. In the end, it was mostly used to deliver mail before it was finally retired.

The US supersonic program never ended up suffering a similar tragedy, but that's because their SST was never even built. Boeing abandoned their "swing wing" concept because it was simply too heavy and complex. Instead, they released plans for a fixed wing supersonic jet that essentially looked like a larger, more beefed up version of Concorde, but it was still going to require huge development costs. At the same time, there were growing costs for the Apollo missions and the Vietnam War. So in 1971, Congress decided to cancel the SST program. 

Both of these programs, by the Americans and the Soviets ended up failing, because they lacked the careful and patient development of Concorde. One which was a bottom-up process that was led primarily by the engineers, not by politicians. And these were engineers who were chasing a dream, and they weren't really interested in being the first or the biggest, they wanted to be the best.

However, the failures did create a chill in Britain and France, as more and more people started to wonder if supersonic flight was a fool’s errand. And this was just as the Concorde prototypes were about to take to the skies, if all went to plan. Next time, Concorde faces its biggest challenge yet, people actively trying to kill Concorde because they no longer believe in its vision of the future.

Dr Perez Olindo:

There are a lot of reasons why any right thinking person should condemn the Concorde.

Katie John:

The oil crisis jacked up the price of oil fourfold, and then suddenly the economics of operating something as thirsty as Concorde looked a lot more shaky.

John Britton:

We worried about them, because obviously after Boeing stopped their SST, the movement got quite strong against Concorde ever flying into the States.

Jonathan Glancey:

I think everybody is shocked when they first hear a supersonic boom because, boy, it'll make you jump out of your skin. 

Protesters:

We have to live here. Not the people that are building the jet, not the people that are pushing the jet to be a success. They don't have to live here, we do. We got enough noise here.

Nastaran Tavakoli-Far:

That's next time Teamistry, an original podcast from Atlassian.