 IMechE Aerospace North West
Aerospace North West, a regional committee of the Aerospace Industries Division of the Institution of Mechanical Engineers (IMechE), arranged a special tribute to the Concorde at the Manchester Airport Aviation Viewing Park on 8 September. A sizeable crowd attended the event and on this late summer’s afternoon we were blessed with glorious hot, sunny weather.
The celebration began with professionally conducted group tours of G-BOAC, the Concorde on static display at the Aviation Viewing Park. Designated number 204, this was the second British-built production Concorde, constructed at Filton in 1974, which was delivered in February 1975, achieved four transatlantic crossings in one day on 1 September that year and formally entered service in February 1976. (And there was definitely no Flight Test Engineer’s station on board!) Bearing the registration G-BOAC, this became the flagship of the British Airways fleet (formerly British Overseas Airways Corporation, BOAC), carrying most of the Royal Family and numerous leading politicians and celebrities while making over 6,700 supersonic flights and covering some 18-21 million miles.
Our tour guide began by walking us underneath the Concorde and explaining the functionality and history of its components. Concorde has a all undercarriage, which protected its engines from debris ingestion during ground running but on this occasion simply provided us conveniently with copious headroom while we circumambulated its shadow. The two front tyres, pressurized to 190 psi and serviceable for 25 to 30 landings, were each worth £1,350 while the eight main tyres, all pressurized to 230 psi, would each have cost £1,800. Even the two little tyres on the tail bumper were priced at £1,300 per piece! The four Rolls Royce Olympus 593 engines were each capable of delivering 38,000 lbs (169 kN) of thrust at a fuel consumption rate of 25 gallons per minute, amounting to 6,000 gallons per hour for all four engines, or 26,500 gallons per hour when the afterburners were engaged. On starting a transonic acceleration, the afterburners were always lit in pairs, firstly the inner two and then the outer two, thereby preserving a smooth ride for the passengers. Cleverly (British-) designed hydraulic ramps in the engine intakes efficiently slowed down the airflow subsonically during supersonic flight, in order to maintain optimal compression for combustion. Special paint protected Concorde from heating and thermal expansion caused by skin friction; at an outside air temperature below -50 °C, the nose tip would reach +127 °C and the fuselage would stretch by eight inches. Fuselage insulation shielded the passenger compartment from these harsh extremes, ensuring that its occupants could continue sipping champagne comfortably in their shirtsleeves. Concorde is 203 ft. 9 in. (62 m) long, has a wing span of 83 ft. 6 in. (25.5 m) and is 37 ft. 5 in. (11.4 m) tall at the tail. It is noteworthy that Concorde’s wing span is approximately the same as the fin height of the Airbus A380, an airliner that will carry up to eight times as many passengers subsonically. Of course, we all know that Concorde’s innate forte was not size but speed, and lots of it. If we would ever have been fortunate enough to witness both aircraft flying together, then we would have seen Concorde leave the A380 behind like a forgotten
umbrella in a cloakroom! When cruising at 60,000 ft. at a true airspeed of 1,350 mph, 2.04 times the speed of sound, Concorde took just 2.7 seconds to travel one mile, thereby zipping through a London-New York flight in only 3.5 hours.
The tour guide
took us on board, giving us plenty of time to look up and down the passenger compartment while he and his assistants provided comprehensive commentaries. For a short while, I sat in one of the £4,000 leather seats near the front, a few feet away from seat A1, where dignitaries such as HRH Queen Elizabeth II or Lady Thatcher had been seated on many occasions. We were also taken onto the flight deck, which was essentially set out like that of other airliners of its generation, but with additional features such as a Mach meter, reheat controls and a lever to adjust the nose droop on takeoff and landing. There was a large panel for the Flight Engineer, who during a flight had the demanding task of continuously pumping fuel from one tank to another. This was necessary, not only for maintaining balance by moving the centre of gravity to compensate for the aerodynamic centre shift in supersonic flight, but also for keeping the cabin cool.
G-BOAC, focal point of the Viewing Park
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First-class seating throughout,
on an airliner second to none
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Following the tour, there was a short interlude for a buffet, at which the caterers mistook me for a photographer, before the evening presentations began. Peter Hampson, General Airfield Manager of Manchester International Airport, provided a short introduction and then handed the floor to Prof. John Edward Talbot (better known as Ted Talbot), a Fellow of the IMechE who had been a principal Concorde design engineer. He led us on a jovial trail through the history of the various supersonic aircraft designs that had led to Concorde, such as the Fairey Delta, Handley Page HP 115 and Bristol Type 188, alongside some foreign rivals. Two aircraft variants were considered for the final design, as well as two engine variants and fairly similar diversity among the designs for intakes, diverters, intake controls, engine controls, reheat controls and nozzles. The fuel load was to be shared between 13 tanks, numbered from 1 through to 11. This appeared illogical until Ted explained that the set of tanks also included a number 5a and 7a, remnants of the numbering system of an earlier design, which had been retained for convenience. Ted proceeded to discuss with much enthusiasm the design of the Rolls Royce Olympus engines and covered their evolution from the Olympus engines on the Vulcan, which had only produced 11,000 lbs of thrust. Next, he gave and animated account of the flight testing of Concorde, including some funny stories about the testing that was done on overseas detachment. Finally, he briefly discussed the tragic crash of Air France Concorde F-BTSC at Gonesse on 25 July 2000, in which the lives of 100 passengers, nine crew and four people on the ground were lost. Much of the investigation into the reason why the leaking fuel ignited, which eventually proved that it was caused by contact with sparks from damaged wiring rather than with the reheat plume, was performed in the high speed wind tunnels at BAE SYSTEMS, Warton. These tests had been shrouded in much secrecy at that time. On finishing, Ted pointed out that Concorde was the first civil aircraft with a fly-by-wire flight control system (although manual reversion was available), as well as the first to use digital electronics and the first to use carbon fibre disc brakes. We owe it solely to Concorde that, to date, more supersonic flying hours have been accrued in civilian flight than in the flight of all the world’s military forces put together. Collectively, the Concorde fleet has flown approximately 140 million miles and carried two and a half million passengers.
Peter Hampson delivered the second presentation, on How to Catch a Concorde, in which he explained how G-BOAC came to the Aviation viewing Park at Manchester. British Airways and Air France had made the heartbreaking joint announcement on 7 April 2003, that they were going to retire their Concorde fleets. When Peter heard the announcement, he promptly wrote a letter to Mike Bannister, British Airways Chief Concorde Pilot, to ask if he could have a Concorde for display at Manchester Airport. He had not realized at that time that he was actually one of 600 applicants, all making the same request, but he made it through to the shortlist of 60, nd following an interview with a British Airways official at Waterside, Heathrow, became one of the 30 finalists. In order to pass the final selection, these candidates were all to give a presentation, expressing the compelling reasons why they should have a Concorde for their airport or museum. In our evening lecture, Peter showed us some of the highlights of the one and a half hour presentation that he had delivered at Waterside. He began by showing that Manchester International Airport was centrally located in the United Kingdom, had a very large principal passenger catchment area, was easily accessible by road, rail and air, and was the origin or destination of 40 British Airways services. This airport was also the first in the UK to have devised a Concorde Policy: it successfully developed and implemented operational protocols in conjunction with the local community, which facilitated Concorde operations at Manchester. Over 27 years, Concorde had made more than 100 flights in and out of Manchester, more than any other airport in the UK except Heathrow. The Aviation Viewing Park already had a Vampire, a DC-10 fuselage and an Avro RJX (sadly the last civil aircraft to be manufactured in the UK) on display, and Concorde would clearly complement this collection most appropriately. It was predicted that the annual number of visitors to the park, already greater than to the RAF Museum at Hendon, would consequently also exceed the annual number of visitors to Duxford. Additionally, the Concorde would be seen on display by the 20 million passengers travelling through the airport every year. With this and a multitude of other advantages that Peter presented, he had eventually managed to convince British Airways to hand over G-BOAC to the Aviation Viewing Park on a permanent loan and he was ready and waiting for its delivery. Another Concorde, G-BOAG, made a farewell flight out of Manchester on 22 October 2003, and then on 24 October there was an emotional ceremony at Heathrow when three Concordes made their final landings there. However, it was not until the end of that month that G-BOAC
came home to Manchester and the news was made public. Half a year later, she was towed to the Aviation Viewing Park over reinforced steel plating and positioned on a specially built mini-runway. The fuel, hydraulic fluid and batteries were then removed for safety. A formal press opening of the display took place in April this year, saluted by a Tornado flypast.
The evening concluded with a raffle, in which the first prize was a framed Concorde photograph and other prizes included Concorde models and Concorde bottle stoppers. As night time arrived, the Concorde display became illuminated decoratively in special ‘blue-steel’ lighting at the front and magenta at the rear. This had been a very enjoyable afternoon event, thanks to those of the Aerospace North West committee who arranged it so well.
Before closing, I shall just return to my earlier notion of Concorde and the A380 flying together and stretch my hypothesis a little further. Just imagine that the two aeroplanes could have taken off from Heathrow at the same time, headed for New York. The A380, chugging across the Atlantic, would later see Concorde sprinting the other way after it had landed in New York, refuelled and taken off again. The A380 would probably land at New York just as Concorde was getting back to Heathrow. However, the A380 would already have delivered 800 passengers stateside, while Concorde was just coming back for its next 100. But would this make Concorde any less beloved? Absolutely not. (No disrespect is intended to the giant A380, another forthcoming aviation superachievement to which I greatly look forward.) Economists might well play down the Concorde, but to all those engineers who drove its development, it must have been like their dearest child, and to all who flew it, their favourite toy. Few accomplishments of mankind can rival that of those engineers, test pilots and other visionaries who transmuted into reality the distant dream of allowing people to travel so gracefully, twice as fast as sound and high enough to see the curvature of the earth. Now that this fantastic creation has sadly become confined to the earth’s surface, our fond memories shall outlive it many times over. We do not yet know with certainty when there will ever be another achievement as magnificent as this. It all depends how well we rekindle and preserve, in the face of political and economic adversity, that spirit of creative genius and tenacity that brought to our skies the cherished gift of Concorde for one third of a century.
Concorde display opened at the Aviation Viewing Park
www.manairport.co.uk/web.nsf/Content/PressReleaseConcordeLaunch
Where the birds have gone home to roost
www.concordesst.com/fleetoverview.html
Seattle Museum of Flight®
www.museumofflight.org/visit/concorde.html
A CD containing my photographs is available for loan.
Craig F. Eckersley, RAeS Preston Branch
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