Concorde memories

[ike]

A less well known aspect of Concorde was the Lifetime Heat Fatigue Static Test facility at RAE Farnborough. Through the hard-learned lessons of the Comet tragedy, British Aerospace built what was then the world's most complex testing system for a complete airframe, a vast complex machine the size of a small tower block. I remember well getting a guided tour in and around the test airframe with my Dad who was a shift controller. I got to climb up into the wing tanks - you could almost stand upright at the deepest point of the wing root!.

A VAX11 computer controlled everything including several hundred hydraulic jacks to load the airframe to simulate in-flight stresses. A gargantuan HVAC system powered by several multi-megawatt ammonia turbo-compressors, fans and heat exchangers provided airflow over the entire airframe. The system ran 20-minute flight cycles takeoff, climb, supersonic cruise, descent and landing, 24/7/52 except for maintenance periods, or unless something broke. After 10 years or so they had exceeded the expected lifetime of 25 years service and actually got to a simulated 40 years service. The final test phase was to destruction, and destroy it they certainly did. The main wing spars broke, otherwise meaning the wings fell off! They got caught unawares when various tail breaking incidences occurred in service, but they eventually recorded the exact same failures on test. Many other cracks occurred in testing that prompted early modification, strengthening or replacement on planes in service. If passengers knew exactly how many cracks appeared on Concorde during it's life, some would probably have thought twice about flying it!

The airframe was chopped up for scrap. My Dad wanted the nose but so did a lot of other people!. He had a piece of cabin fuselage with a window which lived in the workshop for some years. He eventually gave it to the aero museum at Kemble.

What a tragedy that it was a simple strip of metal that led to it's ultimate demise and the poor souls with it.

Ike

 

[woodbloke]

As I recollect events, shortly after 'the' crash in France, both airlines just pulled the plug and ceased operating the aircraft - Rob

Ah well.. all was revealed in a book which IIRC I lent/gave/sold to another forum member years ago!

IIRC in a nutshell there were several factors:

according to the author of the book,

1) there was another near disaster involving the French Concorde and not very well documented. The flight crew had inadvertently left open the fuel tank drain puffins and had taken off from JFK for Paris. During their coffee/croissant/Gauloise break, the tanks were haemorrhaging fuel at a great rate of knots. Luckily the crew spotted a low fuel indicator and were able to land elsewhere in the US. This put the wind up Air France management.

2) Air France never made a profit from Concorde. On the other hand, BA had been making a good profit for quite a while. Then Sept 11 happened and for whatever reason the French and anything to do with France were villified by Americans. So what few US passengers were flying on the French Concorde got even fewer.

3) Air France wanted to get listed. Concorde was a millstone for them. So Air France pulled the plug on Concorde.

4) Now rumour starts. Posit a French Chairman of Air France and a French Chairman of Airbus Industrie. The very same Airbus Industrie with lots of very expensive engineers reserved for maintaining Concorde. Very expensive and experienced engineers who could be redeployed on other types. One could imagine a conversation by the Air France chairman along the lines of 'we can't have those English being the only nation to fly a commercial SST, can we'. One can imagine a gleam in the eye of the Airbus chairman.

5) But there was a fly in the ointment. Under the Treaty of Rome (IIRC) if a company is in a position of sole provider then if their customers still require maintenance services then they must provide them.

6) One can only raise conjecture as to the conversations/deals/offers/whatever that may or may not have gone on between BA (who were in a position to insist on continued support) and Airbus. Suffice to say BA must have come to the conclusion that they could take their Concorde passengers and fill up their First Class seats.

The rest, sadly, is history.

With regard to the original crash, my understanding is that the court case is/was due to start in France this year. My French isn't good enough to try and google that.

EDIT: Due to start 2 Feb 2010 and end in May 2010.

Rog - thanks for that, political shenanigans as per usual then? - Rob

 

[Harbo]

Rob wrote

Agreed the Chunnel went over, but I'd be hard pushed to find a major engineering project that came in on budjet...Olympic build maybe?

I worked on the Channel Tunnel Rail Link from St Pancras to the tunnel (or HS1 as it is now known) which was finished on time and on budget! (well that's what Tony Blair said!) - One of the largest Civil Engineering projects ever in the UK.

I worked for a time on site at Datchet near Heathrow - our Portacabins used to shake when Concorde came over - if on the phone you could not speak/hear until it had gone past - wonderful sight though.
I often think about it when flying across the Pond (which takes 6 or 7 hrs) that if it was still flying could I afford the 3 1/2 flight ? - No
I also seem to remember that Richard Branson tried to take them over but was refused?

Rod

 

[woodbloke]

Hi Rod - I remember you saying that you'd worked on the Chunnel, I couldn't recollect which bit of it - Rob

 

[Harbo]

Rob that's OK - we all know Mr B told porkies - it did open on time but had to be bailed out a couple of times!

Rod

 

[CHJ]

I believe the possible fatigue problems on Concord became a concern early on in it's construction. The high strength alloys used a high Copper content similar to those used in some of the Vee Bombers, the Valiant fleetwere scrapped immediately when a wing spar broke in flight, fortunately the skin was strong enough to hold it together until it landed.
Great annoyance to us at the time as we had just completed best part of 2 yrs prepping a research Valiant.

The Canberra Bombers had to have major Spar and Undercarriage mods for the same reason.

 

[newt]

Concorde, technically brilliant
commercially not so good
Rae designed the wings
It was built as a military project
Russians copied but could not cope with the detail
US noise lobby smoke screen because not invented here
Technically in the top 3 most demanding projects this century IMO
The french are nearly as clever as us in aviation, however could not have done it without them
The post crash mods worked fine, (9/11 killed trans atlantic traffic the two operators had no choice, the airframe was good for at least ten years as the test specimen indicated.
It is probabley the last project ever that will have been in the category " I wonder if we can do it" pipper the cost. Bit sad, but getting on the moon has not been great commercially, but it was done. Do we just sit still technically or take some risks, or let the bean counters run the show.

 

[RogerS]

...... Many other cracks occurred in testing that prompted early modification, strengthening or replacement on planes in service. If passengers knew exactly how many cracks appeared on Concorde during it's life, some would probably have thought twice about flying it!
......

Wonder if they were aware of that when they carried out the two barrel rolls?

Newt...was going to ask what you thought the other two were and guessed one of them being the moon landing (I concur 100% btw). Am I right?

Wonder what the other one is? Don't tell us. Let us try and work it out. :wink:

My guess is nuclear power generation.

 

[woodbloke]

My guess is nuclear power generation.

Close... I think it was the Manhattan Project - Rob

 

[newt]

Roger /Rob your both very preceptive, I have this strange feeling that thats it no more "can we do it". Mind you we have enough aeronautical test data to last a couple of decades, there are no real unknowns left, its just tinkering on the edges improving efficiency. My biggest fear is that countries like Iran could hire the brains, and they could then become main inventors and technical risk takers :twisted:

 

[CHJ]

My guess is nuclear power generation.

Close... I think it was the Manhattan Project - Rob

Walking back to my on site accommodation at Oak City Air base (Oklahoma) my fist evening there, I found myself adjacent to a large Prop. on a display plinth. Walking closer to read the dedication tablet I found that it was one of the props. off Enola Gay, the effect it had on me was very sobering, despite having read quite a lot about the effects of the A bomb nothing had prepared me for the feelings I had at that moment.

 

[Tony Spear]

Olympus powerplants were lifted straight out of the 50's being the same units that powered the 'V' bombers - Rob

Hardly.

The Avro Bristol Olympus engines in the last Vulcans developed 11,000 lbs. thrust each.

The Rolls-Royce Olympus 593 engine fitted to Concorde developed 38,000 lbs.

Lifted from - no.

Developed from - decidedly.

(just like most successful engines in Aeronautical, Automotive and Marine history).

P.S. a friend of mine was the first commercial BA Concorde pilot and when he pased over our local pub, he used to flash his landing lights to let us know it was him!

 

[woodbloke]

The Avro Bristol Olympus engines in the last Vulcans developed 11,000 lbs. thrust each.

The Rolls-Royce Olympus 593 engine fitted to Concorde developed 38,000 lbs.

...with no doubt, a corresponding increase in the db level - Rob

 

[Blister]

Still looks futuristic today ,

even though its now pensioned off

Sad to see it go

 

[p111dom]

Rog - agreed, standard procedure. Ground the fleet, do the 'fix' (which as I understand was relatively straight forward) and then re-instate the service...but both BA and Air France just threw the towel in, that's what made me ponder - Rob

I presume you're talking about the Paris crash in 2000 but concord was returned to service and flew on till 2003. The "relatively straight forward" fix was to design and install a kevlar lining into the fuel tanks to prevent a repeat rupture which took time to design and make and have passed by the FAA, CAA and other bodies so the aircraft could get its air worthiness certificate back. No one on at BA "threw in the towel" as far as I'm awhere but the down turn in passenger numbers post 9/11 and ever increasing maintenence cost made the aircraft unviable.

 

[newt]

9/11 was the final straw. Some may not realise that a huge feature of the concorde design was the use of standard aero alloys. It would have been technically easier to use some exotic material, in fact that was a major aspect that influenced the end of the US SST attempt. The US are good at a lot of things aviation but not everything.

 

[p111dom]

Well I would say that 9/11 lit the fuse but concord still flew on for 2 more years. Hardly the final straw.

 

[newt]

Well I would say that 9/11 lit the fuse but concord still flew on for 2 more years. Hardly the final straw.

Your right, the load factor did plummet after 9/11, I think they kept going in the hope of a recovery.

 

[Paul Chapman]

I think it's a shame they scrapped it - I will always regret never having travelled in it. Still, at least my son, Scott, has a cardboard cut-out on his wall 8)

Cheers :wink:

Paul

 

[p111dom]

I should add that I'm on the supporting side for Concord and think it a shame that my kids won't get to see it flying. Despite the problems of intergrating it with other traffic, it remains a huge technical achievement. I last saw it in 2003 when it flew into Edinburgh where I was fortunate enough to be standing airside so had an unobstructed view (much to the annoyance of one of the TV news crews outside the fence that we were standing in front of). As for the noise, there's one solution. Don't buy a house near to or under the flight path to an airport. :wink: