Yep. I used to live in Wichita KS near McConnell AFB which was home to a B1-B squadron. After moving to the UK I worked in an office where I could see Concorde taking off nearly every day. They sounded quite similar.
…and the old “Memphis Belle” sat outside at the Memphis airport for decades. Saw it myself once while taxiing
Given the subsequent history of Mirabel and of the Concorde, that seems very appropriate in retrospect.
Just to clarify, it was a half-hour, subsonic (of course) flight around the airfield area. I didn’t have $US600 to blow at the time.
We recently saw it at the Air Force Museum while visiting Dayton Ohio. It wasn’t flying, just hanging from the ceiling. I was able to get up nice and close to it; some teenagers standing next to me were probably wondering why I was gawking at it. I stood there for at least ten minutes before my group pulled me away. It would have been wonderful to see in action. The Wikipedia entry said it got badly deteriorated while in Memphis, between souvenir hunters and pigeon droppings. I glad to see it got moved indoors and restored.
She is a beauty. I bet I built the Reveall model of her at least 3 times. That box- cover art pulled me in every time. My Dad served in the Pacific with the 58th fighter group as crew chief/ mechanic. His primary training was on the P-40 but as soon as his unit was scheduled to move to the Pacific theater the 58th had its P-40s pulled and replaced with P-47 thunderbolts. I built Numerous models of both of those planes too.
Thanks for the heads up:.. I did not know she was in Dayton!
This meshes with what one of my profs said. Her was on sabbatical in France in the mid-60s, when Concorde was being designed. The newspapers said they were going to drive the subsonic jets out of business. It didn’t work out that way.
He, physicist, also said Concorde was originally going to be bigger - 707 or even 747 passenger capacity. The engineers had expected the post WWII improvements in metallurgy to continue, so by the 1970s they could build big engines with big turbine blades and get the power needed to get a 747 supersonic. But the metallurgy had played out by the mid 60s. So the engines had to be smaller, and therefore the plane much smaller. Then it couldn’t carry enough people to be profitable.
I’ve never been able to confirm the second point. Was the original Concorde design for over 150 passengers?
The original Boeing 2707 swing wing designwas configured to hold over 300.
The Concorde - Wikipedia talks about the early design goals. The Brits were aiming at 150 pax and transatlantic range. The French were aiming elsewhere.
Then engineering reality set in. To close the thrust /w eight / range / speed case with the tech of the day, the airplane kept shrinking. And shrinking. etc.
As noted above, the Americans, between Lockheed, North American, and Boeing, had leapfrogged themselves into a 747/777-sized behemoth that could also go supersonic. A full 40 years before the 777. Good luck with that.
Thanks! That proposed Boeing SST would have needed oceans of fuel, wouldn’t it?
Thank you for confirming a story I heard in the 80s!
It surely would have burned more on a per-passenger basis than an early 747 did. Like maybe double. I don’t know about “oceans”, especially in an era when fuel was nearly free and “greenery” meant parsley garnish on a dinner plate.