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The Concorde was the first and only successful supersonic airliner to sustain regularly scheduled service. Developed as a joint endeavor between the governments of Great Britain and France, and the aerospace companies British Aircraft Corporation and Aerospatiale, the project encountered numerous delays due to the technical difficulty of flying at supersonic speeds. Designed by French engineer Pierre Satre (1909–80) and British engineer Sir Archibald Russell (1904–95), the aircraft featured a highly-swept delta wing and was one of only a few commercial aircraft to employ a design without a horizontal stabilizer on the tail. The Concorde was also one of the first airliners to have a fly-by-wire flight control system— manual flight controls replaced with an electronic interface and computer. The fuselage needed to withstand temperatures exceeding 260°F from the air friction produced at Mach 2 speeds, which caused the airframe to expand by nearly one foot. See “Supersonic Transport: The First Generation” on display, pre-security, in the Aviation Museum and Library and online at: https://bit.ly/SSTFirstGeneration #sstfirstgeneration advertisements: Air France, Airbus; 1980s Gift of Thomas G. Dragges 2015.165.613 postcard: BAC Aerospatiale, Concorde; Gift of Henk Harkema 2023.009.095
This image was posted on December 01, 2023.