Concorde success or failure
This study of the Anglo-French supersonic transport (SST) Concorde focuses on its relationship with the United States. Kenneth Owen outlines early attempts to recruit American participation in the ambitious and very expensive effort to build a passenger airliner that could cruise at speeds of Mach 2. The author also discusses aborted American plans to build a competing SST during the 1960s; the attempts by American diplomatic and intelligence agencies to monitor, and even derail, the Concorde; and, the politics of winning U.S. airworthiness and "ear-worthiness" certification during the 1970s. The Concorde is a spectacular and reliable aircraft, but makes "economic nonsense" (p. 5). As Owen notes, its history presents "an outstanding example of how not to develop and build a supersonic airliner-or any other high-technology product" (p. 171). The billions of French francs and British pounds poured into the Concorde were commercially futile. Owen shows, however, that the dreams of thousands of SST airliners circling the globe figured only tangentially in the Concorde's momentum. British "pride," French "resolve," and coping with "U.S. competition" were the main impulses. Technological striving among large and influential con
Owen's account reads well, but is frequently repetitive. The author, a journalist, trailed the Concorde while it generated news headlines and interviewed "key players." FAA reports and memoranda, and presidential records, especially at the Lyndon B. Johnson Library in Austin, Texas, are cited. Nevertheless, these are used superficially. The book never rises above the author's "inside story" approach. Readers interested in the technological, managerial, and political-economic aspects of this unique aircraft will be disappointed. The Concorde began with a 1958 report on the possibilities of SST by British aircraft designers and with the 1959 commitment to SST by Harold M. Macmillan's cabinet. The British feared being left behind in civilian aeronautics and still smarted from the eclipse of the ill-fated De Havilland Comet jetliner by the Boeing 707 and Douglas Commercial 8. The British wrongly assumed that the U.S. intended a commercial derivative of its supersonic B-58 Hustler and B-70 Valkyrie bombers. They hoped for U.S. collaboration, but were rebuffed and turned instead to the French. By 1962, the British and French saw advantages in a joint SST apart from cost-sharing. The British hoped to ease their way into the Common Market, and French President Charles DeGaulle "viewed Concorde as an important step in demonstrating the technical competence required of a major power," as the Central Intelligence Agency argued in 1966 (p. 69). The Conc
Some topics in this essay:
Kenneth Owen,
Boeing's SST,
French British,
Europe Japan,
Airways Concorde,
Concorde Tupelov,
Air American,
Austin Texas,
Washington DC,
Port Authority's,
commercial sst,
lyndon johnson,
french british,
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Approximate Word count = 981
Approximate Pages = 4 (250 words per page double spaced)
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