TonyNo doubt about it….the North American Aviation P-51 was the premier fighter of the war.
Replacing the original Allison engine with the Rolls Royce Merlin transformed the Mustang to a fighter that
was able to take the war to the Germans with its long range and performance over 15,000 feet (due to the Merlin engine built under licence in the US by Packard).
The legendary Lockheed Skunk Works headed by Kelly Johnson has produced top aircraft like the SR-71 and U-2 (interesting that the first jet engine the Skunk Works started with in 1943 was the British Goblin jet engine).
Other pioneers like Bill Lear with 120 patents, which is an outstanding number for one man in his lifetime, embody the best traditions in advances in aviation along with engineers in Britain, France, Germany and Russia.
Added later:
With honourable mentions to engineers from Sweden and Canada….I am sure I have forgotten others.
All generations stand on the shoulders of others who have gone before which is the way of all progress….the number of innovations in Britain handed to a plate to others include the Rolls Royce Nene turbojet given to USSR in 1947 (authorised by the new Labour government under a spirit of co-operation) and reverse engineered to give the Klimov VK-1 used in the mass produced MiG-15 is one example….same engine built under licence as Pratt & Whitney J42 was used in the Grumman F9F…..another example is the Miles M.52 where all the research work was handed over on a plate to Bell after the new Labour government implemented cuts. Bell went on to use all the work done to produce the Bell X-1 first supersonic jet…..look at the pictures of both planes…..I am sure there are many more examples 😀
Tony@Cream
Thank you for your link to the proposed Concorde B which is very interesting with lots of information and comparisons between Concorde A and B.
With an extended range to 4000 to 5000 miles and more efficient engines in the proposed Concorde B other airlines might have gone for it and air travel may have developed in a different way!
The Air France Concorde accident was due to debris on the runway and not a defect of the plane….that was the beginning of the end.
I did not know that British Airways made £0.75 billion revenues from Concorde (will be more in today’s money)…..at one time the 7 Concordes on the lucrative London- New York route (a tiny portion of its huge fleet as one of the largest airlines in the world) were making a quarter of British Airways’ profit!
Your link confirms Concorde take off noise was 119.50 dB (I had guessed around 120 dB from memory) and this would have been reduced to 109 dB in Concorde B…..still loud!
The other interesting thing is Concorde flew for three hours straight at Mach 2 without afterburner which is true supercruise…..the SR-71 Blackbird flew with afterburners on all the time!
The Americans have been subsidising their own planes for years and trying to kill off competitors in Europe and Canada (e.g. killed off the Avro Arrow interceptor)…..President Kennedy promised the US government would pay for three-quarters of the development cost of an American supersonic airliner but the paper projects of Lockheed and Boeing (both Mach 3 and 270 passengers) did not go any further…..JFK’s younger brother Edward Kennedy (a big honcho in the US Congress) in the 1970s told Pan Am (then largest airline in the world) if you want an SST it must be American and not Concorde! (I will try to find the link for that quote).
Tony@Tomcat
Much of military aviation development costs are borne by governments…
….what do you say abut the contention that the $600 billion USA annual military budget is just effectively just a system of subsidies to US companies…..especially the contracts on a “cost” + guaranteed profit!
There is no shareholder risk for the US manufacturers under these type of contracts and a side effect is to kill or wipe out competitor companies in Europe and elsewhere that cannot compete against these subsidised American companies? Ultimately, the poor taxpayer in every country loses out because they have to pay more in a monopoly market when you’re the only show in town….only the shareholders in those companies benefit to the detriment of the national interest.
Talking of monopolies when you’re the only show in town the good news is after the F-35 debacle there will be no more “joint” fighters that compromise USAF mission requirements for say a VTOL for the Marines using the same airframe because it turned out there is no upside cost reduction in commonality (for example much of future software development and maintenance cost is not yet known with a fleet of only 150….when there are 2,400 flying we can talk then).
Tony@Tomcat & halloweene
Like Swerve I lived under its flight path to Heathrow for the 20 years it operated until it retired…..twice a day it would shake the house and I had to stop telephone conversations until it passed.
While it was good to see it fly overhead the UK government relaxed the landing and take off noise levels at the airport to allow the Concorde fleet to operate….other planes were quieter then and were under the noise limits I believe around 118 dB or 120dB….modern planes are even quieter.
The reason for the noise was not the sonic boom when going supersonic…..it would fly high at Mach 2 at more than 60,000 feet….the noise that was so horrendous was from the four giant Olympus turbojets on afterburner which were used at low level on take-offs and landings….anyone under for many miles under its flight path would not enjoy that! Today hundreds of jets land every day at Heathrow but you can’t hear them!
As Eagle said the Valkyrie had six turbojets on afterburners which would have made it even noisier!
The main point is Concorde was stopped on purely commercial reasons and not for environmental reasons (KGB you still have not recognised this!)
BA was making an operating profit on the New York – London route (I remember there was a Concorde flight to Singapore which stopped off at Bahrain and had BA livery on one side and Singapore Airlines livery on the other….I don’t believe (unlike the New York to London route) there are enough Chinese businessmen today willing to pay a few thousand dollars on a longer route from China or Asia to Europe to cut their flight time to a few hours instead of taking all day to Europe)….BA could have carried on with Concorde for a few more years but the cost of maintaining it was getting more expensive and they decided to cut their losses and stop operating it.
@ KGB you have not quite accepted what Swerve and others were saying…..even if certain routes are profitable you have to make enough money to also pay off all the development costs and Concorde was simply not making enough money to cover both operating costs (which were covered on profitable routes) and also development costs….the development costs were ultimately covered by the British and French governments for a fleet of about 20 planes (many airlines had options but did not take them up).
@Tomcat much of the aviation development costs are borne by governments….what do you say abut the contention that the $600 billion USA annual military budget is just effectively just a system of subsidies to US companies…..especially the contracts on a “cost” + guaranteed profit! There is no shareholder risk for the US manufacturers under these type of contracts and a side effect is to kill or wipe out competitor companies in Europe and elsewhere that cannot compete against these subsidised American companies? Ultimately, the poor taxpayer in every country loses out because they have to pay more in a monopoly market when you’re the only show in town….only the shareholders in those companies benefit to the detriment of the national interest. Talking of monopolies when you’re the only show in town the good news is after the F-35 debacle there will be no more “joint” fighters that compromise USAF mission requirements for say a VTOL for the Marines using the same airframe because it turned out there is no upside cost reduction in commonality (for example much of future software development and maintenance cost is not yet known with a fleet of only 150….when there are 2,400 flying we can talk then).
Tony@KGB
I have to agree that as fans of all things aviation we want progress….sometimes it’s a fine balance between progress and other considerations…not just environmental…it’s usually cost…always money 😉
Tony@KGB
You are right there was, and still is, a big demand for a Mach 2 flight flying New York to London in 3 hours and a bit hours (fastest ever with favourable conditions was under 3 hours). British Airways made an operating profit on this route and the 100-seater was usually full or thereabouts.
Despite making an operating profit, the decision to pull out by British Airways was commercial as margins on first class passengers on normal airliners was high and without the associated costs (4,800 gallons per hour at Mach 2….this could have been slashed to 3,600 gallons per hour with a more efficient new engine but no one was going to pay for that)…..as Blueapple said lack of support by Airbus (BA had bought all the tooling for spares) also contributed to stopping the service.
A new supersonic operator could easily charge $5,000 or more per seat if they have say 120 seats ($600,000 per flight) to get to New York from London in 3 hours.
But it won’t necessarily be the costs that might hinder a new operator but other environmental factors (carbon emissions) and say something like the fact that flying at over 11 miles high (a more efficient height for supersonic travel at Mach 2) can give high exposure to radiation which can cause cancer….but due to the reduced flight time the risk is probably less than on a long haul conventional flight.
Tony@KGB
Just to be clear the noise wasn’t from the supersonic boom….it was noisy when flying relatively low and slowly over the suburbs on the way to the airport to land….the whole house literally shook when it flew over….the airport noise levels (I think around 120 dB from memory) already louder than other airliners were relaxed by the government for political reasons so the BA and Air France Concorde fleets could continue to operate.
The Rolls Royce Olympus engines were derived from the engines used in the Vulcan nuclear bomber of the 1950s. It was too expensive to build the brand new proposed engine (RB.169) so an existing engine based on the Mk.320 used in the cancelled TSR-2 nuclear strike aircraft was used instead.
Attempts were made to reduce the noise, including by SNECMA, but the attempts at noise mitigation such as spades projecting in the exhaust all failed. There was a proposal for a new engine with reduced air flow to mitigate noise but it was just too expensive to develop and build while there was a working engine which had superb Mach 2 performance and could supercruise (the real deal and not the watered down LM version! :D)
Someone has already nailed why the B-70 was cancelled….it was just too expensive and would have eaten up the USAF budget….there were other, cheaper methods of delivering nuclear warheads into the USSR using missiles….there no longer was a mission to fly bombers into one of the most heavily defended places on Earth….the shoot down of Gary Powers U-2 showed the writing was on the wall…..some people might say Mathias Rust landing his plane unchallenged in Red Square put some question on to whether the celebrated Soviet air defence was all that! 😀
Tony@KGB
The noise pollution thing wasn’t a scam….I live on one of the flight paths to Heathrow Airport (almost 30 km away) one of the busiest airports in the world….when Concorde used to fly over the whole house would shake…if you were on the phone you had wait until it had gone to carry on talking…it really was awful! Hundreds of planes fly every day but you can’t hear a thing….modern jets are silent by comparison 😉
TonyYou’re right AK this happened before in 2002-2003 when Bush slapped punitive tariffs on UK steel (UK high quality steel was much sought after). We appealed and Bush ignored us. We appealed to the World Trade Organisation and they found the tariffs were illegal but the Americans ignored the WTO! (a bit like the French who ignore EU rules when it suits them….remember when the French farmers burnt Welsh lamb in the trucks carrying them to France! :D)
The EU threatened selective tariffs where it hurts such as Florida oranges (a key swing state where Bush’s brother Jeb was governor) and the US quickly took off the illegal tariffs.
This is happening now while we’re in the EU and won’t get any better once we’ve left. Countries with big enough clout will ride roughshod over smaller ones. A bit like the way Apple, Microsoft, Google (I include $73 billion Uber in this) treat smaller countries and cities and say what are you going to do about it? Do you want to lose our business?
The only language they understand is when it hurts them in the pocket and they get fines of billion like the EU gave them recently in an anti-competition ruling. Tthey do billions of business here using local resources and infrastructure paid for by local taxpayers but they pay little or no local company tax because of artificial tax arrangements. When it hurts them in the pocket (billions are a drop in the ocean to them compared to their cash piles of hundreds of billions) only then do they comply with the rules and say they’re sorry.
TonyHi Geoff… I hope you are well!
I’ve seen the cast list for the film above…..it’s got Dandy Nichols way down the cast list….wasn’t she Alf Garnett’s wife in Till Death do us Part?
TonyOur friends in the US of A, who were supposed to put us at the “front of the queue” (to have our backsides slapped! 😉 after Brexit, have unkindly slapped a tariff of 220% on exports of Bombardier aircraft!
As we leave the World’s biggest free trade area, it’s a cruel world out there with self-interest all the way 😀 and no one gives a stuff about us! Who would have thought it! 😀 Liam Fox thinks we can get little far away countries like Uruguay and big ones like the US to replace doing business with our next door neighbours in the EU, where we sell most of our stuff….mainly because its easier and usually cheaper to sell stuff to your neighbour than someone thousands of miles away.
In the same way it’s harder for smaller countries to stand up to bigger ones…a bit like smaller countries who can’t stand up to big companies like Apple, Microsoft, Google etc. unless they get, as they did recently from the EU, a multi-billion dollar fine (that’s right….billions of dollars in fines…. because they hardly pay any local company tax in Europe through artificial tax arrangements….while using all of our resources, roads, communications and infrastructure all paid for by local taxpayers) for unscrupulous anti-competition practices (because companies will try to make as much money as they can (nothing wrong with that) to the detriment of the consumer and public interest unless they are regulated and called to account).
We are going to lose out here in the UK because Boeing did not like an order by Delta Air lines for 75 C-series airliners worth $5.6 billion made by Bombardier who have a big factory in the UK. Boeing did not even compete for the Delta order because it doesn’t even produce a competitor to the C-series! But Boeing believes any profits Bombardier makes may help it design a bigger aircraft to compete with Boeing so it wants to kill competitors before they become a threat to it….good for its shareholders but not for competition or for long suffering taxpayers that have to pay more for Boeing civil and military products as a result of no competition!
Boeing have the cheek to ask for a level playing field when they are doing the complete opposite by unfairly killing competition to the detriment of taxpayers, while receiving massive subsidies themselves!
The Canadian company has a factory in Northern Ireland employing 4,000 making the wings for its airliner and Boeing say they had government subsidies so the US should slap massive punitive tariffs on exports to the US…..and with which the US Department of Commerce has kindly obliged 😉
Boeing is the biggest aircraft company in the world….you would have thought needs no help itself from anyone in the way of subsidies?
Guess who receives the biggest US subsidies?
That’s right….Boeing got the most subsidies! To the tune of $13.4 billion! That is $13.4 billion in both State and local subsidies!!
Is it one rule for US companies and another for UK companies?
They kill foreign competitor companies by claiming they get subsidies, while at the same time giving subsidies to their own companies! In addition to the open state and local subsidies listed in the Washington Post link below one could argue some of the massive US $600 billion defence budget is a system of hidden subsidies for US defence contractors.
We could of course slap the same 220% tariff the Americans levied on our exports on the US companies listed below that get billions in US subsidies :dev2:
Here is a list of the main US companies that do get billions in subsidies kindly listed for us by the Washington Post! 😀
TonyThanks for this Marcellogo…..who else but the legendary commander General Issam Zahreddine! Congrats to the SAA for lifting the ISIS siege after three long years.
TonyLifting the siege of Deir al-Zour is great news! :D….not least to the almost 100,000 people besieged since 2014….still a long way to go…
Syria drew their football match today and may reach a play- off for the World Cup….a potential opponent may be Saudi Arabia!:dev2:
The Wahhabis are of course the main sponsors of the illegal invasion and attempted destruction of a sovereign country, Syria, by jihadists from all over the world.
The bright sparks in the intelligence services who facilitated the travel to Syria of western jihadists and the supply of arms there (fully documented including shipping from Eastern Europe and paid for mainly by Saudi and Qatar and some western countries) and used to fuel the war in Syria (and also in a few other hotspots in the Mid-East and Africa) need to reflect on what happens when the chickens come home to roost and they try do the same thing when they return to the west.
….a few people did say at the time don’t support tyrants asking for democracy in Syria when they don’t have democracy in their Wahhabi Terrorist Fiefdoms (WTF) because it will have bad ramifications for us here in the west and it doesn’t matter in how much they pay you….it’s not worth it because the resulting damage and fallout will cost a lot more to sort out and won’t be worth any money they are willing to give us now in the way of contracts to get us to fight for them and their narrow sectarian interests!
ironically, karma means that Bell Pottinger the FTSE100 quoted company is likely now to go down the tubes after pocketing half a billion dollars for doing fake news and PR work for the Syrian jihadists after they were expelled from the PR trade body after being caught with their pants down in South Africa trying to stir up racial tension there on behalf of the Gupta billionaires who are close to President Zuma and family.
TonySwerve, I agree parts of the media have too much influence on the state.
Anthony Hilton (then City Editor of The Times newspaper) asked Rupert Murdoch (owner of the Times and Sun newspapers and Fox News :dev2:) why he hated the European Union so much? Murdoch replied ‘That’s easy, when I go into Downing Street they do what I say; when I go to Brussels they take no notice!’”
Just like Google, Microsoft and other mega companies are finding they just don’t have the clout when taking on the EU’s $17 trillion GDP (compared to say just the UK’s $3 trillion GDP). Particularly relevant when they make billions in sales all over Europe but pay no local tax in the countries where they make their sales because their headquarters is based in say Dublin paying just 12.5% corporation tax ;- ) The EU needs massive reform but that is one example when it can take on giant multinationals in the public interest.
Murdoch’s company Fox is now bidding for the 61% of Sky Broadcasting that it doesn’t own, so all of a sudden Murdoch now denies he ever said that! :D.
Hilton (great journalist now with the London Evening Standard) says “I stand by my story” and Murdoch had never denied saying that before (until now when he’s got to look squeaky clean!)
Remember Tony Blair as Prime Minister flew half way across the world to Australia to meet (or kneel before him :D) Murdoch just for a few hours? That was when every politician was frightened to death of the press barons before their power was (partially) broken after the telephone hacking scandal involving Millie Dowler….he had to abandon his last bid for Sky when the hacking scandal broke he had to close his most profitable and feared paper The News of The World to stop the scandal damaging him further (ironic that a scandal sheet became toxic overnight because of a scandal) and paid millions to the editor to fall on her sword and take the “hit” for him to keep him squeaky clean as a ‘fit and proper person’ because he said he didn’t know anything about the hacking 😉
Hoping people have forgotten, he’s re-launched the bid to take over 100% of Sky in a £11 billion deal…in my opinion too much power in the hands of a few media moguls is against the public interest and the takeover bid should be investigated…power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely.
TonyAll you’re worried about is giving Putin a slap in the face…..you don’t give a **** about fighting a proxy war resulting
In the death of hundreds of thousands of innocent civilians.
Carla Del Ponte of the UN was stunned when she found out the “moderate” terrorists were responsible for the chemical attacks after the UN investigation on the 2013 false flag attacks designed by the Saudis, Qataris, Turks and Americans to frame the Syrian government as a pretext for attacking him (before the Russians intervened).
Why would Assad use chemical weapons, which by the way were confirmed by Kerry to be all removed, when he is winning? If he had a secret stash as a weapon of last resort you would think he won’t waste it on ISIS or al Qaeda. There is no proof that Assad used chemical weapons but there is proof ISIS have used chemical weapons very recently in Mosul! Other people will recall sarin was found in Turkey when ISIS/ Al Qaeda members were raided (part of the stash used in the original attempt to frame Assad). Seymour Hersh the American investigative journalist contends Hilary authorised the transfer of Libyan sarin stocks via Turkey into Syria for the false flag frame up of Assad as a pretext for attacking the Syrian government on the side of the “moderate” terrorists.
Trump has been bamboozled into doing Hilary’s work in attacking the Syrian government and become the Air Force for ISIS and Al Qaeda. Assad is the only person defending the minority christians and yazidis from the head choppers and unbelievably Trump is attacking him.
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