Originally Posted by DozyWannabe
Well, it was essentially a development airframe pressed into premature service for the sake of beating a western project into the air.
Originally Posted by
M2dude
Good point I suppose, but you could say that the six Concorde prototypes, Pre-Production and Production Series Test aircraft were also development aircraft
Something I think I hinted at before, was how much the two Concorde prototypes differed from the aircraft that followed, even from the pre-production aircraft.
Wherever you look... the cockpit, the visor, the engines, the tail, the avionics, other systems... the prototypes were a first "iteration", designed and built to prove the concept.
The real development was done on what were the real "development aircraft", the pre-production and first two production aircraft (even if 01 / G-AXDN was a bit of a hybrid, retaining the short tail and the early engine nozzles).
I hope sometime the story; of how different were 001 and 002 from those that followed, will go on record before it fades into the mists of time.
CJ