NHerby
The 1962 treaty talks about an equal share of work and expenditure between Fr and UK... That sounds very political and not very realistic! A more pragmatic way would have been to take the best each country had to offer. But, in the end, was the share really fair for everybody?
WOW! Talk about asking the 64000$ question up front!
It would take a book to answer your questions properly. Luckily someone has already written it - try to get hold of Ken Owen's "Concorde New Shape in the Sky" ISBN 0 7106 0268 5. It is an excellent account of the genesis and development of the machine that drove my life for 25 years.
You are right - it was a political agreement, but politics after all the art of agreeing what is possible, and we are talking of the UK and France of the 1950s. No way that either of those two proud countries was going to let the other have the lion's share of the kudos and fun of developing and flying the world's first supersonic airliner. Fun? yes, exciting, challenging, exhausting but definitely fun.
and no way it was going to be other than an equal split.
But one can easily argue that it was arranged so that each country contributed the best it had to offer. The actual split was 50/50 on total costs, but arranged so that the UK had 60% of powerplant and 40% airframe. At the time, France had nothing to compare with the Olympus as an engine suitable for supersonic cruise, so that was logical. Out of our 40% on airframe we had responsibility for the intake and for powerplant/airframe integration. But when it came down to brass tacks Onera had a more flexible intake design than anything we Brits had to offer, and later in the project the "TRA" nozzle also came from France. We can take a lot of credit for melding these into a very successful powerplant, but I think it fair to say that each country did, in fact, contribute the best it had to offer.
As for fair shares for all, well all I can say is that there was more than enough work to go around
