Hi SLFinAZ,
I agree that we got (with my comments in [brackets]):
- sworn testimonies by highly respectable & trained people, [that I never saw quoted in extenso (if you have a reference, I'm interested), except for one ATC who said IIRC (TV show) he was not looking towards Concorde when she began her T/O roll];
- sworn testimonies by certainly also respectable people, [but not trained in any way, for exemple the foreman seen in the TV parallel inquiries];
- all those people were situated, at the time of the accident, relatively far from the aircraft [making it difficult to jaudge distances];
- the "step" on the runway that could have played a role "before the strip" [but I can't remember any evidence or even precise/factual hypothesis about that].
Now, on the "other side", we also got:
- no single hard evidence of fire (or any other arising problem) before the blown tyre/fuel leak event;
- no satisfying scenario able to explain where/why a fire would have been present before the strip/tyre/leak event (not even the missing spacer, see quote below);
- evidence (damaged concrete) of the tyre blowning up at the time when & place where the final report said it occured;
- evidences of the fuel leak beginning at the time when & place where the final report said it occured;
- evidences of this fuel leak taking fire shorlty afterwards;
- correlation of all those with the FDR traces;
- correlation of all those with the CVR recordings;
- correlation between those events and the TWR ATC message "Concorde, vous avez des flammes derrière vous".
The lack of precision of eyewitnesses is relatively common, if we're to believe what professionals experienced in working with witnesses say on the topic.
My conclusion is, then, that without meaning the slightest disrespect to sworn and/or professional witnesses, their testimonies must be somehow incorrect/not enough precise.
Quote from B. Sieker (op. cit. in my #160): The report makes a point of recording that there was no sign of abnormality in the taxying and takeoff run up to the point of tyre destruction. There was no shimmy, no deviation from track, the brake temperatures were equal RHS and LHS, and the longitudinal acceleration was consistent with the TO mass and ambient conditions. Let us accept that ensemble as evidence that any bogie misalignment due to the missing spacer became a potential problem only after the destruction of the tyre.