LEM
...the certification requirements take into account the loss of one small window, an immediate descent at an amazing rate and oxygen masks for breathing...
As you say, certification takes account of a rapid depressurisation, not an instantaneous one, and requires the flight crew to don pressure breathing masks immediately, and then, if the F/E cannot control the cabin altitude, accomplish an emergency descent.
If I may just add one or two comments to what you have posted, the passenger windows fitted in the production aircraft are smaller than the passenger windows in the prototype aircraft, a change made during certification and test flying to ensure that the aircraft met all the relevant decompression standards.
One advantage of Concorde is that with a normal cabin differential pressure of 10.7 psi, the cabin altitude is a lot lower at any given aircraft altitude than on conventional subsonic jet aircraft.
The flight crew do not routinely wear O2 masks at any stage of the flight but do have a genuine pressure breathing system available, to ensure sufficient O2 intake in the event of high cabin altitudes being attained. If required, they could get the aircraft down from FL600 very quickly.
...not pressure breathing apparatus, which every aircraft has..
I personally don’t know of another civilian aircraft that has a similar flight crew pressure breathing system to the one fitted on Concorde.
Those who have used both “Demand” and “Pressure” breathing systems know the difference between them. Those that haven’t will learn it as soon as they take their first breath wearing a real “Pressure” breathing system!
...Have you ever seen a VSI with a scale greater than 6000?...
On Concorde, once the needle indicates ±6,000 fpm on the conventional scale, a digital indication in a lower or upper window then takes over.
The VSI can thus read over a range from +10,000 fpm to -30,000 fpm, which is usually enough for our needs!
TopBunk
…Spoke with a ccde flt eng…and he saw -34,000 fpm on the VSI!...
A good story, but the Mach 2.0 surge procedure, whilst certainly very interesting, won’t produce as high a rate of descent as the Emergency Descent procedure will, and neither procedure would produce anything like 34,000 fpm.
Regards
Bellerophon