I don't think that it is necessarily totally an urban legend.
The story of the Duxford Concorde having the modified fuselage frames ties in well with the "Brit " Concorde 002 at Yeovilton allegedy having a similar configuration under the skin -possibly even so far as including the sway brace hardpoints. The "French" prototypes it seems did not have this.
The story could now be fairly easily verified or disproved I would have thought.

At least one problem would seem to be, where to put any weapons? The Blue Steel shown in the pictures was big & heavy (let alone 3 of them!). The space around the CG in a Concorde is all taken up by wheel bays and engines. While no expert I'd have thought that trim problems in releasing heavy stores so far ahead of CG as shown in the picture would have been insuperable.

what a brilliant thread !!:D

Makes you wonder what lies under the FOI act doesn't it?

Well...
Maybe that was where all the time and money went. Time for the history anoraks to see whether 01 or 202 disappeared for a while in the 1970s, doing weapons release and tests of an astro-inertial nav fit someplace in Nevada.

Continuous Concord...
 

How about MORALE BOOSTER...?
Or multi-student fast-jet trainer. Give Wales a break, run it around the Home Counties, Monday to Friday.
I know the dreadful realities of life too well, but we need to dream sometimes. Those who dreamed of getting a Vulcan up again managed it, four Olympus too, but I think that's a dream too far for Concord- too much technology. The Vulcan's a Meccano set compared to Concord.
B50.

I believe the French have kept one airworthy just in case. Can't recall the museum it's in but ex-Conc engineers have kept up with the work. :ok:

My father was a QFI and was last stationed at Upavon. He retired from the RAF voluntarily in 1965, age 44 to go on to work as an instructor for Airwork Services and then BAC in Saudi. When he took me to see the Concorde at Yeovilton, he told me he had been involved in some of the radar work on that aircraft (002 I think?) - sorry to open up such an old thread, but does this ring a bell with anyone?

He joined up in 1939 at age 18 and after much flying was part of the RAF mission to Germany in 1958 to teach Luftwaffe pilots to fly jets. His name was Arthur "John" Hubbard.

Anyone who might have known him, please reply. I'd give out his service number, but I'm not sure if that's de rigeur.

Thank you all!

From RAF Yearbook 1971
https://cimg4.ibsrv.net/gimg/pprune....99f5e279c4.jpg
https://cimg5.ibsrv.net/gimg/pprune....b0fdbf734d.jpg

and somewhere else, depiction of it carrying Blue steel or skybolt

https://cimg7.ibsrv.net/gimg/pprune....395e00e7fd.jpg

cheers

Thank you!

the article is interesting - as ever any mention of financial restraints are missing - and one might also muse on an industry that seemed incapable of producing an exportable aircraft after the Canberra and the Hunter and maybe the Harrier

Hawk?

To be fair, in the case of the VC10 that was probably attributable to the fact it was U/S most of the time.

Far more exportable than the Harrier.

designed over 50 years ago....................

But continuously developed over that time, over 1000 sold, the last one delivered just a year ago.
In terms of design royalty payments, although they decreased as the design evolved from the original TMk1, supposedly the second most profitable export programme ever across all sectors.

aZooZa, my Dad was also at Upavon in 1965 having gone from spec-rec for promotion to Wg Cdr to redundancy in the latest round of defence cuts within a matter of months. His last flying tour as an A1 instructor had been 2i/c Transport Command Examining Unit at Benson, after which he did the Russian interpreter's course at Tangmere. Long story involving air crash in Russia killing many military and air attaches meant him dipping out on a diplo tour in Moscow, so he finished his operational time as Ops O for a SIGINT Wing at Butzweilerhof near Cologne. Sadly, he departed the fix 2 years ago so am unable to find out if he knew your Dad; HQ 38 Gp did seem to be a clearing-house for people departing the service.

If chopper2004 :ok: hadn't already done so, I'd have uploaded the Arthur Gibson black-and-white pic from the Yearbook.

Its not just the aircraft - we continually build & buy military equipment of all types which rarely sells - tanks? destroyers?..................

tho they do seem to be selling the plans for the T26 frigate

Which variant and period are you talking about? It served BOAC/BA and several other operators for several years without any serious safety issues.

The RAF variant (This is the Military Aviation Forum, not the 1950's Airliner Nostalgia Forum) that so often failed to materialise at the end of a deployment.

We very rarely had them unavailable in my time. Ther main problem we had was the stupid running rules that messed up getting them sorted at night.