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.

You must have been exceptionally unlucky. I can't remember a single time that happened to me.

Or you were exceptionally lucky, I can remember multiple times......

The real explanation, from this
"Concorde flies at Mach 2, 1500mph, which is faster than a bullet from a gun. Which is why they've never made a military Concorde, because if it opened fire it would shoot itself down........"

The XB-70 Valkyrie predated the Concorde by well over a decade - and would have been a far more capable military platform than the Concorde ever would (Mach 3, a large internal bomb load, and range).
It was cancelled because it had become apparent that 'high and fast' simply wasn't enough against the emerging air defenses - and that was in the 1960's.
So my first question would be - "What could a military Concorde bring to the table that the XB-70 wouldn't have done better?"

Hey? That doesn't make sense.
It can fly faster than a bullet from a gun. Then that being the case, how could it possibly shoot itself down. Because the bullet it fired would not be able to catch up with the Concorde.

So, each and every air combat aircraft since the F-100 has been a myth?
Who knew…

Never mind all that. T'would have been a brilliant transport for the AOC on his annual inspection.....

Just caught up with this as regards the VC 10 (C)1 - and I can only add that my recollection of the 10's early days - both on a squadron tour and in posts related to the daily tasking of the aircraft - back up what you say. Serviceability was at least as good as that achieved by any of our transport aircraft of the time and management of the force was not a problem.

RAF VC10 C1 Serviceablility
 

Having flown the RAF VC10s for six years in the 1980s, I can only say that the serviceability rate was never a problem affecting my small part in that sphere of operations. Of course there were the occasional times when snags occurred.<br />One such event happened to me when the centre windscreen started double-delaminating whilst climbing up through FL290. A return to the departure airfield after a lower level jettison of fuel was carried out. As soon as a few of the windscreen securing bolts were removed by the ground engs, the whole screen shattered into a million small pieces. We weren't going anywhere.<br />A new windscreen was ordered from the nearest RAF base holding one (HKG) but it was then was lost in transit by the civilian carrier in Melbourne, Aus. A new window had to be ordered from the UK but would take a week to reach us. - Oh I forgot to say that we were climbing out of Nandi in Fiji when we had the failure and it was in mid-December. We had to suffer a week in Fiji getting a suntan, before returning home just in time for Christmas. As a penance for our enjoyment we later had to suffer many a night flight to Cyprus and back, as recompense for a week in the South Pacific whilst all at home were shivering.

Thank you very much. I appreciate your time! I might find the 'Like' button at some stage :ok:

An amusing sidebar to the conversation

https://www.planeandpilotmag.com/new...t-itself-down/

Amusing unless your the pilot who shot himself down. New call sign, bullet catcher.