Concorde

I love the Concorde story, it's full of so many myths, and tears of sadness and joy.

The first story I like is that the British government gave the French government the early plans of the British prototypes without telling the British team what the government was up to. So basically the French teams were given a British design to start with. The result being when it was time to pool the development it was basically already the same British design, but now it looked like it was 50% French. I don't know how true this is, or what the motives of it would have been, but it's interesting.

I like that many people in England now spell Concorde with an e without thinking about it, when in fact concord doesn't have an "e" in English, but the aeroplane does.

I like the flags on this stamp, if you look carefully, you will notice that the Tricolour and that the Union Flag are backwards, I think that's because they can't put the French flag on a British stamp, so both flags are shown as they are on one side of an aeroplane, as if you are looking at them with the pole to the right rather than the left as usual... Someone can probably confirm my theory.

I've touched a RR engine of a Concorde once, as it was sitting on a gurney at the Science Museum in London being prepared for display. I've also had a Concorde go over the top of me once while at Heathrow - I was in a bus going to the departure terminal at silly o'clock and a Concorde rolled out across the road in front of our bus. Concorde may not be very big but it's awfully tall!

There is another story that learning that the Russians were snooping around the British and French governments allowed them to have the data of a known to be unstable aerodynamic design, which gave rise to the Tu-144 "Concordski", and aeroplane with a poor flight record and a reputation for instability...

Still spinning plates at work...