The only picture of Concorde flying at supersonic speed, chased by RAF Tornado crew

Just noticed this article and thought our resident pilots and avgeeks might enjoy it. It's a shot of the Concorde flying at supersonic speeds as captured from a RAF Tornado crew: "The Tornado was stripped of everything to get it up to that speed as long as possible. After racing to catch the Concorde and struggling to keep up, the Tornado broke off the rendezvous after just four minutes"

It's certainly not a new photo release, but something I'd managed to miss.

Great article from theaviationgeekclub.com

Gorgeous!

Glorious!

I had opportunity to walk through a Concorde at the Duxford Air Museum. Also got to tour their de Havilland Comet, another beautiful airliner in my opinion.

Holy crap! All that in three hours?
I'd be shitfaced and they'd have to carry me off the plane in NY.

One of the most expensive transoceanic flights, and they were serving Bell’s?

Probably a good idea, as you couldn’t drink enough of the stuff in four hours to get pissed 😉

It only aged 20 years as no one was drinking it 😉

Nice! Thanks @Trev !

Prototypes in the works..

The scaled down prototype is going to fly through the wall in seventeen hours for the first time ever. I hope its smooth sailing as I desperately want the airliner version in service.

https://boomsupersonic.com/

I would have guessed they would have done it with an F-4. Didn’t know the Tornado had similar range and top end. I assumed even with its swing wing and concessions to low level and ground attack it would not have the same interceptor cred.

With the amount of juice Old Smokey gulped at Mach 2 he would have had to tank up at altitude, chase to Concorde, take a quick pic and do a U turn back to the tanker and line up for another drink to get him home.

Doing it as the Tornado did, with the Concorde throttled back to Mach 1.6, would have been feasible.

Reading a UK test pilots memoir (the late great Roland Beamont) he expressed frustration that the technology was not developed by the UK (imagine a more fuel-efficient Concorde etc) It was only supposed to be in service until 1999 I think (so it should have been replaced before the tragic accident that finished it off in 2000). People forget that New York banned it just long enough to ensure it would not be a commercial success, and then decided that it could land there after all. That delay killed the order book and any potential to develop it futher. One imagines the New American design will have a bit less of a political headwind, which won’t be just down to its superb aerodynamics :0)

CAS, IAS and TAS all look a bit complex to a non-pilot, without throwing in compressibility issues breaking the sound barrier etc. In terms performance It Looks like for Concorde the max cruising speed at 15,635 m (51,000 ft) M2.04 or 530 kt CAS, whichever is the lesser, equivalent to TAS of 1,176 kt (2,179 km/h; 1,345 mph).

It looks like a Tornado was TAS 1,300 kts @ Mach 2.20, 50,000+feet. A higher performance airframe as you would expect. But nowhere near the level endurance and comfort, not to mention the 128 passengers.

Considering Concorde was designed in the sixties, what an amazing plane, and so futuristic even today. All hand drawn back then and designed with slide rules......

The Tornado swing wing design came from Barnes Wallis as a slight aside. From wiki he also complained of the loss of aircraft design to the United States, and suggested that Britain could dominate air travel by developing a small supersonic airliner........