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By Stephen Dowling
22 March 2016
In
November 1962, the British and French governments announced a deal that caused
great distress in the boardrooms of American planemakers.
The
two countries announced plans to jointly build a new airliner, one that would be
able to fly at more than twice the speed of sound. The aircraft – to be called
‘Concorde’ – would be the most advanced civilian aircraft in the world, showing
that European aircraft manufacturers could create the most bleeding-edge
designs.
US
president John F Kennedy rose to this sudden challenge; the Anglo-French
Concorde would have competition. America would create its own rivals to the
European design, building a giant, passenger-carrying jet capable of flying
faster than a rifle bullet.
The
state-sponsored project selected two designs for further selection, one from
airliner giant Boeing and another from Lockheed. But the programme became mired
in political turmoil, environmental protests and spiralling costs. Neither of
‘America’s Concordes’ ever flew.
The announcement of the Anglo-French Concorde
concerned the US (Credit: Getty Images)
Today,
however, supersonic flight is back on the agenda in the US, after more than 45
years in limbo. Lockheed recently announced a collaboration with Nasa to design a
quieter supersonic jet that may, one day, carry passengers.
So, what can be learned from the story of America’s failed Concorde rival?
In
the 1960s, Boeing and Lockheed were two of the most experienced aircraft
manufacturers in the world. Boeing had revolutionised air travel with
ever-more-reliable jet airliners. Lockheed had designed the first aircraft
capable of flying at more than twice the speed of sound, the F-104 Starfighter,
and was working on even faster military designs.
To be beaten in
the supersonic airliner arena by the British and the French was one thing – to
be shown a clean pair of heels by the Russians was another
Even
before Concorde was announced, American aircraft companies were seriously
looking at the feasibility of a supersonic passenger plane, or a Supersonic
Transport (SST). One company, Douglas Aircraft, produced a concept in 1961 for
an airliner that could fly at three times the speed of sound (Mach 3). Douglas
not only believed that such an aircraft could be flying by 1970, but that there
would be a market for hundreds of aircraft.
Concorde,
it turned out, was not the only reason to focus American attention. On the
other side of the Iron Curtain, the Russian design bureau Tupolev was also
creating a supersonic transport and airliner, the Tu-144. To be beaten in the
supersonic airliner arena by the British and the French was one thing – to be
shown a clean pair of heels by the Russians was another.
The
quest for a supersonic airliner became almost as important to the US as the
race to the Moon. “You look back to that time and there really was a lot of
technological advancements in aeronautics,” says Peter Coen, Nasa’s supersonic
project manager at Langley Research Center in Virginia. “Whether it was a
consideration of the market and what type of aircraft might be needed, or
whether it was a case of one-upping Russia and Europe.”
The Lockheed L-2000 was one of two designs that
underwent more detailed testing (Credit: San Diego Air & Space Museum)
President
Kennedy’s carrot to Lockheed and Boeing was that the government would pick up
75% of the cost of the programme if either could produce a design that could
rival Concorde. Both companies had done private research – “paper studies” as
they’re known – on supersonic transport since the late 1950s. Most of these
studies mirrored the Russian and European research, creating delta-winged
aircraft.
As
aircraft started being fitted with jet engines, and travelling at far faster
speeds, the standard design that had served propeller-driven aircraft for
decades was no longer desirable; straight, plank-like wings created too much
drag. With a too-powerful jet engine, these wings would snap off. The
triangular shape of delta wings provided a stability that could withstand the
stresses of enormous speed – aircraft like the French Mirage III fighter and
the Russian MiG-21 had already proven the delta shape could easily go to Mach 2
and beyond.
Lockheed
chose the delta layout for their design, intended to fly at 2,000mph
(3,200km/h) while carrying 270 passengers. Boeing’s design was supposed to be
able to fly at Mach 2.7 (1,800mph), carry more than 270 passengers, and be able
to fly more than 4,200 miles (6,700 kilometres).
When we were
building Concorde, we were pushing technology as far as it could possibly go at
the time. They were pushing for something that was just too difficult – Kit
Mitchell
Boeing
chose what’s known as ‘variable geometry’ – or swing wings, as they became
known – in their initial design. The wings would be straight at low speeds,
improving the aircraft’s handling at take-off and landing, and then swing back
closer to the aircraft’s body as it picked up speed. And the US government must
have been impressed – after a great deal of further testing, Boeing’s concept
was chosen as the winner on 1 January 1967. But the 2707’s progress was
anything but smooth.
Kit
Mitchell was the principal scientific officer at the then Royal Aeronautical
Establishment (RAE) in the 1960s, and worked on Concorde. He says the Boeing
2707’s main problem was that it was trying to do too much, and that so much of
the technology needed to do it was still in its infancy.
The
fact that the 2707 was supposed to fly hundreds of miles an hour faster than
Concorde “had huge implications”, says Mitchell.
“When
we were building Concorde, we were pushing technology as far as it could possibly
go at the time. They were pushing for something that was just too difficult.”
The 2707 project was Boeing’s major priority
during the late 1960s (Credit: Boeing)
Mitchell
says that the 2707’s extra speed would have caused enormous challenges for
every single part of the aircraft. At such speed, the aircraft experiences
enormous heating – parts of Concorde’s metal skin heated to well over the
boiling point of water; the very tip of the nose could be as hot as 127C when
cruising at Mach 2. “Everything – from the sealants, to the electrical wiring,
to the windows, you name it, had to especially designed for a ‘hot’ airplane.
“A
lot of this was unknown territory.”
But
few could criticise Boeing for not throwing enough resources at the design.
Mike Lombardi, Boeing’s resident historian, says: “To put into context just how
ambitious this was, when Boeing was working on supersonic transport, the
company was also designing what would be the 747 Jumbo Jet, and the 737
airliner had just entered service. There was the space programme to get a man
on the Moon, which Boeing was heavily involved in, and there were some military
projects as well.
“We
were going to the Moon and building the 747, and 2707 was still the number one
project at Boeing.
“Joe
Sutter, who was in charge of building the 747, said how difficult it was to get
engineers to design that airplane because they were all committed to supersonic
transport.”
The design team
literally had to go back to the drawing board – Mike Lombardi, Boeing
National
pride was at stake. But the political will wasn’t enough to solve the enormous
design challenges to get Boeing’s swing-wing giant into the air. Some military
jets had already been designed to use the technique, but these were small,
carrying two crewmembers at most. Scaling that up to something that could carry
almost 300 people was a huge challenge. “The problem Boeing had was that it
meant a tremendous amount of extra weight,” says Lombardi. “The bearings had to
be really heavy, and the weight became almost prohibitive. The design team
literally had to go back to the drawing board.”
Even
when the designers moved to a delta wing shape, says Mitchell, they still couldn’t
solve some of the weight problems which meant the aircraft was very fuel hungry
and couldn’t get from the US to Europe on internal fuel. “That’s the same
problem the Concorde prototype and pre-production models had too, however. We
had to keep refining the design, and the production model was the first one
that could actually cross the Atlantic.”
Wings
were not the only problem. The sonic boom the 2707 would create as it broke the
sound barrier would be another issue. “Once it became apparent just how
disturbing that was,” Coen says, “it put paid to the idea of supersonic flight
over the US.”
A full-size mock-up of the delta-winged Boeing
2707 was built in Seattle (Credit: Boeing)
This
would be the same issue that would affect Concorde. Dozens of Concordes had
been ordered by airlines as the Anglo-French project gathered speed – including
US airlines such as Pan Am and TWA – but these orders melted away as it emerged
that the environmental constraints would limit the aircraft’s use to flying
over the ocean, far away from populated areas. (It’s why British and French
Concordes only flew to destinations on the east coast of the US.)
“The
model that most airlines use means that they can’t have an airplane that they
can only use on a few routes,” says Coen – if you’re going to use expensive
supersonic aircraft, then you have to use them on as many routes as possible so
they pay for themselves.
Fuel
was relatively cheap when the 2707 was being designed in the 1960s, but
Boeing’s design burned so much of it that the sheer costs of it might have
offset the traditional argument in favour of supersonic transports – that they
take less time to fly between airports so each aircraft can carry out more
flights per year.
What ended up
killing the project, and eventually Concorde itself, was the amount of fuel you
had to burn – Mike Lombardi
“What
ended up killing [Boeing’s design], and eventually Concorde itself, was the
amount of fuel you had to burn. It became prohibitive,” says Lombardi. “There
was the recession of 1971, and the cost of oil started to rise. But even if it
hadn’t ended then, the oil crisis of 1973 would have killed it. It would have
ended up being a disastrous project if it had still gone ahead.”
Boeing
became a household name because of the aircraft that did make it into the air –
the ones which took ordinary people on holidays near and far. But even if the
2707 failed to make it into the air, Lombardi says there were silver linings.
Nasa and Lockheed will collaborate on a new
supersonic demonstrator (Credit: Nasa)
“The
2707 had a lot of effect on the development of the 747, he says. “The thinking
was that all the world’s airlines would want supersonic transport, and no-one
would buy these subsonic airliners. So Boeing had to plan that some time in the
1970s they would have to turn all these 747s into cargo freighters. It turns
out that we only needed to start doing that a few years ago.”
And
despite the project’s failure, some of the things Boeing learned made its way
into other experimental vehicles the aerospace giant built in the following
decades, including some of the unmanned vehicles built in recent years, such as
theHigh Speed Civil
Transport project during the 1990s. And the super-critical
wing, a design tweak now routinely used on modern airliners to limit shockwaves
and reduce drag, came out of the 2707 project.
Lockheed’s
ill-fated L-2000 design will live on, in a way, thanks to the collaboration
with Nasa and Lockheed to fly an experimental demonstrator to research the
supersonic aircraft of the future. Perhaps, in years to come, a US-built
supersonic airliner will finally take to the skies – with no pesky Concorde to
get in the way this time…
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