|
----------------------------------------------------------------------------.::.
aircrafts .::. ships .::. miscellaneous .::. ----------------------------------------------------------------------------- |
Aerospatiale/BAC Concorde |
Airfix initial issue of the Concord was more like the prototype. The decals were unusable in my kit, so I bought decals for the second prototype from F-DCAL.
|
| The nose and the tail are shorter than the production machines and the engines look different to. |
British airways G-BOAD |
Airfix kit of the production version. Nose, tail and engines look different than the prototype.
|
| G-BOAD flew for a while with both British airways and Singapore Airlines livery. My own Singapore decals. |
BAC Conqueror |
|
One of the best kept military secrets is the one about the Concordes military cousin. It has always seemed odd that a supersonic airliner would be developed just to build as few as 20 of them. The cost of such a project could never have been justified by the profits to be made. Now we have the explanation. The British supersonic bomber project TSR-2 was cancelled in 1965. This was because of a joint project with France: A Mach 2 bomber. The BAC-Aerospatiale Conqueror. To conceal this an airliner was developed as a cover story. This was the Concorde. 40 BAC Conqueror was secretly built. Several new squadrons were raised, one was the 1557 Squadron.
|
| In fact, the RAF sponsored the manufacturing of the airliners. They were crewed by RAF pilots since this was a possibility to have the flight training without revealing the secret of the Conqueror. The Soviet Union did find out about the planes, but they would not admit openly that the enemy had the possibility to deliver a nuclear bomb over Moscow, so they put lot of efforts and money in counter measures. After the collapse of the Soviet Union both Great Britain and Russia was all too happy to be able to dismantle these expensive weapon systems. The death for the civilian Concorde was the dismiss of the last of the RAF Conqueror as the RAF had no use in sponsoring the British Airways Concorde's any more. There are suspicions that the same arrangements were made in France between Air France and the French Air Force but no facts of this has been found so this is still just speculations that the French Air force also had around 40 planes. |
|
The pilots served on the British Airways Concords as pilots but there was always A-bomb equipped Conqueror's ready to start. Whenever these planes needed to be airborne it was always done in bad light
conditions and the planes would be marked as British Airways planes to maintain the secret of their existence. In an interview Squadron Leader William E. "Billges" Johns tells the story about how the squadron got its name: -"I was a part of the first Conqueror squadron and someone apparently thought it would be humorous to name the squadron 1557. The distance between London and Moscow was 1557 miles and since this was during the cold war Moscow was of course one of the main targets for the squadron. |
|
The Concord was meant to be in service with the B.O.A.C. Corporation (British Overseas Airways Corporation) and we pilots would be employed by them as a cover.
Because of this we took the BOAC Speed bird logo and doubled it. The colours became red and blue on a white circle.
I guess we wanted to connect to the colours of the Union Jack. The government merged the BOAC and BEA companies in to the British Airways before the Concorde was delivered so we pilots flew for the B.A. instead.
Our devise was: "SPEED AND FORCE". The pictures are still classified and cannot be published but here are at least pictures of a model of the Conqueror. |
| Stockholm February 12, 2018 |  |
No updates |
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------.::.
aircrafts .::. ships .::. miscellaneous .::.
home .::. ----------------------------------------------------------------- |