Concorde doesnt crash?

Hawker's P.1121 studies suggested that a Medway was most appropriate for low level strike fighters, the de Havilland Gyron most appropriate for a high-level interceptor, and the Olympus was best suited to a multirole fighter that might be called on to do both jobs.

The Medway was a low-bypass turbofan, similar to a larger Spey (or rather, the Spey was a scaled-down Medway), and wouldn't have worked well as a supersonic cruise engine on the Concorde. It might, however, have been a good replacement for the Conway on the VC10.

Pity.

Extract from Scenario 1957 of Project Cancelled by Derek Wood

Inevitably, the big high altitude bomber, the Avro 730 has to go, but to ensure long-term supersonic know-how, design and research contracts are issued to A.V. Roe for a Mach 2.5-Mach 3.0 experimental aircraft with sufficient fuel tankage for sustained supersonic flight. On this vehicle many of the problems of Concorde are destined to be sorted out.
Bill Gunston in his book Back To The Drawing Board - Aircraft That Flew But Never Took Off has a chapter about the Bristol 188 supersonic research aircraft. In it he says that Specification E.R. 134 which the aircraft was built was originally for a Mach 2 aircraft that could fly at that speed for at least 30 minutes, but it was altered later on to Mach 2.6 to support the Avro 730. The change in the specification meant that stainless steel had to be used instead of aluminium. Gunston wrote that the change probably doubled the time taken to build the aircraft and more than doubled the overall cost. Puddle welding had to be used and the aircraft was finally completed 5 years behind schedule. He also wrote that the Bristol Olympus could have been used, but the Ministry decided on the P.S. 50 version of the De Havilland Gyron. The first aircraft XF923 was rolled out on 24th April 1961, it began its taxiing tests in February 1962 and made its first flight on 14th April 1962. 3 aircraft (including the static test airframe) were built, but the Ministry wanted 6.

Unfortunately the Bristol Type 188 got nowhere hear holding Mach 2.0 for half an hour and never reached Mach 2.6.

With hindsight the first 3 aircraft (including the static test airframe) should have been built of aluminium with the Olympus engine to the original specification for a Mach 2 aircraft. The second trio (which according to Wikipaedia were added to support the Avro 730 programme) should have been of a Mk II version, that is the aircraft actually built IOTL, but with Olympus engines. The Mk I could have been flying as early as the second quarter (1st April to 30th June) of 1957 and that might be early enough for any lessons learned to be read into the definitive Mk II. After the Avro 730 is cancelled it might be possible to modify them into test beds for the versions of Olympus used by TSR2 and Concorde.

Following Wood's Scenario 1957 and/or my suggestion won't save Concorde from being withdrawn when it did, but it might reduce the R&D cost and mean it entered commercial service sooner.

However, the reduction in the R&D cost might only be a in the bookkeeping. That is all the money saved on developing the Concorde would be transferred to the cost of the Type 188. Furthermore the Bristol 188 was an all-British project, while Concorde was an Anglo-French one. Therefore the French taxpayer would receive a disproportionate amount of the financial benefit.
 
Hawker's P.1121 studies suggested that a Medway was most appropriate for low level strike fighters, the de Havilland Gyron most appropriate for a high-level interceptor, and the Olympus was best suited to a multirole fighter that might be called on to do both jobs.

The Medway was a low-bypass turbofan, similar to a larger Spey (or rather, the Spey was a scaled-down Medway), and wouldn't have worked well as a supersonic cruise engine on the Concorde. It might, however, have been a good replacement for the Conway on the VC10.

Derek Wood had similar ideas about replacing the Medway with the Conway, the difference was that it replaced the Conway on the V.1000 instead of the VC10. This is the relevant section from his Scenario 1957.

With the supersonic Hunter already available and the P.1B on the production line, the big question remains to sort out the SR.177, the Hawker P.1121 and the Fairey FD.2. Operational Requirement No. 329 is for a big twin-engined high altitude fighter is abandoned as being too big and too compex and too expensive. Instead a requirement is issued for a supersonic single-/two-seat fighter/strike aircraft which is to become a worthy rival to the American Phantom. The contract is placed with Hawker's at Kingston and the Gyron-powered prototype P.1121, hitherto a private venture, is completed under official auspices.
Flight trials are successful and the long-term decision is taken to develop the P.1121 as a two-seater all-weather aircraft with a continuous-wave radar and a semi-active guidance air-to-air missile developed by Fairey. This missile overcomes the serious gap in British technology where concentration has hitherto been only on infra-red air fighting weapons which are unsuitable for low/medium altitude operation in bad weather. The chosen power plant for the production P.1121 is the Rolls Royce RB.140 Medway engine with fully-variable reheat. The Government also persuades British European Airways, in 1958-59 to keep the proposed Trident airliner as a 111-seater with three Medways rather than scaling it down with a smaller power plant. The Medway is thus established in both military and civil fields, and in the latter becomes the key rival to the Pratt & Whitney JT8D, powering the Trident, the Boeing 707 and a second generation V.1000 airliner with under-wing pods in place of buried engines. The Medway beings life at 10,000 lb (4,535 kg) thrust and is steadily developed to 12,000, 14,000 and then 17,000 lb (5,445, 6,350 and 7,710 kg) - keeping pace with both military and civil demands for more power. For Rolls Royce there is an additional bonus as the P.1121 installation gives the company vital "hot back end" experience which is read across into the "Super Conway" which eventually emerges as the RB.211.

P.S. I wrote the two paragraphs as a single quote, but when posted it came out as two separate quotes. It often does that. Does anyone know why.
 
Wood was wearing spectacles so rose-tinted when writing that chapter it's a miracle there isn't a typing error in every line. Reality is that the P.1121 was more like an F-105 than an F-4, and would be quite a hard sell for export customers.

So far as the Bristol 188 goes, it used the Gyron Junior, not the Gyron - Avons or (reheated) Sapphires might be suitable replacements, but an Olympus would be far too big and powerful. The idea of derisking some of the sustained high speed stuff for Concorde during the OR.330 program isn't a bad one, though.
 
Which is why commercial flight keeps its speeds beneath that drag spike and, nowadays, only military jets (and only combat planes at that) fly supersonic. Even then, it took the F-22 to finally make a small, military, jet able to cruise at supersonic speeds.


i think you might find there are other Military aircraft able to supercruise in clean / ferry / Interceptor configurations ...
 

Ramontxo

Donor
And so did the lightning in the fifties thought arguably with a range big enough to cross the English channel. And so can the Typhoon even with drop tanks and military ordnance on military power (no afterburner) *

*"The Typhoon is capable of supersonic cruise without using afterburners (referred to as supercruise). Air Forces Monthly gives a maximum supercruise speed of Mach 1.1 for the RAF FGR4 multirole version,[136] however in a Singaporean evaluation, a Typhoon managed to supercruise at Mach 1.21 on a hot day with a combat load.[13 "(from wiki)
 
Wood was wearing spectacles so rose-tinted when writing that chapter it's a miracle there isn't a typing error in every line. Reality is that the P.1121 was more like an F-105 than an F-4, and would be quite a hard sell for export customers.

So far as the Bristol 188 goes, it used the Gyron Junior, not the Gyron - Avons or (reheated) Sapphires might be suitable replacements, but an Olympus would be far too big and powerful. The idea of derisking some of the sustained high speed stuff for Concorde during the OR.330 program isn't a bad one, though.

More myths busted.

Was the P.1125 with a pair of Medways any better? I don't see it selling in large numbers on the export market either, because the Americans would be building thousands of Phantoms for themselves and only hundreds of Hawker heavy fighters would be built for the RAF and RN. Furthermore most of the countries the Phantom was exported to were more closely allied to the USA than the UK.

I'd not thought about the errors in Project Cancelled being typos by the author before. I thought they were errors by the printers. E.g. in the book the RAF version of the V.1000 was to meet Specification C.123 when it was really C.132 were errors by the printers. The real 123rd specification in the post-1950 system was M.123 for the Short Seamew.
 
Was the P.1125 with a pair of Medways any better?
Doubtful, it would have been an even larger, more expensive aircraft with less flexibility, weighed down by Hawker's failure to grasp the weapon system concept. They might have been decent aeroplanes, but they'd have been inferior military equipment.
 
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