I grew up on Guernsey - under the flight path of the Air France Concordes operating out of Paris. They'd be supersonic overhead and I heard their sonic booms every day as a kid and often watched them soaring across the sky. A beautiful bygone era in civilian aviation.
I used to hear it about 5 or 6pm? In South Wales... I never actually knew what it was until later. It used to sound like a distant metal drum or something being hit
In 1947, first person ever to fly above the speed of sound, Chuck Yaeger, did it while his wife was watching from the ground. As the aircraft he was piloting, the Bell X-1, broke the sound barrier, it was obscured by cloud from her position, and all she heard was a loud "BANG". I can only imagine how terrified she must have been. Fortunately, Yaeger was still very much alive, and died in 2020.
I remember when the Concorde used to fly over my grandpa's old house in Queens. He lived next to Kennedy Airport. Everyday at 6pm and 6am, my grandpa claimed the Concorde came. I only had the pleasure of experiencing a flyover once. The furniture shook as it approached, followed by the most deafening roar you've ever heard, and every car alarm on the block going off simultaneously. It was awesome. :D
I grew up in Syosset so I heard concordes engines about 3 min before your grandpa did... my cousins were in Howard Beach and it used to shake their house when he had to go around for whatever reason...
The takeoff noise of Concorde was incredible, nothing remotely like it now except perhaps a Rockwell B1. However what you are hearing here is far more powerful: the sonic boom of twice supersonic flight, only permitted over the Atlantic I believe, as it was truly shocking.
Really miss hearing this as a kid (about age 6-7) 😔 I live in Cornwall and we used to hear the booms (although not quite this loud) most days at around mid-day and late afternoon. I remember my Mum trying to explain to me what it actually was and I was just like wot...
Yeah, grew up in Devon and much the same for me. Quite a lot of pheasants round about and they would always get alarmed by it a second or so before we heard it.
Three reasons why it was: 1:The maintenance prices were very high 2:People started deciding that they would arrive in another country a few hours later 3:There were Safety issues not as severe as a Tu-144 (Russian concorde) but still deadly,which caused some planes to crash but killing hundreds
I remember seeing Concorde fly past many years back (we'd all stop working or playing just to watch it glide overhead) silently... and then a few minutes later hear the rumble of the engines. Lovely. Once in a lifetime.
I only saw a Concorde up close one time and that was at Heathrow in London. We were taxiing past it in a 747-400 after landing there. It was much smaller than I thought it would be. We were looking down on it. One other time was when one was on final approach into Miami and we were on a Cruise ship ready to depart for a week long Caribbean cruise. It flew right over us and looked like an arrow; very beautiful!!!
over bristol in the am and pm, saw it most days. used to hear it come out of supersonic but never going supersonic. sounded like a controlled explosion
Honestly what a huge airframe to be traveling those speeds. Wish I’d had a chance to fly on one of these. To connect civilians in the world that quickly at its time of introduction must have inspired a generation of aviators and engineers.
The good old days of supersonic commercial flight,and being proud of a British global icon of flight,i remember it well. This bird would come into any airport in the world and everyone stopped to look in awe. Now we have easyjet.!
This amazing, and beautiful piece of engineering used to fly over my house every Wednesday evening as it was approaching Heathrow. I lived in Forest Hill, London. I was always mesmerized as a little boy going out and watching in awe every time it happened. Look mum its Concorde. I am now 48 yrs old. The technology behind it still astounds me. It broke so may records in flight and development. It's amazing what we can achieve when we don't fight...Particularly between the English and French! She could out accelerate an F1 car. Concorde was the best of Humanity.
I first saw Concorde (the French one) on a school trip to Paris in 1970, parked on the tarmac at Orli Airport. They were still undergoing tests at that time. We just stood there staring at it through the security fence, gobsmacked! 😲It looked like something from Thunderbirds but it was REAL!😃😃👍👍 The envy of the aviation world in it's day.
SirusKing Well there are plenty of ludicrously rich people in the world, it's not unfeasible that one could purchase a Concorde and restore it to flying condition.
Brody Carlson sadly never ever ever will come back it’s too old now to be flying again but there will definitely be planes very very similar to concordes just more advanced :)
I've heard that a couple of time in our garden when I was younger and German Tornados were breaking the sound barrier. It's amazing and I'll never forget.
I used to fly by Concorde. The cabin inside was noisy because of the engines, like sitting in the back of an MD80. You could not hear or feel any difference in the cabin as you went through Mach 1 I expected to hear a reduction in engine noise but that was not the case. It was an amazing and very smooth ride always.
+dranzer gigs I guess you mean the vapour cone. The cone only appears while the aircraft is transonic, that is when it is passing the sound barrier. Once it is supersonic, it will no long create one. Supersonic aircraft continuously make a sonic boom however the shock wave is not visible.
There's something about this technology that's more wondrous than others....it's not just going fast but declaring it to the world as it passes over the beauty of the natural world and the ordinary workers unaware their industry crafted it's godlike power.
Thats a sound I used to hear a lot when I loved in Newquay Cornwall. Concorde took off from Heathrow at 5pm, then not that many minutes later it used to go super sonic, after just passing the coast.
Watched this in my GeoPhysics class today. Everybody went "WOOAAAHH" Everybody laughed at the woman's "Ohhh~" Then we watched it again. Then one more time.
ive actually seen concorde up close. when they used to fly over the grand national in england so loud but beautifull airplanes. sad they dont fly anymore :' (
@koldun12 The sonic boom is essentially a massive pressure disturbance. Not only is it scary for people who dont know what made the noise, it can shatter windows quite easily. I can recall an incident near where i live in australia where an F18 broke the sound barrier over a chicken farm. The bang was loud enough in the shed where they were sleeping it scared a lot of chickens to death. Obviously, the airforce had to pay for it.
I flew on the Concorde. While inside you don't hear any outside noise. You can't tell you'er going that fast untill he tries to slow down. Then it feels like stopping a fast roller coaster with hydraulic brakes! It throws everybody forward!
I loved this plane when I was a kid, had little models of it and everything. Remember my Grandma took me to Manchester Airport and we seen one take off. Wow I wont be surprised if I end up with bad hearing in my later life but it was worth it.
When we started down the runway,& picked up speed , we were feeling the g- forces, we were slammed agains't the seats, my girlfriend was yelling, "We're crashing" & several other people yelled out also as It felt like we were on the fastest thrill ride we'd ever been on,but It didn't last long before we were In the air & the feeling went away. I wasen't afraid & actually lopved the whole experience. The whole trip was awesome & 3 a half hours to Paris was fantastic!!!
Its truly amazing that the French and British created an airliner faster than the speed of sound. Such a priceless artifact of aviation. If only they brought the Concorde back in service.
I don't think it would be feasible for Concorde to return to service. But it _might_ be feasible to introduce a "Concorde 2", which would have to be an improved version of Concorde, with new engines and a glass cockpit. We would have to find a way of reducing costs, though, so that Concorde 2 isn't too exclusive.
@CerealKiIIer : It crashed because it was subject to manouvers it was not designed to do. The Concorde would have suffered a somewhat similar fate if the same manouver had been attempeted.
Deux fois le mur du son (Mach 2). Très impressionnant pour un avion de transport civil. Décolle tranquillement à moins de 500 km/h, je crois. Avons vu plusieurs fois le Paris/Dakar/Rio partir de Dakar-Yoff les mercredis entre 16 H et 17 dans les années 70/80 vers Rio.
Just great to see something like this...Concorde is a magnific airplane...I saw one at Paris but it was only exposed on the Charlles-de-Gaulle airport.
That's a whole lot of metal to push around at twice the speed of sound. Even at 40,000+ ft. its gonna ring your bell. RIP Concorde, it sure was fun while it lasted!
lol it is too funny what People post who have no idea about supersonic aerodynamics or flight mechanics... i can say, this aircraft has not just broken the soundbarrier... XD It is already at approx M 2 (or 2.02). M is the Machnumber and depends on temperature (which is lower in higher altitudes). By the way, the Sound and when the boom Comes depends on the mach angle which in turn depends on the machnumber. Which is in this case approx 30° that means... the aircraft is flying by,... and is Kind of trailing those shockwaves behind it in a cone. After passage of the shockwave you can hear it. And now the best... in the plane you wont hear a Thing! So, i hope I opened some ones eyes here XD
Exactly. One can think of it as a boat travelling parallel to the shoreline. The boat's bow wave will reach different people on the shoreline at different times as the boat moves along. It is the same thing, except in 3D: instead of a "V"-shaped bow wave the airplane's shockwave is conical in shape and as it travels along the airplane's flight path, people on the ground will hear the boom as the shock wave passes by them, much like the bow wave example. But because of messed-up media and movies, most people seem to think that there is a sonic boom only at the moment the airplane exceeds Mach 1. Not so.
***** Only up to a certain point. Once the airplane passes by you putting you inside the area where the Mach cone intersects the ground, you then hear the engine (and the sonic boom before it).
***** I don't know, but it is very high, in the order of tens of thousands of feet. I have heard sonic booms when the airplane itself was invisible, one could see only the condensation trail.
***** Sonic booms will happen anywhere inside the atmosphere.You do not hear sonic booms often because they are high in the sky because law says that you can not do a sonic boom near spectators,and the air should be slowing the vibrations of the boom soon.
The Concorde was a great aeroplane and it was perfectly safe. A few accidents happened but that also hapoened with: the 737, 747, F-117, F-104, the Valkyrie, the F-15 and with just about every other plane. Nice boom
@@caribbaviator7058 Nah, the loudness comes from the sonic boom. Anything going supersonic produces a loud bang. This includes whips, bullets, and other things.
The commentors here are very misinformed. Let's clear this up once and for all: Neither the US nor the crash of the plane contributed to it being grounded. As it stands, the plane was a heavy liability (rather than an asset) due to fuel costs. It is to date the most inefficient aircraft ever produced. It literally guzzled through hundreds of thousands of gallons of fuel to cover the distance between the UK and North America, which isn't much by international flying standards. This led to extremely outrageous ticket prices for both the Air France and BA flights. High costs meant that demand sunk, which means it is disastrous for a company to own one (from an economic standpoint). If you want to blame anyone, the English and French engineers are the real ones at fault here, not the DC-10, not a mechanical fault on the plane and not a crash. Now consider the Concorde's closest competitor, the Boeing 747 (US made, I might add). It carried 452 passengers compared to 120 on the Concorde, that's literally almost four times the amount the Concorde could carry! Coupled with this, the 747 does not waste half as much fuel as the Concorde (because it wasn't as fast, and it didn't have to be) AND ticket prices were cheaper, which meant high demand (in other words, profit for the airlines)! There's a reason why the 747 survived more than 50 years of service haha.
+Sid P You missed out the fact that the Concorde planes only realistically had to places it was able to fly to because it was banned from flying over land pretty much everywhere due to the double sonic boom that occurs when it breaks the sound barrier.
+Sid P Lol I've never seen someone manage to squeeze so much nonsense in such a short number of words. "It is to date the most inefficient aircraft ever produced." Well that is just obviously false. Concorde has similar fuel efficiency to american business jets (just concorde carried far more people and got them there much faster) and had far better fuel efficiency than military jets. How you have came to your conclusion is beyond me. " It literally guzzled through hundreds of thousands of gallons of fuel to cover the distance between the UK and North America" Really? That's incredible when you think about it! Seeing as concorde couldn't hold anywhere even remotely close to 200,000 gallons of fuel (about 27,000 it held). It would have had to do a full refuel about 7-8 times in mid air to have used this much fuel. So you're saying concorde managed to refuel this many times and still cross the atlantic so quickly?! That's just fucking amazing! "This led to extremely outrageous ticket prices for both the Air France and BA flights." Yes, concorde was never supposed to be cheap. I think you've missed the point. It was an alternative to a business jet, not an alternative to a big jumpo jet to squeeze hundreds of people on like cattle. "High costs meant that demand sunk" Nope, demand sunk as a result of the crash. If you have any evidence to prove otherwise other than an opinion you've just formulated in your head then please do share :) "Now consider the Concorde's closest competitor, the Boeing 747 (US made, I might add)" A huge number of which are powered by british engines, I may also add. You're really just comparing apples with oranges when you compare a 747 to a concorde. You're basically comparing a double decker bus to a ferrari. Is the double decker bus cheaeper and more efficient per passenger? Yes, of course it is, but the ferrari isn't even trying to compete with the bus on these levels so it's a pointless comparison to even make.
Drenwickification "Well that is just obviously false. Concorde has similar fuel efficiency to american business jets (just concorde carried far more people and got them there much faster) and had far better fuel efficiency than military jets. How you have came to your conclusion is beyond me." You said it yourself, it's fuel capacity is similar to a business jet - which is incredibly inefficient when you consider that it carries a mere 100 passengers. That means that one passenger in a Concorde can travel about 16.7 miles on one gallon of fuel*. I compared the plane to the 747 because most enthusiasts and pundits regard them as competitors. At the end of the day, an airline wants to make money, and the Concorde doesn't do that. Demand never sunk because of the crash, the tickets were extremely expensive even before the crash took place. You want evidence? Look it up. "Why did the Concorde fail?"** Almost everybody, every article, every comment thread cites a huge economic burden as the main problem. It cost more to fly the damn thing than the revenue it brought home. By your own words, I missed the point of it because "it was an alternative to a business jet." Clearly, you missed the point, because that doesn't generate revenue. The problem is that BA and Air France naively thought in the same way as you, and treated the Concorde as a marketing stunt for rich people. This fell flat on its face, obviously, because there weren't enough rich people to make up for its (once again) **extremely expensive maintenance**. I have sources to back me up, you're yet to provide one. *Source on that point: thetravelinsider.info/2003/0411.htm ** I think this helps: lmgtfy.com/?q=why+did+the+concorde+fail
+Sid P Not sure if you are implying that the B744 is made entirely of US sourced materials but I'll give you the benefit of the doubt. Plus I wanted to say that the closest rival to the Concorde was actually the Tupolev TU-144 not the Boeing 747. I see your point about the Concorde being uneconomical but to be honest it wasn't built with economy in mind, it was built to be the fastest passenger plane with no compromises. Air France and British Airways were given huge subsidies to purchase them, probably why tickets were so expensive and probably why it was only the well off who could afford the price of admission to fly in one where-as the Boeing was designed for mass transport and economy so to compare the two and call them rivals is like comparing apples and oranges.
i hope youre trolling. Boeing had far more means back then, and still did not manage to build a well-engineered supersonic airliner like the Concorde. even the russians built something supersonic that could transport people, the USA did not. Deal with it.
No, because the pressure wave that causes the boom is a cone with it's point at the aircraft's nose, so the sound goes away from the plane. Wherever the cone touches the ground is where the boom is heard.
@copilot7777 The TU144 was a poor and rushed copy of the Concorde based on early blueprints stolen from Aerospatiale by KGB operatives in the early 1960's. The wing design in these early blueprints displayed a Compound Delta wing as used on the TU144. The final wing design for Concorde used an Ogival Delta, which is far more stable, especially at low speeds and high angles of attack. The soviets fitted forward Canards to aid stability but it never really solved the problem. See TU144 Paris crash
Love the double booms. Don't ask me to explain the physics involved, but sonic booms on aircraft always occur in pairs. One off the nose of the aircraft and a second one that occurs off the tail of the aircraft.
@elmagico1082 "By the way, the concorde didn't go down due to a structural failure, but because it ran over a piece of steel that another aircraft had lost on the runway." - I'm glad you mentioned that, I didn't have room.. :)
when I was younger the Concorde used to fly over daily. They were suposed to wait untill they got to over the sea to break the sound barier but they would always do it early, used to rattle our widows xD
i watched the space shuttle come in to land. the 2 sonic booms sounded like somone fired a canon 100 meters away from you! and for another shuttle landing, i was well over 60 miles away from kennedy...still faintly heard the bangs, and the windows rattled a little. amazing!
i remember as kid at primary school living eastlondon near Wapping and the river. they would come over and bank hard parallel with the river up to Heathrow the noise was amazing the kids loved it everything would shake lol the teachers hated it
@ERK77VI Yes, in fact, during Concorde's life, there were thousands of complaints of noise and even property damage. The space shuttle would also produce loud twin sonic booms during reentry even when it was still 90,000 ft up. You can find some videos if you type in those key words.
@250Trojan A lot of the pressure differential depends on the shape and size of the aircraft. The concorde was well capable of delivering a good boom at 30,000ft.
