Legends of the Air No.3 Viscount Comet and Concorde

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{detailed description}VICKERS VISCOUNT
The world's first turboprop airliner to enter production, the Viscount remains Britain's most successful commercial aircraft, with 444 built and having seen service with some 200 operators over several decades.
At first rejected by its first and primary customer - British European Airways - the Viscount soon proved to offer an irresistible combination of operating economics, speed and passenger appeal and provided the primary equipment of many major airlines in the 1950s and 1960s until jets began to take over.
Even after that, second hand Viscounts found a ready market with smaller operators after having established new standards for the industry. The Viscount was responsible for allowing the British aircraft industry into the North American and other markets and even though only a few remain in service as the 1990s progress, some will certainly survive into the next millennium.
DE HAVILLAND COMET
Britain seemed to have a substantial lead in airliner technology with the appearance of the Comet in 1949, the world's first jet airliner. Early service seemed to support this, but a series of tragic accidents soon ended the dream and resulted in the grounding of the aircraft and the loss of any advantage briefly enjoyed by the British industry.
The crash investigations resulted in a vast increase in knowledge of the hitherto grey area of airframe fatigue, the results of which were passed on to other manufacturers for the benefit of all who have flown in airliners since then.
A 'second generation' of Comets appeared in the late 1950s, and although they gave many years of safe and reliable service, by then the advantage had been well and truly lost to American manufacturers. Only 112 Comets were flown, but the aircraft remains one of the most important airliners in the history of aviation because of what it was and what it could have been.
BAC/AEROSPATIALE CONCORDE
'Technical triumph and commercial disaster' is the description most commonly applied to the Concorde, the only supersonic transport to have achieved the status of regular airline service.
Although just 20 were built and then operated only by the national airlines of the two sponsoring countries, Concorde is truly one of the most remarkable aircraft ever built, performing routinely what even military jets find difficult - cruising over long distances at twice the speed of sound, all with 100 passengers in a spacious cabin sipping champagne!
Much new technology had to be invented in order to allow Concorde to perform its intended role, with aerodynamics, and airframe and engine design all stretching the limits of available knowledge.
Concorde has now been in service for more than two decades and plans are in place which will probably see the aircraft still flying the airways forty years after it first entered service. With no real successor in sight, Concorde will probably remain the world's only supersonic transport for another generation at least.
{Author / Publisher / Date}by Stewart Wilson
published by Aerospace Publications (Australia) 1996 1st edn. 196pp profusely illustrated, some colour 21x28 paperback
{condition}some damp cockling otherwise very good
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