The Tornado crew needed the Concorde to slow down from Mach 2 to Mach 1.5–1.6 in order for them to get the shot
The stunning photograph in this post, which was taken in April 1985, is the only image of a Concorde traveling at supersonic speed.
While piloting a Royal Air Force (RAF) Tornado fighter during a rendezvous with the Concorde over the Irish Sea in April 1985, Adrian Meredith captured the shot.
The Tornado could equal Concorde’s cruising speed, but because of the huge rate of fuel consumption, it could only do so for a short period of time.
After several failed attempts, the Concorde was forced to slow down from Mach 2 to Mach 1.5–1.6 in order for the Tornado crew to get the image. To get the Tornado up to that speed as quickly as possible, everything was removed from it.
The Tornado broke off the rendezvous after only four minutes of rushing to catch the Concorde and trying to keep up, while the Concorde landed peacefully at JFK!
On February 7, 1996, Concorde flew from New York to London in 2 hours 52 minutes and 59 seconds, setting a record for the fastest transatlantic flight.
The supersonic passenger jet airliner Aérospatiale/BAC Concorde was a joint British-French project. With seats for 92 to 128 passengers, it had a top speed of Mach 2.04 (1,354 mph or 2,180 km/h at cruise altitude, more than twice the speed of sound). The plane went into service in 1976 and flew for a further 27 years.
Twenty Concorde samples, including six prototypes and development aircraft, were created as part of the combined development and production effort between Aérospatiale and the British Aircraft Corporation (BAC) by an Anglo-French treaty.
Only two airlines, Air France and British Airways owned and operated Concorde.
Regular transatlantic flights were made by the supersonic airliner from London’s Heathrow Airport and Paris’ Charles de Gaulle Airport to New York’s John F. Kennedy International Airport, Washington Dulles International Airport, and Grantley Adams International Airport in Barbados; it completed these flights in less time than other airliners could.
After the disaster of Air France Flight 4590 on July 25, 2000, in which all of the passengers and crew perished, the aircraft was eventually decommissioned in 2003. Aérospatiale and BAC’s successor business, Airbus, stopped providing maintenance assistance for Concorde in 2001, which also played a role in the overall decline of the commercial aviation sector.
Photo by Adrian Meredith / Crown Copyright