Building Concorde

In Building Concorde, renowned aviation author and historian Tony Buttler explores in detail the design, construction and testing of this extraordinary airplane. A huge design and test effort, involving many different research aircraft, explored every aspect of Concorde's proposed design and operation before the first prototype even took to the air. The Concorde program also marked a then unprecedented cooperation between rival aircraft manufacturing nations.

The well-known French aviation author and historian Jean-Christophe Carbonel has contributed to the book and the result is an account of the French contribution to the Concorde project often overlooked in previous works on the aircraft. Building Concorde has never been covered in such depth before in either the English or French language, including the early gestation of the 'Super Caravelle' and other French supersonic proposals.

This book also covers the US effort to build its own Supersonic Transport (SST) airliners to compete with Concorde, a program ultimately abandoned in the face of the economic realities of the early 1970s.

Bringing a brand new perspective to one of the most iconic aircraft ever to fly, Building Concorde is illustrated throughout with photographs, drawings and technical plans from national and private archives uncovered by Tony Buttler and Jean-Christophe Carbonel, many of which have never been made public before. This is the behind-the-scenes story of the genesis of the record-breaking aircraft that was decades ahead of its time.