Concorde

canberra wrote:

And I no nothing about the supersonic photos from an F3, please enlighten me.

Taken in April 1985 the cool photo in this post is the only picture of Concorde flying at supersonic speed.

The image was taken by Adrian Meredith who was flying a Royal Air Force Tornado jet during a rendezvous with the Concorde over the Irish Sea in April 1985.

Although the Tornado could match Concorde’s cruising speed it could only do so for a matter of minutes due to the enormous rate of fuel consumption.

Several attempts were made to take the photo, and eventually the Concorde had to slow down from Mach 2 to Mach 1.5-1.6 so that the Tornado crew could get the shot. The Tornado was stripped of everything to get it up to that speed as long as possible.

After racing to catch the Concorde and struggling to keep up, the Tornado broke off the rendezvous after just four minutes, while Concorde cruised serenely on to JFK!

Built in 1984, this is the only F2A variant Tornado aircraft in existence. This unique aircraft is a ‘T-bird’ twin stick variant of the Tornado with full flying controls in both cockpits. The aircraft is decommissioned with weapons systems and radar removed, but otherwise complete. This represents a one-off acquisition opportunity!

Tornado F2A ZD902 was originally attached to 229 OCU at RAF Coningsby in a training role. In 1988 it was converted at St Athan to F2A specification. This upgrade was designed to bring early F2 airframes up to F3 standard whilst retaining the Turbo-Union RB199 103 engines. Bizarrely, ZD902 ended up being the only aircraft to receive the modifications, with most of the remaining F2s eventually becoming spares sources.

ZD902 was famously used as a camera chase aircraft in 1985 flying alongside Concorde at MACH 2.