Saintsman From United Kingdom, joined Mar 2002, 2065 posts, RR: 2 Posted (7 years 2 months 1 week 6 days 12 hours ago) and read 2979 times:
From a time when Great Britain was leading the way in aerospace. Today's the 50th aniversary of the first aircraft to fly faster than 1000 MPH in straight and level flight. The Fairey Delta FD2.
GDB From United Kingdom, joined May 2001, 12707 posts, RR: 80 Reply 1, posted (7 years 2 months 1 week 6 days 8 hours ago) and read 2950 times:
AHHH, the Fairey Delta!
Later, this type would be modified with a scaled down Ogival wing shape, as fitted to Concorde.
You can see this example, alongside the first UK Prototype Concorde, in the museum at Yeovilton.
But, one has to consider what one Marcel Dassault would say later;
"But for the ways you do things in Britain, you could have had a Mirage".
The RAF Air Staff had an interest in the basic FD2 concept, but for a massively scaled up, side by side twin seater, twin engined interceptor.
Two AAMs only (!), no guns, no other role but shooting down Soviet bombers.
Doubt that would have had the export success of the Mirage III somehow!
Even then, after the cancellation of most UK military aircraft in 1957, Dassault proposed teaming up with Fairey, combining their then embryonic Mirage, with the FD.2, to develop a contendor for the mass re-equipment of European AF's, eventually won by the F-104.
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