Regarded by many as an aviation icon and an engineering marvel, the supersonic passenger airliner known as Concorde made its first flight on March 2, 1969. To mark the 25th Anniversary of this flight, Pobjoy Mint is delighted to announce the release of a new coin on behalf of the Isle of Man. The origins of the Concorde date back to the early 1950s, when Arnold Hall, director of the Royal Aircraft Establishment (RAE) asked Morien Morgan to form a committee to study the supersonic transportation (SST) principle. The group fulfilled for the first time in February 1954 and provided their very first report in April 1955. At the time it was understood that the drag at supersonic speeds was strongly related to the span of the wing. This led to making use of short-span, really thin rectangle-shaped wing such as those seen on the control surface areas of numerous missiles, or in airplane like the Lockheed F-104 Starfighter or the Avro 730 that the group studied. The team described a baseline setup that looked like a bigger Avro 730. Soon after, RAE published a series of reports on a brand-new wing planform, known in the UK as the "slender delta" idea. The team, including Eric Maskell whose report "Flow Separation in Three Dimensions" added to an understanding of the physical nature of separated flow, worked with the reality that delta wings can produce strong vortexes on their upper surfaces at high angles of attack. The vortex will decrease the atmospheric pressure and trigger lift to be significantly increased.
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