Anti-Concorde Project

The Anti-Concorde Project, founded by Richard Wiggs, challenged the idea of supersonic passenger transport, and helped bring about a re-evaluation of Concorde's long-term commercial future. Concorde is venerated as a technological and national icon, but when it entered service in 1976, not a single plane had been sold, and the State Airlines of Britain and France, the countries which had developed the plane, were essentially forced to take the 14 planes that had been built. For some, rather than being a prestigious triumph, Concorde was considered a white elephant.

Overview

In the late 1950s, the advocates of supersonic passenger transport proposed building fleets of hundreds of planes to fly supersonically all over the world, into and out of every major city. It was assumed that people would just get "used to" the sonic boom and to the planes' high noise levels at airports (inescapable problems of supersonic flight). But by the early 1970s, opposition to SSTs had led to bans on supersonic flight in Sweden, Norway, the Netherlands, West Germany, Switzerland, Ireland, Canada, the USA, with the probability of it being banned elsewhere. Consequently the routes available for Concorde were extremely limited, and it was clear that it would operate at a loss.

The facts about supersonic transport - that the damaging effects of the sonic boom would be intolerable, that the increased noise at airports would be unacceptable, and that it would be extremely expensive to build - were known in the early '60s from studies carried out by aeronautics expert Dr. B.K.O. Lundberg, Director of the Swedish Aeronautical Research Institute. The Anti-Concorde Project was founded in 1966 by Richard Wiggs to make these facts more widely known, and to oppose the development of supersonic passenger transport.

Wiggs saw Concorde as a test case in the emerging confrontation between concern for the environment and the unchecked development of technology regardless of its true costs.

Origins of The Anti-Concorde Project

With the signing of the Anglo-French Agreement to build Concorde in 1962, the environmental and economic problems which are inherent and intractable features of supersonic transport were eclipsed by the vested interests of the aeronautics industry and the Government (the collaboration was convenient for the UK's pro-European aspirations).

However, in 1963, when The Observer newspaper published an article titled The Supersonic Threat, (based on Dr. Lundberg's study Speed and Safety In Civil Aviation,) Lundberg's conclusions that the sonic booms generated by fleets of supersonic passenger planes would produce effects varying from annoyance to severe physical shock, breaking windows and causing structural damage to buildings, reached an audience beyond scientific academia. Many readers thought this would be an "intolerable price for ordinary citizen's to pay for the transportation of privileged business travelers" and a flurry of correspondence to the paper ensued. A Mr. D. W. Rowell wrote that he would support an anti-Concorde movement, if only someone would organize it. Richard Wiggs, a teacher from Letchworth, Hertfordshire, wrote to the paper inviting people to write to him. He received 80 letters the next day, and within a few months the volume of correspondence became so great that Wiggs gave up teaching to become full-time organiser of the Anti-Concorde Project.

Among those who wrote letters to the newspapers expressing concern about the development of Concorde were Sir Alec Guinness, and Pamela Hansford Johnson, Baroness Snow. In a letter to The Times, July 1967, Wiggs wrote:

Anti-Concord Project

From Richard Wiggs

Sir, Miss Pamela Hansford and Sir Alec Guinness (July 5 and 10), and many other readers of 'The Times' may be glad to know of the existence of the Anti-Concord Project, which has been founded by a group of some hundreds of people including scientists, artists, business men, civil servants, farmers, housewives, professors, M.P.s etc. who are concerned and alarmed at the efforts being made to develop supersonic aircraft.

We see this as a clear case of a choice having to be made -- is technology to be sanely controlled or is it to be allowed increasingly to degrade and destroy our environment?

Our immediate aims are to help create in Britain a climate of public opinion in which it will be possible for the Government to terminate work upon Concord, and to press the Government to make this decision. Our further aim (in co-operation with similar movements in other countries) is to help bring about the banning of supersonic transports internationally.

We shall be glad to hear from people who agree with these aims.

Yours faithfully,
RICHARD WIGGS, Convener.

Methodology of the Anti-Concorde Project

Full page ad created by Richard Wiggs for the Anti-Concorde Project, run in "The Times" in 1970.

Full page ad created by Richard Wiggs for the Anti-Concorde Project, run in "The Times" in 1972.

In addition to concerns about the Concorde's environmental impact, Wiggs saw that there existed a need to counterbalance the claims being made by the aerospace industry about the viability (both technical and economic) of the Concorde program.

When the Labour Government took office in October 1964 facing a ₤700m annual deficit, Government-funded "prestige projects" such as the Concorde (with escalating costs and questionable economic advantages) were shortlisted for cancellation. The 1962 development estimates for Concorde were ₤150-170m, and had now risen to ₤280m. Evidence of financial mismanagement also emerged: the UK Treasury, responsible for tracking government spending, had not been involved in drawing up the Anglo-French agreement to build Concorde, and was not represented on the Concorde Finance Committee.

When the Government failed follow through with cancelling Concorde, Wiggs believed that the outcome might have been different, had there been an informed lobby armed with the facts about the inherent and intractable problems of supersonic passenger transport, to offset the influence of the aerospace lobby.

Wiggs' idea was that the Anti-Concorde Project would collate and publish the scientific information available about the sonic boom, airport noise, and astronomical fuel use (Concorde used 2.5 x times the amount of fuel per passenger mile as subsonic jets). The Project would also publicize the facts about the economics of Concorde: that the plane could not be operated at a profit, and that the research and development costs, funded entirely with taxpayer's money, would never be recovered.

Wiggs was tireless in his correspondence with newspaper editors and air correspondents, pointing out inaccuracies and correcting misinformation promulgated by The British Aircraft Corporation (the makers of Concorde) and also by the Government Ministers responsible for the program. But letter-writing could get the campaign only so far, and Wiggs conceived of the idea of placing advertisements in the national press, initially columns in New Scientist, New Society and the New Statesman, and later, full page advertisements in The Guardian, The Times, and The Observer. The advertisements stated in detail the case against supersonic transport, and invited people to make a contribution to pay for further advertisements. Later advertisements included the names of contributors.

Advisory Committee

Following the initial letters he wrote to the newspapers, Wiggs enlisted a group of distinguished people to serve as the Anti-Concorde Project's Advisory Committee:

• Dr. John Adams, Professor of Geography, University College, London. Adams was also an original member of the Board of Directors of Friends of the Earth

• Professor Gustav Victor Rudolf Born, FRCP, FRS, Dept. of Pharmacology, Kings College, London

• Dr. Nelson F. Coghill, FRCP, West Middlesex University Hospital

• Mr. C. B. Edwards, Lecturer in Economics, University of East Anglia, and author of Concorde - A Study In Cost Benefit Analysis, University of East Anglia, 1969

• Dr. A. W. F. Edwards, Professor of Biometry, University of Cambridge

• Professor Sir Nevill Mott, FRS, Head of the Cavendish Laboratory, University of Cambridge. (Professor Mott's autobiography describes how he became involved with the Anti-Concorde Project.)

• Dr. R. M. S. Perrin, University of Cambridge
• Dr. Jerry Ravetz, Professor in the History and Philosophy of Science, University of Leeds. He was also Executive Secretary for the Council for Science and Society, 1973–76
• Professor Horace E. Rose, Department of Mechanical Engineering, Kings College, London
• Dr. William Shurcliff, Physicist and Senior Research Associate at the Cambridge Electron Accelerator, Harvard University; Director of Citizens' League Against the Sonic Boom, author of SST and the Sonic Boom Handbook, Ballantine Books, 1970
• Professor Cedric A. B. Smith, Professor of Biometry at the Galton Laboratory, University College, London
• Dr. Peter J. Smith, Senior Lecturer, Department of Earth Sciences, Open University
• Mary Stocks, Baroness Stocks, writer
• Professor William Homan Thorpe, FRS, Professor of Ethology, University of Cambridge
• Professor Nikolaas Tinbergen, FRS, Professor of Ethology, University of Oxford, and winner of 1973 Nobel Prize in Physiology/ Medicine

International Associate:

• Professor B. K. O. Lundberg, Director of the Aeronautical Research Institute, Sweden

Assistant Secretary:

• Mr. Nigel Haigh, M.A.

The Case Against Supersonic Transport

The Sonic Boom

It is a popular misconception that the sonic boom occurs only at the moment a supersonic plane "breaks the sound barrier." In fact, the boom is a type of shock-wave, or pressure disturbance, caused by the movement of the plane through the air, much like the wave produced by the bow of a ship as it moves through water: just as the bow wave is produced for the entire journey of the ship, so the sonic shockwave occurs throughout the duration of a supersonic flight.

With subsonic flight, the plane pushes the air ahead of it out of the way as it moves. When a plane is traveling faster than the speed of sound (i.e. faster than air molecules normally travel) the air ahead of it is not pushed out of the way: the air remains still until the plane has approached to within half an inch, at which point the air is forced aside in a few millionths of a second. This creates extreme local compression and heating, and a highly energetic shockwave spreads outwards in a cone. At ground level, this pressure wave extends approximately 25 miles either side of the flight path, and is experienced as a loud sound, with accompanying vibration severe enough to break windows and cause damage to buildings.

The development of Concorde had proceeded on the assumption that the sonic boom would be "acceptable" and that people would get used to it. Huge sums of money had already been committed to the project, with no sonic boom tests having been carried out by the makers of the plane. Yet tests carried out in the US, using military planes, had provided plenty of evidence that the boom would not be acceptable.

In 1961-1962, 150 flights were made over St Louis, Missouri; in 1964, Oklahoma City was subjected to 5 months of supersonic over-flights; in 1965, there was further testing over Chicago, Milwaukee, and Pittsburgh; and in 1966-67 at Edwards Air Force Base in California. Residents found that sonic booms broke windows, cracked plaster, tile and brick. There were claims for hundreds of thousands of dollars in damages. In addition, routine exercises flown by US Air Force supersonic jets caused much damage annually: $3,800,000 in sonic boom damage claims were presented to the Air Force in a three month period in 1967.

In July 1967, the UK Ministry of Technology staged a series of supersonic tests over southern England (using Lightning fighter aircraft), totaling eleven flights. No official arrangements were made to investigate public reaction, but The Guardian newspaper commissioned a public opinion survey, reporting that: "Nearly two thirds of the population of Bristol were frightened, startled or annoyed by the sonic booms to which they were subjected to last week." The Ministry received 12,000 complaints.

Between 1970-72 when prototype Concorde 002 made a total of 20 flights over the Irish Sea, there were reports of damage including cracked and broken windows, and slates falling from roofs, and accounts of panicking farm animals and frightened children and adults. The Government was ultimately obliged to pay out ₤40,000 in damages.

Airport noise

The iconic delta wing-shape of the Concorde was designed for efficiency at supersonic speed, by reducing drag. The trade-off however is that the delta wing is much less efficient for subsonic flight. In order to develop enough lift for take-off, Concorde needed to attain a very high speed, produced by high thrust engines with very high velocity: and the greater the jet velocity, the louder the engine noise. Not only was Concorde louder than conventional aircraft on take-off, it was louder on landing approach as well: as the plane reduces speed, the delta wing actually causes increased drag, which the engines have to compensate for with increased thrust, which means increased engine noise.

People living near London's Heathrow Airport were rudely apprised of this on September 13, 1970, when, as a result of bad weather, Concorde 002 was unexpectedly diverted to Heathrow. The Times reported the following day that there had been "a wave of complaints from people under its approach path" and the airport switchboard had been jammed with calls.

In 1971, the British Airports Authority released figures showing that on every count - take-off, landing, and sideline measurements - Concorde's noise level was twice, or more than twice, that of other aircraft (including the Boeing 747 when it came into service). It was clear that the operation of Concorde would exceed the noise limits introduced in 1970 for all new British aircraft: indeed Concorde was simply exempted from these limits, because it had no hope of operating within them, but as Andrew Wilson, aviation correspondent of The Observer, pointed out, "there was no reason why other countries should be so obliging."

International opposition

In the autumn of 1969, the British Aircraft Corporation referred to "the assumption that supersonic flight will be allowed only over the oceans or over areas with sparse populations" as an "extremely pessimistic assumption" saying that: "Concorde's makers do not expect that its sonic boom will be unacceptable to the great majority of the public."

After the appearance of the first Anti-Concorde Project advertisement in New Scientist, Professor John J. Edsell, of Harvard University, began a correspondence with Wiggs. A few months later, Edsell, together with Dr. William A. Shurcliff physicist and senior research associate at the Cambridge Electron Accelerator, founded the Citizens' League Against the Sonic Boom in March 1967. Andrew Wilson wrote: The League "adopted the same propaganda techniques as the Project with astounding success." In December 1970, the US Senate voted to prohibit commercial supersonic flights over the USA and to restrict SST noise levels at US airports.

Sweden, Norway, the Netherlands, West Germany and Switzerland indicated that they would be unlikely to permit supersonic over-flying across their territories. Ireland had drafted legislation, and Canada prohibited supersonic over-flight.

Faced with such opposition and restrictions on routes, the makers of Concorde persisted with plans to fly super-sonically over "sparsely populated" territories such as Africa and Australia. The British Aircraft Corporation's attitude was revealed in a comment, made public by Wiggs, by their Press Chief Charles Gardner, who dismissed the possibility of opposition since it would "only affect a bunch of old Abo's." (derogatorily referring to the Australian Aborigines).

The success of the campaign to ban supersonic flight over land meant that by the time the Concorde came into service in January 1976, the only routes it was able to fly were London - Bahrain, Paris - Rio and Paris - Caracas. Despite the 1970 Federal ban in the US, the plane was given permission in May 1976 to fly into Washington Dulles International Airport. When the Federal ban was lifted at JFK, New York City imposed its own ban, with local opposition organized by Carol Berman and the Emergency Coalition to Stop the SST (Wiggs visited New York to work with Berman and the Emergency Coalition). Nine months later, following a ruling by the Supreme Court, Concorde was allowed to start flying from Paris and London into JFK.

In December 1977 the plane flew a London - Singapore route a handful of times before the Malaysian government banned it from their airspace, and then it was banned from flying over India.

Media

The Modern Records Centre, University of Warwick, contains partial archives of the Anti-Concorde Project, comprising publicity material issued by the Project, 1967–1981, minutes and agendas of the Advisory Committee, and subject files compiled by the Secretary of the Project. The collection also includes press cuttings, reports and publications.

The 2003 BBC2 documentary, Concorde - A Love Story aired in the US in 2005 as a PBS Nova documentary, Supersonic Dream, and includes archival footage of Wiggs and interviews with family members. As narrator Richard Donat explains: "In Britain, Concorde's nemesis came in the guise of a retired schoolteacher, Richard Wiggs. Working from his family home, his aim was simple: to stop Concorde from flying."

External links

• Index to Records of the Anti-Concorde Project at Modern Records Centre, University of Warwick
• [1] - Photograph of Dr. Bo Lundberg and Richard Wiggs
• A Life in Science - Autobiography of Sir Nevill Francis Mott
• SST and Sonic Boom Handbook - Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists Review
• NOVA, Supersonic Dream - Documentary
• NOVA, Supersonic Dream - Transcript