keen judgment calls. But they miss nothing, and the 384-pound bulk of Bob Trueman had been taken into account, along with everything else.
They called the flight shortly after 1015, and the passengers were all on board by the time the fueling was complete at 1028. The computerized loadsheet showing the final weight and balance of the aircraft was checked carefully by Brian Lambert, who signed it. The ramp coordinator reported formally to the cockpit, then left, securing Concorde’s door behind him.
The captain and First Officer Brody then set the white markers to the takeoff speed, and pitch angles of the nose cone, for the climb-out.
“Start clearance,” said Brian Lambert.
And Joe Brody contacted air traffic control, requesting permission to start the engines.
“Speedbird
Henry Pryor made two further entries on his checklist. Then he started Concorde’s number three engine.
Linked to the commercial satellite international communication system, MARISAT, the ex — Royal Navy diesel-electric ran silently. The special submarine aerial had worked perfectly when they accessed, just before first light this morning. The message from Bandar Abbas Navy HQ had been succinct:
“KING BIRDS ON BOARD SUPERSONIC FLIGHT 001, ETD LONDON HEATHROW GATE 1045 (GMT), SCHEDULED 51N, 30W APP. 1219(GMT).”
Commander Adnam, standing in the control center with his navigator, had raised his eyebrows, and murmured, “Hmmm. An interesting first test. The highest and the fastest.”
Now, four hours later, he checked for surface ships, found none, and ordered
Flight Engineer Pryor had all four engines running. Concorde’s nose and visor were set in the 5-degree position for the taxi to the runway, during which time 30 more checks would be undertaken by the flight crew. That morning Concorde would take off from runway 27R heading 274 degrees magnetic.
The final checks completed, Concorde taxied into her holding position, waiting her turn to leave. The cabin staff were strapped in, the flight engineer had moved his seat forward and was looking over the pilot’s shoulder, his left hand on the back of the captain’s seat. The word came over the intercom at exactly 1100.
“Speedbird
“Speedbird
Brian Lambert opened the throttles. The afterburners kicked in, increasing the acceleration.
“Airspeed building.”
“One hundred knots.”
“Power checked.”
“V1, Captain.”
This is 165 knots, the point of no return. Any faster and the aircraft could no longer stop in time to abort the takeoff. She hurtled forward, building to her ground-leaving speed of 250 knots.
“
And Brian Lambert, husband of Jane, father of thirteen-year-old Billy, gunned Flight 001 westward, shrieking into the skies above London’s premier airport, climbing quicker and steeper than any of her bigger, heavier Boeing counterparts.
Concorde was watched, as always, by a breath-holding crowd of onlookers in the Terminal Four departure lounges. But she was watched also by the silent Naval attache from the Iranian Embassy, who stood behind the glass staring west, speaking crisply into his mobile phone.
Commander Adnam held in his hand the brief printout from the satellite message, direct from the Iranian embassy link.
FLIGHT 001 CHOCKS AWAY 1045, PROBABLE TAKEOFF 1100.
In one hour and ten minutes, he thought, Concorde would be a couple of hundred miles out. It was not a particularly clear day, visibility was only 3 miles, but his radar would take care of that, and, so far, the sonar sweep had found no noises to suggest any ships within a 12-mile radius. The seas around the submarine were clear. There was no one around: perfect conditions in which to commit the ultimate sea-air atrocity of the twenty-first century.
Ben Adnam’s team was highly trained. When he gave the word to the radar operator to begin the tracking, his men would slip into well-rehearsed routines, which they had practiced a thousand times. He felt relaxed and unemotional, as he always did when the pressure went on. And right now the Iraqi-born CO was in his rightful element, commanding a top-class submarine, with 2 miles of water beneath the keel, out here just west of the Mid-Atlantic Ridge, watching and waiting, intending, as usual, to outwit his enemies, in the most holy name of Allah.
Brian Lambert had Concorde almost at 400 knots, and with the nose raised, they were climbing at about 3,000 feet a minute. Joe Brody had received clearance for 28,000 feet, and the captain had turned off the seat-belt sign. The weather up ahead looked gloomy but settled. In any event, Concorde would race 4 miles above the nearest clouds as soon as she reached her cruising altitude.
Still at MACH-.95, fractionally less than the speed of sound, the supersonic British Airways flagship thundered across western England. At 1124, high above the Bristol Channel, just before longitude 4 degrees west, her oceanic clearance came through.
“
Flight Engineer Pryor began the rearward transfer of the fuel, preparing for supersonic flight, and Brian Lambert pushed the throttles hard forward, on full power. The afterburners were fired up two at a time, as Concorde streaked through the sound barrier, smoothly accelerating to MACH-1.3.
Many passengers felt the two gentle nudges as the afterburners were ignited, and still others paused from the morning papers to listen to the sounds of the big engines changing slightly in tone. Bob Trueman wondered if he might hear the sizzle of a couple of cheeseburgers deep in the galley. He regarded sudden loss of weight much more seriously than he would ever have regarded sudden loss of altitude.
He and his team occupied a block of seven seats close to the front of the cabin — two doubles on either side of the aisle, row four; one single on the aisle, right behind in row five; another double for Bob alone, plus briefcases, on the other side, row five C and D.
Immediately in front of them was the unmistakable figure of the 1970s British pop icon Phil Charles, who was still recording at the age of fifty-five, with a reputed net worth of $300 million. The small, balding, unshaved figure sat unobtrusively with his pony-tailed manager. Both men wore T-shirts and leather jackets. The seats to their right, row three, C and D, were occupied by two sour-looking, willowy blondes in their mid-twenties, who might have been daughters, but were probably not.
Phil Charles’s long lifetime of philandering was a constant source of delight to London’s tabloid newspapers, mainly because he was such an unprepossessing individual with a plain and obvious vendetta against the
