(CNN) — On January 21, 1976 a teenage John Tye was among crowds of onlookers clinging to a chain link fence, cheering as the first commercial British Airways Concorde flight departed from London’s ...
The Tu-144 beat Concorde into the sky, but speed was never the problem. Built to win a propaganda race, the aircraft was rushed, under-tested, and repeatedly redesigned after it was already flying.