TODAY is the 50th anniversary of the first flight of Concorde 002, the “British” Concorde that owed a lot to Scots.

The first Concorde, 001, had completed its first flight from Toulouse in France the previous month, the French getting to go first in a diplomatic move by the UK Government of Harold Wilson.

Designated G-BSST, Concorde 002 took off from the British Aircraft Corporation assembly base at Filton just north of Bristol on April 9, 1969, and flew just 50 miles to Fairford in Gloucestershire, which would become the main test centre for Britain’s Concordes.

WHAT WAS SCOTTISH ABOUT IT?

THE designer of the revolutionary swept-back wings was a Scottish engineer, Sir James Hamilton, from Penicuik in Midlothian,

Hamilton was dux at the then Penicuik Academy and took a wartime, fast-track degree in civil engineering at Edinburgh University, graduating in 1943.

He soon became almost legendary among aircraft designers, and worked on Concorde’s early designs before the Labour Government appointed him as Britain’s director-general of the Concorde project in 1966.

He stayed with the project until Concorde flew commercially and then filled many senior civil and government posts including carrying out a visionary review of British engineering. Hamilton died in 2012 at the age of 89.

Parts of Concorde were designed and manufactured at Ferranti in Edinburgh, including the machine tools for the British side of the construction programme and navigational instruments.

Numerous test flights were made out of Prestwick Airport in the 1970s, largely due to the Heath government’s fear of the aircraft’s infamous sonic boom alienating voters in southern England.

For most of its short but very useful life, Concorde 002 was flown by Scots.

SCOTS WERE THE PILOTS?

JOHN Cochrane and Eddie McNamara, both from Ayrshire, were the main test pilots on Concorde 002.

Cochrane was in the cockpit on that very first flight alongside chief test pilot Brian Trubshaw. Cochrane attended Strathallan School, in Perthshire and studied engineering at Paisley Technical College before joining the RAF, where he served with 617 (Dambusters) Squadron.

The National:

Captain Brian Trubshaw (left) and Scots co-pilot John Cocrane (right), hold a cake celebrating Concorde 002’s maiden flight

He was at the controls when Concorde went through the sound barrier for the first time, in 1970, and was on the operational flight when Concorde reached its highest speed.

WHAT WAS CONCORDE 002 ALL ABOUT?

THE first British Concorde was very much a test bed, carrying tons of equipment to measure every component on the revolutionary plane.

According to Heritage Concorde: “Initial flying showed the aircraft to be very ‘flyable’ and in the take-off and landing phase perhaps a lot better than some had predicted. There were virtually no real handling problems of significance.”

Concorde 002 never went into commercial service and is now preserved at the Royal Naval Air Station at Yeovilton in Somerset on behalf of the Science Museum.

HOW DID TONY BENN DEAL WITH PROTESTS ABOUT THE NAME?

THE biggest area of disagreement over Concorde was its name. The aircraft was initially referred to in Britain as “Concorde,” with the French spelling, but was officially changed to “Concord” by Harold Macmillan. In 1967, the Labour Government’s Minister for Technology, Tony Benn announced he would change the spelling back to “Concorde.”

Not to put too fine point on it, this caused a riot in Little England. Benn recalled in his memoirs that he neatly extricated himself from the row by stating that the “e” represented “Excellence, England, Europe and Entente (Cordiale).”

He promptly got a letter from a Scottish man claiming: “You talk about ‘E’ for England, but part of it is made in Scotland.”

Benn, who presided over a massive rise in costs, recalled that he replied: “It was also ‘E’ for Ecosse” (the French name for Scotland) – and I might have added ‘e’ for extravagance and ‘e’ for escalation as well!”

The UK Government still hasn’t quite worked out how to deal with naming things that might affect relations with France.

The new Astute-class nuclear-powered hunter-killer submarine to be built at a cost of £1.5 billion has already been named HMS Agincourt after the 1415 bloody battle won by the English against Scotland’s allies the French. How very diplomatique.