"I have seen her, you know, Concorde." Stan Irwine is blind, but last week, as he stood on the South Bank of the Thames opposite the mock Gothic Houses of Parliament with tens of thousands of others, he had to be at what he felt was a wake.
His friend Jim Forbes described the scene to him and Stan nodded. "I saw her several times over London," he said, "but it was the noise I remember most."
And what a noise. A deep rolling thunder that one experienced rather than heard, overlain with a sharp crackle unique to the four Olympus engines on full afterburners. To see Concorde leave the ground pouring four streams of white flame trailing diamonds of hypersonic flame and lance upward into the evening sky was simply inspiring. When she took off, there was always a small crowd of well-wishers on the airport perimeter road, some cheered, most just gazed in silent wonder.
In a few moments, this man-made metal craft left the solid world of concrete and clay to soar into a world of thin air and deep blue sky, transforming itself from gawky droop-nosed bird on spindly legs into something proud and spiritual, taking the private hopes and dreams of the earth-bound with her.
With her wings clipped and tail removed, the lifeless carcass of the "Speedbird," as Concorde flights were designated, slowly proceeded down the River Thames aboard a barge on her final journey to a museum in Lothian. As a final irony, the huge red floating catafalque slowed to a halt outside the Houses of Parliament and the pencil slim body was raised high over the deck in salute to the well-fed politicians who signed her death warrant. It felt as if they wanted to feel sure that the body of the icon, symbolizing human success over the challenges of distance and sub-space, was finally dead.
There was a long ripple of applause from the crowds - no cheering, but a simple mark of respect and a sense of an era finally ending.
"I was there when she took off for the first time," Don Wakeham told a small crowd. Over quarter of a century ago, Wakeham was one of a small group plane spotters camped out at the end of a runway near Bristol. On an air-band radio, he had heard that Peter Trubshaw, chief test pilot for Concorde, was to take Speedbird 1 out for final fast taxiing and maybe, the first lift off. Their wait was rewarded.
After a couple of trial runs, they heard the characteristic roar. "We couldn't see her," said Wakeham, "because of a slight rise in the runway."
"We heard Trubshaw counting off the speed and then give the OK." The predatory shape appeared over the brow of the rise nose down and wings drooping, engines trailing flame and smoke. "When the nose wheel lifted off the ground, we cheered, some burst into tears, some just stared open mouthed," said Wakeham. "I will never, ever forget that moment."
Concorde had that effect on people. She was never an "it," but developed a unique personality. The British public took her to heart. She quickly became a national icon, an impossible dream realized and visible but for most unattainable. Her very shape was the perfect melding of art and science. It was impossible for her to be any other shape to achieve the technical feats that she did; her lines were simple and graceful in a way no other machine has ever been.
Even on her floating bier, the elegant grace of her body was evident, branded though it was with a temporary banner "Concorde for Scotland."
As she was slowly lowered back into the hold of the barge that was to take her to Scotland for exhibition in a museum, another ripple of applause washed along the riverbank. The journey by barge down the Thames is reserved for very few of Britain's national heroes. The last was Churchill, boarded at the same point on the Thames where Concorde halted on her journey. She, like him, rose above political criticism to popular adulation.
Never again would she soar exultantly into indigo skies; never again flood London with the thunder of her raw power; never again seem to float, traveling at twice the speed of sound in an environment she had claimed as her own.
The sun, hidden for the hour she had been on display, burst out from behind the clouds and flooded the scene with a golden light.
As if this were a signal, the crowds almost as one, turned away in subdued silence, fully aware they were seeing an old friend on the last journey to her final resting place.