Bristol Type 223

The Bristol Type 223 was an early design for a supersonic airliner, produced by the Bristol Aeroplane Company in the late 1950s and early 1960s as part of a large British inter-company effort funded by the government. It was a transatlantic transport for about 100 passengers at a speed near Mach 2. The work followed the Supersonic Transport Aircraft Committee, formed in 1956 under Sir Morien Morgan, which favoured a gothic delta planform; design contracts went to Hawker Siddeley and Bristol in late 1959. Bristol studied both Mach 2.2 aluminium alloy and Mach 2.7 stainless steel structures, and its designer Archibald Russell, influenced by the difficulty and expense of building the Bristol 188 in steel, favoured the lower speed alloy aircraft. The Type 223 sat between Bristol larger Type 198 and the smaller Sud Aviation Super-Caravelle, with four Bristol Siddeley Olympus 593 engines and a delta wing. The costs were too large for one country, so negotiations through 1962 led to an agreement on 29 November 1962 that merged the British and French work into the Concorde project. The Type 223 was never built.