Thank you.

Thank you!

Was any definitive reason ever given for the crash?

I know there was the famous part from a US plane found on the runway, but I remember seeing a documentary with various experts who felt this was some excuse and that gear maintenance was to blame. They also felt the French investigation had come to the wrong conclusion.

well ... where should I start? There was an official version and I forget the degree of cause to various factors but from what I've seen on various sites :-

1. Overloaded plane (or certainly right on its limits with fuel and baggage)
2. Tyre punctured (possibly by piece of another plane)
3. Spacer pieces missing from wheel making it harder to steer once tyre had burst
4. Piece of tyre or other debris punctured one or more of the petrol tanks
5. Decision to continue take of may have been taken because the President of France was in a plane near Concorde's path
6. Failure to retract undercarriage (caused more drag so proper flying speed never reached).
7. Inadequate information to pilots about the state of the engines - it was assumed that it was an engine fire and number 2 engine was shut down ... dooming the plane to never get enough air speed.

Note: these are personal views - for the official reports look at the last link in my post.

Peace
peter

No. 3 was the reason that a lot of the "experts" on this programme agreed with.

I think it was cumulative - any one of them wouldn't have necessarily been fatal, it was the combination of them all that did it!