Classic British Flight Sim

Sometimes it DOES take a Rocket Scientist!!


Scientists at NASA built a gun specifically to launch standard 4 pound dead chickens at the windshields of airliners, military jets and the space shuttle, all traveling at maximum velocity.


The idea is to simulate the frequent incidents of collisions with airborne fowl to test the strength of the windshields.

British engineers heard about the gun and were eager to test it on the windshields of their new high speed trains.


Arrangements were made, and a gun was sent to the British engineers. When the gun was fired, the engineers stood shocked as the chicken hurled out of the barrel, crashed into the shatterproof shield, smashed it to smithereens, blasted through the control console, snapped the engineer's back-rest in two, and embedded itself in the back wall of the cabin, like an arrow shot from a bow.

The horrified Brits sent NASA the disastrous results of the experiment, along with the designs of the windshield and begged the US scientists for suggestions.



NASA responded with a one-line memo --





"Defrost the chicken."

An obvious reply perhaps but I have the advantage of having a non-engineering background

ATB

DaveB :tab:

Thats old... its usually told as being the Channel-tunnel train designer being loaned the chicken cannon from Rolls Royce (who use it to test the effect of bird ingestions in jet engines, or because the local KFC is too far away). That version goes that they used it to test the impact of birds on the windshield of the train at 130mph and found that it went through it, through the drivers' cabin the front bulkhead and landed in the first pax compartment :roll:

Another one (which may or may not be true) relates to the fibre-optics used in the fly-by-light system in the Eurofighter. Legend has it that in the first EF2000 constructed in Germany, workers, being typical neat and efficient teutonic types, firmly fixed the optic cabling along the inside of the fuselage, and tightly around all corners and other facets. Of course you cant bend it more than 15deg/metre, so it all snapped and they were puzzled when none of the control surfaces worked

I heard it was the Rolls Royce Cannon they borrowed for testing birdstrikes on the RB.211



Anyway they went to the butcher to get a standard test chicken, set it up fired it and............... they forgot to defrost it.

Garry

It is a bit spurious isn't it Toby. I can't imagine us begging the US for anything! I don't suppose ChrisT originated it did he :shock: :-$

Only joshing matey!

ATB

DaveB :tab:

Toby beat me to it

As far as I know it was BR Derby the HST and the story is true.

At least it appears in a book I had of true engineering mishaps and had a reproduction of a newspaper headlne form the local press.

Garry

DB as a direct answer to you post


The memo said.........you were supposed to defrost the chicken first.

Garry

but what about winter?

http://www.snopes.com/science/cannon.htm

Makes interesting reading - the USAF deliberately use frozen chickens.

Hear the one where they left the chicken in the gun overnight to defrost, and when they fired it the next morning into a jet engine, when they looked at the high speed camera footage later, they saw that there was a cat clinging onto a half eaten chicken!!!