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Comment by interestica | Hacker News Reader

Investigations have some weird bits. I've always wondered if there's a certain title for the person who prepares the chickens for the 'chicken gun' in airplane testing.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chicken_gun

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This story has been going around the world for 50 years, and in different variations. According to some sources, the first time it appeared in a publication in USA in 1958, in the professional magazine "Meat and Game" of the California Associations of Game Producers (proven fact). The authenticity of the story, however, is questionable.

The FAA has at its disposal a unique device for measuring the strength of aircraft windshields, in case of a collision with birds at high speed (which happens not so rarely). This device is a powerful pneumatic cannon that shoots a chicken carcass into the windshield of an airplane at a speed approaching the cruising speed of a civilian aircraft (for jet aircraft, this is approx. 800 km/h, for piston engines in the 1950s this figure was probably smaller, maybe 400-500 km/h). According to the theory, if the glass can withstand a collision with a chicken at such a speed, then it should all the more withstand a real collision with a bird in flight.

A certain British engineering company developing high-speed trains borrowed this gun from the FAA to test the strength of the windshield of its a new high-speed train. The cannon was brought to England, installed at the landfill, loaded with a chicken carcass and fired at the prototype train.

The result exceeded all expectations: the chicken broke through the glass, broke the back of the driver's seat and got stuck in the back wall of the car. The British sent test results to FAA and asked them if they had done everything correctly and if the gun was hitting too hard. After studying the description and consequences of the test, the answer was sent by telegram immediately: "Next time, defrost the chicken."

I read a story, "Maybe" true, probably not that once one of the testing organizations that did exactly these sorts of tests used to use frozen chickens from the supermarket. They would load the air-cannon the night before the test, then in the morning the chicken would be defrosted and they were ready to go.

However one morning the test results were rather more "messy" than they were expecting. They had no clue what had gone wrong, so they reviewed the high-speed footage to see the chicken leave the barrel along with a stray cat that had been chewing on it when the cannon fired...

I realise it's a joke, but I think a high speed train can probably withstand a frozen chicken at speed. They would need some defence against vandals throwing rocks, and weight isn't a problem.

This paper shows test impacts of a 1kg steel hemisphere, which damage the windscreen but don't shatter it.

http://koreascience.or.kr/article/JAKO201336447756524.page

Assume a hemispherical chicken...

Those guns are not cheap. I once worked in a startup that wanted to put thermal cameras on commercial planes to measure volcanic ash concentrations. The cameras had to be behind a special glass that is transparent for thermal radiation. But as the glass size exceeded certain size, it required to certify against bird strikes. It turned out the cost of the certification was like 500K euros.

For engines presumably the major cost is dismantling and inspecting the engine under test

If that special glass is quartz, it should be stronger than regular glass.

It was germanium glass if I remember correctly. It was very essential that all thermal radiation passed through it.

Operational Testing Lead Quality Assurance Tester El Pollo Hermano

Less fun than Operational Testing Lead Quality Assurance Tester Los Pollo Hermanos

Excuse me sir, it is:

SENIOR OTL-QA-TEPH

Sounds like a Mayan diety.

Or a Jedi master.

Chac Mool was out on other business along with Benedict Arnold.

Mr. Fring would like to see you in his office. Now.

I got to take a tour of SWRI when I was younger, and they have one of these chicken guns in one of their testing facilities. They also have a locker full of machine guns for testing bullet resistance of vehicles etc.

An employee on the Canadian satire show This hour has 22 minutes

I thought it was Royal Canadian Air Farce that did the chicken cannon?

Obscure fact: Canada had a show called Royal Canadian Air Farce where, during their year-end special, they'd launch a "Chicken Cannon" at cut-outs of that years news makers.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NLJ5q3-XJtQ

Colonel is an Air Force military rank. Just saying.

Bird Hit QA engineer

Bird Bash QA engineering.

The person who bought the chickens told me that battery chickens were not suitable because the bones were too soft. Farm chickens were needed. The farmer never knew what the chickens were for.

Damn, we throw chickens in engines that are healthier than the ones most people eat.

Maybe they can like...catch the exit material and fry it up.

After the joke fiasco, and since it's a government job, i'm sure there is someone employed there to thaw them first :D

What joke? was it related to https://cdc.gov/chikungunya

I believe they're talking about this one: https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/catapoultry/

Excellent, thank you!

Interesting that in at least one situation, the Air Force really did use frozen chickens to be extra-sure of the canopy durability.

An iconic Mythbusters episode also :) They made an air cannon to fire frozen chickens into a plane.

Yep, this one... "thaw it first" :))

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