From: Kristin
Subject: Where Col. Sanders gets his chickens??
Date: Friday, October 13, 1995 9:55 AM
I got this from my friend. I beleive it could very well be true. My dad used to head up the stress testing of Boeing airplanes and I know the chicken windshield test is for real.
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The FAA has a device for testing the strength of windshields on airplanes. They point this thing at the windshield of the aircraft and shoot a dead chicken at about the speed the air-craft normally flies at it. If the windshield doesn't break, it's likely to survive a real collision with a bird during flight.
The British had recently built a new locomotive that could pull a train faster than any before it. They were not sure that its windshield was strong enough so they borrowed the testing device from the FAA, reset it to approximate the maximum speed of the locomotive, loaded in the dead chicken, and fired. The bird went through the windshield, broke the engineer's chair, and made a major dent in the back wall of the engine cab.
They were quite surprised with this result, so they asked the FAA to check the test to see if everything was done correctly. The FAA checked everything and suggested that they might want to repeat the test using a thawed chicken.
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From: "Jim Schaeffer"
Date: Thu, 23 Jan 1997 19:05:36 -0500
can confirm that last year I sold a 40' piec of polypropylene lined carbon steel pipe to Boeing and that it was to be used to shoot chickens (already dead) for simulated "birdstrike" testing
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Date: Fri, 04 Apr 1997 10:18:29 -0800
From: Bruce Musgrove <*bmusgr@*mednet.swmed.edu>
Unfortunately this stuff is true. Both militery and civilian aerospace manafacturers do this in testing. They also throw frozen turkeys in jet engines (testing the new high bypass turbofans) to determine bird strike surviveability. They had a show on discovery channel (can't remember if it was the Knowledge zone or Beyond 2000) that did a piece on this.
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From: Bryan Young
Subject: Chicken gun
Date: Sun, 27 Apr 1997 18:19:56 -0500
I have also heard of the chicken testing. I also have heard it is nicknamed "the rooster booster"