Tricky, although a little rough, Mach pretty well has it right. You must remember that it was in the 60’s when Boeing was designing the US answer to the Concorde. The United States, and a lot of Europe, was going through a period of anti-everything. Anti-war, anti-government, anti-bra (well that bit was alright), anti-establishment, anti-older generation, etc.
These were the ‘Nixon’ (The fact that Johnson was president matters little.) years. The media was just in the infancy of rabid reporting of “Anything to sell and increase rating” type news. For the younger generation (The “Don’t trust anyone over thirty.” Crowd.) the only true driving force was the bigger the headlines the better. Remember Woodstock, LSD, Timothy Leary, sit-ins, “Drop out, tune in.”, race riots. The SLA (Patty Hearst), well, I could go on forever, but I think you get my drift.
In 1965 (I think) the U.S. Air Force was directed to conduct supersonic flights over a medium sized city in the United States. That city was Oklahoma City, Oklahoma. I don’t know why we were so lucky. Oklahoma City could be considered to be the buckle of the ‘Bible Belt’ of the United States. One would be hard pressed to find a area in the United States that was more conservative or patriotic then as well as today. One can only speculate that the government’s thinking was that if the citizens of Oklahoma City complained there was a true problem with sonic booms.
The first airplanes used were, in fact, F-104s. As the war in Viet Nam heated up the F-104s were replaced by F-106s. As this happen a long time ago my memory (like everything else about me) may be a bit rusty. However as I recall there were three flights a day. The first around 08:00, 12:00 and 17:00. The altitudes varied from very high, around 50,000ft to ridiculously low, 18,000ft. I believe these flights lasted for over three months.
The damage claims amounted to over 10’s of millions or dollars. Hens stopped laying eggs, cows stopped producing milk, chicken farms lost thousands chickens, building walls and foundations cracked, windows were shattered (this was from the low altitude runs), dishes fell from cabinets and more of the same type claims. The local newspapers were flooded with letters complaining about the sonic booms, preachers in churches gave sermons on the Devil’s work in creating the sonic boom (well I told you that Oklahoma City is the buckle of the ‘Bible Belt’
. Although I must say a lot of Oklahomans said they really were not against the sonic booms, they just wanted them to be moved to Texas. Oklahoma and Texas don’t get along to good together, especially during football season.
Because of the results of the flights over Oklahoma City and the current mood of the country Congress refused to fund any more monies to Boeing for the SST. This was devastating to Boeing. Boeing lost 100’s of millions of dollars and had to layoff thousands of workers. In fact there was a billboard on the Interstate highway leaving Seattle to the south that said “Would the last person leaving Seattle please turn off the lights.”
That is the real reason why the Concorde was banned from flying over the United States land mass. It had nothing to do with the fact that Boeing did not build the SST. In fact there was a large movement by a lot of people in the US to not even let the Concorde land or takeoff anywhere in the United States. Fortunately their views were unheeded by Congress and the wonderful Concorde was allowed to operate in and out of the United States.
There is humorous story I must relate about the sonic boom flights over Oklahoma City. A popular radio station had a talk show and as one can imagine a lot of the calls concerned the sonic boom flights. One morning a man called the station to complain about the sonic booms.
Radio show host; “Yes sir, what is your problem about the sonic booms?”
Caller; “I get woken up way too early in the morning because of the blasted things.”
Host; “Well how early are you woken up?”
Caller; “4:30 in the morning.”
Host; “4:30 in the morning! The first boom is not until 8am, what are you talking about?”
Caller; “Yeah, I know. I fly the first morning flight and I got to get up at 4:30 and I’m sick and tired of it!”
[ 07 December 2001: Message edited by: con-pilot ]
Ok, put in the "e", sorry about that.
[ 12 December 2001: Message edited by: con-pilot ]
[ 12 December 2001: Message edited by: con-pilot ]