sonic booms and airshows
Relative to the sonic booms, I was at Farnborough as an RAE student apprentice back in the good old days when sonic booms were part of the annual show, but I never heard such ‘monsters’ as I did when camped in Utah in April 1968 when the SR-71 Blackbird was test flying over the area. I never even glimpsed the culprit – long gone before I could get outside and likely flying at altitude. There would be several booms every week, and each would almost send me through the roof of the camper.
I was in the apprentice hostel the Saturday Farnboro show of 1958 when Beaumont in the P1B hiccuped and sent a sonic shockwave into the control tower, breaking a number of windows. At the hostel there was no boom, but an awfully loud and sudden flypast.
BTW, at the ‘gathering’ before the opening of that show I, then an 19 year old lad fascinated by fast aircraft, wandered down to A shed tarmac when the P1B arrived and parked. While walking around it and poking (worshipping might be a better word) one of the FD-2s arrived with Peter Twiss aboard, holder of the then air speed record (1152mph) . Twiss climbed out and crawled underneath to open an access panel and check a leaking fuel pump – with me right behind to see what he was doing. We had eye contact but exchanged no words – he probably already knew what a nuisance the RAE apprentices could be. A short time later Fairey Aviation’s Dragon Rapide arrived with mechanics aboard. They removed the fuel pump and Twiss climbed into the Rapide and took off for Hayes with it – arriving at Farnboro with the world’s fastest plane and leaving with its slowest.