> >> http://home.xnet.com/~warinner/chickens.html
>
> Thanks Gene. These sites confirmed some of the things I
> had recalled about the chicken cannon: that the birds were
> propelled by compressed air, and that the gun looks an awful
> lot like something that would come off a battleship...
There is another possibility that came to mind as I recalled my
trip up to the north range at China Lake to the chicken cannon
site. That being the Mojave Desert, it would often get ghastly hot
up there. Most of our crew would scatter like rabbits when
there was a job to do on those ranges in the summertime, but
they knew I looooved going up on the range, I was such a whore
for airplanes and weird stuff. When it was over 110 degrees F, the
testers might have gotten sloppy (that being an outdoor facility)
and rushed the procedure. They may have had the chicken
out of the freezer for insufficient time, so that the outside was
thawed but the inside was still frozen enough to be quite
destructive to an experimental canopy. spike
This archive was generated by hypermail 2b30 : Mon May 28 2001 - 09:59:44 MDT