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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Well...a long time ago in a less PC age, I worked for a company that made fuel systems for jet engines. They had an outdoor test firing facility that was enclosed in a wall, maybe 6 feet high, intended to protect passersby.
The chap who ran the facility had a party piece. He'd put bird seed on top of the blast wall in front of the inlet. He waited for enough pigeons to start eating the seed. Then switched on the engine. There were a lot of feathers...
Sometimes. Probably most of the time. But not always.
Petty Officer JD Bridges on a US Navy aircraft carrier got sucked into the intake of a fighter jet. Somehow his body got wedged in such a way that he did not go through the engine and managed to climb out a few seconds later.
We're all glad you got an AI-induced "chuckle" in a thread that ponders the tragic death of 200 or so people. Cool stuff. Reddit is just over there to the left...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chicken_gun