F35 goes supersonic over Tinker AFB

[LVSteve]

WOW! They actually got one of those junkers in the sky!
Geoff
Who notes the USAF no longer publishes critical information, like numbers available for flight.

They fly enough out of Nellis to be a nuisance. I call them SNUBs, Short, Noisy, Ugly Buggers. That big single motor is seriously loud, and they have to use the loud end of the throttle quite a lot coming out of the base.

I was unimpressed when they were flying a demo at Aviation Nation. It was like the aircraft had agility without the capability to sustain a long, high-G turn. It was pretty evident when compared with the other fighters tearing up the sky that day.

 

[whittier]

In the late 50's and early 60's we would hear sonic booms all the time. We had duck and cover drills in school once or twice a month. They would test the air raid sirens on the last Friday of every month at 10am. There was a Nike missile base about 5 miles from my house. They had armed guards and you couldn't get close to it. One of the neighbors had a complete bomb shelter buried in the back yard. Nuclear war was a real fear back then.

 

[LDM]

I was visiting my uncle in Grenada Hills, CA, when the space shuttle came in to land at Edwards AFB. Two sonic booms as it passed overhead.

 

[JohnHL]

When I was a kid in St. Louis in the 1960's you'd hear a few sonic booms every week.
McDonald Douglas was based in St. Louis and deep into production of supersonic jet fighters at the time. My dad worked on the F4 Phantoms and they were capable of over mach 2.

Yup!

Just like BC38, I grew up in St. Louis during the '50s and '60s and sonic booms were not uncommon.

During the '70s, I ran a motorcycle dealership less than one mile from Lambert Field, where McDonnell Aircraft (later McDonnell-Douglas) was located (still there) and the Missouri Air National Guard was based (since relocated).

All sorts of commercial and military aircraft overhead.

Watching a big fat L-1011 lumbering skyward after take-off was amusing to me. (Reminded me of a fat turkey struggling skyward. )

Hugh Hefner kept the Playboy Bunny jet there for a few years.

Watched countless Missouri Air National Guard F-4s and then F-15s take off and land in groups of four. (The F-4s were smoky.)

Often, we would hear the thundering of dual afterburners vastly overwhelming all other sounds, and it would be a new F-15 or F-18 making a "Viking Ascent" straight up into the sky.

Quite a few of my customers were McDonnell-Douglas employees, and I asked them if the "Viking Ascent" was for test purposes or merely "showing off"?

"Nope", they told me.

The traffic around Lambert Field (later St. Louis International Airport) was so busy that when they got clearance from the tower, they were instructed to go straight up, both after burners blazing, so they could quickly clear the pattern and the civil aviation people could get back to their take-offs and landings.

I always needed to look much higher in the sky than from where the sound seemed to be coming, to get a glimpse of a silver bird disappearing in to the blue.

I still have a couple of pictures around here that I got from a fellow who worked in the engine test cell.

Airplane tied down, both engines at full burn.

The thrust diamonds in the fire cones are impressive.

John

 

[Jon651]

When I was a kid in Texas sonic booms were common and I thought they were neat. Never knew of any damage done by one. This was in the early 50s

Heard quite a few myself during the space shuttle landings at Cape Kennedy. If it came in from the south we always got the double-boom!

 

[SMSgt]

When I was in the Air Force part of my job in public relations was to explain when a pilot went supersonic. They are not supposed to do it over populated areas.

One poor lady had her house damaged because a number of SR 71s broke the sound barrier over her place. Found out they were on final approach to their base in Ca. Her house is in Arizona. The Air Force ended up paying for all the damage.

I would have to call BS on that one. Beale AFB is hundreds of miles from AZ. A sonic boom is a sonic boom. Any SR-71 sonic boom would have been at higher altitudes. They still do it all the time at Edwards AFB, which is closer to AZ than Beale.

 

[twodog max]

I remember hearing them a lot back in the 50's and early 60's. We lived fairly close to Little Rock AFB. It ain't in LR actually but I did not name it. My Dad was Air Guard so he was always interested in planes and so was I. Lots of military traffic back then.
About a month ago the military was doing lots of training over the Ozark National Forest night and day. One night around 10:30 BOOM I new exactly what it was from the old days. I was in bed thinking some pilot got a little carried away or pushed a little hard. Had folks talking around the area. Did not bother me. Heck if I was flying one of those things I think it would be hard not to blow the soot out once and a while.