Redditor Reveals How Engineers Made Use Of "Chicken Gun" To Fire Bird Carcasses At Aircraft Components Just To Test Plane Safety

Chicken Gun? I'm just as surprised as you are

Maryjane

• Published in Animal Stories
• November 24, 2022

A large-diameter compressed-air gun known as a "chicken gun" or "flight impact simulator" is used to shoot bird corpses at aircraft parts in order to imitate high-speed bird hits while the aircraft is in flight. The most frequent targets in such testing are jet engines and airplane windshields because they are particularly susceptible to damage from such attacks.

Although several bird species are employed in the testing and certification of airplanes, the gadget earned the nickname "chicken gun" since chickens are the most frequently utilized "ammunition" due to their easy accessibility. The US Civil Aeronautics Administration and the Westinghouse Electric and Manufacturing Company collaborated to create the first chicken cannon in 1942.

It was created by Westinghouse's High Power Laboratory in Pittsburgh and had a muzzle velocity of up to 270 mph (430 km/h), although it could fire bird corpses at a maximum speed of 400 mph (640 km/h). The gun's propellant was compressed air, which was stored in an accumulator by a compressor until the appropriate pressure was attained.

An electric quick-release valve was opened by an operator to fire the gun, releasing compressed air into the barrel. It was possible to achieve various muzzle velocities by adjusting the pressure that was kept in the accumulator.

Up until November 1943, the gun was in operation at the High Power Laboratory. It was relocated to the Indianapolis Experimental Station, a CAA research and development facility in Indianapolis, in early 1945.

More info: Reddit, Wikipedia

Redditor u/Urisk has shared an interesting piece of information with the TodayILearned subreddit community

A Chicken Gun is a compressed air cannon that fires bird carcasses

There, it was used to test parts for a number of commercial aircraft manufacturers before being retired sometime in 1947. The De Havilland Aircraft Company in the United Kingdom independently created a similar gun in the middle of the 1950s.

Here are what redditors had to say:

World war 3 and World war 4

Thawing the chickens

The royal Canadian airfarce

Planes are not vegetarian

The best today I learned of the week

It does say bird carcasses

They fire freshly killed chicken

They never found some kind of reusable replacement

It is called the chicken cannon

A myth busters episode

What they also fire

They put the jet engine on the test

Artificial bird analogs for use in impact tests

Engineers uses them for safety

Here is the step one

Using defrosted chickens for these tests

That'd be a strong insult to the turkey

The UK's Royal Aircraft Establishment constructed a chicken gun in 1961. This cannon was frequently used until 2016 when it was transferred to the Canada Aviation and Space Museum and two more contemporary weapons took its place.

The use of a modular barrel allows the replacements to more easily accept birds of various sizes.

Tell us your thoughts about this Chicken Gun story in the comments below.

Maryjane