natioal geographics did a television special several months ago on the
problem of birds bing injested into navy aircraft jet engines. The
show mentioned that more than 130 aircraft have been lost because of
this problem. I am trying to find what the name of that show was and
obtain a transcript of it.
Thank you

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Request for Question Clarification by omnivorous-ga on 06 Mar 2003 09:21 PST

Steve --

I've searched through all of the National Geographic sites (and the
web in general) and wasn't able to find the specific video clip that
you're interested in.

However, if you're interested in some excellent resources and data on
bird strikes, I developed a good list of those sites.

Best regards,

Omnivorous-GA

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Request for Question Clarification by techtor-ga on 06 Mar 2003 21:25 PST

Perhaps the show you saw is that of another documentary company, like
Discovery Channel or BBC. I shall see if that is possible.

I have not been able to locate a National Geographic television
program on this subject, but here is an article from the International
Wildlife Foundation that mentions the figure of 130 aircraft crashes
caused by birds being sucked into jet engines:

International Wildlife Foundation: When Birds Become Missiles
http://www.nwf.org/internationalwildlife/1998/israel.html

There are links on the page for civilian as well as military:

http://www.birdstrike.org/events/signif.htm

I have heard this before don't know if its true or not, but it's funny
nontheless:

I have a friend who works with a British Aerospace firm which has been
involved in developing next generational sub-orbital passenger
aircraft. US and EU firms have been working on such craft for over ten
years and just recently they have begun testing of actual planes.

What the Brits lack that the Americans have is experience in testing
aircraft designed for sub-orbital speeds. The Americans of course do,
so when the Brits had done their preliminary lab testing of their
first plane, they sent their data off to NASA for checking and
feedback.

The Americans pointed out that the Brits had neglected to include a
'bird strike' scenario test. They pointed out the increased risks
associated with the higher speeds (over MACH 10) and the need to check
resistance to collisions with such small mid air objects. NASA advised
that they had a machine designed for such tests, and they were
prepared to lease it to the Brits to let them complete their testing.

The Brits set up the machine with US manuals, inside the specially
designed wind tunnel they used for testing high speed flight
conditions.

They had dummies in the cockpit, and started the first test - when the
plane was at simulated atmospheric peak performance, a chicken was
loaded into the bird strike testing equipment and catapulted at the
plane.

To the shock of all engineers watching, who had devoted years of
research to getting the programme to the point it was at, the chicken
smashed through the cockpit glass, decapitated the dummy pilot and
lodged itself into the bomb/bullet proof back wall of the cockpit.

Dejected engineeers contacted NASA, thanking them for pointing out
their oversight, and their support in allowing the test that had
showed such a terrible flaw in their programme. They included test
data along with the machine, and added a request for any suggestions
the Americans had in how to go about averting this risk in planes that
they build in the future.

The response from NASA was a simple, three-worded fax:

"Defrost the chicken"