The chicken gun urban legend - fact or fiction?

[Tetragon213]

An old story that sometimes does the rounds on the internet (inevitably distorted further and further by each retelling) goes roughly along the lines as follows...

During the 60s (other versions of the story claim the 80s), British Rail was testing a new locomotive's resilience against the effect of bird strikes (I imagine this would likely be around the development times of either the 125 or 225). To perform the test, they borrowed a pneumatic chicken gun from the FAA (the American Federal Aviation Administration; other versions of the story claim they borrowed the gun from Boeing), and fired a chicken carcass into the windshield.

(Incidentally, this test is quite typical in aviation; indeed, Rolls Royce, the makers of a not-insignificant number of turbine engines, make reference to "firing chicken carcasses at whirring engine blades to assess their resilience to bird strikes.")

The result was astounding; the bird shattered the windshield, broke the chair, and embedded itself in the back wall of the driving cab. The FAA (or Boeing, depending on the story) was contacted for advice, and the reply came back (in classic laconic style), "use a thawed chicken".

My question is, is there any truth at all to this tale? Or is it, like all good internet tales, simply too good to be true?

 

[mike57]

Have a look for the Mythbusters 'Chicken Gun' episode which covered this topic from an aviation point of view, I would imagine the results with a locomotive windscreen would be similar, and they covered the frozen v defrosted aspect as well.

 

[Tetragon213]

Have a look for the Mythbusters 'Chicken Gun' episode which covered this topic from an aviation point of view, I would imagine the results with a locomotive windscreen would be similar, and they covered the frozen v defrosted aspect as well.

Oh, I know full well that a frozen chicken would almost certainly have gone straight through the windshield. What I was trying to ask isn't the physics of it, it's about whether or not it really happened that British Rail engineers actually fired a frozen chicken at an Intercity 125/225 set. It sounds like one of those "just barely plausible enough to sound true on the internet" stories!

 

[jfollows]

Not the answer to the question, but I remember 10+ years ago when I worked a little with Rolls Royce in Derby on their high performance computing that a friend explained that they simulated a chicken test and its failure, so they re-worked the engine design before doing it for real and it passed the test. A good example of why spending money on computer simulation was not wasted money this time at least.

 

[Mcr Warrior]

As @mike57 states above, the 'Mythbusters' team on the Discovery Channel (= Jamie Hyneman and Adam Savage) have previously investigated the "Chicken Gun Myth" more than once, and eventually came to the (revised) conclusion that frozen chickens do indeed have more penetrative power than unthawed ones. They also mention the story of the British supposedly borrowing chicken gun technology (from NASA) in order to test the impact of bird hits on high-speed trains, but I've yet to see any verifiable source which 100% 'confirms' the story.

 

[Peter Mugridge]

There is a related "cat story" involving one of these tests whereby the chicken was loaded into the gun and left to thaw while the testers went to lunch; allegedly when they fired the gun after they returned, the chicken emerged with a cat clinging on to it...

 

[EveningStar]

Interesting thing about railway enthusiasm is the level of minute investigation into every detail of anything to do with trains. Tellingly, in all the books and magazine articles concerning development of the HST, nobody has come forward to say they were involved in the test described. While it is impossible to prove a negative, yet it strikes me as improbable in a subject so carefully examined that there is nothing to verify the story.

However, what is attested is Rolls-Royce using the chicken gun test while developing the RB-211 jet engine with 'hyfill' carbon fibre blades, with the results as described and the cost overruns of replacing the blades with more conventional titanium blades leading to Rolls-Royce needing a government bail out from bankruptcy. Now this was the 1970s, where Rolls-Royve was still considered classy and British Rail was at a nadir, so it does not take a leap of imagination to transfer the story from classy to the Aunt Sally of the time.

Attached photo of 43020 at Leeds on Monday 24 August 1987. From my notes, was working with 43003, which I joined as 1400 from Birmingham New Street and running on time past Sheffield. Notes record, "Stone throwing near Bolton-on-Dearne smashed the windscreen on 43020 and a window on TGS 44065. After short delay continued to Leeds (arrived 1649 against scheduled 1611) at reduced speed where train terminated (viz York)." You will see from the impact zone that it was a large stone, possibly as large as brick and probably carrying a similar mass to, shall we say, a frozen chicken. Yet window integrity maintained, even if the driver could be forgiven for needing a change of underwear.

 

[47296lastduff]

I remember this originating as a joke told by a comedian around the 1970s, but cannot recall which one. In the style of Chinese whispers this became a "real story".

 

[Gloster]

However, what is attested is Rolls-Royce using the chicken gun test while developing the RB-211 jet engine with 'hyfill' carbon fibre blades, with the results as described and the cost overruns of replacing the blades with more conventional titanium blades leading to Rolls-Royce needing a government bail out from bankruptcy. Now this was the 1970s, where Rolls-Royve was still considered classy and British Rail was at a nadir, so it does not take a leap of imagination to transfer the story from classy to the Aunt Sally of the time.

This is entirely my feeling on the origins of the story. BR was the butt of every lame and ancient joke going, so the chances of this being the truth of the matter strike me as being very high.

 

[Ted633]

The version I've heard involved General Electric (Rolls Royce engine rivals).
GE couldn't get their engines to pass the chicken test and phoned RR to ask how they did it. Response was as the OP said, don't fire frozen ones.

As there are so many variations, I strongly suspect it started out as a joke somewhere or other and has now turned into a 'fact' to allegedly show how stupid Americans/British Rail/any other organisation were

 

[Somewhere]

I definitely remember watching a video from however many years ago watching a frozen chicken being fired into the windscreen of a Networker. I'll have a hunt on YouTube