The costs of democracy: why the United States was never able to create a plane that was in the USSR and Europe

The 1960s were quite interesting for humanity. The horrors of the Second World War had already been left behind, before the people was the limitless potential of technological progress. He told about what happened and how the arms race between the USSR and the USA grew into something more. Levik on your blog.

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On April 12, 1961, Soviet cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin went into space, and 8 years later, on July 20, 1969, the Americans went to the Moon. Aviation on Earth also did not stand still - the era of jet aircraft had arrived.

By the end of the 1960s, Boeing created a new technological miracle - the double-decker 747.

“Everyone firmly believed that the future of aviation lay in supersonic aircraft. The Europeans built the Concorde, the USSR worked on the Tu-144, and the Americans... And here we have a snag. The Americans have never built a passenger plane capable of flying faster than the speed of sound. But why? The answer to this question can be found in a strange place: Oklahoma City,” writes the blog author.

It is clear that at the height of the Cold War and the arms race, none of the countries could afford to fall behind.

“Then everyone thought that in ten years, all passenger air transportation would be carried out exclusively on supersonic aircraft: why fly slower if you can fly faster?! Therefore, of course, the USA also began to develop such technologies,” writes the blogger.

In the USA, they created the SST (supersonic transport) program, at the request of which one of the aircraft manufacturers was supposed to create a supersonic airliner. For this role, the Boeing project, codenamed 2707, was chosen.

“This plane was supposed to be larger and faster than the European Concorde. Instead of 92-128 passengers, a supersonic Boeing would be designed for 250-300, writes Levik. — Concorde flew twice the speed of sound, and Boeing was going to fly three times faster. It would be a worthy example of American industrial excellence."

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Enthusiasm for the future development was so great that Boeing named its new basketball team the Supersonics.

But there was one gap. At that time, there were already military supersonic aircraft and everyone knew that they created a sonic boom in front of them - this is a very loud sound, heard for kilometers.

It was unclear whether it was possible to fly at such speed over the earth, where populated areas are located and people live. If a supersonic plane flies low, the sonic boom is very strong - it can break windows and knock people down. But even when the plane is flying very high at high speed, its loud rumble can be heard on the ground.

It was impossible to predict whether people would get used to living in a constant buzz.

“To test this, the US aviation authority launched the so-called Operation Bongo II. The idea was to choose an American city and launch supersonic planes over it several times a day. And in order to understand how one can get used to this, they decided that this operation would last not one or two days, but six months,” writes the author of the blog.

For this purpose, a city was chosen in the heart of the USA - Oklahoma City (Oklahoma).

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“On February 3, 1964, flights began. They were carried out by Air Force fighters from a nearby base. The planes were supposed to fly over the city eight times a day along the planned route. The first flight was at 07:00, the last in the afternoon, writes Levik. “The Civil Aviation Authority has placed microphones and other equipment in the city to measure the level of sound and vibration caused by flying fighter jets.”

At first, the residents were even happy about this honor, and the authorities organized a celebration. When it all just started, they weren’t against it either - the flights were on schedule and the city residents decided that it was quite possible to live like this.

“The film crew, sent to observe the local residents, were surprised to find a construction crew, for whom another sonic boom served as a signal for a lunch break,” the author notes.

However, after a while, local residents began to get tired of the eternal hum. In addition, the city's two tallest buildings were damaged by the flights in the first 14 weeks, with the shock wave breaking a total of 147 windows.

“By late spring, activist groups were demanding an end to the bullying, but local politicians asked them to be patient for the national good—Oklahoma City was believed to be the site of an important national experiment. However, the pressure continued to grow - the story was covered by popular newspapers, the author notes. — As a result, the program was stopped on July 30, just a month before its successful completion. During this time, 1253 supersonic flights were made over Oklahoma City.”

The final report indicated that 73% of residents surveyed said they could eventually get used to a life with constant sonic booms over their heads. 25% of the population reported that they are not ready to endure it. And somewhere around 3% of the townspeople were so angry with these flights that they wrote angry letters, called to complain or even sued. About half a million people lived in the city at that time, which meant that 15 people could not bear these sounds at all.

The problem was aggravated by the fact that the civil aviation administration rejected many applications from people who asked for compensation for various damages.

As a result of this experiment, the government was forced to abandon the supersonic air travel program. The development of the Boeing 2707 was curtailed in 1971, and a couple of years later, civilian supersonic flights over the United States were banned. For years, the Concorde, operating transatlantic flights to New York, had to slow down as it approached American shores.

And in 2008, the Seattle Supersonics basketball team was transferred from Seattle to Oklahoma City, where it was renamed the Oklahoma City Thunder ("Thunder of Oklahoma City").

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