Those clever Yanks have done it again!
Apparently this is a true story. Scientists at NASA have developed a gun, whose purpose it is to launch dead chickens. It is used to shoot a dead chicken at the windshields of airline jets, military jets, and the space shuttle, at that vehicle's maximum travelling velocity. The idea being, that it will simulate the frequent incidents of collisions with airborne fowl, and therefore determine if the windshields are strong enough.
British engineers, upon hearing of the gun, were eager to test the gun out on the windshield of their new high speed trains. However, upon the firing of the gun, the engineers watched in shock as the chicken shattered the windshield, smashed through the control console, snapped the engineer's backrest in two, and embedded itself in the back wall of the cabin. Horrified, the engineers sent NASA the results of the experiment, along with the designs of the windshield, and asked the NASA scientists for any suggestions. The NASA scientists sent back a single sentence response:
"THAW THE F*&%*&% CHICKEN!"
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One person who used to work for British Aerospace tells a similar story (which he swears is true) that these machine are actually used to fire chickens into jet engines to simulate bird strikes on the compressor blades. To cut a long story short, to thaw the chicken someone left it in the gun overnight and performed the test in the morning. The results were somewhat different to expected and close examination of the high speed video footage showed a very startled looking stray cat clinging to a half eaten chicken as it exited the gun at MACH 0.7.
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