Our international correspondent serves up a fun mini blog:
Strangers,
The Oklahoma City Booms, which would be a great band name, were a series of sonic booms that occurred in Oklahoma City 8 times a day for half of 1964. The poor residents of Oklahoma City were subjected to these booms without their consent.
Operation Bongo II (another great band name) began on February 3rd of 1964 when the US Air Force, under the instruction of the FAA, started flying planes faster than the speed of sound above the great city. These flights created sonic booms as the planes broke the sound barrier. The booms shook homes, displaced knicknacks, and frightened every dog and small child within the city limits.
These sonic booms were part of a government ordered and funded test to see how the public would tolerate the sonic booms in anticipation of a new mode of air travel - Supersonic transportation (SST). It was clear from the beginning that the answer was ‘not well’, however the tests persisted until the summer.
Residents reported that egg production had been impacted, with some layers refusing to provide breakfast for the duration of the testing. Others claimed that the early summer and extreme lack of rain was a result of the booms. Others believed the booms were part of an elaborate plan to destroy old houses in order to make them uninhabitable so they could be bulldozed to make way for modern buildings. Despite the complaints (over 12,000 phone complaints and 8000 property damage claims), 1253 sonic boom flights were conducted, with residents never knowing when exactly they would happen. When the tests were completed, the residents were relieved to go about their daily lives without worrying about picking up picture frames or spilling their tea. That is, until January 2013.
On January 4th, 2013, it was reported that locals in Gutherie, 30 miles north of Oklahoma City, heard a weird, loud noise. It was reported as a one boom at 7pm and another and 9pm on January 2nd. Responding officers were unable to pinpoint the source of the boom which shook homes and startled residents. Locals speculated as to the cause of the boom. Was it a blown transformer, a noise from the gun range, or an explosion on a nearby oil field? No one could say for sure and the boom was soon forgotten. That is, until January 2015.
In January 2015, more booms were reported in cities and towns near Oklahoma City. Again, local law enforcement were unable to find the origin, and the booms were blamed on a cryoseismic boom, which is a boom caused by frozen water in the ground. This would make sense with the cold, winter weather. NewsChannel 4 chief meteorologist Mike Morgan explained that heavy rainfall combined with a sudden cold snap could have caused the cryoseismic boom. In this article, the sound of the cryoseismic boom was compared to that of a sonic boom. A similar story broke in 2016, and again in 2017, and once again in 2018.
The reporting of the 2016 boom suggests that it could have been a sonic boom, however nothing concrete was ever reported. The suggestion was raised in the 2017 reporting. The 2018 noise was blamed on a meteor, one that would’ve broken the sound barrier as it descended towards earth. Could the earlier booms could have been caused by a meteor as well, or were they caused by another round of FAA and Air Force Supersonic transportation (SST) testing, 50 years after Operation Bongo II wreaked havoc on the lives of the residents of Oklahoma.
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Sources:
https://gizmodo.com/when-the-faa-blasted-oklahoma-city-with-sonic-booms-for-1649589210
https://kfor.com/news/mysterious-boom-heard-in-guthrie/
https://kfor.com/news/strange-booms-heard-in-oklahoma/
https://www.kjrh.com/news/rogers-county-residents-shaken-by-loud-boom