I think it shows some military aircraft, as I recall tracking the UK’s Rivet Joint aircraft around the start of the invasion of Ukraine.
Quick calc.: a sonic boom casts about the weight of a passenger car onto a medium size roof.
Growing up in Cornwall I could hear a sonic boom nearly every evening. Since living in France I have not heard one.
Same in Finistère. You could set your watch by Concorde leaving Paris for NY and booming over our house at 10pm on the evenings it departed. The crockery was always rattling when the sonic boom occured. Shame it was stopped.
Only worry if the bomb racks are loaded and it is flying directly at you!
Please do not ask how I know, however it is personal experience.
Simon
We had them out last roaring around until gone 23h30. It has been known to be midnight before they’ve cleared off.
That’s the one. It was 9 o’clock in Cornwall. I have been at Reading University a few times when Concorde was making a fairly low speed turn before landing at Heathrow. That was worse than the sonic boom, much, much worse.
I only heard Concorde once when I was loading on an industrial estate nearby and was very glad that I lived nowhere near. But wasn’t it the case that it was required to be well out to sea before it went supersonic and created the boom?
In the early 70s trials took it up the west coast of Britain and warnings of sonic booms were issued beforehand. I distinctly remember one when I was in Kilmarnock but I’m sure there were others. Later, Prestwick was used for training, approach, take off and landing, i imagine. It would do small circuits out over the Firth of Clyde and inland over central Ayrshire. My kids watched open mouthed while I gave Maggie Thatcher a (fake) call to tell her, in no uncertain terms, that my children couldn’t hear the telly and none of us were very happy. It was that loud. I also stood by the fence at Prestwick to watch it take off. That was a phenomenal experience.
After sitting for some time making plenty of noise, it suddenly burst into life and was off, up and away in what seemed like an incredibly short distance and time.
I remember there were subsonic flights to Egypt and back for the Concorde experience. I’ll always regret not having taken the opporchancity.
We are in the darker orange bit of your map David and now I understand why in past week or so we’re getting buzzed by military aircraft much lower than before.
We’ve always had a few military overflying in lumps of a few days in succession from ttime to time. But past 8 days or so more and lower - i hope they’re not intending to buzz us l lower like this in future. The nearby small flying club has only been flying weekends. From Easter normally they’d fly in the week too. So will be interesting to see if they’re not bsck flying on weekdays from next week.
It used to fly quite a way up the English Channel at supersonic speeds, the booms could be heard in South West England and North West France. Over Reading it was travelling at low speed but the engines were having to work hard.
There were transatlantic round trips one way on Concorde and the other on the QE2 for what seemed a reasonable price. I wish I’d done one of those.
Saw (and definitely heard) two military jets today in N Vienne.
Also Cirl Bunting and Cetti’s Warbler, plus a dozen others.
Concorde?
I lived at the far end of Bretagne so it would fly down the coast where we were. You never saw it, far too high but the boom(s) always made us jump even after years of being used to them.
Reminds me of the farmer in mid Wales who painted on the roof of his barn “P*** off, Biggles”. He had to paint over it, because more of them came to have a look.
I remember in the very early 70’s before Concorde entered service we were on a flight to Tenerife when the Captain said “look out the left side windows, it’s Concorde on a test flight”.
There she was and it left us for dead. Beautiful sight!
Akin to pulling away at red lights in a muscle car.
We saw Concorde on her last flight from London to New York.
We were sitting out in our garden in Stroud and it was beautiful early evening with a clear blue sky and we clearly saw her on her last flight.
They are regulars here from the Army base in Dijon.
They use a local hill as one of their way points for low flying practice.