4 ms·

not really the same, fighters are quite smaller than airliners.

hollerith 5y ago
They might be smaller, but the boom is quite startling; I certainly wouldn't want to endure them regularly. I know because booms from fighters were common during my trip to West Germany in 1970. (I'm relying on what locals told my parents as to the source of the booms: I never saw a plane.) I've never heard a sonic boom in my 60 years of living in the US.
- Mountain_Skies 5y ago
  Rural Alabama had them semi-frequently in the late 70s and early 80s. Not sure where the fighters came from, perhaps Maxwell AFB had a training wing at that time. As far as I know, it never broke anything but it sure would rattle your dental work.
  - paul_f 5y ago
    You are correct. I clearly remember hearing sonic booms in Montgomery, AL in the early 70s.
- LinuxBender 5y ago
  I heard them all the time near Vandenburg AFB in the 70's and early 80's. I don't remember when exactly I stopped hearing them.
- dreamcompiler 5y ago
  I used to hear them all the time in Texas when I was a kid in the 70s. We were fairly close to an air force base and we'd be out in the yard on a bright sunny day when we'd hear a thunderclap, as if lightning had struck less than a mile away. We'd look up, see a contrail, and say "Oh." It never caused any damage; it was just surprising.
Retric 5y ago
Less than you might think. Wingspan Concord 25.6m vs F-22 13.56m. Maximum takeoff weight Concord 185,000kg vs F-22 60,000kg. Expanding that to all supersonic military aircraft and the Rockwell B-1 Lancer has a higher maximum takeoff weight than the concord. It’s a loud and heavy beast.
- perl4ever 5y ago
  I wonder if the comparison would be more frontal area than weight?
nine_k 5y ago
I don't see why the boom energy has anything to do with the size of the aircraft producing it. It should only depend on the speed of the spike that produces the boom; typically the entire aircraft fits within the sonic boom cone produced by the nose spike when flying straight. So I suppose an artillery shell, a jet fighter, and a Concorde should produce about the same amount of boom at the same speed of, say, 1.5 M, while flying by. The engine sound of the aircraft, though, can add significantly to the noise in the wake of the boom cone. Those engines are not low-power or quiet.
- kortex 5y ago
  Why wouldn't size correlate with magnitude? A whip crack breaks the sound barrier, it doesn't shatter windows. Same with a bullet, which goes even faster. You need both pressure level (voltage) and momentum (current) in order to stay strong over distances (shock waves diffuse over time) to break windows. Small, super fast things create large pressure differentials, big jets create more momentum.
  - lazide 5y ago
    Because the Mach cone produced by the leading edge/cone keeps most of the air from interacting with the aircraft behind it. It’s in the ‘wake’ as it were, though there may be multiple Mach cones or non-‘cone’ shaped ones depending on the shape of the aircraft. This does cause some stability or handling issues for the aircraft. The analogy re: voltage or amperage are spurious and just don’t apply here.
    - vilhelm_s 5y ago
      Surely the air is still interacting with the airplane. The shockwave generated by a body shaped like an acute cone is a (somewhat less acute) cone with the same apex. Inside the shock wave, the air gradually turns around to move parallel to the body, like so [0]. Each streamline that enters the shock structure keeps turning around, so each bit of air keeps feeling a force even after it passes through the original cone-shaped shock. In the case of a cone-shaped body, the interaction happens to create a single "straight" wave, but it's still generated by the entire surface of the cone, not just the sharp point of it. As a rule of thumb, the magnitude of the sonic boom is proportional to the weight of the plane. That is because most of the interaction between the plane and the air is from the wing, it needs to continuously deflect down enough air to generate a lifting force. So the total boom has one contribution from the cross-section of the fuselage, and another from the wings, and the latter is determined by the weight. [0] https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Richard-Benay/publication/238189753/figure/fig3/AS:668946889977857@1536500775189/Streamlines-of-a-conical-flowfield-Taylor-Maccoll-method.pbm https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Richard-Benay/publicati...

They might be smaller, but the boom is quite startling; I certainly wouldn't want to endure them regularly. I know because booms from fighters were common during my trip to West Germany in 1970. (I'm relying on what locals told my parents as to the source of the booms: I never saw a plane.) I've never heard a sonic boom in my 60 years of living in the US.

Mountain_Skies 5y ago
Rural Alabama had them semi-frequently in the late 70s and early 80s. Not sure where the fighters came from, perhaps Maxwell AFB had a training wing at that time. As far as I know, it never broke anything but it sure would rattle your dental work.
- paul_f 5y ago
  You are correct. I clearly remember hearing sonic booms in Montgomery, AL in the early 70s.
LinuxBender 5y ago
I heard them all the time near Vandenburg AFB in the 70's and early 80's. I don't remember when exactly I stopped hearing them.
dreamcompiler 5y ago
I used to hear them all the time in Texas when I was a kid in the 70s. We were fairly close to an air force base and we'd be out in the yard on a bright sunny day when we'd hear a thunderclap, as if lightning had struck less than a mile away. We'd look up, see a contrail, and say "Oh." It never caused any damage; it was just surprising.

Retric 5y ago

Less than you might think. Wingspan Concord 25.6m vs F-22 13.56m. Maximum takeoff weight Concord 185,000kg vs F-22 60,000kg. Expanding that to all supersonic military aircraft and the Rockwell B-1 Lancer has a higher maximum takeoff weight than the concord. It’s a loud and heavy beast.

perl4ever 5y ago
I wonder if the comparison would be more frontal area than weight?

nine_k 5y ago

I don't see why the boom energy has anything to do with the size of the aircraft producing it. It should only depend on the speed of the spike that produces the boom; typically the entire aircraft fits within the sonic boom cone produced by the nose spike when flying straight. So I suppose an artillery shell, a jet fighter, and a Concorde should produce about the same amount of boom at the same speed of, say, 1.5 M, while flying by. The engine sound of the aircraft, though, can add significantly to the noise in the wake of the boom cone. Those engines are not low-power or quiet.

kortex 5y ago
Why wouldn't size correlate with magnitude? A whip crack breaks the sound barrier, it doesn't shatter windows. Same with a bullet, which goes even faster. You need both pressure level (voltage) and momentum (current) in order to stay strong over distances (shock waves diffuse over time) to break windows. Small, super fast things create large pressure differentials, big jets create more momentum.
- lazide 5y ago
  Because the Mach cone produced by the leading edge/cone keeps most of the air from interacting with the aircraft behind it. It’s in the ‘wake’ as it were, though there may be multiple Mach cones or non-‘cone’ shaped ones depending on the shape of the aircraft. This does cause some stability or handling issues for the aircraft. The analogy re: voltage or amperage are spurious and just don’t apply here.
  - vilhelm_s 5y ago
    Surely the air is still interacting with the airplane. The shockwave generated by a body shaped like an acute cone is a (somewhat less acute) cone with the same apex. Inside the shock wave, the air gradually turns around to move parallel to the body, like so [0]. Each streamline that enters the shock structure keeps turning around, so each bit of air keeps feeling a force even after it passes through the original cone-shaped shock. In the case of a cone-shaped body, the interaction happens to create a single "straight" wave, but it's still generated by the entire surface of the cone, not just the sharp point of it. As a rule of thumb, the magnitude of the sonic boom is proportional to the weight of the plane. That is because most of the interaction between the plane and the air is from the wing, it needs to continuously deflect down enough air to generate a lifting force. So the total boom has one contribution from the cross-section of the fuselage, and another from the wings, and the latter is determined by the weight. [0] https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Richard-Benay/publication/238189753/figure/fig3/AS:668946889977857@1536500775189/Streamlines-of-a-conical-flowfield-Taylor-Maccoll-method.pbm https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Richard-Benay/publicati...