If you heard USAF sonic booms, they were probably over 15 miles offshore, or 15 miles inside an Air Force training range. They were probably not directly over y

If you heard USAF sonic booms, they were probably over 15 miles offshore, or 15 miles inside an Air Force training range. They were probably not directly over your house. A crosscountry scheduled supersonic flight will have to overfly populated areas twice a day - booming all the way. (Something that causes a lot of confusion - people often think a sonic boom is an instantaneous thing that happens when the plane breaks the sound barrier - it is not, it’s a continuous shockwave that travels with the aircraft while it is flying above Mach 1; anyone on the ground who the shockwave passes over along the flight path hears a sonic boom) If you’ve ever heard thunder from lightning 15 miles away compared to thunder directly overhead, that might give you some framework for figuring out the difference.