Jerry's Ultimate Fourth-of-July Fireworks

Last night we sat out on our deck and watched the official Independence Day fireworks show along the Columbia River in downtown Wenatchee, and a number of bootleg shows that were nearly as spectacular all over the Valley. Jerry got nostalgic:

            During the late 1960s or early 1970s, the FAA was involved in a program testing the noise likely to be made by supersonic passenger airplanes, SSTs, if they were permitted to land at American airports. The FAA conducted some of its tests by discharging ever larger explosives, and testing the noise. When the tests concluded, and the SST was excluded, his  father Frank Horn of the FAA stored some of the unused explosives in his house. When Jerry came home fresh from Vietnam, where he had worked as a weapons system specialist, he knew the ordnance when he saw it. He saw Howitzers with air-burst shells.  “Pop, you have enough here to blow up a city block!” he said. He knew they had to get rid of it.

            They took some of the explosives to an FAA site on a remote section of beach beyond Long Beach, Washington. Jerry bundled some of it, stuffed  it into a hollow drift log, and using lamp cord and a battery to detonate it, blew it up. The sound was like dynamite!  Jerry had just coiled up the cord and put it away when a  Grays Harbor Sheriff’s Deputy pulled up in his patrol car. “There’s a report of dynamite exploding down here,” he said, “Did you hear anything?” Frank handed him a business card to show that he had the right to be on the federal reserve (where the Sheriff had no authority), then pointed down the way. “Yes,” he said, “It sounded like it came from over there!” He sent the deputy on a wild goose chase.

            Jerry took a lesson from that.  Gradually, piece by piece, he disposed of the ordnance, most of it on the Arizona desert.  Without fail, it attracted the police. “Yes,” he always said, “It sounded like it came from over there!”  He’s just a guy who likes to blow things up. 

     Frank Horn Comments: Enjoyed reading your entry about the SST tests -- that was a weird program run out of Washington, giving me two extra positions to test SST runs by the SR-71's based near Marysville, CA. When the weather conditions were right, we would test the recorders first to make sure they were calibrated, before calling for the SR-71 to make the run.

The tests were run near Pendleton, Oregon, involving a one mile string of recorders, and another bunch of recorders set up in a one mile square. Pendleton had been a big WWII military base, and there were ammo bunkers at the airport. The local ranchers probably got quite a few bucks for the temporary leases on the test sites. The recorders were housed in garden sheds of the type sold by Sears.

Most of the the fireworks were commercial grade, of the same type used that you were watching on the 4th. The Washington eggheads running the tests also got the National Guard out there with some big guns, before the project was shut down.