Community Reactions to Sonic Booms in the Oklahoma City Area
TL;DR — The social-science record of the 1964 experiment in which the FAA deliberately sonic-boomed a US city eight times a day for six months.
Volume I: Major Findings. 422 pages. In 1964 the FAA ran the Oklahoma City sonic boom tests — supersonic aircraft were flown over a populated American city roughly eight times a day for six months to find out whether the public would tolerate commercial supersonic transport. NORC was commissioned to measure the reaction.
This report is the result: a full survey-research account of what happens to a city subjected to a deliberate, sustained, government-run noise experiment.
Why it matters beyond its subject. The study is a landmark in two literatures at once — community noise response, and the ethics of experimenting on a population that did not consent in any individual sense. The residents were informed; they were not asked. Thousands of damage claims followed.
It is also a real piece of technology-policy history: the finding that annoyance grew rather than habituated helped end the American SST programme. A 422-page PDF is the reason a Concorde never flew domestic US routes.
Where this came from
422 pages. A copy is archived locally against link rot; the header links the original source.