This Is How Airplane Engines Are Tested

Back in the day ( Late 70s ) I started working at a place called Allisons and they made jet engines primarily for the military and a lot of it was experimental work . They also made large marine engines . This was back when turbine engines were the hottest big thing . They had their own test facilities but ours were all indoors . The operator had to have an airline taxi license to operate the engines . I remember that they had chicken and pigeon coups on the roof of the test facility and back then they just shot a bird or chicken that were alive out of an air cannon directly into the engines just to see what kind of damage they would inflict on the turbine engines . I sure would have hated to be the guys that had to tear down each engine to assess the damage just so they could build it back to do it all over again .They even shot a few live turkeys in them to see what would happen . After several years animal rights activists complained about cruelty to animals and that was the end of using live animals and they had to buy frozen ones and thaw them out to shoot them into the engines . Ah , the good ole days ! P.S. I remember one time and I don’t know what they shot into the engine but it was a TF-41 engine and it completely demolished everything in that room ! Where the guy set to monitor the engine there was a 3 foot thick piece of bullet proof glass and it even cracked it to pieces ! Whatever it was everyone heard it cause it sounded like a bomb .
That starting video was a fan blade separation test not a bird strike test.


We need to protect poor chickens . Can’t they use AI to develop protective cage for engines?(so it doesn’t affect drag much).
Love your content on all channels. But the opening shot is not a bird test, it is a blade off test of the Rolls Royce Trent engine. Testing for a situation where a fan blade fails and the fan cowl MUST contain all the shrapnel and havoc released. Thanks and have a cosmic day.








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