From Oxley's 'Explorer' in "The Land" newspaper of 7 November, 1996 comes the following article.

"A recent issue of the US Meat and Poultry magazine quotes an apparently true tale from Feathers, the publication of the California Poultry Industry Federation. It seems the US Federal Aviation Administration has a unique device for testing the strength of windshields on aeroplanes. The device is a gun (developed by Texas A&M) which launches a dead chicken at a plane's windscreen at about the speed the plane flies at. The theory is that if the window doesn't crack from the carcase impact, it will survive a real collision with a bird during flight.

Well, the British were interested in this system and wanted to test the windscreen on a brand new, high speed locomotive they were developing. They borrowed a FAA launcher, loaded a chicken and fired. The ballistic chicken shattered the windscreen, went through the engineer's chair, broke an instrument panel and embedded itself in the back wall of the engine cab. The stunned British asked the FAA to recheck the test to see if everything had been done correctly.

The FAA did so and had just one recommendation:

"Use a thawed chicken."