I remember being out at sea and they would announce when a fighter jet would be doing a fly-by while breaking the sound barrier. So being a smoker at the time I would do what we always did....go have a smoke. Seems like they always did it on the port side of the ship (where the smoking sponson is) when doing the fly-by.

The first time I experienced it I didn’t realize how loud and powerful it would be. I was expecting the jet to be a lot closer....but nope, it was far enough away that you could barely see it and it didn’t really look like it was going all that fast. So sitting there watching it put along as it goes by and laughing how it was a disappointment......and....BOOM!!!! Holy shit I wasn’t expecting that at all! It was loud enough to make all of the cigarette butts jump up to about waist high.

Then it was time for field day because all the dirt and rust in the ventilation system would get knocked loose, and someone had to clean it all up.

Living in Maine means being on the flight path for almost any aircraft flying from JFK to Europe. That included the Concorde, which had clearly defined envelopes of where it was supposed to be when going in/out of supersonic speeds.

Sometimes they didn't quite make the right call, and we were blessed with a random boom.

One I particularly recall I was walking between school buildings and it hit. Some kids ran, others hit the ground... then there were the rest of us foolishly trying to look for the aircraft! Never did see it!

I was lucky enough to see, and hear, Chuck Yeager break the sound barrier in an F15 over Edwards AFB at an airshow in the late 90's. He flew up high, don't remember the exact altitude but it was 30,000 feet or higher. At that altitude it was more of a crack than a boom, obviously didn't want to break any windows. Still pretty cool though.

Many years ago now, wife and I were on our way to Germany and had landed in Iceland for refueling. Brand new terminal building, lots of glass. And all that glass was gone, replaced by sheets of plywood. Seems a couple jet fighters did a high speed (above sound barrier) low level pass. Blew all the glass out of the terminal building.