Freedom sounds like fighter-jets

This ad hearkens back to the days before America came to mistrust its military-industrial complex, the dreamtime when the scream of jets was a sound to comfort your children.

Freedom Has a New Sound

I write books. My latest is a YA science fiction novel called Homeland (it's the sequel to Little Brother). More books: Rapture of the Nerds (a novel, with Charlie Stross); With a Little Help (short stories); and The Great Big Beautiful Tomorrow (novella and nonfic). I speak all over the place and I tweet and tumble, too.

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halfpress

I’ve been under – but not as close as the milkman depicted here – to repeated Blue Angels flyovers and thought my head was going to cave in. Between that and feeling your whole body vibrate… jeez. Impossible to take photos decently since I spent the whole time crushing my own head between my hands to cover my ears. Yes… I took the earplugs the next time, but it was still a challenge.
- http://www.facebook.com/people/Derek-Vandivere/650258206 Derek Vandivere
  
  I grew up next to a Naval Air Test Center. The year I got my license, I was driving my Dad’s car on base and a Harrier came in for a landing right next to the car. The entire car was shaking.
http://www.patobrienphoto.com/ Pat O’Brien

We’ve always said “Jet noise is the sound of freedom”. This ad must be what coined the phrase long before we knew it existed!
- Suits Deal
  
  I am sorry to say that Jet noise is not the sound of freedom it is sound of war and destruction, so many people will die because of it :(
  - http://www.patobrienphoto.com/ Pat O’Brien
    
    Being former Army, I’m all to familiar with that.
  - Guest
    
    What do you mean? Imminent war is always soooo comforting, isn’t it?
    
    Plus, violence solves all problems, completely and forever.
    
    So it’s kind of a win-win.
  - awjt
    
    When the ad was created, WWII and Korea were fresh on our minds. Most everybody knew someone who had served or died overseas. We had just defeated Hitler and other direct, nameable threats to our freedom. Freedom had a different meaning then. It was less encumbered.
  - cellocgw
    
    You got “whooshed” on the whoosh here…
  - Anonyman
    
    Since when are freedom and peace mutually inclusive?
http://orbitnet.com JIMWICh

I was just a wee Happy Mutant in the 1960s when I remember hearing big thundering sonic booms. I loved them. I liked anything that was modern and/or loud. I remember being disappointed when my parents told me that they’d read that we wouldn’t be hearing sonic booms anymore.
- thezarray
  
  And now the kids of today have dubstep.
http://twitter.com/tobymgraves Toby Graves

I thought I only heard the sound of freedom in the restroom.
- Mantissa128
  
  I dunno, I think the sonic booms are the same for some of us.
  - http://twitter.com/tobymgraves Toby Graves
    
    You’re not supposed to light ‘em.
https://plus.google.com/107503942976029957889/posts matrix

I wonder what those in Syria would think of that.
- ikonag
  
  I’m guessing Assad would stop the killing and try to find exile in another country.
hoffmanbike

i’ve lived all of my life in one of two cities with large military airbases. I’m still reassured and proud of the jets that flyover regularly (grew up beneath C-5A’s, near an A-10 base, then moved to the A-10 base city just after they switched to F-15′s.)
- hoffmanbike
  
  however i think the sound of freedom is the sound of a loud noisy protest. the sound of the protection of freedom is a jet or a honest politician (i know they don’t really exist, they’re like Nessie)
  - Anonyman
    
    Honest politicians only exist in theory, like absolute zero or 100% efficiency.
Suits Deal

It looks like it is photoshoped !!!
perch

Although I don’t approve of any of these overseas actions the US takes part in, I can still enjoy the machines themselves. When I lived in Tucson there would often be something screeching across the sky. To see the jets rip past and feel their engines, it’s something else. Then to think of all the engineering that went into them, the technologies used, the ridiculous amounts of refined fuel they use, the training of the pilots; they’re wonderful in the most literal sense of the word, in my opinion.
Nadreck

Two stories:
1 – A friend of mine was looking for a house in the insanely expensive LA market and found a suspiciously cheap place right next to LAX. She figured that it must be because of constant airport fly-over noise and told the real estate agent that it was no good. He, however, claimed that it was off all of the commercial flight paths and, LAX had just signed agreements to stop late night flights off those paths except in emergencies. He offered to let them stay in the place for four-days, including a weekend, to prove it to them. There was some sort of military base across from this place but he (truthfully) assured them that that only had a couple of flights a month. They experienced no noise in the trial period and bought the place.

They then discovered that the “only a flight a month” was the takeoff of a rocket assisted cargo plane at completely random times of the day: eg. 3 am. That sucker could bounce the books right off your shelves. Then the war in Afghanistan started up and it was a flight a day….

2 – (Probably a little apocryphal) During the Kosovo conflict the Northern Albanian refugees were forced out of their homes and hunted like animals over the countryside by various government agencies such as the militias. They couldn’t light fires to cook food or provide warmth for their children as that would give their positions away. Once the NATO jets were overhead though, they could have a quick BBQ and thaw out a couple of the kidsicles as long as they could hear the jets overhead. The militias couldn’t break cover for even a little massacre or a rape-fest without getting blown up. One little tyke noticed this and asked her parents what those overhead noises were that let them enjoy the basic Paleolithic luxury of fire. ”Are they Angels?”

Why yes, child, they are. They’re the Angels of Death.
- beardnick
  
  Nadreck- jeeeez that sounds terrible. they didn’t pull the ” sacrifice your tauntaun to keep luke warm trick”?Seriously though… Am I paranoid because, this image and what it stands for helps me realize we are not that far away from being a nation very much like North Korea?
  - http://twitter.com/SSGGeezer Thomas Needham
    
    You obviously haven’t done any in depth studying of North Korea and the life their subjects live.
    - Diogenes
      
      You need to get out more.
      - Travis_Smith
        
        He said, sipping a latte.
      - Diogenes
        
        Latte? Do you mean coffee?
- ocker3
  
  http://rolcats.com/manner-birds
  
  “-Pa-pa what manner of birds are they?”
stayzuplate

As today, it was easy then to use a whiff of fear to sell the justification for your death machines…
http://www.facebook.com/people/Tay-Oleson/1038819308 Tay Oleson

I can’t help but think that at that altitude they’d be blowing windows out all over the place.
- photodawg
  
  Yeah, seems that they are flying kind of low, doesn’t it. They did enough damage, just by flying at 10,000 feet.
Antinous / Moderator

Hearken back?

A total of 2,068 military operations — takeoffs and landings — occurred at the Palm Springs airport between January and November, with 215 military operations in November alone.

http://www.kathrynsreport.com/2012/01/group-to-press-palm-springs-on-military.html

One of the comments on the local news report – “I think the jets are the sound of freedom and I think we should support our military.” The original Desert Sun story doesn’t seem to be available anymore.
http://pulse.yahoo.com/_OAUXAA362EXWLYVMPJOKLFB5JQ Incipient Madness

Oddly enough, even after 9/11 they took Ellington’s F-16′s away. And this was after many people pointed out that many more people could have been killed by a 9/11 style attack on the Houston Ship Channel. Greatest concentration of toxic chemicals in the US, and home to a good chunk of the nation’s refining capacity. Shut down the Channel, no gasoline for you.

All we got now is NASA’s T-38′s. They could easily ram any attacker, but I do not think they are kept fueled and ready.

So if risks are so high we have to go through TSA’s porno scanners, why did they take our air defense? Just goes to show that it’s not about defending potential targets. The TSA effort is all about making us compliant with the police state. If it was about defense, we’d still have our F-16′s.
- Gulliver
  
  And this was after many people pointed out that many more people could have been killed by a 9/11 style attack on the Houston Ship Channel. Greatest concentration of toxic chemicals in the US, and home to a good chunk of the nation’s refining capacity. Shut down the Channel, no gasoline for you.
  
  Luckily, today’s terrorists are grandstanding lunatics rather than pragmatic lunatics. Unfortunately, now that our government has whittled away all it’s war-fighting capacity on strategically useless wars, we’re unprepared if anyone competent challenges us militarily. But at least we have rejected rent-a-cops to grope children boarding commercial airlines, so I’m sure we’ll be okay.
Øyvind

I grew up in a small community, the two main sources of income was farming and the local air force base. We had flyovers pretty much every day. Without it, the community would have been decimated.
To me (and I suspect to most of my generation), fighter jets aren’t so much the sound of freedom as it is of prosperity.
- Diogenes
  
  “Without it, the community would have been decimated.”
  
  No doubt true. But at what cost nowadays? Do we still need them? What could we do with our current defense budget? Bullet trains? Retro-future healthcare? And with what’s left over, jetpacks all around!
http://lemoutan.blogspot.com/ Lemoutan

Attempt the impossible. Try to ignore the politics, the history, the context. Just look at it as a piece of art and try to imagine yourself back when it first appeared. How could you not be alarmed by these inhumanly loud, hard, dark geometries flying over your head? And others will have told you it’s thrilling. We’re a weird lot.
- ocker3
  
  At least with a jet, you’ve got a better chance of hearing it coming. A drone only shows a flash of light.
beardnick

hmm
Geoduck

For years, an air-base here in Washington State had (still has?) a sign alongside a nearby road proclaiming the “pardon our noise, sound of freedom” line. And so, inevitably, back in the Reagan era someone got at the sign and altered it to read something like “sound of imperialist aggression in Nicaragua.”
http://twitter.com/hughstimson Hugh Stimson

“This ad hearkens back to the days before America came to mistrust its military-industrial complex”

Or perhaps even more endearingly, this ad hearkens back to a time before the country was aware of the military industrial complex and *then* went on to mistrust it, when sonic booms were a frightening and unfamiliar moment and the military industrial complex still needed an ad buy and a graphic artist to induce basic familiarity, if not trust.

I miss that time, even if I never experienced it.
- Casey Winstead
  
  You called it, Hugh. I was there. It was an organized campaign designed to do exactly what you described.
- Diogenes
  
  I experienced it, and I miss it, and I miss the future we believed in.
  
  Robots would free us from labor. We didn’t realize they’d also free us from income. (Did I just suggest the Flesh Fair?)
cdh1971

“Freedom Has a New Sound”

‘Indeed’ - Teal’c
- cdh1971
  
  Well…so much for my (lame) attempted troll to incite some sort of Nerd Rage.
awjt

My grandmother used to proudly point out the small crack in her kitchen window and say, “that was caused by a sonic boom.”
http://twitter.com/strugglngwriter strugglngwriter

Unfortunately, I’m not so sure the majority of America mistrusts the military industrial complex. Or if they do, they don’t seem to be doing anything about it.
- Diogenes
  
  I think most of them think it’s a building or a factory.
Jonathan Badger

Anyone who lives in northwestern San Diego (or La Jolla, which amounts to the same thing) deals with fighter jets zooming overhead several times a day — loud enough to interrupt video conferences at work. Despite the annoyance (and the fact that they sometimes crash into houses, as they did into a house a few blocks from my home in 2009, killing several people including a child), few people complain. Yes, you can say “that’s because Southern California is conservative”, but a more practical reason is so many people here depend either directly or indirectly on the military.
- creativehumanoid
  
  I know someone whose house was half-destroyed by that crash. He’s a staunch supporter of the military despite the fact that the Marine Corps has tried everything they could to minimize the payout for damages. Note: I’m a supporter of the military, but not quite as staunch as my friend.
  
  Back around 1985 or so, an F-14 flew overhead at Mach 1+ and I’m guessing somewhere below 500 feet. It wouldn’t have been much of an issue except that it arrived from behind me. With aircraft breaking the speed of sound, you don’t hear it until after it’s passed you. Just about scared the pee out of me.
http://www.jimdraws.com Thorzdad

When I was a kid (back in the 60′s), I can recall a several times being jolted by the sudden BANG of a sonic boom shaking our house. And we lived nowhere near USAF base. In a city.

The planes depicted in the ad are actual, for-real aircraft, btw. Convair Delta Darts.
- David Kopelman
  
  Those are F-102′s not 106′s. I too remember sitting at home and all of a sudden, boom!, the house shook and windows rattled. On to victory! or some such….
  - mclean1382
    
    Sort of. They look like the straight sided YF-102, not the pinched waisted operational jets.
    - creativehumanoid
      
      That fuselage pinch is interesting. It was found that the pinch actually helps smooth airflow over the fuselage, and it’s known as the Coke bottle effect.
mclean1382

Milkmen. It was different then.
- citykids
  
  Yeah… from the looks of it, the man of the house has already left for work too.
prawojazdy

There’s currently an ad in the DC Metro (on the Blue Line, which stops both at Capitol South and the Pentagon) for the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter. Just a big picture of a jet landing on an aircraft carrier, and in the negative space next to it, four words: “Carrier capable. Freedom minded.” (I paraphrase.)

This annoys me to no end. I’m resigned to the fact that there’s lots of contractors advertising where procurement people and appropriations people can see them, but dammit, can they at least make sense? WTF is a “freedom-minded” fighter plane? Advertise it as faster, deadlier, cheaper, better, techier, whatever, but for fuck’s sake, stop anthropomorphizing the weapons platforms! They hate it when you do that.
http://twitter.com/BonzoDog1 BonzoDog1

The Air Force flew PR sorties in the 1950s.
I clearly remember a summer day in Pennsylvania about 1958 when I heard the drone of a large formation. It must have been a day of calm winds at altitude. Went outside and looked up and saw a whole squadron of B-36 bombers in formation. They had some means of controlling their contrails, which they used to spell out “JOIN THE AIR FORCE” in very large letters at about 30,000 feet in a dot-matrix fashion.
My dad, a combat vet of World War II who had seen (and heard) large bomber formations flying overhead, had a flashback.
I was impressed, but not enough to join up when I came of age.
- http://noctilucent-studios.blogspot.com/ Noctilucent Studios
  
  I could see having a means to control individual smoke canisters but not their contrails. Either way, the B-36 was a badass looking plane.
pebird

Send in the drones.
- Antinous / Moderator
  
  Don’t bother, they’re here.
- Mark Dow
  
  In the 1970′s, more than 200 of these F-102A aircraft were converted to “target drones”, remotely controlled for anti-aircraft target practice.
xkot

I’m surprised no one has correctly diagnosed this image. Perhaps I missed the post. Just to spell it out: it was the early ’50s. Our government was doing what it felt necessary to prevent the spread of Communism. Nuclear war with the Soviet Union was the background hum of daily life. Interceptor jets like the F-102 pictured were developed to intercept incoming Soviet aircraft before they could bomb our country back to a radiation-ravaged Stone Age. This ad was a reminder to plain folks that the horrible noise and inconvenience of jet flyovers were necessary to maintaining our edge over an expansionist Soviet empire. “The price of freedom is constant vigilance … and the occasional shattered milk bottle” and all that.

Of course, it was all a bunch of silly, noisy and expensive nonsense, and we of the Future can now laughingly shake our heads about it. But back then, it was our ignorant parents’ and grandparents’ zany, mixed-up reality.

It’s a lovely piece of art nonetheless. Sort of Norman Rockwell meets Flash Gordon. I dig it.
- Teller
  
  Exactly. A Cold War ad for sure. I like jets. I like when they fly low over SF during Fleet Week and panic the anti-engineists. But the sound isn’t freedom. It’s more like: nothing nothing nothing KKKKKKRRRRRRR!
Vengefultacos

“So… it would take us millions of dollars and many years of research to mitigate the effects of sonic booms?” “Yessir.” “Ah, well, we can just fix the problem by appealing to a sense a patriotism to get people to STFU.” “Excellent idea, sir. I’ve got the Sterling-Cooper ad agency on line 1.”
RuthlessRuben

Hm, contribute to the rather interesting discussion or post something silly?

Meh, all the above posters have said what I could have said much better than I would have said, so going with my original plan: I’m going to think up a US-Army parody and I am adding that sentence to the routine, delivered by bellowing at the top of my lungs, possibly with a cigar dangling from the corner of my mouth.

Just so you know.
http://www.facebook.com/Bentcorner Rick Rottman

The F-102A was an interceptor, not a fighter. It could not dogfight, nor did it even have a gun. Its sole purpose was to protect the United States from long-range, high altitude Soviet bombers. So yes, the sound of jet engines is the sound of freedom.

And if you think America has general mistrust of the military-industrial complex, you need to get yourself to an air show this summer, preferably at military base . You’ll find yourself standing in long lines of people waiting to see military jets, not because they mistrust them, but because they love them.
- Diogenes
  
  A – I don’t trust the military-industrial complex
  AND
  B- I like air shows
  THEREFORE
  NOT (A XOR B)
  - http://www.facebook.com/Bentcorner Rick Rottman
    
    Why would anyone who mistrusts the military go to a military airshow ?
    - Travis_Smith
      
      Why not? I like CGI, but I think most Hollywood movies that use CGI heavily have bad story lines.
      - Diogenes
        
        Bingo! It’s almost like they either spend the budget on CGI or story, but rarely both. Doesn’t have to be that way, but that’s the way it usually is.
    - Diogenes
      
      To see the airplanes. Now that wasn’t really so hard to figure out, was it?
      - http://www.facebook.com/Bentcorner Rick Rottman
        
        So… you mistrust the military and the industry that creates military aircraft, but you enjoy looking at military aircraft. Got it.
      - Diogenes
        
        See, I knew you could grasp it if you slowed down and thought about it. The planes and their operators are fun to watch when they aren’t killing people.
        
        I also mistrust Grizzly Bears, but I like to watch them fish.
- retroz
  
  Out of interest, what do you think an ‘interceptor’ does when it intercepts? Gives the enemy a hug? The 102 was used for bomber escort and ground attack in Vietnam.
  - David Kilfoil
    
    But the F-102 was NOT designed for the roles it was used for in Vietnam in the 1960′s, and they were sent back to the States to flown by the US National Guard up until the 1970′s in the original interceptor role. Which meant that if you were one of the connected few in the 70′s that could somehow serve your draft years assigned to the F-102, there was no risk of serving in Vietnam (see George W. Bush). So certainly that jet meant “freedom from war” for the future president.
Casey Winstead

Ads like this were part of a campaign to fight a nationwide wave of local resistance to newly-deployed supersonic jets at nearby long-standing air bases.

There were propaganda movies that promoted the “Sound of Freedom” concept.

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0047791/plotsummary
photodawg

I grew up in Atlanta, and those sonic booms occurred every once in a while during the late 50′s and 60′s. They usually happened at night, which amped up the fear factor in the beginning. Even the news programs didn’t know what they were. After a while, almost everyone knew what was going on, but it was still disconcerting to have windows broken and other mild damage happen to homes. To my knowledge, no one was ever reimbursed for the damage, you know, the price of freedom.
kraut

Growing up near Ramstein, Germany, the sounds of US fighter jets was a constant backdrop to my childhood. And yes, we used that phrase. Ironically.
yobar

I’m just happy I no longer dream of Sov nukes going off. Haven’t yet started dreaming about terrorist nukes. My happy interregnum.
http://noctilucent-studios.blogspot.com/ Noctilucent Studios

Alright, I’ll join the parade of “my fondest childhood memories of a cool jet”. The place: Aurora, Colorado. The characters: me as a young lad of about 15 just walking down the street……HUGE roar overhead…..I look up and in the air, just a couple of hundred feet off the ground vertically and about 200 yards due East of me was what at first looked for all the world like a rocket ship right out of the Future. Then I realized I was looking at an SR-71 that had made an unscheduled stop at Buckley Air Force Base. My gob was officially smacked. Thing was gorgeous.
cstatman

I remember the sound of “Fast Movers” leaving Barksdale AFB in Shreveport and hauling behind over our house in North East Texas.   The Sonic Booms were “worth it” because the brave young men flying those jets were protecting our very way of life.

I remember being thrilled watching the Apollo missions on TV.   Excited by the engineers at Mission Control using their slide rules and knowledge to calculate how to get us to the stars.

I also grew up in a time where children were taught to go to a police officer if they needed help.

Yep, times? have changed.

I do not believe the “govt” is worried about protecting anything other than rich corporate profits, kids no longer want to be engineers, they want to be whores like on “Jersey Shore” and my 5 yr old “hides” when he sees the police, so they won’t use pepper spray or tazer him.

times? changed.
http://twitter.com/the_mjl mjl

(1) Unilaterally disarm
(2) ???
(3) Freedom!
taras

This is still a ‘thing’. I bought a coffee mug at an airshow which says ‘JET NOISE – THE SOUND OF FREEDOM’ a few years ago (I love tacky mugs).
Adrian

In 1965-66, I had a nun for a second grade teacher straight from eastern Europe who, when she heard a sonic boom go off for the first time, fell to her knees and started praying out loud in Polish. I don’t know exactly what she was thinking.
- yobar
  
  Perhaps she thought it was the re-invading German or Soviet Army’s artillery. I had a problem for the longest time with unexpected bright flashes and loud bangs after being stationed in West Berlin in the early 80s, during Reagan’s Evil Empire days. We used to kid ourselves with our unit’s unofficial motto First to Know, Last to Glow.
Adam Weiss

Alright… this looks good. So here’s the deal. We like this thing, we like the idea of supersonic interceptors and we’ll sign onto the program with a commit for 1000 units and an option for 500 more, but our people tell us these things are gonna be damn loud. You’re gonna to have to set aside at least $200,000 for public relations. If there is public outcry, and congress gets involved, we retain the option to cancel mid-program and go with Northrop’s subsonic units.
http://www.kmoser.com kmoser

I love the sound of fighter jets in the morning. They sound like…freedom.