Student pilots blamed for sonic booms

Thursday, Dec. 4, 1997 | 9:20 a.m.

Navy Lt. Greg Hicks, spokesman of the Naval Strike and Air Warfare Center, said the pilots are on temporary assignment at the Navy's Top Gun school for fighter pilots.

Navy officials are reviewing records and recordings of the training exercise to determine who was flying the jets that created the sonic booms, according to the Lahontan Valley News and Fallon Eagle Standard.

The Navy has a supersonic operation area east of Fallon, but creating a sonic boom over the city is a violation of policy, Hicks said.

Dozens of people called the Navy base to complain, he said.

archive