onewolf

Now this is rich. You're telling me that the sound of a plane passing you at 500 mph is the same that it sounds inside the plane? You have some serious physics to read up on before any more "quite simple" answers. Start with the chapter on "sound and speed of sound." At 500 mph, you are hearing a fraction of what someone being passed hears. I live near a Navy flight pattern for F-15 fighters. About 3 days a week, a pair passes very low - it's an exciting event for anyone the first time they hear it - and their first reaction is always the same: they duck quickly, look up and around, and say (either verbally or with facial expressions), "what in the hell is/was that??" Trust me - it sounds like what we all assume a missle sounds like. And it doesn't sound anything remotely like the hum of engines that you hear inside the plane. Note that pilots don't hear the sonic boom their planes generate when they pass mach 1. It's because the sound is behind them.

My point is, the first time you hear a jet plane go by at 500 mph at reasonably close range, your first reaction is certainly not, "oh - a plane". My other point is that anybody who says, "it sounded like a missile" is only guessing since none of those people have ever heard a missile.