One of the few people I remember from my first three semesters at Lafayette College is Pete Thompson. Pete was in my physics class, even though he was an upperclassman, because his degree did not require him to take Basic Physics as a freshman. He was helpful to me learning physics as good as I did, which wasn't great, because I was a kind of thick head about physics in those days. In later years I got to know his brother Jim too. Jim ran the coffeehouse at Illick's Mill in Bethlehem. Pete and his wife lived in part of the same apartment my grandparents lived in when I was a small child, on the third floor over the Washington Market on College Hill.
On summer semester breaks, Pete used to work at the Lakehurst, N.J. Naval Air Station, the same one where the Hindenburg burned, on a jet sled test track. This particular test track was used to test the cable arresting systems that enable Navy pilots to safely land on aircraft carriers. The cable would be strung over the track and the hook would protrude from the top framework of the sled. The force of the hook hitting the cable could be varied by varying the load on the sled.
The test procedure was thus: Load the sled with the weight chosen for a particular run, string the cable over the track, accelerate the sled for 1/4 mile, and then cut the power to the sled. That way the hook hits the cable as dead weight, not under power. There were a number of sheds along the track with the required test gear and recording devices.
Fortunately on the day in question here, Pete and his buddies were not working the track, but taking their lunch break, watching the runs from a safe distance. The sled was loaded with 85,000 pounds, the largest load ever attempted. They watch and heard it make its 1/4 mile acceleration run, and saw the engine cut off as expected. At this point the sled would normally be stopped by the cable.
But not this day. Pete and his buddies heard a deafening sound, like an artillery piece being fired. This was the cable snapping. The whiplashing halves of the cable sliced all of the equipment sheds in half! The sled, unimpeded by the cable, continued on into the woods past the end of the track, subsequently requiring the efforts of 2 D-9 Cat bulldozers four days to be removed from the woods.