The 200-mile-an-hour Duck Hawk

The incident of the speeding duck hawk first appeared in The Bulletin of the Essex County Ornithological Club, and was recounted by Ralph Lawson from information supplied by the aviator in question, in whom Lawson had full confidence. This is the story:

"He [the aviator] was flying a small pursuit plane, which had a normal speed of about 125 miles per hour, and, while cruising about at a considerable altitude, he saw a bunch of ducks flying far below and ahead of him. Thinking to gain some experience in diving at a moving object, he turned the nose of his plane down and opened the throttle of his engine, thereby gaining speed rapidly. While he was still some distance from the ducks he glanced at the wing-tip of his plane to see how much vibration his swoop was causing, and as he did so a hawk shot by him 'as though the plane was standing still', and struck one of the ducks, which fell towards the ground apparently lifeless.

“At the time the hawk passed the plane the latter was travelling at a speed of nearly 175 miles per hour, and my friend thinks that the hawk was stooping two feet to his one, but of course that is only an estimate, as under the conditions no accurate computation was possible. We do know, however, that this particular hawk was moving at a rate of speed much greater than 115 miles per hour and perhaps not far from double that rate."

In support of this statement regarding the tremendous speed of this most spectacular bird there is the experience of the Scottish writer on wildlife, H. Mortimer Batten. Batten tells how, when he was living on the shores of Loch Ken in Scotland when a peregrine [called in America the duck hawk] used occasionally to come hurtling down the face of the Bennan for a matter of 1,000 feet or so, in order to put the breeze up the wildfowl feeding on the lock. Although he never saw the hawk strike at them, but, as his headlong descent down the mountain terminated, he would cork-screw clean across the loch by sheer inert' literally revolving at giddy speed for the space over a mile.

The fastest horizontal flight speed of which there is authentic evidence has been recorded for the frigate bird. The evidence is in a letter that Commander J.E. Capstickdale, R.A.N.R., sent me in 1941. Commander Capstickdale observed a flight of frigate birds pass over his schooner. The birds were flying towards an island. The time, by chronometer reading, was observed. Later the Commander compared notes with a man on the island, who also had observed the same flight of frigate-birds and had also taken the time by ship's chronometer. In his letter the Commander gives details of the checks that were made, and of the allowance for wind-age. The resulting speed, in level flight, worked out at 261.4 miles per hour.

By: davidbunch

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