re: #157 pre-Boomer Marine brat

re: the missile off LA, Google San Nicholas Island
/the info isn’t original with me

So I did….

[…]

McDowell points out that the US Navy runs a base on San Nicolas Island, which lies 120 kilometres west of Los Angeles. Small rockets are launched there every few weeks, he says.

He says some of the rockets are used as targets for tests with the Airborne Laser, a Boeing 747 jet with a nose-mounted laser designed to shoot missiles downMovie Camera. “They’ve been flying this 747 around and using it to fire at little rockets they’ve launched from San Nicolas,” McDowell says. “So you can imagine if this helicopter is zooming off the California coast a bit away from LA, near the San Nicolas area, and this thing goes up right next to it, the crew would go, ‘Oh my goodness, what is that?’”

But a spokesman at the Missile Defense Agency, which launches those rockets, told New Scientist it was not one of their tests.

Howdy pBMb!