It starts one of a few ways, such as this:

In an issue of Meat & Poultry magazine, editors quoted from “Feathers,” the publication of the California Poultry Industry Federation, telling the following story: The US Federal Aviation Administration has a unique device for testing the strength of windshields on airplanes. The device is a gun that launches a dead chicken at a plane’s windshield at approximately the speed the plane flies. The theory is that if the windshield doesn’t crack from the carcass impact, it’ll survive a real collision with a bird during flight. …

Or maybe like this:

This is true! Sometimes it DOES take a Rocket Scientist! Scientists at NASA built a gun specifically to launch dead chickens at the windshields of airliners, military jets and the space shuttle, all traveling at maximum velocity. The idea is to simulate the frequent incidents of collisions with airborne fowl to test the strength of the windshields. …

And the punchline is: The FAA [or NASA] engineers had one recommendation: “Use a thawed chicken.”

(Another, older variant has a cat wandering into a loaded chicken gun and becoming part of the test.)

Okay let’s take a breath. It’s an interesting idea, and kind of funny, but is it true or is it a hoax?

There is, in fact, a chicken gun. (And probably plenty of others owned by other agencies.)

The USAF Arnold Engineering Development Center (AEDC)’s Ballistic Impact Range S-3 (“The Chicken Gun”) is used to determine the effect of impacts on, say, aircraft cockpits. Recently it was used to help NASA test impacts of foam on the Space Shuttle. For some previous stories on the Chicken Gun, see some articles on Army truck testing and tests against the Raytheon T-6A.

Whether the idea or “the gun” (which is really a test range) was loaned to the Brits is anyone’s guess.

Impact testing on the canopy of an F-16 Fighting Falcon.

A little bit of searching turns up some websites claiming it’s “false, but…” and others claiming it’s “true, but…” Chalk that up to the bias of the individual website. You’ll also find a defensive rebuttal by the San Antonio Express News.

Well, obviously the best source for info is the Fisher House themselves. There you can find a Stars and Stripes article, for which another search turns up the original at the Stars and Stripes site itself.

So it’s a good story, but a little confusing. The attacks on media bias are understandable, since celebrity nut jobs do get a lot of press. The attempt to brag about Mr. Washington’s support for the troops and his generosity is certainly warranted. However, blindly forwarding erroneous information hurts rather than helps.

Other annoyances with the email include referring to the Brooke Army Medical Center as “Brooks,” big crazy formatting of the text, underlined text that is not a link, and the obligatory plea to forward it to everyone “This needs as wide a distribution as we can create” (of course in huge, blue underlined text).

So do you just delete it? Ehh… how about changing the Subject: line from “Fwd: Fwd: Re: Denzel Washington” to “Denzel Washington’s True Generosity” and recording the real story? Then forward that to your email friends (and back to whomever sent the flawed original to you). Politely set the record straight. Then if it really moved you, donate to the Fisher House yourself!

According to the Stars and Stripes,

Officials from the Fisher House Foundation want the public to know the Academy Award-winning actor is a generous donor to their efforts. But an e-mail forward which has him single-handedly building new facilities for them is nothing more than an urban legend.

See also articles at the Fisher House website here and here.

Denzel and Pauletta Washington also became members of the Fisher House Board of Trustees.

It should be noted that arch-liberal Garry Trudeau is also donating proceeds to Fisher House. From the Fisher House Angels page: “Mr. Trudeau has donated the advance and all royalties from his newest book to Fisher House Foundation™.”