Over the past five years, a number of exercises involving the making of bangs have been staged in the United Kingdom. The bangs have been made both by flying aircraft at supersonic speeds and by firing explosive charges. From this work, information has been obtained on the intensities and waveforms of aircraft sonic bangs as measured outdoors, on the nature of the disturbances that are recorded inside buildings, and on the subjective reactions of people to these bangs. The paper summarizes the results of this work.