HALIFAX, Nova Scotia – A Canadian musician has become an Internet sensation after posting a song on YouTube about United Airlines braking his guitar.

Dava Carroll’s video for the song “United Breaks Guitar’s” was posted on site earlier this week and has received more than 600,000 hits by Thursday evening.

The song recounts Carroll’s yearlong struggle to get compensation for what he calls “a vicious act of malice” at O’Hare International Airport in Chicago last year.

Carroll was flying between Halifax and Nebraska when he switched planes in Chicago. The passenger next to him noticed baggage handlers tossing guitar cases outside the plane.

Carroll’s Taylor guitar required 1,400 Canadian dollars (U.S. $1,200) in repairs. He said it still doesn’t play the way it used to but he keeps it for sentimental reasons.

Carroll initially told United he would write three songs about his broken guitar. He plans to debut the second song soon but hasn’t written the third one yet.

***United Airlines Model Planes available at Warplanes.com***

The UK Royal Air Force (RAF) officially unveiled its new BAE Systems Hawk T.2 advanced jet trainer (AJT) during a ceremony at RAF Valley last July 2.

The aircraft, six of which began arriving at the base in April, are the first of 28 T.2 aircraft, purchased at a cost of GBP450 million (USD736 million) to replace the incumbent Hawk T.1 as the RAF’s lead-in fighter trainer.

As well as advanced systems and a more powerful Rolls-Royce Turbomeca Adour 951 engine, the ‘glass cockpit’ of the T.2 is nearly identical to that of the Eurofighter Typhoon and similar to those of the Harrier and Tornado, allowing for an easier transition for students onto the RAF’s frontline combat force.

Flight Lieutenant Timothy Pye, a pilot with 19 (R) Squadron AJT Development Team, said that, although the T.2 is heavier than the T.1, the more powerful powerplant means that it has about the same thrust-to-weight ratio and so “loses nothing in terms of performance”.

The first women to fly U.S. military aircraft will be receiving gold medals to honor their service to the country under a bill signed last July 1 by President Obama.

About 300 of the 1,000 or so women who were members of the World War II-era Women Airforce Service Pilots (WASPs for short) are still alive to receive their Congressional Gold Medals. The rest will go to the pilots’ families.

Created during World War II, the all-women unit’s primary mission was flying non-combat military missions in the United States to free up their male counterparts for combat. They flew virtually every type of U.S. military aircraft that existed at the time.

“The Women Airforce Service Pilots courageously answered their country’s call in a time of need while blazing a trail for the brave women who have given and continue to give so much in service to this nation since,” Obama said at the bill signing. “Every American should be grateful for their service, and I am honored to sign this bill to finally give them some of the hard-earned recognition they deserve.”

Thirty-eight of the WASP pilots died while performing their missions. But it wasn’t until 1977 the WASPs were afforded veteran status.

Joining Obama at the signing was Rep. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen, R-Fla., who helped shepherd the bill through Congress, three WASP members — Elaine Danforth Harmon, Lorraine H. Rodgers and Bernice Falk Haydu — and five female active duty U.S. Air Force pilots.

U.S. Air Force F-22 Raptor executes a supersonic flyby over the flight deck of the aircraft carrier

The breaking of the sound barrier is not just an audible phenomenon. As a new picture from the U.S. military shows, Mach 1 can be quite visual.

This widely circulated new photo shows a Air Force F-22 Raptor aircraft participating in an exercise in the Gulf of Alaska June 22, 2009 as it executes a supersonic flyby over the flight deck of the aircraft carrier USS John C. Stennis.

The visual phenomenon, which sometimes but not always accompanies the breaking of the sound barrier, has also been seen with nuclear blasts and just after space shuttles launches, too. A vapor cone was photographed as the Apollo 11 moon-landing mission rocketed skyward in 1969.

The phenomenon is not well studied. Scientists refer to it as a vapor cone, shock collar, or shock egg, and it’s thought to be created by what’s called a Prandtl-Glauert singularity.

Here’s what scientists think happens:

A layer of water droplets gets trapped between two high-pressure surfaces of air. In humid conditions, condensation can gather in the trough between two crests of the sound waves produced by the jet. This effect does not necessarily coincide with the breaking of the sound barrier, although it can.