Chimonas and Hines1,2 suggested that atmospheric gravity waves could be generated by the supersonic passage of the Moon's shadow through the Earth's atmosphere during a solar eclipse. Beer and May3 pointed out that the eclipse of June 30, 1973, would provide an opportunity of investigating the idea, and perhaps establish a link between travelling ionospheric disturbances (TIDs), as reported by other observers4,5, and the eclipse phenomena. In addition, Beer and May predicted the positions of the hypothetical wavefronts for various times during and after the eclipse.