We consider the transient behavior of a large linear array of coupled linear damped harmonic oscillators following perturbation of a single element. Our work is motivated by modeling the behavior of flocks of autonomous vehicles. We first state a number of conjectures that allow us to derive an explicit characterization of the transients, within a certain parameter regime Ω. As corollaries we show that minimizing the transients requires considering non-symmetric coupling, and that within Ω the computed linear growth in N of the transients is independent of (reasonable) boundary conditions.