Posted on 11/16/2001 1:15:07 PM PST by Swordmaker
This means that the engine sounds continue normally AFTER the event that precipitated the crash began... in other words it was not a loss of an engine that knocked the tail off. But then we had already concluded that. The loss of the tail HAD to be the initiating event. The question then must be asked : did the engines fall off because of the same problem that caused the tail to fall off?
IMPORTANT! The plane actually took off earlier than reported and was only 1 minute 45 seconds behind the Japanese 747! Turbulence to a weakened tail may be the real answer!
You definately heard what they told you.
FYI, Theodore von Karmen was an early fluid dynamicist.
In this reverse von Karmen vortex street, water is accelerated backwards through the vortices. The magnitude of thrust is a function of the mass and acceleration of this backwards moving water.
So the pictures TV showed of a test where the two planes in the test, one behind the other, with the following plane yawing in the wake and turbulence should have had it's tail break off as well? It looked to be a lot less than 4 miles between them. Maybe 2,000 feet.
... And when a plane encounters a bad thunderstorm the tail just falls off?
... And the huricane hunters, why they keep a supply of extra tails back at the hanger to replace the ones which fall off when they fly through a hurricane.
... And in midair refueling better have that spare tail handy. Some toilet paper too. Mid-air tail replacement after refueling?
... sounds a little fishy, errr taily, to me.
Loose bolts anyone? Missing bolts> Cut brackets?
snooker
Seems as if I read somewhere that the Japanese 747 flew for quite some time without the vertical stabilizer.
Ever see a bird without a tail fly. Tough to do.
snooker
Maybe not, but you never know --- Hard to find bolts that were missing after the plane takes off and crashes. Turbulence might just have made it happen sooner, rather than later in the flight. High stress occurs at takeoff/climb out.
snooker
And then there are these to consider:
Crash not seen part of terrorist warning (US Received 11/12 Warning)
Air Authorities Monitored Terrorist Threats After Downing Of Flight 587
The Japanese 747 did in fact fly without the vertical stablizer for quite some time until they ran into a mountain. Also few years back, a B-52 lost 90 per cent of its vertical stabilizer due to turbulence and they were able to land safely.
During refueling in the military we were always up close and personal with aircraft wakes, tails never fell off.
The smooth unbroken structural interface where the tail and fuselage meet is very suspect. If it were fastener failure you would expect a clean break. If the fasteners were missing, then one or more brackets would be undamaged. You can't really tell much from the TV picture, so hopefully NTSB will give real data.
The tail looked undamaged for the most part. Likely first to fall off. Cause, maybe turbulence. But seriously, how many tails have fallen off in the last 30 years or so?
Don't overlook ------ that if someone made 'weakening cuts' in the mounting brackets air turbulence could snap it off and detecting those cuts after a crash could be very hard to do. But with detailed analysis, you should be able to tell.
When you have a bracket mounted structure like a tail, and the structure is under high stress, like a tail is, then any failure(intentional or unintentional) in any one of the brackets could cause the entire structure to fail. Airplanes usually have redundancy built in, so it might take two or more mount failures to be catostropic.
But when I saw the virtually undamaged tail fin pulled from the water, my first thought was hmmm.
If the mounts failed, you would expect the tail to have been ripped off with torn metal obvious on all of the brackets. If tampering was the cause, mounts which were tampered with would show little or no ripped/torn metal.
If all mounts show torn or ripped metal, then external forces(turbulence?) would likely be the cause. Home in on the tail fin brackets, major clue likely there.
One other possibilty is rudder failure for one reason or the other. This has happened before with catastrophic results. But I doubt rudder failure would cause the tail to fail by falling off.
I belive if the tail caused the crash, the NTSB will know what was the exact cause. Wether they tell us right away or not is to be seen.
We'll know soon.
snooker
Repeatedly in 1991, and once again in 1998, sections of rudder came off while the plane was flying 16 km high at twice the speed of sound
My memory is a bit hazy about the 1991 but I seem to remeber there were chunks the size of a garage door that cam off mid - Atlantic and the pilots when they saw it couldn't believe the plane could have flown.
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