[Dr._Joseph_Warren]

"Half the wing"??? Shoot, looks like just a minor dent!

Now HERE is a REAL plane...... The McDonnell Douglas F-15!!!

This Israeli F-15 collided with another plane during exercises. Unfortunately, the pilot of the other plane didn't make it.

The F-15 landed safely with NO right wing!!! Used rear stabilizers to land.

I was working at McDonnell Douglas at the time. Alleged story goes that the F-15 pilot set down on the closest military runway which happened to be an F-16 base. Some F-16 pilot approached the plane from the left screaming at the F-15 pilot for being stupid enough to landing his F-15 on their base. As soon as he walked to the other side, his jaw dropped and he asked how he could transfer to fly F-15s.

Don't know if that story is true, but it is a fact that the F-15 pilot landed this plane with absolutely no right wing!

[dighton]

A chunk here and a chunk there . . .

[DefiantZERO]

IAF is truly a force to be feared.

[timydnuc]

When I was in civilian flight training they taught us how to fly the aircraft "by the tail". It's scary but it works like a charm. A good pilot can take his aircraft in with a lot more damage than this.

[chilepepper]

big deal... everyone knows an F-15 doesn't actually NEED wings to fly as long as the two engines are working...

[Tennessee_Bob]

"One-winged landing

In the summer of 1983, an Israeli F-15 staged a mock dogfight with Skyhawks for training purposes, near Nahal Tzin in the Negev desert. During the exercise, one of the Skyhawks miscalculated and collided forcefully with the F-15's wing root. The F-15's pilot was aware that the wing had been seriously damaged, but decided to try and land in a nearby airbase. It was only after he had landed, when he climbed out of the cockpit and looked backward, that the pilot realized what had happened: the wing had been completely torn off the plane, and he had landed the plane with only one wing attached.

A few months later, the damaged F-15 had been given a new wing, and returned to operational duty in the squadron. The engineers at McDonnell Douglas had a hard time believing the story of the one-winged landing: as far as their planning models were concerned, this was an impossibility. "

http://www.israeli-weapons.com/weapons/aircraft/f-15/F-15.htm