Missing a control surface is different than losing one in flight.
Cables are pretty strong and might tend to hold on until something else
breaks, and in the meantime there's a lot of unusual drag and flapping
around going on. I sure wouldn't want to be aboard. A Cessna's aileron
pushrod would probably bust right of and let the aileron go, but a
rudder would be a different story.
I'm an aircraft mechanic and a pilot. I hear stories that make
me look at things closely. I have a mechanic friend who did some
experimental reasearch on the cable breakage of Cessna 185 flap control
system. They disconnected the LH flap and tried to see, in flight, what
might happen if one was down and the other up. They were just able to
keep it level with full aileron as the RH flap came all the way down.
He said that if that cable broke suddenly at low level on approach
there would be no way to control the airplane; it would roll over right
away.
Dan