on a wing and a prayer

"Mark" wrote

The F-15's pilot was aware that
the wing had been seriously damaged, but decided to try and land in a
nearby airbase, not knowing the extent of his wing damage. It

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.

source-Wikipedia
subject-lifting bodies

The ability to stay in the air depends on enough lift being produced, then
on the ability to balance it to stay in a consistent, controlled attitude.

Producing lift, no problem. It still had one wing, and a fairly good
lifting body, so if you go fast enough, you can make enough lift. The lift
was totally off axis, and not symmetrical, and there is where a special
characteristic (not planned on being used in this manner) of the aircraft
came into play.

The totally independent full flying tail surfaces are what did the trick.
Let's say you remove the right wing. If you put the leading edge of the
right tail surface up, you will have the left wing and the right tail making
lift. If you can balance the aircraft on those two surfaces, you win. They
did.

If you make the left tail's leading edge go down, you will provide negative
lift, which can be used to lift up the weight of the aircraft that is ahead
of the line formed by the left wing and the right tail, which are the two
surfaces that we are balancing the aircraft on. Use all three of the flying
surfaces you have left, and keep going fast enough, and you get to keep the
aircraft. Pretty amazing, until you think about it, then it is very
amazing! g
--
Jim in NC