Best damn or luciest pilot

"Robert M. Gary" wrote:

at first Boeing didn't believe it really happened until they sent their
engineers out. They explaination is that the body itself generates so
much lift it could still fly.

If this account is true, then what does this say about the engineers of
this aircraft? Isn't the lift generated by the body itself taken into
account by these engineers?

--
Peter

Leonard Milcin Jr. wrote:
Jim Macklin wrote:
http://www.strangemilitary.com/content/item/110099.html



Besides being both very good and lucky pilot he risked his life to save
machine that will be written off anyway. But I suppose he wasn't aware
of that at the time...

They put a new wing back on...

"Peter R." wrote in message
...
"Robert M. Gary" wrote:

at first Boeing didn't believe it really happened until they sent their
engineers out. They explaination is that the body itself generates so
much lift it could still fly.

If this account is true, then what does this say about the engineers of
this aircraft? Isn't the lift generated by the body itself taken into
account by these engineers?

--
Peter

Yeah, but...

At first glance, the engineers probably looked at first order issues - can
the airplane fly straight and level with most of one wing missing? I'm sure
they had enough data in their files to say... At a certain speed, the good
wing generates X pounds of lift and a rolling moment of Y pound feet. The
remaining aileron can generate a rolling moment of Z pound feet to counter
the rolling moment from the wing. The answer was probably that Y Z, so
the aircraft would be uncontrollable.

As Dudley pointed out, there was probably a significant yaw induced due to
the asymmetric airframe. This would have reduced lift on the existing
wing, reduced the rolling moment, and allowed the wide fuselage to generate
enough lift at 250 knots to bring the airplane home. It is very doubtful
that the engineers had data for that flight condition at hand to override
the initial analysis based on the data they did have...

KB

Besides being both very good and lucky pilot he risked his life to save
machine that will be written off anyway.

.... and also to prevent it from impacting randomly.

Jose
--
There are more ways to skin a cat than there are cats.
for Email, make the obvious change in the address.

Given enough power, almost anything will fly. Controllably? That's another
story. Pretty exciting stuff.

--
Bob (Chief Pilot, White Knuckle Airways)


"Jim Macklin" wrote in message
news:caLOg.22772$SZ3.8382@dukeread04...
Bumblebees can't fly either. I'm most amazed, not that it
could fly, but that the pilot recovered control.


"Dudley Henriques" wrote in message
ink.net...
|
| "Jim Macklin" wrote
in message
| news:2dFOg.22744$SZ3.2566@dukeread04...
|
http://www.strangemilitary.com/content/item/110099.html
|
|
|
| Friend of mine, a General in the SAAF, sent this along to
us a while back.
| Amazing really.
| I think they tossed it around a bit down at Navy TPS at
Pax and I believe
| someone finally came up with a computer model that worked
for the scenario.
| The fuselage around the intake area apparently created a
great deal of lift
| as the airplane went to a natural yaw angle with the one
wing gone. Don't
| remember exactly what the cross over airspeed was to get
that yaw angle, but
| I'm guessing it was extremely high.
| I think he brought it in at over 250kts. Of course he was
a bit light on
| fuel :-)) Anyway, if I recall correctly, the MD engineers
were mightily
| impressed with their hardware :-))
| Interesting incident. I seem to remember an F4 driver
going off the Midway
| with the wings folded as well. I think he made it as well
but I don't
| remember the details of the story.
| Dudley
|
|