My postulate is that the tail section and wing, attached and sliding (upright) landing gear forward, dropped into the ditch, snagged, and the assembly “pitch poled” to land as found.
This demands that it was the last of the energy contained in the structure(s) that did the work. From the condition of the tail, any inverted slide would almost assuredly have destroyed the VS, HS, and rudder. This is plausible and demonstrable, hence probable.
G0ULI:
“How the aircraft broke up is only important in establishing what components, that may have been contributory to the accident, may have been damaged or gone missing. Giving the same evidential weight to contemporary press reports against the final official report is likely to lead to conflicts in reconstructing events, as appears to have happened in this incident. The investigators were not lying, nor was there a corporate cover up, although the temptation and pressures to do so may have been enormous. Lockheed allegedly ended up losing more than 100 million dollars as a result of this and the whirl mode accidents. Public faith in the aircraft never really recovered and the age of a preferrence for pure jet travel dawned.”
I have intimated something (post 384, above) that puts the report’s accuracy and integrity in doubt. That is intended. Would you consider a very careful and discerning discussion about what Lockheed and the CAB decided to report in this accident?
Last edited by Concours77; 12th Jan 2018 at 15:40.