Originally Posted by
megan
Amen G0ULI.The report clearly shows that the direct cause of the accident was sloppy maintenance, little different to the DC-10 engine fell off case at O'Hare. Lockheed was in the clear. As an accident cause (maintenance error), the files are replete with examples.
In the Law, the “direct cause” is reasonably easy to understand. Also in the Law is something a bit more difficult: The
procuring cause.
Camel, straw? The direct cause is the last straw. The procuring cause is the mass of straw already borne by the poor animal’s back.....
megan, here, we are in agreement.
G0ULI
I maintain that certain disputed parts of the official report are not deliberately inaccurate or even incomplete accounts of events.
In the day, the public slavishly obeyed authority, and virtually always accepted official data as gospel. Given that power, there existed a freedom to exaggerate, embellish, ignore, and even lie on the part of a government charged with our “best interests”. This was not done necessarily for cynical reasons, but more for reasons of “protecting” the public. “Well flight crew are deceased, no good can come of chasing a different theory and hobbling an otherwise exemplary corporation with further “trouble”. “
Lockheed had contracts with the Government, and patriotism compelled a certain kind of “pass” for those boffins who almost never make fatal mistakes?
A trusting public, mostly those who accept “official probable cause” as certainty, not to be doubted....?
“Probable”. A delightful word that lets the potential culprit off the hook, and seemingly immune to a different view?
Now we can discuss some design issues that hobbled the poor Electra? A tease?
Why did Lockheed perform inspections and develop a defense of the wing area adjacent the aileron/flap?
megan’s previous analysis I believe not to be accurate. “Airloads”?......please.
I think the pilots figured out what was happening. Too low, and no time to broadcast what they knew?
Oh, those pesky “chattering” ailerons? “Only in flight”? How did the aircraft “fly” four hundred feet further than contact by the wing tip at the tracks? At ninety degrees Bank? They were higher than wing tip proximity would define? So, with that, here is:
G0ULI:
The only requirement for this scenario to work is that the aircraft hit the ground in a vertical bank, which is supported by the available evidence and reports.
YES! At ninety degrees Bank, the aircraft is not flying, it is falling, like a brick, at
one G. Yet it stays aloft another four hundred feet? It is accelerating in the vertical at 16feet/second/second. It should have impacted the ground (a second time) no further than one hundred feet along. Probably more like fifty. Another way to envision this? When the wingtip struck, the altitude of the aircraft was already in the minus. By twenty feet...
Levitation?
A reduction in power as “routine”? Just after breaking ground? At liftoff at four thousand feet down the runway, they flew another four thousand feet and managed to climb only one hundred feet? That’s a climb at two degrees. At one hundred feet the aircraft commenced a roll moment to the right? Notice that the report does not say: “Pilot commanded right turn?”
I have been reluctant to start this, pilot error is imposing, but I believe the pilots had no part in this accident. Similar to the DC10, the pilot’s were along as pax.