Originally Posted by
booke23
However you have to ask.......if the aircraft was at MTOW (not over it), took off with the spacer in place the No 2 engine wasn't shut down.....would the outcome have been different? (btw the tank that ruptured wasn't overfilled according to the report)
Well the tyre would almost certainly still have burst. If it shed 4.5kg of rubber up against the tank it would still have ruptured and caught fire. If engine 2 hadn't been shut down it would have flamed out anyway as engine 1 did. So they may have flown a little bit further but the outcome would have been the same.
They were also quite unlucky in that the tyre debris was thrown up at speed and impacted the underside of the wing very close to a junction between a thicker and thinner (machined) section. The fuel pressure pulse then fractured the skin at that junction. Had it impacted at a slightly different location it is possible that the wing skin may not have failed OR lead to a smaller leak.
All this discussion about the crash must not detract from the stunningly brilliant technical achievement that was Concorde.