I left Lagos on Monday, 22 December 2003 on a scheduled flight, as SLF. The 747 was parked up near our stand, so that we all got a good look at it as we taxied past. The left main gear seemed to be completely gone, just some part of a strut or something was dangling from the bay. Number One engine seemed to have a lot of damage to the bottom of the forward cowling and I think I can remember seeing some more damage to the various stuff on the trailing edge of the left wing. The rest of the landing gear appeared to be intact.
Some engineer friends told me they had seen digital photos of damage where the gear had been torn out of the spar, but that's just hearsay, since they had told me it was the center gear that was involved. They all said they thought the aircraft was a write-off (economically unrepairable) but that's just hearsay as well.
I heard the same rumours about an ATC screw-up but there was no firm information to hand when I left. The accident occurred in the wee hours of the morning, so that someone might have been tired enough to make a mistake, or perhaps there were mistakes on both sides. We will just have to wait for the report, I guess. At least in this case no one was hurt.
I really dislike the way people get all excited and start jumping in with wild stories (wing ripped off, controller ran away, etc.) without really knowing if they are true or not.
That ADC crash was followed with three or four positively, absolutely, no bullsh*t versions of what happened (hydraulic failure or loss of control due to near-miss and faulty control inputs were the two main ones). There just seems to be something about Africa that invites people to let their imaginations run wild. Well, the truth can be pretty weird, at times, but hardly anyone I know in the biz is a drug-running cannibal. There was this one guy, but he went back to Europe....