To: Waldo Pepper
I appreciate your input especially the part about planning your route to avoid thunderstorms. Yet in another post you indicate you were hit several times. In my case I have to reverse engineer the situation to make the story line work. In the case of Wings of Wax the aircraft is hit with a lightning strike which attaches to a partially extended slat. Because there is no bonding of the slat system to the airframe the lightning arcs to the path of least resistance which is a slat jack. The lightning then arcs to the fuel tank causing the explosion. In the process of doing this the lightning also causes a disconnect in the slat drive system.
That is why I asked the questions. With all of the answers I got I will have to stick with the three innocuous cumulous clouds below and parallel to the landing path. I have to get a lightning strike otherwise there is no story.
Although extremely improbable it is possible on the two subject airliners
