ShotOne
.... as an aside why are folks so strung up on the precise point at which each part of the aircraft hit the ground? Even if the berm hadn’t been there the aircraft would certainly have hit the trees a bit further on.
While you are almost certainly right, we do not really know that the berm made no difference, do we? The plane was almost flying when it reached the berm.
One the other hand, the accident was well under way before the plane reached the berm so that in that sense the exact events at the berm may not be relevant to the primary causes of the accident.
However, to my mind it is interesting to look at what must have happened. Please skip the following if you have no interest in the details.
The Boeing pdf document “747 Airplane Characteristics, Airport Planning”, May 1984, has a scaled drawing of a 747 which when overlaid on the photo of the berm allows one to see which parts of the plane passed over which parts of the berm. I hesitate to show the drawing here (copyright considerations), but the following diagram shows the results of such a comparison.
Note: In making this diagram:
(a) the plane’s dimensions have been scaled so that the inner wheel tracks in red lie in the four ruts at the BASE of the berm.
(b) the photo has been rotated so that the center line of the fuselage lies along the broad whitish track beyond the berm. I assume that this track was made by the aircraft sliding along the ground either going or drifting slightly to the right of 90 degrees to the berm.
Observations:
(a) when orientated as detailed above, two of the red wheel tracks lie on the right-hand pair of ruts in the photo all the way up the slope of the berm, while in contrast the left-hand ruts diverge away slightly to the left, as though the left-hand undercarriage was beginning to collapse.
(b) the eight wheel tracks in red correspond approximately to the positions of knocked over antenna masts (as has been said before).
(c ) the remaining undamaged antenna masts show that, although the rear fuselage is known to have hit the berm, the wings (purple), engines (green) and tailplane (blue) must all have cleared the tops of these masts.
A little gentler slope to the berm and there might have been a “ski jump” take off.
Cheers,
