Originally Posted by
Pom Pax
I suggest that there does not have to have been any actual physical contact to have caused this accident.
On the road you meet a large lorry at a closing speed of 150 knots. As you pass your car experiences a severe buffet. Now consider 2 aircraft of similiar comparatives sizes closing at 6 times that speed. V squared has become much much greater. The winglet is subjected to this sudden force in the opposite sense (direction) to which it is designed to work, it fails strikes a glancing blow to the tail plane.
Back to the motoring comparison, Ranger One much earlier in the thread (post #178) made some calculations, that winglet now has as much energy as a very large car traveling at 40 mph. The winglet now strikes the the 738. Now refer to the Lockerbie (Pan Am) report to see how damage to 1 panel of the skin leads to the failure of others.
The Pan Am Lockerbie was not just the one panel of damage that led to its destruction nor even the rapid decompression following. The critical ingredient was the same as TWA800 and that was structural damage in the pressence of reverberating
overpressure
I believe that large transport aircraft can easily sustain large sections of skin damage as well as decompression, but not overpressures