Milt, as I remember the incident the aircraft was on a training sortie at relatively light weight and one item of the trip was to practice a failure of pressurization drill in the climb. When the simulated failure was introduced the co-pilot who was not familiar with large aircraft pushed the nose down rather fiercely to level off. The crew heard a loud bang. Being unable to locate the cause they decided to recover to Gaydon. Upon joining the pattern they selected flap and the aircraft started to roll to the right so the selected it back in and flew a flap-less approach and landing. On shutdown they inspected the aircraft and found the right wing appeared to have moved away from the fuselage by a couple of inches or so. Because the Valiant flap mechanism was driven by a rod and cog system from electric motors in the fuselage the right wing system had disconnected due to the wing movement thus possibly saving the wing from being ripped off.
Last edited by Art Field; 15th Oct 2007 at 16:22.
Reason: wrong wing