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Old 18th May 2010, 10:46
  #629 (permalink)  
andrasz
 
Join Date: Sep 2008
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Age: 60
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Having been away a few days, I cannot see much new aside [edited out, thanks anyway ], most of what I summarised in #40 still seems to stand, with the exception of the final moments that are not supported by the contact marks.

I still maintain however that the aircraft must have struck at a highly unusual attitude. It does appear that the complete disintegration was the result of a rapid pitch-down following tail separation (with a possible tumbling around the axis of the wing box, shredding the fuselage but keeping the wing structure relatively intact at the farthest point of the wreckage field). However for the tail to have completely separated, the aircraft must have been either in a very sharp nose up attitude, or the vertical speed must have been very high. With the latter being improbable even in a blotched approach/go around scenario, the first is the more likely.

There have been a number of speculations about the hardness of the ground. I am very familiar with desert surfaces (including Libya), from what I can see on the photos of the impact site the subsoil is a mix of gravel and clay covered by a thin layer of sand. Such surfaces are very firm, will easily support a car without any meaningful sinking of the wheels, and may be strong enough to actually support an aircraft on wheels. This layer of gravel and clay will extend to a depth of several metres before bedrock is reached. The firmness is indicated by the fact that the tail only dug a trench of less than half metres, in soft ground that rut would have been much deeper. Had the plane made a gentler contact with this type of terrain, it would have just slid along, probably the only major damage being the shearing-off of the undercarriage (more due to unevenness of terrain rather than the wheels sinking in)

Last edited by andrasz; 18th May 2010 at 11:03.
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