French Concorde crash

[PBL]

Iron Duck,

concerning reports of fire on the right side of the aircraft, I think we can see in the front TO photo that there is nothing. Furthermore, the BEA says there are no traces. They also report the RHS engines as functioning normally, which they would not do if there were untoward combustion in the vicinity. So whether or not there was visible burning on the RHS of the aircraft, it did not affect the performance of the flight in the way in which the conflagration on the left has been shown to have done so.

So the fire question must concern mainly the conflagration on the left. The 32 cm square chunk that was exploded out of the fuel tank, and the resulting hole, is, I hope, not in question. Fuel would have been coming out of that hole in large quantity, and can be seen doing so by tracing the fire in the photographs. It is clearly seen in the photos to have ignited, and that the fire is huge. It is this fire, intuitively, and also from the investigation's statements about how the power produced by the left-side engines was affected, that we should be most concerned about. It is this fire which altered the engine parameters to reduce the thrust, and very likely would have burned through the wing maybe even before the aircraft had reached Le Bourget.

Whether or not people have observed flame fronts travelling forward on other aircraft, the BAC engineers were completely unable to reproduce a forward-travelling flame front from afterburner ignition on this aircraft in their post-crash experiments. Nobody intimately involved with this aircraft sees how the flame front could have so travelled. So ChristiaanJ's supposition remains very much alive in the minds of many. A related question is whether such damage to wiring would have been pre-existing, or whether it would have been engendered by debris from the tire burst. I would guess this question will remain forever unanswerable.

Concerning sparks from tires due to misalignment - bearfoil, do give us a break! Look at the size of the spacer in the diagrams; look at the gap between the wheels; draw the obvious conclusion.

Also, does anyone see the burning in the photos anywhere near the left main gear bogie? No? Neither do I. So how exactly is anything to do with that bogie supposed to have ignited the fire?

PBL