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[bearfoil]

infrequentflyer789

Hey. Perpignan was a nose plant at flying speed: 14 degrees ND??

We are told 447 was a buttdrag at nominal speed, certainly not flying.

So the impact aspects were totally different. The 320 assumedly lost its VS fully forward, clear of the impact debris, while 447 is said to have landed on its tail, then belly. This is the upshot of my disagreement: 447 drove her VS into the tail cone, then clear?. No evidence is apparent that the skin of the fin spent any time whatsoever in a decelerating trajectory into the mass of structure that is the tail: APU, HS, Elevators, Pressure cap, tankage, etc. Nor is there evidence on the inner perimeter of the torn out fuselage frames of rupture that would have occurred as the energy of the Fin was dissipated into the axis of the fuselage.

machaca

At twenty nine feet tall and three feet thick, The Vertical Stabiliser has perhaps the best strength to weight ratio of any structure on any swept area of the aircraft. Of course it is silly to call it fragile, it is not. However, it has diminished survival futures in a debris field because of its light 'weight' relative to other structures, due to its strength from 'spread' rather than 'mass'. It is susceptible to puncture and asymmetric torsional stress, something it likely would not have seen had it been lost prior to impact. It is reasonable I think to posit that it would survive a flat impact with the water at some terminal velocity in free fall, but would show immediately any puncture or insult from thousands of pieces of structure with which it would have shared the impact site.

Of course FRP does not 'explode', that was a poor term choice. Better "Shatter, or Disintegrates".

chrs