Originally Posted by
bearfoil
henra
Without VS/Rudder, both JAL 747 and Sioux City DC10 'landed' flat.
Hi Bearfoil,
As has already been pointed out the DC-10 did not lose its VS.
The JAL 747 did indeed lose most of its VS. (There is a crude image existing which shows a small remaining fragment of the VS on the tail).
And indeed the pilots miraculously managed to keep some control of the plane (Maybe having 4 engines with long moment arms helped a little). However from what I understood they did not 'pancake', i.e. they never really stalled or spinned the plane they just lost directional control in the sense that they could not really control where it was going. They also lost pitch control due to loss of the hydraulics.
Upon impact it still had significant forward speed when they hit the mountain ridges
Had they really stalled it I'm sure it would have gone into a spiral dive similar to AA587 and gone in in a forward high speed impact. In that case surely not a single person would have survived