For those inquiring about the use of flaps in this case.
I was involved in two incidents, not accidents thank God, with aircraft with wing damage. One was very severe, but the severity of the damage was not known to the crew in flight. The second case involved a 727 and I believed the severity was worse than it actually was.
Many years ago I was a co-pilot on a Convair 300, a corporate version of the Convair 340. One morning while I was scheduled on a trip in the company MU-2, another co-pilot and the chief pilot had a trip early the same morning in the Convair. I arrived at the hangar shortly after they had taken off. As I was getting the MU-2 ready one of the maintenance people came running out and told me the Convair had declared an emergency and was returning.
We ran out to the edge of the ramp to get as close to the runway as we could and saw the Convair on short final,
gear and flaps up. As it passed over the end of the runway the gear came down and they landed. after using all of the runway they pulled off at the end, shut down the engines and was promptly surrounded by the CFR trucks.
As we drove out to the aircraft I could see that the right wing had dark strains streaking back from the leading edge of the right wing back to the trailing edge of the wing, the entire length of the wing. As we drove up Tony, the chief pilot, and Rick, the other company pilot and my good friend, were standing under the right engine just behind the right main gear. Then Rick walked quickly over to the grass next to the runway and threw-up.
The exhaust system had collapsed, most likely on takeoff at full power, and the exhaust from the engine had been routed out through the wing deice system causing a fire just behind the engine just behind the right main gear. This fire could not be seen from the cockpit obviously and was in an area that had no fire detection. There was a hole just behind the right gear that one could fit a large office desk chair in.
The fire had melted two of the wing spars. Now, this is where bar talk/hangar flying can save your butt some day. (and now I guess the Internet) Just after we had bought the Convair, Tony was sitting in hotel bar on a RON and started talking with a American Airlines Captain. As they were talking about Convairs in general this AA Captain told Tony a story about what had happened to a good friend of his that was a Captain on an American Convair 440. It was the same thing that would happen to our Convair a couple of years later.
In the American's 440 accident all was going well until they selected landing flaps, that was too much strain on the damaged wing, the wing separated from the aircraft and it crashed killing all on board. When the same thing happened to Tony and Rick, Tony remembered that story he had heard from that American Airlines Captain.
On the landing brief Tony told Rick that no matter what, it would be a no flap landing and that they would keep the gear up until over the runway, that way if he felt anything unusual as the gear was extending, he would just slam the aircraft on the runway before the wing could come off and then hopefully they could get out alive.
We all drank a lot of Scotch that night.
The next incident was not near as exciting as was the Convair story. I was PIC/PF on a 727 one day as we left an small airport. Shortly after takeoff I saw a flash of white out of the corner of my right eye and then felt an impact through the controls. I continued the takeoff profile and then as we were cleaning up the wing (retracting the leading edge devices and flaps) the leading edges were slow in retracting and just for a moment we thought that they were not going to retract at all, but they did.
I sent the FE back to check out both wings, but told him to pay special attention to the right wing, where I had seen the flash of white. He came back and told me he could see a substantial dent where the number five and six slats joined. I decided to proceed to the next destination where there was a maintenance base and a lot longer runway.
The 727 is one tough bird and to be honest I was not all that concerned, but the incident with the Convair those many years ago was in the back of my mind. When we got in range the FE talked to the maintenance people and we formulated a pretty simple plan. We would stay at 5,000 ft AGL and slowly configure for landing. That way, should anything strange or unusually happened, we would stop and land with what ever configuration we ended up with. As soon as we selected flaps 5, the LED disagreement lights illuminated. So we landed with flaps 5 and used a bunch of runway to stop.
Turned out it had been a bird strike, a rather large bird that managed to hit the one area of the leading edge that it could do the most damage. I guess as kind of a pay back for being killed by the aircraft.
So we ended up spending three days sitting while the new slats were shipped in and put on the wing. We ended up drinking a lot Scotch then as well, not due to the incident, but because there is not a hell of a lot to do in Harrisburg Pennsylvania.
The moral of this story is, never assume a thing, take things slowly, remember what you have heard and take what you can get. Unless you know for a fact not do do something from a similar accident, that way you end up with an incident, not an accident.