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although wasn't SAA 747 brought down years ago in the Indian Ocean by a cargo hold fire with large loss of life?
It was a 747SP Combi. There was a long government cover up with the usual conspiracy theories, eventually when apartheid ended the Truth and Reconcilliation Commission confirmed that the aircraft was carrying a secret shipment of solid fuel rocket propellant for a missile project. Interestingly this could not have been the original cause of the fire because it would have destroyed the aircraft in seconds rather than the time that they flew an attempted diversion. It is likely that a minor fire spread slowly until it reached the dangerous cargo.
Google for "Helderberg disaster" if you have a few hours to spare wading through the crackpot theories.
Interesting that you should bring this accident up because I was only thinking about the parallels (or lack of them) today. It wasn’t an SP it was a -200 Combi.
I viewed the reassembled wreckage of the Helderberg in the old SAA apprentice hangar at Jan Smuts some 20 odd years ago and a very somber experience it was. More so because I had drunk more than a beer or 2 with a member of the flight crew on numerous occasions. (Hanger 5 anyone!!!)
Although the investigation left a lot to be desired and there are too many conflicts of interests to clearly establish the true cause and exactly what happened in the final moments, the reassembled fuselage clearly showed that the control cables had been torn apart as opposed to being damaged by the fire and there is no doubt that this was a very significant fire.
The heat within the cabin was so intense that the top of the reassemble fuselage which should have been white was discolored brown and the fire damage aft of the rear most galley had to be seen to be believed.
What I find surprising is that with both the UPS tragedy and now Asiana, it appears from reports that quite early on control problems were experienced, however from what we know of the Helderberg disaster, they didn’t experience any.
The CVR also gave no indications of control problems up until the point when the airframe apparently failed (IIRC Boeing disputed this).
My question therefore is – are the B744F control runs and/or protection significantly different to those on the B742? It seems odd that the 742 experience a massive 1000C+ fire for a similar if not longer timeframe than the B744Fs yet the integrity of the controls appeared to be maintained.