Originally Posted by
G0ULI
I can't agree that the aircraft bank angle did anything other than continuously increase once the control cable separated.
It's entirely reasonable to say the bank angle in might continuously increase given the mechanical failure. But if it had continuously increased in this case, the impact would have been southeast of where it actually hit. The path would be a tightening spiral with more movement parallel to the runway and less orthogonal. For the plane to hit where it did, it required more movement orthogonal to the runway than parallel, and that means the bank must have moderated.
Given the high speed of the impact but only a modest low nose attitude, the fuselage would be expected to tumble and break up as it slid along the ground striking trees and other low level obstructions.
But it didn't tumble. The right wing was obliterated just inboard of the number four engine, but the left wing's full (or very nearly full) length was present at the final impact site. The empennage was virtually undamaged, and only the forward fuselage broke off.
There doesn't appear to me to be any attempt to cover things up or hide any failings.
I never suggested any ill-intent, merely carelessness. The breakup sequence just didn't matter much.
The recurring problem in this puzzle is figuring out how much we have to discard for the rest of it to make sense. Clearly not all the witnesses agree, so some of them must be in error. The question is to decide which ones.
I've been reading the Chicago Tribune stories. There is (embedded in some purple prose) a clear description of three powerful bounces, as opposed to a cartwheel. I find this fascinating because the pictures seem to show three bounces as well, and that is the scenario I present in my document.
That nugget, plus the evidence that the CAB had laid out their impact sequence on the day of the crash, is going to take a while to process before I publish a new version.
ETA: Another interesting bit in the Trib is a picture of a wing fragment lying on the west pair of train tracks. It's a small fragment no more than two feet across. But the large object lying on the east rails in my document is more like seven feet across. This adds weight to the idea that it's the number four engine lying on the east tracks in my picture, and that's a lock on the shallow bank argument.