Originally Posted by
Mike Tee
Thank you for all the replies. It does seem like the landing gear is designed to be strong enough to take just about all that is thrown at it. Perhaps I could have been clearer in my opening post in explaining my query. I would have thought that the gear would be designed to have an amount of built in "twist" movement available to instantly align the gear with the direction of travel at touchdown.......
The B-52 had gear that could be-aligned by a set amount prior to touchdown to allow for crosswinds but I'm not aware of anything with free floating "Castoring" gear, I would have thought such an arrangement might make the subsequent roll out and taxiing a bit interesting to say the least, especially in a strong crosswind. Anyhow if you look close up at most main landing gear and all the assorted braces and attachments you'll see they are very very solid pieces of hardware, I think in reality some of the "twist" is to some extent absorbed by the tyres, the gear should be well capable of absorbing the rest.