Rudder Failure
 

Are there any known incidents where an aircraft has suffered a total loss of rudder, either physically or from a control standpoint and succesfully landed?

Search yahoo using 737 and rudder and hard and over. Revealed approximately 1500 hits.

Seem to remember a flight crew fought an old 737 and after being inverted for a period of time pulled off a successul landing.

To clarify, I mean a total and permanent (to end of flight) loss.

several photos here:

http://www.daveswarbirds.com/b-17/tail.htm


One tough old Bird......:ok:

glad you could find the time and thanks.........

It depends whatvyou mean by successful==the Dash 8 had to be modified following a crash resulting from total loss of rudder control =the aircraft parked itself in a departure lounge with some survivors.

Yep,
Back in 1985 (not sure but in the mid eighties) a JAL 747 on a domestic flight suffered an aft bulkhead failure due to pressurization and broke the vertical stabilizer with the rudder.

The plane lost directional and lateral control and crashed into a mountain in Japan.

Sad event but a good example of how rudder could have possibly changed the outcome of things that day.

Peace

Impressive B17 pictures. You gotta wonder why they built them with empennages at all - they don't seem to need them to fly, and just seem to attract cannon fire!

Respect to the crews. I suppose modern bombers couldn't survive the loss of so much hardware.

Depends on what you mean by total loss of rudder. A Fokker 27 has suffered a failure of the rudder that resulted in the broken rudder being still attached to the aircraft, but fully deflected. The aircraft was still controllable, though use of full aileron, and was landed successfully.