Word: planes
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...reached the site, TIME Tokyo Bureau Chief Edwin Reingold surveyed the area from a helicopter. "The crash scene was still and seemed oddly, pitifully small to represent such a major disaster," he reported. "The body of the jet had crashed through trees, uprooting them as they tore the plane apart. Stripped and blackened trees were still smoldering, and small fires could be seen amid surprisingly tiny pieces of debris. There was no sign of life. No bodies were visible. But this was deceptive. The plane had broken apart, and major parts of it, as well as its human cargo...
...found the morning after the crash by the crew of a Japanese destroyer cruising in Sagami Bay. The sailors discovered floating on the waves a 15-ft. section of the 747's 35-ft.-high vertical tail fin. Further searching in the water turned up more than 30 other plane parts, most notably a 10-ft-long portion of the rudder assembly and a 104-lb. fiber-glass duct containing tubing and valves that had been attached to an auxiliary power unit in the tail section (see diagram...
...cannot be flown without its entire tail fin, which helps stabilize the big craft, and can be flown only with great difficulty without the attached rudder, which is moved to alter the plane's heading, or horizontal direction. The pilot can vary the thrust of the engines and use ailerons, hinged sections of the plane's wings, to maintain altitude and make turns, although directional control is difficult...
Pilots gave high praise to Captain Takahama for keeping his stricken 747 in the air for at least 32 minutes after the tail damage was sustained over Sagami Bay. "In spite of such terrible conditions, the plane was kept aloft by engine thrust only," said Mitsuo Nakano, JAL's deputy chief of 747 pilots. "That is an incredible performance." A U.S. expert, Captain Homer Mouden of the Flight Safety Foundation in Arlington, Va., agreed. "The crew exhibited great courage and skill in trying to keep it sea flying," he said. But the odds loose," a United Air Lines pilot said...
...part of the history of JA8119 (the plane's serial number) particularly attracted the probers' attention. On June 2, 1978, the aircraft approached a landing at Osaka with its nose too high. The tail and the rear part of the fuselage slammed into the tarmac at 320 m.p.h.; the impact ripped aluminum skin panels from the belly of the plane. JA8119 was grounded for a month while Boeing engineers supervised repairs that included replacement of the lower part of the rear fuselage...