Word: tails
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...shattered tail fin provides a clue to why Japan Air Lines Flight 123 crashed into a mountainside, taking 520 lives. President Botha's "manifesto" for South Africa disappoints opponents of apartheid. Iran's rigid theocracy harbors fanaticism and little hope for change. How a U.S. hostage managed to film his Shi'ite captors in southern Lebanon...
What caused the disaster? The first and perhaps most significant clue was 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...
...when the craft is on the ground and the engines are not producing this power. The unit is also a backup for the surface controls, like the rudder, in flight. Some experts theorized last week that as the auxiliary system disintegrated it might have ruptured hydraulic lines in the tail, which, in turn, could have affected the aircraft's main controls...
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...