After seeing this movie last night I got to wondering...of all the problems you hear about with airplanes, engines failing, losing oil pressure, running out of fuel, controls locking, all sorts of things like that, of all the possibilities for what can happen to a plane, could a plane's tail really fall off?
shareVery unlikely the tail would fall off. Metal fatique checks are part of maintenance, although some airlines are deliquent on checking. Regulations came out after Aloha Airlines in Hawaii lost a section of fuselage due to fatigue (really more corrosion). More likely is a loss of a control surface, like just happened over Phila, but most likely a maintenance issue. Closest thing I can remember about the tail was the 737 design flaw where in certain conditions the rudder would reverse opposite to control input and cause a crash, I believe 2 737 crashed before they finally corrected the design. Retrofit in process but not done, but 737 pilots have been trained to recognize and recover from problem. No more crashes since then.
shareAs noted on another thread, the deHavilland Comet, which went into service as the world's first commercial jet airliner in 1952 -- the year after this movie came out -- soon began suffering a series of crashes which were eventually found to have been caused by metal fatigue. I'm unclear whether the tails of the Comets fell off, but since they all went down in flight with no survivors, it seems certain something fell off.
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... they all went down in flight with no survivors, it seems certain something fell off.Actually the Comets exploded due to rapid decompression caused by metal fatigue in the rivet holes around their nearly square windows which cascaded throughout the fuselage. They had to lose two in exactly the same way before they grounded them long enough to discover the cause.
Yes, since making that post the other year I've learned of the cause. Actually they lost more than two, even after grounding them, since they initially found no cause for the crashes. The Comet was repaired and flew for many more years, but British aviation never fully recovered as America took the lead in transatlantic jet aviation.
shareActually they lost more than two ...Actually they lost five thru the two 1954 losses, which were the only ones due to explosive decompression. The first three occurred shortly after take-off at relatively low altitudes. The Comet was more than repaired after the metal fatigue was discovered. It was redesigned. I believe the biggest mistake that DeHavilland made was keeping the Comet name through 4 different models into the 60's. The failure of Comet 1 forever tainted the name. Would anyone sail on Titanic II?
The problem with the Comets was indeed metal fatigue but had nothing to do with the tail. The problem was the drilling of rivet holes around the windows. The holes were either too small for the rivets or the rivets were too large for the holes and the stress of forcing a large rivet into a small hole created a crack. With the stressing and unstressing of the aircraft skin it gradually widened the crack until it was large enough to fail and cause a catastrophic decompression. Because the first few crashes were over the ocean the aircraft could not be retrieved but finally the company created a test tank large enough to find the problem. Unfortunately, by that time the flying public didn't trust the aircraft any longer.
Much the same thing happened with the Lockheed Electra some years later but that was related to engine vibration.
Just saw the film on TCM. As for the tail, the movie mentions a problem at the spar which is used to attach the tail section to the fuselage. A similar incident happend to an American Airlins flight where an engine fell off right after take-off.
shareI'm amazed at the short memory of posters on this thread. Don't you all remember seeing the vertical tail section from American Airlines flight 587 being fished out of Jamaica Bay in 2001?
The plane's vertical stabilizer and rudder separated in flight and fell into Jamaica Bay, about 1 mile north of the main wreckage site. The plane's engines subsequently separated in flight and fell several blocks north and east of the main wreckage site. All 260 people aboard the plane and 5 people on the ground died, and the impact forces and a post-crash fire destroyed the plane.http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_Airlines_Flight_587
And regarding metal fatigue, don't forget the recent (April 2011) Southwest flight that cracked open (ceiling was open to the sky!). They landed safely. It was a 737-??. Metal fatigue grounded many planes for days while they checked them out. some planes were found to be faulty and had to be patched up or re-skinned. I had flow in that same type of plane (SW Air 737-??) just 2 days before the one cracked open. However, the one I flew in appeared to have been "re-skinned" and almost like new on the outside. It was quite a rough flight and I'm glad there were no metal fatigue problems during it.
But this picture is quite interesting in that regard.
And that plane with that tail design in the movie was DESIGNED with tail separation IN MIND! Wow what a monstrosity that tail section was. But the interior of the plane was beautiful! Wish they looked like that now! But those crystal glasses looked a bit perilous there in that cabinet. I guess turbulence in movies isn't what it is in real life...
Yeah, those plates and glasses (and glass cabinets) were major hazards in themselves. If the tail had broken off half the passengers might have been killed by the flying cutlery even before they hit the water!
shareI do not think it is just one piece welded to the body anymore. It could be bolted in many places( I will have to check). The tail itself is a base where other flaps
work just like the wing is a part of the main body. Are the wings just welded to the body? Certainly not!
A bolt or rivet will never tear at once. It is a rarity though, if it did.
this movie was done in 1951, so nearly 61 years have passed by! So the technology might have moved on! Or has it?
They could also use carbon fiber these days. Not sure they are doing it though!
It is certainly affordable with all that money being paid for technology( A normal jet costs around 100 million? experts?).
But in 2001, no body knows what exactly happened to that plane? The tail did come off and they also ran a program on discovery channel. The exact cause and fix was not clear!
I certainly did not give serious thought then. But after seeing this movie, I might have to!
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This is what they got to say from 2001 accident.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_Airlines_Flight_587#Investigation
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The manner in which the vertical stabilizer separated concerned investigators. The vertical stabilizer is connected to the fuselage with six attaching points. Each point has two sets of attachment lugs, one made of composite material, another of aluminum, all connected by a titanium bolt; damage analysis showed that the bolts and aluminum lugs were intact, but not the composite lugs. This, coupled with two events earlier in the life of the aircraft, namely delamination in part of the vertical stabilizer prior to its delivery from the manufacturer and an encounter with heavy turbulence in 1994, caused investigators to examine the use of composites.[5] The possibility that the composite materials might not be as strong as previously supposed was a cause of concern because they are used in other areas of the plane, including the engine mounting and the wings. Tests carried out on the vertical stabilizers from the accident aircraft, and from another similar aircraft, found that the strength of the composite material had not been compromised, and the NTSB concluded that the material had failed because it had been stressed beyond its design limit, despite ten previous recorded incidents where A300 tail fins had been stressed beyond their design limitation in which none resulted in the separation of the vertical stabilizer in-flight.[4]
The official NTSB report of October 26, 2004, stated that the cause of the crash was the overuse of the rudder to counter wake turbulence.[6]
Although it didn't cause the plane's tail to fall off as such it did cause the aircraft into a fatal dive. The MD-80 flown by Alaska Airlines has a jackscrew in the tail that controls the position of the elevator. Improper maintenance allowed the jackscrew to strip the threads and thereby fail causing the pilots to lose control and the aircraft to crash.
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