The killing of Bill Cooper and Liquid Metal Embrittlement

John Young jya at pipeline.com
Wed Nov 14 17:49:34 PST 2001


How would the LME work on the interior structure of the plane?
The skin has little structural strength but does streamline the
structure and I suppose if it was weakened to peel away,
turbulence could shear structural bolts or welds. The tail section
of 587 appeared to be cleanly detached from the fuselage and
not obviously torn.

Vibration of the tail could have loosened or fractured bolts or welds
sufficiently to break away under the forces of take-off and/or
turbulence from the preceding 747.

Still, if the tail was subject to vibration that would have made its
attachments a likely assembly to check frequently.

Several recent FAA airworthiness directives for the A300 listed 
problems needing attention but nothing on the tail assembly.
Which doesn't mean squat necessarily, since expected accidents 
usually don't happen.

However, because tails seldom come loose, I understand, if an
attacker wanted to do the unexpected on a part little suspected
of failure, the tail connection would be a good target. One pilot
was quoted as saying no better failure could have been 
arranged to assure disaster. That is, loss of tail is not in featured
the emergency recovery manual -- at least in civilian aircraft.
I believe loss of tail is included in military emergency planning
due to their being good vertical targets for missiles, shells and
shrapnel. Some military tails are oversized for the plane to
survive loss of a good portion of the tail (although not likely
for entire tail loss except for two-tailed craft).





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