Originally Posted by
PUCCI GALORE
The aircraft had the design fault that you describe and it was only brilliant piloting by the crew that got is down safely. Those aboard the THY Ermenonville disaster in France were not so fortunate.
There was an excellent account of the DC10's flawed design process published with an unfortunately lurid title, "Destination Disaster." The book is better than you'd think. It's built around the THY / Ermenonville crash but harks back to horrible, criminal corner-cutting during design, when McDonnell-Douglas was desperate to beat the similar Lockheed L-1011 to market and the gung-ho slogan on the McD-D factory floor was "Fly before they roll." They skimped on hydraulic redundancies and installed poor, slapdash components from subcontractors like the rear cargo door latch, and the rest was tragic history.