sbrower - No, I do not have any suggestions. Still very suspicious in my mind though. Just finished watching Fox News with nice pictures of the clamps (that apperantly hold the vertical stabilized to the airframe) showing broken part with a very wavey pattern of seperation. I just learned today that the VS is NOT made of metal but rather it is a composite structure.

VS dampens yaw (side to side motion) rudder fine tunes direction (yaw). I can understand tremendous control problems if VS is lost, but still don't have any ideas why BOTH engines "seperate" from mountings. Must have been tremendous force to seperate engines.

Still have not heard anything about elevators. These keep plane "level" (or move nose up/down as desired). Why did plane suddenly "nose over" into a dive if FO still has elevator control.

As I noted in my first post above - the JAL 747 flew for a long time without any VS. JAL plane did have elevators intact after VS seperation. Also had engine speed control and "steered" with engine RPMs as did the UA flight in Iowa.

Still very strange circumstances, but I have no magic explanation that's for sure.

Have another source you can read. Hope this URL thing works. If it doesn't come in as a hotlink then copy and paste and go take a look:

http://www.aviationnow.com/avnow/news/channel_maint.jsp?view=story&id=news/raa11114.xml

dAAvid -

[This message has been edited by AA SLF (edited 11-14-2001).] Aha - it worked. I am so amazed that I did it correctly. Really very simple. - dAAvid -

[This message has been edited by AA SLF (edited 11-14-2001).]