Can a plane fly and manouver without the tail fin?

[PatrickAWlson]

13 hours ago, KGM_Roll said:

 

It' more the loss of all flight controls (inc, crucially, elevator) than the loss of stab that caused the crash of japan air 123, if that's the one you think of.

 

Good point.  The DC10 that almost made it down with no hydraulics shows that these planes can be flown with almost nothing but their engines.  However, per your point, the loss of the stabilizer alone did not cause immediate departure from controlled flight.  It did cause the oscillations that eventually brought the plane down in an uncontrolled crash.  Combination of both I guess.  

 

Back to how this would affect WWII planes - maybe the more stable planes could survive the loss of a stabilizer if there was no further control damage and the pilot was very gentle with the controls.  Not at all sure the less stable planes - fighters - could stay in the air.  

 

Edited January 25, 2019 by PatrickAWlson

[PB0_Roll]

Sioux city showed that THIS Dc10, with THIS payload and initial conditions, could be flown with engines only. The sheer talent of crew made it possible to manage a not 100% fatal crash landing, but I can guarantee that most crews won't be able to achieve that much, talented or not, due to initial conditions of failure. It's basically the same for OP question. It is possible, yes, for sure. But most pilots will possibly crash, at landing or earlier, depending on initial conditions.

[EAF19_Marsh]

So as I said way back: loss of rudder is survivable but tricky, loss of whole fin is very bad news, loss of fin plus other control elements is almost always fatal.

 

But no one involved in any of the above would dream of anything but getting down as soon as possible. Manoeuvring beyond the most tender degree under these circumstances is between very ill-advised and all but impossible.

[Hirachi]

 

 

 

[Bremspropeller]

On 1/22/2019 at 3:04 AM, PatrickAWlson said:

A classic and tragic example is the Japanese 747 that went down after a structural failure caused the loss of the entire stabilizer.

 

JAL 123 went down primarily due to the loss of all four hydraulics circuits. The loss of yaw-stability was just a contributing factor and most probably could have been dealt with had pitch- and roll-control been available to a normal degree.

 

The crew was down to differential thrust for directional- and roll control and symmetric thrust for pitch (read: climb and descent) control at a given (read: frozen) trim setting.

They were very much given an impossible problem which nobody really had really trained for.

 

With the experience of the crash and the knowledge that they actually were able to control the airplane for the most part of 32 minutes after the loss of the vertical stabilizer (and all four hydraulic circuits as a consequence), people started having a more serious look at this scenario and subsequent similar events (eg. UA 232 and a DHL Airbus out of Bagdhad) each had a much better outcome than the incident before:

 

JAL 123: crashed into mountain inverted after razing a ridge (4 out of some 520-odd people survived)

UA 232: crash-landed at high sink-rate in the downward portion of a phogoid, but made the airport (more than 50% survived)

DHL: everybody on board walked away