>At 12:26 AM 19/02/01 +0800, Mike B wrote:
>Not quite true, John, but it didn't have anything to do wth a mid air
>collision. An MMA Viscount lost a wing on descent into Port Hedland in
>about 1967 or 68 with about 20 or so fatalities if memory serves me
>rightly. The cause was traced to a fatigue failure of a spar boom due to
>incorrect installation of a bushing for an engine mount, I believe.
>
>Mike Borgelt
>Borgelt Instruments - manufacturers of quality soaring instruments
Quite correct Mike,
The wing came off in a thunderstorm over or near Port Hedland.
The bush may have caused the start of the failure but the pommy idiot who
designed only ONE main spar in the wing also got a heap of blame.
Subsequent Viscounts, and other airliners since have multiple load bearing
spars.
A Fokker Friendship also broke up after entering a thunderstorm soon after
departure from Cairns in the early 70's I think, killing everyone on
board, including a lot of school kids on their way home for holidays, and
another Viscount was lost after breaking up in a thunderstorm soon after
departure from Sydney in the 60's, also killing everyone on board. It
crashed into Botany Bay I believe.
As Mac Job states in one of his Air Disaster books....." a whole generation
of Australian public and media have grown up without the fascination and
horror of a large airline disaster occurring on our doorsteps" ( or words
to a similar meaning)
TAA, QANTAS and ANSETT have lost large airliners at least once. With their
well publicised maintenance problems of late it won't be too long before it
happens to them here, again. One hopes not, but statistically it must.
PENETRATING, isn't it.
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