captain_spalding said:

Tau.Neutrino said:

Tau.Neutrino said:

I wonder if it’s possible to make a sliding blade to go over an iced wing to clear it off?

Say if a tail elevator fell off, could a small rocket under the nose keep the nose straight?

SN is the aviator, of course, but my ‘feeling’ is that having the elevators fall off is a non-recoverable situation.

Mistake: i was confusing ‘stabilisers’ with ‘elevators’.

The great testing environment of WW2 gives these two exampls:

The Midway Avenger (Ensign Albert Earnest)

During the Battle of Midway in June 1942, Ensign Albert Earnest’s TBF Avenger torpedo bomber took heavy damage. With his elevator controls completely severed, his instruments shattered, and one landing gear dropped, he faced a 200-mile flight back to Midway Island. He successfully flew and landed the aircraft by exclusively using the elevator trim tabs to maintain pitch control.

2. The B-17 “All American”

In February 1943, this B-17 Flying Fortress survived a spectacular mid-air collision with a German Bf 109 over Tunisia. The impact completely tore off the left elevator and horizontal stabilizer, leaving the rear fuselage held together by just a couple of structural frames. Despite the extreme damage and severed control lines, the pilots used meticulous throttle adjustments and the remaining control surfaces to fly 90 minutes back to base and land safely