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MiTasol said:
Stress test of an airliner
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Interestingly enough, the DC-10 fuselage structure was designed by General Dynamics, not McDonnell Douglas. And when GD ran the structural test of the fuselage, meant to show that the fuselage could withstand the effects of explosive decompression, it failed. They found that explosive decompression in the cargo compartments would result in the collapse of the passenger compartment floor - the floor that also served to hold the flight control routings. GD told McD that they would have to redesign the fuselage and McD replied that there was no time for that. Lockheed was building the L-1011, a similar sized widebody airliner, and the expectations were that the market would not support both of them. Lockheed was ahead of McD and both companies viewed who had the first airplane rollout to be crucial to determining program success. As it turned out, the DC-10 floor vulnerability proved to be a real problem, since it was combined with a flawed baggage compartment hatch design, which McD chose to make electrically powered rather that using hydraulics, with the result that it could be closed but not locked in place.
 
There is a lot more to that cargo door issue.

One of the items was that it was manually locked with the placard saying not more than xlb/ykg force shall be used and that on the day of the Turkish Airlines crash the cargo handlers in Paris used many times that force damaging the internals of the door and failing to lock it. Had they opened the door and checked to find why it was not closing there would have been no accident. Unfortunately the system was not Murphy proof and that is always an invitation to Murphy.

There was also a requirement that the carpets had cuts in them over floor relief panels and that was not done so the air could not escape the cabin into the cargo bay. An idiot requirement in my opinion as that made it impossible for ground staff to replace carpet runners with a stock carpet runner. Again, no-one considered Murphy.
 
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That makes sense, I could not understand what the heating elements where for, I forgot about the 2 Mach 2 capable designs. Good photo! Now I would like to see the Soviet cooling solution in diagram for the Concordski. I understand the noise it transmitted to the passenger cabin was most unpleasant!
 
I flew on a DC-10 from San Fran up to Seattle, on the return leg of a trip I took to Japan when I was 13.
Feel kinda lucky to be alive now.
I'll tell ya' one thing, those were the most comfortable seats I've ever sat in. Like your recliner, at home. I slept through most of the hour and a half trip.
 
Dc-10's were good flying airliners, at 1st I disliked working on them and Northwest Airlines had Purchased DC-10-40's with Pratt & Whitney JT-9's (for parts interchangeability with the JT-9's on the previously ordered 747-100's, that in reality had very few parts in common with each other) Being young and skinny at the time I usually drew the job of working on the tail mounted #2 engine. Those Jt-9's leaked oil like a Radial, and the unlucky individual that had to open the hatch to gain access to the engine would be doused with oil. We usually wore a full rain suit when doing it.
Then in the late 1990's the airline purchased 2nd hand DC-10-30's with CF6 engines, what a difference! The cowlings were usually clean and dry, It made it working on those engines seem routine. Remember you would be outside, 40' above the ramp, in all types of weather and temperatures. Hand cranking the 3 sections of cowling open because Northwest was 2 cheap to order the hydraulic versions that where an added cost option. The -30's also had the Hydraulic versions that was much easier open. We used to bring up a 4' ladder to stand on to put in the support struts to secure the cowling open. Fun times. I look back and wonder how no one died doing it. No fall protection, setting the ladder on oil covered aluminum, reaching out beyond what would be considered safe to release the struts, rotate them into place and secure them.

The picture below is of a MD-11 (you can tell by the bulged inlet duct just behind the inlet. A feature of the DC-10-40's and all MD-11's no matter what engine type was installed.

source https://www.airliners.net/photo/Delta-Air-Lines/McDonnell-Douglas-MD-11/441335
 
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The DC-10's direct competitor, the L-1011, did not seem to suffer any of the McD's problems. No cargo door and fuselage design errors resulting in a fatal crash. No engine blowing up and taking out all the hydraulics, resulting in a fatal crash. No engine falling off the wing and jamming the leading edge slats, resulting in a fatal crash. I can only think of two L-1011 fatal crashes. One was in the Everglades, where the flight crew was so busy troubleshooting a fault light that they forgot to fly the airplane. The other was at DFW, where it flew into wind shear that probably was unsurvivable regardless; going into a holding pattern until the storm cleared was likely the only answer. I recall reading of an L-1011 that had to divert to Tampa on a flight from LAX to Miami because the tank with the broken fuel quantity indictor was empty and the flight engineer checked the wrong tank to confirm it had fuel, but once again that was an aircrew problem

The DC-10 was adopted by the USAF as the KC-10, but most people probably do not realize that the L-1011 was adopted by the RAF, largely inspired by the need to supply Ascension Island and the Falklands after the war. Apparently the L-1011 did not have the range of the DC-10 but that did not seem to bother the RAF on those very long flights.
The L-1011 was also adopted by Orbital Sciences Corp to launch the Pegasus space booster as well as some experimental vehicles. A friend of mine told me they studied Lockheed's L-1011 production and found that the company could never sell enough of them to even break even, which says a lot about a company that had not built airliners for 20 years or so as compared to one that had built mainly airliners.
 
Was it the MD-11 that used to fly in a nose down attitude?
I remember working with a guy who formerly had worked at Mc-Doug and he told me that.
Can't remember which plane, though. Md-11? MD-8? Something like that.
 
Glider said:
Tempted maybe, but I bet you would take the ride.
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I read of a Spitfire Wingco in the Med seized a brand new bird for his personal use. On a patrol over Italy he found out too late that the drop tank would not feed. He ended up bailing out over the water. After what it seemed like an eternity a Shagbat came to pick him up but on the way there it had taken some ground fire and was in the process of sinking. They eventually got it off and returned him home.
 
I believe a discussion on the Tu-144 is unlikely to be relevant within this thread, so I've decided to start a new thread here. Hopefully, I can explain there why the use of the nickname "Concordski" is inappropriate.
 
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