Velocity, Detour, Part 2

Grumman EA-6B Prowler

Rocky Humbert found a story by the New York Times that contains a brief description of the damage that the Prowler aircraft suffered when it cut the gondola cable in Italy 11 years ago. Thanks, Rocky! The story also contains a place for a picture, but there is no picture, only a description of what the picture shows, and the aircraft is not in it. I imagine the military has a bunch of photos, but no telling where they are. (This picture is of a similar aircraft, not the one involved in this incident).

So we have a report that there was damage to the aircraft, so maybe it did happen as they say and it wasn't the North Koreans or the Mafia. That airplane wing must be made out of some pretty tough stuff. Well, it is a military aircraft, they do have have hardpoints on the wings to carry things like bombs and stuff, and it has folding wings so, okay, the wing was tough enough to hang on until the cable broke. Still, I wonder about just how the cable broke. It's going to be under considerable tension. I imagine the cable itself weighs a few tons, and then we have the gondola hanging from it, which adds more tension. Now we strike the cable with an aircraft wing traveling 500 MPH, which is like 750 FPS (feet per second). The cable must have parted almost instantaneously. If it had held on for more than a couple of milliseconds, the airplane would have slewed around and probably crashed. I don't think the cable was cut so much as it just snapped. Hitting the cable must have increased the tension on the cable to the point that it failed.

Of course, I could be all wet. There may be an internal structure in the wing that acted like an ax blade and severed the cable.

Update January 2017 replaced missing picture.