@“Rod Knox” , people are more likely to walk away from a crash in a modern car because the front end sheet metal is thin. It’s meant to deform in a crassh so that your ribs may not.
That Hawaiian airline convertible was a freak accident. The engineers designed the 737’s skin in multiple sections so that only a small piece would get torn off and the plane would depressurize and lower the stress throughout the plane. This happened with quite a few Southwest airlines 737s a few years ago. In the Hawaiian airline incident, a flight attendant happened to stand beneath the hole and she got sucked into the hole and plugged it. A lot of pressurized air that’s on its way out of the hole was suddenly trapped and it hammered out a big section of the roof along with the flight attendant.
This is why the FAA fined Southwest for not tearing off the trimmings to inspect the bare metal when they were supposed to. Aluminum airplanes can fly for decades until the airline decides that it would cost too much money and manpower to tear them apart then put it back together, not because fatigued parts cannot not be replaced
sgtrock21, F-14 Tomcats were built by Grumman Aerospace Corporation, not Grumman Iron Works. Grumman Iron Works was a nickname for Grumman Aerospace because they built everything so tough. I’ve see Tomcats return that were hit by rockets over Beruit and flew the next day.
I’ve seen handlers lose control of a Tomcat on the flight deck and crash it into another aircraft, the other AC totaled, no damage to the Tomcat. We had a test pilot in the squadron that “accidently” pulled 12.5 G’s one day and yeah it popped some rivets, but the hammer slammers put in new rivets and it flew later in the day.
But the best example I saw was when a rouge wave suddenly lifted the rear of the carrier just a Tomcat was approaching and the pretty kitty slammed into the round down where it was almost vertical. There were skid marks all the way up the round down (thats the back of the aircraft carrier where the flight deck is rounded down the back). It ripped the fairings (the bottom of the aircraft under the engines) and the afterburners off the plane, but the pilot got airborne and as the engines were self destructing, he managed to glide to a nearby island and land.
A crew from the ship were sent to the island with a new pair of engines and swapped them out. Two days later, it flew back and landed on the ship. It took another week for the new fairings to arrive and then the plane was put back into the regular flight schedule and finished the cruise. Any other aircraft would have been destroyed and the aircrew along with some of the flight deck personal would have died with that type of accident.
The Tomcats primary mission was to shoot down bomber equipped with cruise missiles. That required a very powerful radar and a very long range missile (the AIM-54 Phoenix with a 100 mile range). Since the fall of the USSR and the cold war, that mission disappeared.
When it was developed, the F-14 actually had state of the art electronics, the first ever CPU was developed for this plane, but over the years, all the electronics became obsolete and out of production so maintaining the aircraft became very expensive. Some updates were done but with the development of advanced medium range missiles, the F-14 just could not compete on a bang for the buck with the F/A-18.
And now they are developing the F-35. Despite all the negative press on it, it is going to be one heck of a airplane. The F-14 got a lot of bad press in its development period as well, but its never lost a dog fight in a real battle.
BTW, the Tomcats were not mothballed, as soon as they got to Arizona, the were chopped up and shredded. This was done because the Iranian Air Force still flies them and we were afraid that their spies would steal parts from the mothballed planes to keep theirs flying. A few parts were actually stolen at first and got into Iranian hands.
To this day, our own Navy fighters will not take on an Iranian F-14, no one will. We don’t know what capabilities they still have, for all we know they might just be flying shells with no weapons capability, but no one want to find out.
Steel is a lot easier to fabricate into body panels. Most car makers will stay with it as long as possible…they will mess with " coatings" to slow rust down but that is not a big focus for them. It’s the weight. All metal, even aluminum is subject to corrosion but making cars whose body lasted 20 years would not be good for business. A little more chromium could be added to steel to give it significantly more rust resistance. But then, that might cost a few dollars more per truck to make. I have sailed boats for years in fresh and salt water…aluminum can corrode faster then stainless steel of high quality. There are no magic metals.
We also had a chance to sail on the 12 meter yacht Stars and Stripes which is all aluminum. And yes, it is painted like the top sides of cruise ships, also of aluminum, to keep from corroding.
aluminum doesn’t rust but it will oxidize
There are terms dealing with metals that we use synonymously … We think of rust as it applies to iron and steel and have even declared it a " color’ but it is still oxidization like that of aluminum. So the CYA word for both is corrode. When aluminum oxidizes, it just does not look “rust colored”. , it just looks like crapola.
The idea of making plastic areas prone to rust has merit in cars. Even though cars and trucks a
May have lots of metal, only certain areas are most prone to rust in the rust belt. : rocker panels, fender liners etc, so having plastic in these areas does make sense. @“Rod Knox” the idea of trading a car when rust appears is too late. They will give you little or nothing for it. If you can prevent it from rusting to begin with, which I can, you can save lots if money trade in time. But it’s a top secret and it I tell anyone, the car companies will be upset.
Based on your question, there are two considerations out of many:
The aluminum won’t rust but it is subject to metal fatigue (so is steel), and the steel frame and other steel suspension parts can rust.
Besides the steel pieces, other components like plastic or rubber can oxidize and corrode, so you still have to be careful with salt, moisture, and general wear and tear.
As fuel economy requirements go up, manufacturers are using lighter parts and lighter construction. You’d think this would make cars less durable and less safe, but crash testing, insurance fatality experience, and repair records indicate otherwise. Cars seem to be getting more expensive to repair, though.
That was with the later models with the GE engines. The F-14 was designed to use the P&W F100 engine, the same one in the F-15 ad F-16, but one guy in NAVAIR didn’t like P&W and was able to block the Tomcat from getting this engine. The GE engine was shorter so it sat back further from the intake. The high G spins were the result of the asymmetric thrust caused when one of them flamed out and the wide spacing of them, not the electronics.
, it just looks like crapola.