Newsgroups: rec.aviation.military
From: Bob Keeter <b_keeter@owens.ridgecrest.ca.is>
Subject: Re: More info on SAM survivability re: TWA800
Date: Sun, 28 Jul 1996 19:21:05 GMT

pierce@pat.mdc.com (Cole Pierce) wrote:
>From the nimble fingers of andy@troas.demon.co.uk (Andy D)
>>4) A military fighter that takes a SAM up the butt usually does so
>> into the afterburner. A lucky hit in the burner will wreck the
>> burner, but the actual engine and its moving parts are several feet
>> upstream of the burner can and can be left substantially intact. The
>> length of the burner can tends to isolate the engine and the rest of
>> the aircraft from the effects of the SAM. Military A/C also have
>> redundent systems that are meant to deal with partial systems outages
>> due to SAMs. Airliners don't.
>
<snip>
>
>As far as surface-launched missiles are concerned, writer Andy D
>may be correct .. the warhead is much smaller.  But in hundreds of
>missions in NVN, I heard of no jet surviving a SAM-7 hit, and it
>didn't take an afterburner to draw one in .. A-6s and A-7s don't
>have em.

Not to belittle your experiences in NVN, but unless I am greatly
mistaken, one of the "hot items" for loading on C-5s before scooting
for Israel in '73 were the tail sections of A-4s.  The Israeli's 
apparently did not have any flares aboard that were generally 
effective against SA-7s.  The missile would go straight for the
tail pipe, mangle the rear end, but leave the aircraft flyable
to RTB.  Continuous rod warheads are quite effective, but there is 
just not much that you can do with only a couple of pounds of 
rod and explosive.

In the case of a 747, the systems are just too massive for a SA-7 or
even Stinger class missile.  In all likelihood, a missile of this size
could knock out an engine, maybee even blow some holes in the
structure that could cause eventual loss due to fuel fires, 
hydraulic leaks, etc; but not catastrophic failure like this seems
to be.  Make it an SA-2, (dont know where you could possibly
theorize a launching and more importantly the lack of eye-witness
accounts!  Remember the lit up world that followed a "phone pole"
launch!?!) and you have a potential catastrophic failure!

A .22 will kill squirrels just fine, it might even take down a
bear, eventually.  Dont expect a one shot, immediate catastrophic
kill on a bear with a .22!  To catastrophically kill a 747 you
have to up the caliber a bit.  Stingers just wont do it!

Regards
bk