A few months ago, the talk of the internet was a YouTube video of a stunt plane that lost a wing in flight and nevertheless managed to land safely. Many people in many countries sent me this video; the subject lines of the first few e-mails, which came from pilots, tended to marvel at the display of coolness and flying skill. The next wave, which came from nonpilot friends, displayed a more robust skepticism: Is this really possible?
My own first reaction on seeing the video was that it was a fake, not only because I strongly doubted that the maneuver was even possible, but also because of internal evidence. The wing broke at the wrong time, during a low-G maneuver. The exclamations of onlookers, heard in the background, don’t have quite the tone of fascinated dismay that the spectacle of the imminent death of a human being usually evokes. The airplane lands right in front of the camera — already a suspicious detail, since unexpected and freakish occurrences seldom allow for ideal camera placement — and the dynamics of its landing are unrealistic. The airplane seems to have almost no momentum, but just bounces sharply once and stops. It just looks like a model, the way ships being tossed by storms at sea in old movies look like toy ships.
