Would it be better for a plane to loose a wing or the rudder?

Question

Would it be better for a plane to loose a wing or the rudder?

Answer 1

The rudder! A pilot without his rudder would just use the ailerons to fly his plane; however, without a wing, there would be VERY uneven lift and a crash would be inevitable~

Answer 2

Rudder.

Answer 3

Surely you jest.

Answer 4

I asked my friend who is a licensed pilot and he said that a plane can still fly after losing a rudder, just not very well or for very long.  You're pretty much screwed if you're in a plane when it loses its wing, cus you will crash

Answer 5

Let's see....

A rudder is for turning, even though you could still turn by banking with the ailerons.

The wing(s) keep ya in the air!

Answer 6

A friend recently lost his rudder after a "minor" mid-air with another aircraft. He continued his flight without major incident. He did not return to the airport where he had just taken off from as there was a moderate crosswind. His reasoning was that without the rudder he could still fly relatively straight but it would have been difficult to land in a crosswind without the cross control available from having a rudder. So he continued on to where the wind was more or less straight down the runway at a nearby airport.

Answer 7

Losing the rudder would give me a higher chance of survival. The rudder, a vertical platform at the tail section of the plane allows your aircraft to YAW. Which is usually used during turns to keep the A/C balanced. In which we call, 'balls in center'. Where a wing has AILERONS, which causes the plane to roll right or left.

Now, each of the control surfaces has a secondary effect. For the rudder, if u continue a YAW lets say to the right, your left wing will travel at a higher speed than your left wing, and this consitutes to a roll to the right. In which if you are without a wing. U are going to plunge.

For losing a wing, you lose LIFT totally on one side of the aircaft. This immedately lifts the existing wing upwards and your aircraft will be in a spiral as well. Once a American F15 had a mid-air collision and loses a wing, he only managed to RTB because its a powerful jet which provides humongous thrust and also it has large surfaces, both on its belly as well as its tail section. Which, is merely an impossible task for any other aircraft due to it not having enough THRUST or SURFACE AREA to provide the lift.

Therefore i conclude that losing a rudder would be bad. But a wing would only mean 'EJECT EJECT'. =]

Answer 8

Rudder.  You can compensate for the lack of yaw authority by other means, assuming your day is not too bad in other regards...

Answer 9

The rudder is just a movable panel on the vertical stabilizer. Without it, turning id difficult and it is harder to keep the plane stable left to right. It would still be possible to fly, just very difficult. Without one wing, the plane has no balance at all. It'll begin to roll uncontrollably. It might be possible to fly with a heavily damaged or missing wing in a few fighters that have large enough control surfaces to allow some compensation, but even in those aircraft you'd be lucky. There's no chance in veirtually any aircraft. You can compare it to attempting to drive a car with two wheels taken off. You're not going anywhere.

Answer 10

the rudder, the rudder just keeps it straight and flat.

if a plane looses a wing it will go spiraling down, just like in the movies

Answer 11

Of course if you meant aileron rather than wing, I would rather keep the rudder

Answer 12

If you mean just the rudder than yes, I rather loose that, but if you mean the whole vertical stabilizer or a wing than it doesn't really matter, you are going down.

Answer 13

Loosing the rudder would be better because you might still be able to land the airplane without it. You just would be limited to where. Also, the fuel is in the wing and you would be in really bad shape if you lost that.

Answer 14

Before a rudder and after the wings, of course!

Answer 15

Check this out. For a really cool exception to the rule. Let's you get an idea of why our jets cost so much.

http://www.strangemilitary.com/images/co...

Answer 16

Generally a rudder

In most cases if a plane loses a wing you're pretty well f*cked. Although an F-15 did lose a wing, and still made it safely back to base.. sturdy machines (there is a video on youtube)