Incredible Photoshopped Image

[Black Aeronaut]

Last week someone on my ship sent out a group of photos for moral purposes. You know, the whole, "You think you've had a bad day? Check this
out!" thing. The one that caught my attention the most was a picture of the tail section of an Air Canada 747 disintegrating on landing.

Now, I would have thought we would all have heard something about this event, even if the plane had no passengers on board at the time. So, I did a quick
little google and came up with this result.

The image was a photoshop job. The reason why it looked so real, though, was because stock footage of an actual 747-100 being blown to pieces was used and
super-imposed on the AC 747, and quite excellently, too. Check it out!

[Logan Darklighter]

Huh! Yeah, I gotta hand it to the photoshopper. That was some good work there. I would've been fooled without foreknowledge.

[Bob Schroeck]

Oh yeah, very impressive...
-- Bob
---------
Then the horns kicked in...
...and my shoes began to squeak.

[robkelk]

Good photoshopping, spoiled by a bad writeup.

("No real fire as plane carrying very minimum fuel load." So there were enough fumes in the tanks that the bird shoud have exploded on impact?)

Ah, well. Maybe they did that on purpose to show the image was fake...
--
Rob Kelk
"Governments have no right to question the loyalty of those who oppose
them. Adversaries remain citizens of the same state, common subjects of
the same sovereign, servants of the same law."

- Michael Ignatieff, addressing Stanford University in 2012

[Black Aeronaut]

The thing with jetfuel is that it tends to be chemically similar to diesel. Only it's even harder to light than diesel usually is. The compressor stage
of jet engines achieves a greater degree of compression than that of a reciprocal cylinder diesel engine. You can throw a lit match onto a vat of the stuff
and it won't catch - it'd take something more like an acetalyne torch. Trust me, I live on a ship that's loaded with the stuff - Arleigh
Burke-class DDGs run off four gas turbines for motive power and three aux. turbines for electrical power.

Also, even if there were fumes present, they'd just flash and that would be that - a bit of explosive force, some fire, but nothing that would last long.

[Norgarth]

You ever see the Mythbusters ep where they test the 'burning trail of fuel' movie myth? Even useing a blowtorch they couldn't get diesel or jetfuel
to burn along the trail.
___________________________
"I've always wanted to be somebody, but I should have been more specific." - George Carlin

[Cobalt Greywalker]

Um... Not quite. The fuel used on airliners is the same (mostly) as that used in military jets. The problem comes from the fact the airliners are bigger. There has been at least one mid-air disintegration of a passenger jet due to fumes igniting in a mostly empty tank, and the major limit of safety for airliners is the fact they carry their fuel in their wings (and between) for efficiency. Crashes WILL break the tanks open (flexible, very tough tanks have been tried to no effect), and that causes the fuel to disperse aerosol-like. Which makes it very easy to ignite.
Trying to make the fuel less likely to ignite uncontrolled has pretty much resulted in failure. Making the fuel less likely to vaporise just made it more likely to stick to surfaces and ignite there.

Going by the picture, I'd have expected a big boom about then or within at most three-ish seconds. If it was real of course.

[Black Aeronaut]

Atomization is one reliable method of making this stuff combustable as all hell. On the way to Russia we had a fuel line feeding No. 3 Generator spring a leak,
spraying JP-5 in a fine mist all over the compartment. Fortunately, all the appropriate procedures were followed and there was no fire, but it was still a very
tense situation.