JP,

TWA ordered their Boeing's that way because of one old fart who decided he knew more than the folks that built the plane in the first place.

The overhead panel was considered a vertical panel, thus to turn on something, you flipped the switch up. That's the long and short of it. This carried through to the F/E panel which as you may remember had the A/C panel also upside down. Same stupid idea. It drove me nuts as a F/E because we had leased planes from National and Northeast that were normal Boeing planes.

Now it gets fun...

When the L-1011 came along, it had as standard equipment, a third horizon located just to the right of the Captains instrument panel. It was included in this new plane because of the United 727 that crashed with loss of horizons because of A/C power loss. The third, or stand-by horizon was battery powered. Well this same old fool said TWA did not need such an instrument and told Lockheed to take it out. They did at a cost of some large dollars.

When the L-1011 came on-line, the FAA said that ALL planes will have a stand-by horizon. TWA told Lockheed to put back the 3rd horizon. Lockheed said OK, but that will cost X amount of dollars.  :D

So now you have the rest of the story...

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Bruce,

As for Hoot, he got a bad rap because the FAA (and Boeing) tried to blame him for the event that made plane # 7831 go supersonic over DTW during an event that is very complex, but I think was caused by a bad A-system rudder actuator.

As an instructor in the 727 both as F/E check airman and Captain check airman, we were aware of many problems with un-commanded rudder movements on Boeing planes. This was the Toyota of the air at that time. You may remember a United 737 crash at COS that they tried to blame on the crew. All the airlines had events of some sort with the rudder on various Boeing planes. It was not until the USAir crash near PIT that it came to a head. All the actuators were changed and the problem went away.

For Hoot that night over DTW here is what I think the chain of events were...

They were at FL390, maybe a bit heavy, but the -100 was better than the -200 at being high and heavy. The plane was on autopilot and the crew noticed the yoke was commanding a turn. Remember that this was a early 60's plane with a dumb autopilot. The autopilot had only 2 channels - roll and pitch. The 727 was the most swept wing plane in the airlines and was prone to dutch roll. High and fast were not good when you had dutch roll. The 727 had 2 yaw dampers and needed them big time. If you lost one damper you descended RIGHT NOW into thicker air and slowed down, because loss of the second damper made for an interesting ride, the industry called a hull loss!

So here is old Hoot at FL-390 or 410 in a 727 and guess what... they get an un-commanded rudder input. From the transcript it was a wild ride indeed. The A rudder goes hard to one side. The autopilot sees the yaw and counters with aileron input. After a certain amount of aileron, the 727 adds spoiler to the up aileron to counter adverse yaw. The device that controlled the mix of aileron and spoiler was called the "aileron mixer spoiler ratio changer." In any event at high altitude the last thing these folks needed was spoilers to add drag. The autopilot had the yoke full over to try and maintain heading. The buffet from the spoilers was intense. Imagine, looking at the yoke full to one side, the shaking and buffet, and trying to understand what was going on!

The pilot's first move was to disconnect the autopilot. When you disconnect the autopilot, the wheel which was holding full aileron to counter yaw, went to neutral - RIGHT NOW! Remember the A, or lower rudder ( the 727 has a split rudder - A, bottom and B, upper) was hard to one side. With the aileron returned to neutral the rudder caused the plane to yaw, which resulted in a roll and spiral as the nose fell. Airspeed built up very fast and as JP will remember the 727 was very noisy in the cockpit above 300 kts IAS.

Now the plane was in a steep spiral dive building speed. As the plane passed Mach .90 the noise was so loud that voice was unusable. Soon, old #7831 went through Mach 1.0 in a tight spiral heading for the ground. The F/O pointed to the gear handle to try to slow the beast down. Hoot pointed his hand down! As the gear extended, above Mach 1, the gear door departed the aircraft.

The main gear, as it extends normally has a rearward movement. The gear came out into the Mach 1+ air and moved aft with such force that it ripped the drag brace from the spar. The A system hydraulic line was broken and A system pressure was lost. The loss of A system ended the rudder hard over and the turn stopped. The plane was still in a steep dive at Mach 1+ and the ground was coming up fast. As the crew pulled the nose up to end the dive one of the right wing leading edge slats, whose up-lock had failed, extended into the fast air and departed the plane. This was moot since A system was lost anyway and a landing without leading edge flaps and slats was the least of their worries.

The plane landed in DTW and as you can guess there was a lot of laundry to do during post flight! The FAA and Boeing (deep pockets) tried to say the event was caused by the pilots extending trailing edge flaps to make lift at high altitude. They claimed the slat was lost because of this crew action. Nobody that flew the 727 believed that. After many years of careful exam of the FDR and the trail of evidence of parts falling off the plane, it was shown that the slat was shed at the end of the event, not the beginning.

Years later, old #7831 was based in Berlin, where I logged many hours in this -100. The plane had all sorts of plates to re-enforce the left wing and it flew a bit bent, but it flew on.

Maybe a bit more history than you needed about Hoot, but there you have it.

Lou