Well I’m sure by now most of us have read the story of the israeli F-15 landing minus-one-wing
but that one had fly-by-wire on its side…
and the one about the aerobatic airplane with a failed wing spar doing a knife-edge approach to a level-off and wing s -level landing
which turned out to be a hoax
But this thread is about neither of those. The pilot of the latter must be the same one as the British pilot of a Zlin Z526 who, back in 1971…well, I’ll let the AAIB tell the story of a hulluveflight at Hullavington:
only this one was no hoax…
Here’s the detailed story in Spanish apparentyl translated from the original in Flight International which seems to be behind a paywall.
Photo credit to the above link
And here’s his book
I think if you land fast enough, it works 
BTW the F15E onwards has fly by wire; not earlier ones. The F16 always had it.
The impressive data point of the F-15 is a G corner of 10 G and 440KIAS, losing a wing takes some doing.
Peter wrote:
BTW the F15E onwards has fly by wire; not earlier ones. The F16 always had it.
Sorry to cherry pick, but only the very last versions of F15 for Saudi Arabia, Qatar and the F-15EX for USAF have FBW
Peter wrote:
BTW the F15E onwards has fly by wire; not earlier ones
I was not aware. BUt this story is about the amazing fly-by-hand of Neil Williams. The story goes on to detail that during the roll from inverted to upright a fraction of a second before “landing” , the lower wing just scraped the grass leaving marks on the wingtip. A pity no video recording of the event is publicly available.
The reason he had to do that remarkable, unbelievably skilled feat was that he wasn’t wearing a parachute while doing competition level aerobatics. He was later killed flying a plane with minimal equipment in bad weather, along with his wife and other people on board. Link
I particularly admire skilled people but as the saying goes, it’s also good to use your superior judgment to ensure that you don’t have to use your superior skill.
Silvaire wrote:
he wasn’t wearing a parachute while doing competition level aerobatics
Very true. Any idea as to the reasoning for not wearing? I have only a few hours of aeros training in a Yak-52 and our instructor (the late and great Vytas Lapenas ) always insisted on wearing one.
I’m not sure why he wasn’t wearing a parachute. From what I’ve read (only) it may not have been universal for aerobatics at that time and place.
Zlin (the plane’s manufacturer) then seems to have become really focused on structural failure, with gas pressurized wing spar, very conservative and mandatory life limits and ADs on later designs. I first read about William’s incident while studying some of this.
