Remarkably, the praise came only a month after the crash of a 747 in Japan that killed 520 people and became the deadliest single-aircraft accident ever, surpassing the grim record set by the DC-10 a decade earlier. A half hour into a short domestic flight, the plane’s vertical fin had ruptured, and it plowed into a mountain ridge. Speculation began swirling that the skins of the giant planes were vulnerable to fatigue, the dreaded issue that had ruined the reputation of De Havilland’s Comet thirty years earlier. Wilson at the time was handing authority over the company to a genial lawyer from
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