Page 2 - Down Dont Work News Today : Breaking News, Live Updates & Top Stories | Vimarsana

Everything seemed normal to me. i reached down to get my shoes, and as i was about to grab them, there was a great thump, and i thought oh, we've landed earlier than expected. initial contact with the ground itself and the passengers were really surprised, just a firm one, and -- >> at first, remarkably small doesn't even realized they have crashed, but as the 747 careens out of control and starts breaking apart, the horror of the situation becomes clear. >> the shaking of the aircraft got worse and worse to the point where you couldn't control your body. we were just like rag dolls being thra...

Thick black smoke. the nose of the plane, which contains the cockpit, is crushed beyond recognition. the pilots are presumed dead. incredibly, all four are alive but injured. this photo captures first responders talking to the crew. >> they don't just start cutting. they got to size it up because with all the wire bundles and all of that sheet metal and very small compact environment, you could actually inflict greater harm or injury to those occupants trying to rescue them. >> of 296 passengers and crew, 112 are killed, including 11 children. one of them is a lap child without a paid seat. >>...

The minute the door opened the atmosphere just hit me full force. it was like oh, no, this isn't an emergency. it's a [ bleep ] crisis. >> the situation is grave. the plane has lost all of its hydraulic fluid. >> hydraulics in a modern large jet airplane is the lifeblood of the airplane. it is how you physically move the flight controls. it provides the muscle to move these very large surfaces against very fast moving air in a controlled manner. >> we were keeping an ear, i'll put it that way. control, no. we were just trying to keep it flying. it was doing what it wanted to do. >> in the mids...

The fan disc had separated from the engine core and created shrapnel taking large chunks out of the horizontal stabilizer. in the second picture you can actually see the back side of the engine where the fan disc actually came out. >> by november 1990, 15 months after the crash, the ntsb pieces together what happened to united 232. over a farm in alta, iowa, the fan's fan disc imploded with calamitous results for the plane's hydraulics, the life blood of the jet. >> it sent shrapnel going in a multitude of directions, and it just happened that the shrapnel ended up cutting lines to all three s...

Hour? it's russian roulette. >> in the wake of the crash, the questions began immediately. how could this plane with its clean safety record suffer such a catastrophic failure in flight? right away there are some key clues. at the accident scene, a critical component called the fan disc is missing from the number two engine. it isn't found until three months later in a field 70 miles away in alta, iowa. that's where the plane experienced that initial violent jolt. these photos taken by a witness on the ground as united 232 was about to slam into the runway also provide investigators with criti...