Joseph Mallord William Turner The fighting Temeraire tugged to her last berth to be broken up painting

Joseph Mallord William Turner The fighting Temeraire tugged to her last berth to be broken up paintingJoseph Mallord William Turner The Burning of the Houses of Parliament paintingJoseph Mallord William Turner Moonlight A Study at Millbank painting
able to account for it. The design of the wings has no detectable fault; their failure must be caused by an as yet unidentified physical or psychological factor, an incompatibility of the alar processes with the rest of the body. Unfortunately no weakness shows up beforehand; there is no way to predict wing failure. It occurs without warning. A flier who has flown his entire without a shadow of trouble takes off one morning and, having attained altitude, suddenly, appallingly, finds his wings will not obey him—they are shuddering, closing, clapping down along his sides, paralysed. And he falls from the sky like a stone.
The medical literature states that as many as one flight in twenty ends in failure. Fliers I talked to believe that wing failure is not nearly as frequent as that, citing cases of people who have flown daily for decades. But it is not a matter they want to talk about with me, or perhaps even with one another