WASHINGTON — The mail run started out as routine as a flight can be over Baghdad — until, at 8,000 feet a missile slammed into the left-wing fuel tank.

As part of the wing melted in the flames, the hydraulic system drained of fluid. The three DHL Airways cargo pilots, all longtime veterans who had volunteered for duty in the combat zone, were several thousand feet above the Iraqi desert with no flight controls and — even if they could somehow make it back to Baghdad International Airport — only minimal braking ability.

There was only one option left. The engine thrust controls still worked, and fuel tanks on the other wing were intact. The missile had just missed the left engine, and luckily the fuel lines to it from other tanks remained intact. As damaged as it was, much of the left wing retained its aerodynamic shape, providing enough lift to stay in the air.

So, for 16 anxious minutes, the pilots used the only tool they had, turning the thrust on and off to each engine to crudely steer the Airbus A300 jet. More fuel to the left engine to turn right. More fuel to the right engine to turn left. Reduce the fuel to descend. Give more fuel to climb. It was the same technique that Capt. Al Haynes used in 1989 to bring in crippled United Airlines Flight 232 DC-10 at Sioux City, Iowa, for a crash landing that saved 184 lives.

Figuring out the "asymmetric thrust" technique as they went along, the DHL pilots became so confident that they actually aborted one landing. They apparently were not satisfied with how they were lined up on the runway. Then they went around and approached the runway again, knowing they had no way to steer on the ground and only the thrust reversers on the engines to slow them down.

They effectively became helpless passengers as the plane shot down the runway and veered to the left for more than 600 yards. Sand howling around them, they blasted through a razor-wire fence to a sandy slope between the runway and the taxiway.

The soft sand acted as a pretty good braking system.

The DHL incident, which occurred on Nov. 22, was noted at the time as the first confirmed case of a hand-held surface-to-air missile hitting a wide-body civilian jet. What wasn’t known at the time was the crew’s feat of airmanship, described by investigators this week as "fantastic." The only injury occurred when one of the pilots was cut on a piece of razor wire while evacuating the plane on the ground.

Once investigators had a chance to examine the plane, they were struck with how close the wing came to burning off. One of the two spars running through the wing, a main structural support, was burned completely away. The ribs that provide the structural integrity of the fuel tank were at least half-burned away.

And if the pilots had chosen the parallel runway to their right rather than the one they chose, and the plane had veered to the left in the same fashion, sources said it would have rammed right through the airport fire station.

"This is just a phenomenal feat," Thompson said. "I certainly wouldn’t dispute that they flew an unflyable plane."