Can anyone explain how an F15 can fly/land with 1 wing?

To me it looks like there was still some of thw wing left on that side... It may or may not have been producing a very small amount of lift. Other than that, one hell of a pilot.
Just an assumption though.
 
Extreme thrust to lift ratio or lift coming from the body??

maintain directional control, pitch, attitude, and airspeed, mixture, props....oh wait, never mind.....Left rudder, left rudder, left rudder!

It is a pretty kick ass airplane, a quick google search shows that first flight was 27 July 1972 with the introduction being in January of 1976. I wonder if something like this is what has kept it flying longer than the F-14. Of course the F-14 may have been a more expensive aircraft to maintain or it may just be that the Air Force can do stuff like that.
 
The intake was acting as a lifting body along with a crap load of thrust.

Google lifting bodies and how they work for a better explanation than I could give.
 
Additionally, you don't need wings to fly; just look at a rocket. It is, in fact, possible to create as large of a lift vector as is necessary to sustain flight using nothing more than thrust.

The F-15 has a huge amount of thrust.
 
Like everyone has basically said, if you strap a big enough engine to something it will fly.
 
The way it was explained to us in our inital upgrade training was that the lifting action of the main fuselage area, as well as the very large horizontal stabs and two rudders (that were able to counter the massive roll moment), were what allowed the airplane to keep flying with some semblance of directional control.

Just one of the things that gave me a lot of confidence when flying the Eagle. Reminded me a lot of photos of B-17s flying home with MASSIVE amounts of battle damage during WWII.
 
My old man told me, "Put a big enough engine on a barn door, and it'll fly." (said to me while working on the Starship 2000 project)
 
IIRC the F-14 is about a decade older than the F-14. The F-14 near the end of it's life required nearly 8-10 hours of mx for every hour it flew. The F-15 hasn't gotten that bad yet. The F-14 also older systems and the automatic Wing Sweep system. Sad to see it go. She was a freaking awesome plane and they probably could have gotten another 10 years out of it if they wanted to to put the money into it. It also didn't do well as a multi-role platform. The "bombcat" was exactly a success with the bomb rattling in flight.
 
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