Fatal plane crash mystery

Mobile Register ^ | 04/14/04 | joe danborn

[My Dog Likes Me]

Federal investigators have determined that a single-engine delivery plane that crashed into Big Bateau Bay on Oct. 23, 2002, slammed into something 3,000 feet above the Mobile-Tensaw Delta moments earlier - they're just not sure what it was.

The highly unusual NTSB account points to unidentified red marks on the severely damaged nose and front belly of the plane as evidence that it hit another object in the air...

[VadeRetro]

Maybe it hit the Columbian Express drug flight to Mena.

[jrushing]

I find it hard to believe the Navy fires cruise missiles that fly over populated areas (except in Iraq). They usually "test" cruise missiles in desert areas.

I found it hard to believe also but that's what I read. At the time, that was the fastest growing county in Alabama.

[XBob]

thanks for the ping LP, but for this one, I think you better ping Mulder for the X-Files.

[Cold Heat]

You mean like the red stuff on the seats of Flight 800?

Could be?

[My Dog Likes Me]

Not very close to Arkansas. It happened near Mobile.

[Smokin' Joe]

Maybe the plane was headed south on a pickup run..

[My Dog Likes Me]

Great link on the Cessna Caravan. Looks like a reliable workhorse.

[My Dog Likes Me]

You're right. It was a UFO, technically. That's why I made the X-Files remark.

Whatever it hit cracked the engine block in half, which they point out is very unusual.

This is a weird, tragic story.

[My Dog Likes Me]

You mean there are more? Stranger than this?

Yipes.

[leadpenny]

Thanks for taking a look and welcome to FreeRepublic. Something fairly substantial hit that airplane. What amazes me is that after an exhaustive search of the debris area, only parts of the Cessna, and maybe red paint and a piece of metal embedded in the wing from whatever hit it, were found. Also, the experienced pilot obviously saw something before impact.

[lawgirl]

Someone cue the X-Files music. A piece of unidentifiable material lodged in the wing? The enging shattered in two? This reminds me of that footage of that fighter jet disintegrating into the wall of concrete that protects nuclear stuff. He hit something hard and it wasn't another plane. Freaky.

[okie01]

Don't we have a data base of kinds of paint?...Do we have international types of paint?

You're assuming it was "paint".
Best to think of it as "material".

[Erik Latranyi]

I'm wondering if our gov't is following cargo jets with UAV's and this is the resultant collision.

It is known that cargo jets (like the FedEx DC-10 in the story) are one of the most vunerable to terrorist use as the crew size is small and security is not the same as for passenger flights.

Using UAV's to follow jets requires less fatigue than using manned fighter jets.

I am familiar with the Valentich case. Very strange and given the communications in this case versus the communications in the Valentich case.

I am convinced that TWA 800 was a terrorist act covered up for political purposes (election year). I live in Williamsport, PA which is right next door to Montoursville, PA where so many high school kids lost their lives on a trip to France on TWA 800. Those families are still anguished to this day because the facts do not add up to the cause. They could understand terrorism, but the mechanical cause does not fit the facts as known. Their lives are a daily agony.

[hgro]

Art Bell has lost his edge and his audience in the midwest on weekends with the loozzer guests he keeps having on the program. Too bad.

[commish]

Target drones are routinely painted red

And are used quite frequently at Pensacola NAS, which is only 30 or 40 miles from Mobile Airport.

Pensacola drones are usually launched out over the gulf though, maybe one went astray and the Navy ain't fessin up?