Amazing Interview: Air Force General says "Sub Launched Missile, 100% Certain"

Fox News Interview with Air Force General Tom McInerney | November 14th 2010 | Fox News Hannity Interview

[DontTreadOnMe2009]

Hannity was surprised to hear a famous ex Air Force General tell him “That Is A Missile, Shot From A Submarine!” I quote retired Air Force Lieutenant General Tom McInerney (ex commander of 11th Air Force in Alaska) “I spent 35 years flying fighters, and you can see the guidance system kick in, I have watched that film 10 times, I am absolutely certain that that is not an aircraft, but a sub launch ICBM missile!!!” See the video and judge his words for yourself. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LivRJOWrcpA&feature=player_embedded#! I will next post a clickable link.

[Finny]

You really do live in Missouri, don’t you? Wow.

[TigersEye]

Yep, that settles it. White reflects in the setting sun like a thousand gigawatt arc welder. /s

[TigersEye]

...until somebody went to the trouble of posting an actual photo of the kind of US Air plane that would be making the Hawaii-Phoenix flight, and it had a dark blue belly.

That would be me. Lots of people were talking about how shiny a silver plane is so I found a pic of the jet used for flight 808. Now that meme is gone and it's a white plane and 808 is history.

But even if these planes were reflecting aluminum, it would not explain the absence of clear space immediately behind twin airline contrails from engines on both sides of the fuselage that cools before those twin contrails fatten up and then merge into one.

That's true too. I have seen the sun reflect off of many silver airliners and it makes a nice crisp bright white reflection even in sunset/sunrise conditions. A very small point of light that isn't sustained because the jet quickly moves out of an angle that directs it to one point on the ground.

[TXnMA]

Commonly called, "heat lightning" out on the plains. Originates in thunderstorms just over the horizon or obscured by a horizon cloud bank. Very frustrating when you're in a prolonged drought...

Most I remember seeing were, indeed, on clear, dry, cloudless summer evenings. And, yes, it can be surprisingly bright.

[Finny]

A very small point of light that isn't sustained because the jet quickly moves out of an angle that directs it to one point on the ground.

Yep. It's why someone relying on still shots as evidence in a contrail-looks-like-a-missile argument, lacks swaying power from the start.

[Yaelle]

True dat.

I am out every day now looking for another one of these. Nothing to report.

[TXnMA]

All the evidence points to it being a commercial airliner.

"I have yet to see it."

~~~~~~~~~~~

Have you honestly looked? Try http://contrailscience.com.

There (in addition to a photo showing why an overhead flight appears to be climbing straight up) you will find time-lapse stills and 3-D Google Earth plots of the flight path(s) of the specific UPS (and AWE) flights that crossed that airspace that day in that time window. The flight path(s) exactly match plane positions in the time lapse photos of the "missile" phenomenon.

It is up to you and your integrity to view all the evidence with an open mind.

BTW, "Looks like a missile to me" is not evidence...

And the cameraman need not be a liar -- just misinterpreting a normal phenomenon -- like a lot of the "missile hopeful" here...

[Quix]

TC,

That’s a LOT of related experience piling up on the other side . . .

[Gondring]

Your sarcasm is noted.

And without sarcasm, it would read: “The setting sun reflects off highly reflective aircraft finish (regardless of color) like a thousand gigawatt arc welder.”

[TigersEye]

Your sarcasm is noted.

So you can recognize some things for what they are!?! lol

[The Comedian]

That’s a LOT of related experience piling up on the other side . . .

And yet, not a single shred of evidence supporting these opinions, nor a single refutation of any of the data proving it was a commercial flight (or that UPS has a submarine-launched ballistic missile launching platform that they are using to deliver packages).

Not a single one.

An "expert's" opinion, unsupported with facts, is just an opinion, not an argument. And since I'm allergic to deferral to authority, I need facts to influence my opinion.

And before anyone posts another response on this thread, certain in the falsehood that this was a missile, *please* go read this: http://contrailscience.com/

Frowning takes 68 muscles.
Smiling takes 6.
Pulling this trigger takes 2.
I'm lazy.

[TigersEye]

BTW, "Looks like a missile to me" is not evidence...

Being a video of the event in question makes it a thousand times better evidence than that silly display at contrailscience.com.

[Finny]

Just spent quite a bit of time reviewing the still-shots taken from the balcony in Long Beach and the fascinating time lapses. Compared them side-by-side with the moving video by jumping back and forth in windows on my computer.

The angle and light direction of the still shots and its location perspective to the video don't jive as being of the same event. In particular, the glow of afterburner is all wrong in this moving video for light supposedly reflected on the bottom of an in-bound airliner. The video shows something moving north-northwest very quickly.

Nor do I recall hearing the cameraman say anything about how the object detached from the contrail and continued on its way.

Look, the contrailscience info is impressive and geeky. But it looks suspicious to me. You believe what you want to believe. I personally understand that what I want to believe doesn't always jive with what I feel compelled to conclude in the context of personal observation, experience, and perusal of speculation made by a wide group of people.

[D-fendr]

Here is my first photo that I asked everyone about: Tell me, do you really think that this is an airliner and not a missile launch

Yes. Same thing as was shot the same time the next day:

And quite similar to this one taken a year earlier.

And one the day after in NY or Wichita...

It's not that uncommon.

What would be odd is if an ICBM were launched 30 miles from a city of ten million and almost no one noticed. That alone makes the missile theory extremely weak.

[mvpel]

I am out every day now looking for another one of these. Nothing to report.

I saw one this afternoon. Looked like it launched from a secret missile base in Vermont. What's more, I saw it just as I was passing the facilities of defense contractor BAE Systems. Coincidence?? I think not!! I didn't have my camera with me, darn it all. I did catch another one later that afternoon, again apparently from some Vermont launch site. Those hippies over there must be really pissed about the Republican landslide in Concord.

[TXnMA]

Thanks for taking a look at that additional evidence. I agree that those four time-lapse frames are fascinating.

I hadn't noticed the mismatch you noted of the static-view lighting vs the video, but I had noticed that in the multi-frames, the path veers to the left of the viewer, whereas in the news video it veers to the right. That viewpoint difference relative to the sun would make a big difference in lighting.

I *think* the difference is that the incoming plane passed to the right (north) of the helicopter -- and to the left (south) of the stationary cameraman. I have been thinking about depicting those "apparent curvature" effects graphically. If I come up with anything, I'll post it on FR and ping you.

I'm also working on a color-gradient image of the sunset sky light -- grading from gray at the shadowed surface thru red, then orange , gold, and white as you progress upward into straight sunlight. (Or the reverse as you move from high altitude down to land.)

~~~~~~~~~

There are several striking things about that set of four superimposed stills. In the first, narrow-view set, notice that the right half of the sky and the rightmost (earliest) contrail are bright. I interpret that as showing where the earth's shadow passed across the sky. (The earliest contrail was still in full sunlight.)

In the other three frames, the shadow line had moved up and to the west, and the contrail was shadowed and only illuminated by red-shifted "sunset light" diffracted through the bulk of the atmosphere. (There is a good chance that auto-exposure compensation masked this effect in the video.) [I wonder if one could photograph that shadow progression across the sky on any clear evening...Hmmmmm...]

My guess is that the cameraman or the film editor truncated the video before the plane (head end of the plume, if you will) passed into shadow -- as it obviously did in the last three stills. (That's thy the "detached plane" wasn't in the video.) Also, if it was UPS902, it had begun its descent and (in addition to dropping into deep shadow) dropped below the "prime contrail forming layer". That is why the last three views show the plane "detached" from the plume, and with a short, dark "mini-contrail".

Yeah, I know this sounds "geeky" but I love analytical thinking! If nothing else, this exercise has made an awful lot of folks do some serious thinking about what we usually take for granted -- curved-sky geometry and sunset... '-)

[TigersEye]

Earlier, at 5:19, Rick Warren takes this image from his 10th floor balcony in Long Beach

He took several more photos, at different zoom levels, but all from the same position. You can clearly see the plane as it stops leaving a contrail.

Those two photos are clearly NOT taken from the same location OR the clouds moved quite a bit from one shot to the next. If the cloud moved a lot why didn't the vehicle leaving the contrail move significantly as well?

The second pic is obviously taken a little later than the first as the lighting of the sunset shows. But the vehicle is in the same approximate position and a good deal of the contrail has disappeared. The answer is simple. The vehicle is traveling away from the photographer to the west at a severe angle as the photographer thought. Even a slow moving aircraft would have moved significantly more in the frame if it were coming towards the photographer to the east. As both UPS and flight 808 were supposed to be doing.

[TXnMA]

Did you see the animation

http://consci.s3.amazonaws.com//images/clipped-animating.gif

on the "Contrail Science" page?

When you look at that animation of ten frames -- and compare it with the UPS flight path in the image directly above, it looks like he's pretty well nailed it...

[D-fendr]

Yep. He nailed it, riveted it, welded it shut.

UPS902.

[TigersEye]

Here is another problem with those two pics.

Put yourself in Long Beach. Now draw a line from LB to the path of flight 808. (the UPS flight path was the same) How far in a westerly direction would you have to be facing to see a view of that flight that would correspond with those pics? At some point a plane on that path would pass to your left would it not? If it were descending to LAX, as the UPS flight was, wouldn't it pass to your left and come down in the frame considerably?