Mysterious missile launch most likely US Air flight 808

Island Turtle ^ | November 11, 2010 | Corky Boyd

[Corky Boyd]

Network news and the internet were abuzz with the report and video by Los Angeles CBS affiliate KCBS of a reported missile launch late Monday afternoon -- around 5 PM. Both the Air Force and the Navy denied they had any missiles launches at the time. According to CBS News the Defense Department remains baffled.

"Nobody within the Department of Defense that we've reached out to has been able to explain what this contrail is, where it came from," Pentagon spokesman Col. Dave Lapan said. "So far, we've come up empty with any explanation."

And they go on:

"The FAA told CBS News that they ran radar replays of a large area west of Los Angeles based on media reports of the location of a possible missile launch, but they did not reveal any fast moving unidentified targets in that area. The FAA also did not receive any reports of any unusual sightings from pilots in the area."

"The North American Aerospace Defense Command, or NORAD, issued a statement jointly with the U.S. Northern Command, or NORTHCOM, saying that the contrail was not the result of a foreign military launching a missile. It provided no further details."

A search for flights that could have left a contrail led me to US Air’s flight 808 from Honolulu to Phoenix. The flight took off from Honolulu at 10:06 AM HST, passed over Catalina Island at 5:03 PM PST....

[Wissa]

Is it that you think we've never seen those live, as opposed to on video or (worse) in still shots?

What I think is that you've been fooled by a selectively edited video. High magnification of the top end of the contrail in the video tricks your mind into thinking you're seeing something towering overhead. The screenshots made from the video lead me to believe the top of the contrail was never more than a couple of degrees above the horizon at any time during the recording.

[Niteflyr]

Frankly, I find the scramble in the MSM to spin this as a combination airliner and optical illusion, and the willingness of people to believe it in defiance of all common sense, as disturbing as the launch itself.

Yep the way the story was handled is a story in itself... first official release I heard was "don't know what it is but there is no threat..". What a contradictory nonsensical statement...

[Finny]

That could be -- the location of the contrail is not what strikes me one way or the other. It's the QUALITY of the contrail, how the photographer described the event from start to finish, and a few of the still shots as well. What they show is something that an airplane condensation trail would not create. I know it because I have watched -- LIVE -- plenty of missile shots as well as about five times as many airplanes in the sky leaving a variety of contrails.

An honest question that has crossed my mind: Do you think the cameraman, who has been shooting video of LA skies for 11 years, deliberately did video tricks and THEN LIED in a TV interview about what he saw? At the end of one interview he describes exactly what I've seen at the end of a missile shot -- the thing disappears. With a contrail, it doesn't disapper, it just changes. Do you figure the cameraman outright lied? Maybe he did, you know. Even so, the footage doesn't look in any way like a condensation trail from an airliner, especially as captured in some still shots I saw somewhere in all these discussions.

[SeeSac]

Whatever. The only expertise I have seen claimed by your ‘whole lotta’ is having lived in CA and FL. I thought maybe you had seen something I hadn’t seen.

[Wissa]

Do you think the cameraman, who has been shooting video of LA skies for 11 years, deliberately did video tricks and THEN LIED in a TV interview about what he saw?

Possible, but I doubt it. I think they just zoomed in to give people a better view by magnifying what was being seen. By zooming in so much, the top of the contrail was then necessarily disconnected from the bottom. The bottom of the contrail fell out of the shot. Once it's disconnected, you don't see that it is still close to the horizon. When the top of the contrail in the picture is near the top of the image, it gives the impression that it is overhead. I don't think there was intent to fool people.

Because of time constraints, the video was edited to just show was seemed most interesting. I haven't heard the audio of the cameraman, but I also doubt that he lied. I've heard people saying that there's a UFO moving around in the sky. It turns out it's just Jupiter. It's not really moving around in the sky, but they think they're seeing it move because the mind can play tricks on people. They're completely convinced that they've seen a UFO and it takes a bit for them to believe otherwise.

With a contrail, it doesn't disapper, it just changes.

They always stop appearing whenever the plane enters air conditions that aren't favorable for the production of contrails. If they didn't, you'd see a contrail trailing the plane all they way down to the ground where it lands.

[TigersEye]

There is some excellent analysis and commentary at that link but this is probably the most bottom line statement of all.

"How do I emphasize this enough, NORAD can track a baseball in orbit. They would not miss a major launch and for the pentagon to pretend that they might not know if it were a plane or a rocket, is a LIE."

[TigersEye]

The screenshots made from the video lead me to believe the top of the contrail was never more than a couple of degrees above the horizon at any time during the recording.

How far from the coast would you estimate that would put an airplane? Roughly.

[Finny]

An airplane at a high altitude is visible to the naked eye, a speck, until it passes so far over the horizon that it becomes too small to see in the distance. Forget the contrail -- I'm talking about the thing making the contrail or the plume.

A missile making the plume disappears because it is at too high an altitude to see anymore. It doesn't disappear because it's too far away across the horizon, it disappears because it's too high above the earth, or because it burns out.

If the camera zoom was close enough to create the illusion of that kind of speed in a commercial aircraft at supposedly that ultra-high altitude, then it would also show the body of the craft or at the very least, the area aft of the plane where the condensation is only beginning, and then fattening up for the two contrails from either side of the fuselage to merge as one.

At this point, it doesn't matter. You're convinced it's an airplane contrail. More power to ya. :^) And thanks for a good, civil discussion.

[TigersEye]

If the camera zoom was close enough to create the illusion of that kind of speed in a commercial aircraft at supposedly that ultra-high altitude, then it would also show the body of the craft or at the very least, the area aft of the plane where the condensation is only beginning, and then fattening up for the two contrails from either side of the fuselage to merge as one.

I can see that much with the naked eye whenever a commercial jetliner flies overhead here and they are always at altitude.

[BIGLOOK]

A commercial air liner transiting a hub like LAX at altitude would be at 35,000' and very hard to see...especially at dusk.

The air temperature at that altitude should have been constant at that time and all transiting flights would have had similar contrail signatures but only one was homed in on and became an anomaly?

I'm sticking with examining the a/c contrail theory and eliminating it from argument of whether this was a transiting plane at altitude or a missile launch from 35 miles off the coast, a reported distance that is also highly suspect given that the footage was taken from a helicopter. The horizon from someone on the beach is about 30 miles; one from an elevated platform is much more.

I've seen a/c in the sky at altitude as a speck also, under certain conditions, depending on the size of the a/c and I've seen contrails that they've created but never seen one appearing just over the horizon. Lot's of questions to pursue here which seem pedantic and mundane, like what was the paint coloration on the Hawaii to Phoenix flight, course and course changes as well as the time of it's actual passage over the area and what did the cockpit of that flight report (or ignore) seeing from their vantage point in transit. A helo's visual at a few hundred feet is limited, an a/c at altitude is much greater.

Has anyone inquired as to what they saw?

[TigersEye]

The horizon from someone on the beach is about 30 miles; one from an elevated platform is much more.

You describe how far the horizon is, on a flat plain, from ground level. Think about this. A contrail at 30k ft. stretching out nearly to the horizon. Being so high the visible far end of that contrail would be much further than 30 miles wouldn't it?

Hide the Incline!

Many very interesting posts there. I am only part way through them. They seem to have established that there was a NOTAM at that time not just afterwards as others have said.

(post #8) JG says:
November 9, 2010 at 6:41 pm
A Notam was put out for that area for 20:00 yesterday.

NOTAM for LA. KZLA LOS ANGELES A2832/10 – THE FOLLOWING RESTRICTIONS ARE REQUIRED DUE TO NAVAL AIR WARFARE CENTER WEAPONS DIVISION ACTIVATION OF W537. IN THE INTEREST OF SAFETY, ALL NON-PARTICIPATING PILOTS ARE ADVISED TO AVOID W537. IFR TRAFFIC UNDER ATC JURISDICTION SHOULD ANTICIPATE CLEARANCE AROUND W537 AND CAE 1176. CAE 1155 WILL NOT BE AVAILABLE FOR OCEANIC TRANSITION. CAE 1316 & CAE 1318 WILL NOT BE AVAILABLE FOR OCEANIC TRANSITION. CAE 1177 WILL BE AVAILABLE FOR OCEANIC TRANSITION. W537 ACTIVE, CAE 1176 CLOSED. SURFACE – FL390, 09 NOV 20:00 2010 UNTIL 10 NOV 01:00 2010. CREATED: 08 NOV 20:52 2010

Those times are UTC so by PST the NOTAM was on from 12:00 PST to 5:00 PST. It ended about the time the video was made.

Has anyone inquired as to what they saw?

Good question. I have seen nothing on that.

[catfish1957]

Every issue has brought a plausible explanation that it was an airplane. Problem for me, is 10 plausibles don’t equal factual proof. We may never know.

[Ernest_at_the_Beach]

Now that is a biggie....by inference that would mean it was a planned event...which is comforting.

[Ernest_at_the_Beach]

On second thought....It might be comforting....depending on just when the Notam was issued....

[TigersEye]

..by inference that would mean it was a planned event...

Much better than the alternative. Some people seem to be very upset at the idea that the DoD would lie to the public. There are a lot of things they need to lie about. How many years was the stealth bomber reported in the skies and even written up in magazines while DoD continued to say "Vee know nussing?"

They also think it is significant that Congress critters on defense committees are saying they have heard nothing different than the public. Well, duh! DoD lies to those morons all the time. And they should!!!