Where can I find out about the departures and flight numbers of the other 8 flights?
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The departures prior to PS752 in reverse chronological order:
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Np. I did it the hard way by replaying FR24. Departuring flights 3 hours before Flight 752:
MAS2
THY7LD
CFG359
SWR155
AUA872
AEL513
QTR491
THY8ZA
KKK1185
QTR8408
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A few of those do not depart IKA, but do overfly Iran. You can filter for just the airport with airport filter IKA.
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When did the missile launch stop?
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Couple hours before that flight. But the missile launches were coming from nowhere near Tehran.
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And completely the wrong type of missile, and completely different flight paths and different altitudes and different targeting systems.
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So, what is your best hypothesis?
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It was a very short range (10-20) mile range missile. Either a simple mistake, or something more complicated. Kind of odd that the plane that just happens to get shot down, is 1/2 Canadians. Maybe coincidence, I guess.
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The cynic in me says they targeted a plane with Canadians because they knew there wouldn’t be any blowback from Canada and it would give them the warm feeling they get from blowing up innocent people.
I pray it was an accident and that they can prove it.
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Hope that wasn’t the case, but the circumstances raise questions for sure..
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Wait so 10 planes took off and only 1 was shot down? Why? Maybe it was a manual firing of the missle def system?
Judy...what are the national news, or national gum shoe types saying, or speculating, on this downed plane that had many Canadians on board?
I'm afraid my first WAG on this may turn out to be the facts of the case.
Long day, lots of stress, (maybe) a new/inexperienced site commander sees a blip on the scope doing a very fast climb coming directly for him (all bits I've picked up from various posts during the past couple of days)...and he pulled the trigger on a plane full of civilians. (I've seen worse in simulated situations like that back in The Day)
One other factor that may apply here is something I noted during GW1 when Baghdad was first being bombed: Anti-aircraft guns were just blazing away spraying rounds in all directions and I guessed (it turned out correctly) that the rocket sites were doing exactly the same.
The reason?
There was a pretty good chance that if Baghdad was going to take any hits at all, any Iraqi AA site commander who didn't claim a dozen or more enemy aircraft downed or hit with empty ammo lockers and/or launch racks to back up the tale was going to have a very bad and possibly fatal postaction debrief.
Something we used to call "Same [****], different day" would seem to have applied for Tehran.
And that 737 was just in the wrong place at the wrong time for all involved.