Posted on 05/13/2019 2:13:03 PM PDT by InvisibleChurch
Just watched a 2013 doc. Just wondering.
“With the aircraft around 15-16,000 feet ASL, that’s outside the slant and ceiling ranges for MANPADS. Seems to me like a bigger missile (ship mounted?) would have been what was used.”
I watched the video of the missel rising shortly after the event. That was definitely no Manpad or Stinger. It was the type of large land to air AA like they shot at my aircraft over ‘Nam.
You would likely only confirm what some of us already know from spurious reports which were quashed by FBI and, most pertinently, witnesses which came forward who were never interviewed and/or threatened to remain silent about the matter...
Still, I’m curious.
If you didn’t forget your sarc tag...
HAAAAAHHHHHCHooBULLSHIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIII
T.
If it wasn't a Stinger or SA-7/Strela, then what type of missile? Bigger missiles means bigger launchers, usually active radar fire control, and harder to hide. Bigger missiles mean bigger warheads and more obvious damage, which is harder to cover up. A better missile means a higher chance of hitting TWA 800. It also means a higher chance of getting caught before or afterwards, and a lower chance of it getting covered up for politics.
Following up on what I said, anything bigger would have had to have been something like vehicular SAM on the deck of a ship, or a proper naval mounting of a SAM, with sea worthy launchers and radar fire control. The SA-8 has a retracting naval mount, except its recognizable and looks really out of place on a commercial ship. Vertically launched missiles always use radar fire control. It would be kind of hard to explain that to the U.S. Coast Guard.
At the time, a manpad missile made the most sense. The thinking was anything else would have been too big to get to the coast. The FBI did dredge for parts of a Stinger or similar type of weapon around the crash site and found nothing.
Lets say Iran built a specialized missile launcher for sneak attacks and mounted it on a converted ship. At no time over the last twenty years has anyone suspected the use of such a weapon in any of the airliner crashes since. When a Russian missile was used to shoot down MH-17, governments figured that out fast, because of the casing being found in the wreckage. IIRC there was video posted on youtube of the suspected launch vehicle. The implications of a weapon other than a manpad SAM don't hold up well over time.
All BS! There also were no eye witnesses permitted for the first time at an NTSB hearing, only a sanitized report from FBI 302s, not NTSB investigator reports. Even those 302s did not accurately characterize the statements of what the eye witnesses claimed they saw, and in most instances obfuscated the actual statements as the witnesses themselves stated later. Radar data, including both primary and data from transponder was made to disappear, going to the White House instead of to the NTSB. The FBI lab improbably claimed that a strange red residue trail on seats which tested to contain rocket fuel components was instead a contact cement made by 3M. 3M testified none of their contact cements contained any of those elements, and that their contact cement is green or yellow, not .
Similarly, the residues of nitrate explosives similar to C4 found in the cabin were attributed by the FBI to a bomb sniffing dog exercise performed in St Louis the week before, except the logs for that air frame showed its schedule did not allow enough time on the ground without service personnel aboard to perform the dog training, and when the the records of the ATF training were secured under a FOIA suit, it turned out that 1) the test bomb package leaves no residue, and 2) the people doing the training wrote down the tail number of the TWA aircraft on which it took place and it was not the aircraft that became TWA 800, and 3) therefore, the residues of nitrates similar to C4 cannot be explained away by being left by a non-existent dog training exercise which always use non-residue sample bombs, so as to not taint the environment for future training purposes.
In addition, multiple experiments have been run with mock fuel tanks loaded with equivalent amounts of Jet-A (kerosene), heating them and attempting to get an air/fuel mix to mix to the proper stochastic levels and then ignite with any spark of the voltages and amperage available even with the suggested short. All failed.
Many planes have sat waiting with A/Cs running for longer periods with similar ullages in the empty center tank in much hotter weather, and have not blown up. It never happened before or since and it took over 20 years for the last 747 to be retrofitted or taken out of service to fix this problem. They did not even start retrofitting for eight years.
The evidence there showed that Philippine Airlines mechanics did an in-house ad hoc un-approved retrofit of floodlights to light their logo on their 737’s tails and ran a high voltage twisted pair wiring through the center wing-tank as the easiest route. It frayed. It also was not a 747, a later, more modern design.
They found a lot of such damage and curious round shrapnel in the bodies.
12,800 feet and climbing.
The math doesn’t work for either the CIA or the NTSB cartoons which were used to explain the crash. I’ve done the math and neither of them work. Ergo, the explanations involving the plane continuing to fly is impossible for either scenario. Both require the engines to keep running at full thrust they had at the moment of the incident, but Boeing testified that at loss of signal from the cockpit, the engines revert to idle, therefore, no thrust when the nose was lost. No thrust, instant pitch up, combined with loss of attack angle, stall. No zoom climb. No zoom climb. Ballistic fall into the ocean which comports exactly to radar and where the main body of the plane was found by the USS Rude. Had there been ANY climb at all, it would have taken longer to fall and not been where it was found BUT MILES AWAY. Physics requires it. Go up, come down in a longer fall, both in time and place. That didn’t happen, ergo, no zoom climb matching either CIA or NTSB claims. It is impossible.
No, that’s not quite accurate, Skydancer. 38º C is Jet-A’s flashpoint, the temperature at which liquid Jet-A will start to form a vapor with the air above it. To get it to actually ignite, that vapor has to reach an air/fuel ratio above ~14% fuel to air, preferably more, then you need an ignition source with sufficient joules for sufficient time to cause it to ignite. Here is a study in point. It’s quite interesting. One thing I found most interesting is that at the most probable temperatures of 46º-56º C, the greatest pressure was most likely only 2.5 to 3 atmospheres, at most 45 pounds per square inch, which the Center Wing Tank could easily have withstood being designed to hold 56.25 tons of fuel at 6.66 lbs per gallon. . . And that was with mixing the fuel air with a fan to get even distribution.
Boeing tests duplicating the TWA-800 flight conditions measured temperatures in the CWT:
”The issue of the thermal environment produced by the ACM operation during the gate hold must addressed through flight test and thermal modeling. A preliminary flight test was carried out by Boeing (8-26-97) and temperatures at 5 locations within the CWT were measured as a function of altitude. At takeoff, temperatures within the tank ranged from 85 to 96◦F (29 to 35◦C). After takeoff, a fuel temperature of 115◦F (46◦C) was measured at the rear spar for altitudes above 7 kft. The air temperatures within the tank decreased with increasing altitude up to about 10.5 kft and then returned to the takeoff values above 12 kft. This is an indication of the role of heat transfer since if the gas within the tank expanded adiabatically (no heat transfer) during climb, the temperature would drop by 44◦C. . .. . .This model suggests that the average air temperature in the tank is about 33.5◦C (92◦F). This is comparable to the average air temperature measured in the preliminary flight tests (85 to 95◦F).”
Note these values are below the 38º C theoretical flashpoint and the actual 44º-46º C stoichastical measured practical flashpoint of Jet-A fuel.
The white heat from a burning solid rocket engine and the white flare could have easily over rode the redness of a setting sun; in fact it would have enhanced it.
For most of the observers, the setting sun was either behind them or to their right and had little red component affecting what they saw. Nice try to distort the record.
No, it won’t. It has to be mixed in the right proportion with air or oxygen. . . And then you need an ignition source with sufficient joules of energy. Heat alone will not do it. Sheeesh.
Nah, you don’t need that much. . . But you do need sufficient joules for a long enough period of time to do it. Milliamperes can do it if the voltage is high enough to generate a hot arc. . . But the required voltage and amperage goes up as the temperature and mix goes down. . . As well as the time to ignite.
It wasn’t at 15-16,000 feet, that was the CIA’s claim after they created the absurd zoom climb to explain away what the eye witnesses saw. It was at 13,800 feet and never climbed from there. That’s the extreme limits of some of the more sophisticated MANPAD’s altitude and range. Three weeks before TWA-800, the Long Island Sheriff’s Department found a fully setup and ready to fire, tripod-mount anti-aircraft rocket on a rural road near the flight path. Why was it abandoned? Who knows?
Damn lying in bed and typing on a horizontal keyboard. . . Make that 13,800 feet.
You’re going to have to provide some references to support that last claims. There’s no such thing as a “Long Island Sheriff’s Department.”
meanwhile.,
The vaunted FBI refused to interview any of those 3000 folks who say they saw a missile go up from earth and hit the damned jet?????
FBI is simply a cover up outfit.
It was a police agency on Long Island. . . I don’t recall which one this long past but it was patrolling in the rural area, so my old memory is fading. Sorry about that mis-citation.
Still, I’m curious.
It would confirm that there was indeed a missile, and it would confirm that there was indeed an ordered coverup of evidence that proves it.
They say they found nothing. I've read some of Jack Cashill's articles on the subject. He goes into quite a lot of detail about what sort of missile was probably used.
I have no information on what sort of missile was used. I only have information that demonstrates some sort of missile was used.
Lets say Iran built a specialized missile launcher for sneak attacks and mounted it on a converted ship. At no time over the last twenty years has anyone suspected the use of such a weapon in any of the airliner crashes since.
The information I have says rogue elements of Iran's military. Iran disavowed any involvement. Of course the way Iran behaves, who can say what is true about whether this mission had official sanction?
Last time I discussed this, someone posted test data on what they had to do to get the fuel to ignite. It was way beyond what any sensor circuit could provide in the way of power. It might be in that report that Skydancer posted above, but I am loath to have to go searching for it again. I'd rather go back through my comments from a year or so ago and find out the exact information I winnowed out of the Data.
The amount of energy needed to ignite the fuel in the tank was so great that I can't believe anyone suggested it as a serious cause. They must have felt that the vast majority of people wouldn't look at it, or wouldn't understand it if they did look at it.
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