[muawiyah]

One of the most difinitive events toward the end of the Iran-Iraq war was our accidental shootdown of an airliner leaving Iran. This happened on July 3, 1988 however.

What does happen circa July 17 or 18 every year is that the Earth travels through the ancient debris trail of a comet. Rocks fall in seeming to travel from East to West. The first rocks have a very flat trajectory and actually appear to streak UP from the horizon.

I'm still putting my money on a boloid that also hit flight 800.

[jwpjr]

re: "accidental shootdown of an airliner leaving Iran"

This was not an accidental shoot down. The crew of the navy ship that fired on the aircraft intended to bring it down and was very accurate and efficient in the accomplishment of that mission. The airliner refused to identify itself, would not activate it IFF system, flew directly at the navy ship at a higher than normal rate of speed and did so at at time when several surface vessels were harassing the ship. The crew of the ship had but a minute or so to make a decision as to the intentions of the approaching aircraft. Remember, they had no visual contact with the target, just a radar contact that was displaying many, if not all, of the aspects observed when an attack is in progress. As I recall the Iranians had steadfastly refused to have that airline flight leave at its designated time and often flew off course just to fly directly at warships in the area. I remember at the time how frustrating it was that the crew of the aircraft did almost everything they could to present a hostile profile to an American warship and then Iran bitched and moaned when the ship responded in a very appropriate manner. I know that you did not intend to imply that the airliner was innocent of any wrongdoing and was accidentally downed by trigger-happy Americans, but anytime this incident is mentioned I like to remind those who might have missed it originally that the guided mussel frigate was responding to what it thought was an attack by enemy forces. Thanks for reminding me of this unfortunate event. Also remember, our ships were in that area because Iran was trying to block the shipment of oil from the mideast by blockading the straits through which every oil-laden ship had to pass. An oil tanker sunken in that narrow area would have stopped all oil from being shipped out of the area. Remember all the mines they laid in the channel, and the number of times their miniature gun boats fired on unarmed oil tankers?

[Atlas Sneezed]

What does happen circa July 17 or 18 every year is that the Earth travels through the ancient debris trail of a comet. Rocks fall in seeming to travel from East to West. The first rocks have a very flat trajectory and actually appear to streak UP from the horizon.

---

This gets the award for creative post of the day. Of course, of the 43 listed meteor showers, there are none with a peak within less than 10 days from the event. And a plane getting hit by a meteor large enough to make it blow up, and it the right spot to make it blow up, is among the most improbable events imaginable. A faulty fuel tank or stinger missle are infinitely more probable.

http://csep10.phys.utk.edu/astr161/lect/meteors/shower_list.html

[Axenolith]

You're probably thinking of the Perseids and they occur in August each year, around the 12-15th IIRC.

[demkicker]

What does happen circa July 17 or 18 every year is that the Earth travels through the ancient debris trail of a comet. Rocks fall in seeming to travel from East to West. The first rocks have a very flat trajectory and actually appear to streak UP from the horizon.

I'm still putting my money on a boloid that also hit flight 800.

TIN FOIL HAT ALERT!!!

[katana]

That would not explain the explosives residue found all over the aircraft debris. Would the DOJ reopening of this and the Ron Brown files around, say the first week of October be considered a "surprise"?

An Iranian connection is at least as likely as Al Quaeda and/or Iraq but the key point is the obstruction of justice committed by the Clinton administration in this among so many other cases. They and several dozens of their people should be in federal penitentiaries.

[Criminal Number 18F]

I'm still putting my money on a boloid that also hit flight 800.

That was considered. I think it's appendix 13 of the report. There are several reasons it was rejected. The most important is that the breakup sequence definitely began in the CWFT and proceeded from there (there are a number of ways to determine the sequence, metallurgy, sooting, etc. and they all agree).

OK, so why didn't a piece of space debris, say, penetrate the CWFT and set off the fuel-air explosion that overpressured the carry-through and broke the plane up? Because there's no hole. The structure was almost all recovered, and the bits that were not recovered, the inner and or outer skin between them and the great outdoors was recovered. (Actually the "missing" bits were probably among the fragmentary wreckage recovered, but couldn't be ID's with certainty and put into place. We are talking a max of a pound or so in sub-one-ounce fragments here and there). And none of those missing tank fragments can be gotten to in a straight line from outside the aircraft, except by going through skin and/or structure that evidences no hole.

SO... Imagine you have a helium balloon inside a shoebox that is taped shut. You come home from school and you open the box and the ballon is popped. You think your brother did it with his bb gun. But there is no hole in the box, and no hole in the balloon that resembles that made by a BB gun. Your brother didn't do it -- at least, not that way.

If you have followed me so far, you see that your space debris theory can't be responsible. ANd by the same reasoning, neither can missile fragmentation. (There are no signs of missile blast or fragmentation, or of a bomb, on the wreckage. Anywhere. And yes, these things leave definite signatures and NTSB metallurgists can spot them almost with their eyes closed). There was no question on Clipper 103. There isn't on TWA 800 either.

Here are a couple experiments that most TWA 800 refuseniks either don't know about, or don't understand:

1. An instrumented test flight in a similar 747, reproducing the profile of 800, showed that the fuel-air mixture in TWA800s CWFT was explosive at 13,800 MSL (this danger, by the way, is not news to jet pilots or aero engineers. The traditional answer has been to eliminate ignition sources. That will now be supplemented with chemical inerting or the fuel tank ullage).
2. Test explosions in a scale model of the CWFT produced structural failures identical to those documented in the mishap aircraft.

   Those tests were conducted by Cal Tech's Explosion Dynamics Laboratory (more members of the great conspiracy! Egads how will Jamie Gorelick rub them out now that they know too much? But I digress). Some of the conspiratroids latch onto the fact that these tests did not use Jet A, but they don't understand that the tests could not be conducted at 13,800 feet. The substitute fuel was selected because its properties at the test altitude in California duplicated the properties of Jet A at 13,800. It is very hard to get this across to someone who thinks that Boyle's Law is a cop show on TV....

You are correct about the Iranian Airbus. It was hit by a Standard missile (possibly by two, two were fired) from USS Vincennes. All 290 crew and pax perished. Iranians were very angry about the incident. In defence of the skipper of Vincennes and his officers and men, they were fighting with Iranian light surface vessels at the time, as the US had been engaged in a series of undeclared fights with Iran since 1987 in the Gulf, and a US warship (USS Stark) had recently been hit by a pair of Exocets from an Iraqi fighter, in part because the crew were slow on the trigger. It still was a major blunder and a tragedy.

d.o.l.

Criminal Number 18F

[Palladin]

BWAHAHA!

Yeah-- a shoulder-fired boloid.