Posted on 07/05/2005 5:57:37 PM PDT by wagglebee
Thanks for the ping, ot.
So the electrical short igniting the fuel cell is a certainty?
Re 51 and 66:
I seem to remember the theory revolving around vapor
in the fuel tank in combination with the fact that the Fuel
Sensor Unit was routed through the same Wiring Harness
as a number of high voltage / high power cables.
If you add decaying wire insulation into the mix, you
have a receipe for disaster.
That 747-100 (TWA800) was an old and tired bird. I believe a number of other aircraft
of that era that had the same type of wiring insulation were also sent to the "glue factory" (Lockheed L1011's?).
.
Power at any Price =
The CLINTON M.O. in Action
With CLINTONS' continued control of mainstream NBC-ABC-CBS Broadcast TV News Divisions, with their constantly omitting TV Coverage of the CLINTONS own worst misbehaviors ...many voters have no idea just how threatened their own Liberty is by the CLINTON Agenda that's always been dead set against them.
Just like when the CLINTONS were against Freedom's survival for South Vietnam during the Vietnam War.
It COULD happen here.
'A Free Press that does not fulfill its duty in reporting 'Just the Facts, Ma'am' to the American People...
...may soon lose its Right to do so'
- Freeper ALOHA RONNIE - 1999
.
That the fuel cell ignited is a certainty. The exact cause of the spark that ignited it is not. Along with electrical shorts (which are certainly the leading contender) they looked at a lot of other causes, for instance something mechanical in the pumps scraping up a spark, or something caused by the very warm AC units. They were able to come up with a number of theories but none of them easily built into a refutable, testable hypothesis. So they left that question open.
This occasionally does happen, that there are details, even significant ones, that can't be pinned down. In the Lauda Air 767 that had an uncommanded thrust reverser deployment over Thailand, they were unable to determine if it was a hardware or software failure -- so they changed both. Here with 800 they took a similar all-points approach to making sure there could be no repeat.
I must say, Mr Valance, for someone who was so famously shot in song and on screen, you're looking mighty healthy.
d.o.l.
Criminal Number 18F
Actually, I think a lot of people simply realize that if terrorists were able to get their hands on that kind of weapon, we'd have civilian aircraft shot out of the sky with boring regularity.
One of the things you seem to have overlooked is that it may not have been a U.S. Navy vessel at all -- that's why I included the speculation about a naval vessel from another NATO country.
.
Thank you for your CLARITY, Petruchio, for you are correct.
The CLINTONS must, still, dismiss their own worst misbehaviors or blame them on the VRWC. Extending all the way to whomever BUSH appoints to office or to courts.
With NBC-ABC-CBS Broadcast TV News Divisions running cover for them..
the CLINTONS continue to cause all the trouble they want to.
Even in Time of War.
VRWC = CLARITY ...and the Enemy Within CLINTONS know it.
We Freepers are a clear and present danger to them.
.
And I have yet to meet a pilot who really believes that aircraft climbed a couple of thousand feet with the cockpit and a huge section of the fuselage forward of the wings blown off (which is how they tried to explain the "missile trails" in the sky).
One fascinating explanation I've read is that there WERE two projectiles involved -- one was the missile, and the other was a drone of some sort that was the intended target of the missile.
There was a very intriguing thread on this subject a couple of years ago here on FR, and one of the posters seemed to know an awful lot about what could have happened that night. It actually made a lot of sense, and the chain of events could easily have played out that way. He even speculated about what kind of missile was involved -- something new called a "rolling airframe" missile that the Navy was testing at the time. This missile is unusual in that it doesn't track a target's heat sources -- instead, it tracks its target by locking in on its radio signature, and functions almost like a flak shell by exploding close to its target and shredding it with shrapnel made up of tiny tungsten carbide cubes.
The scenario made a lot of sense, particulary when you take into account the fact that TWA 800 wasn't flying at the nornal altitude for an eastbound international flight out of JFK when it passed overhead that night.
Exactly -- see #92.
It was just a thought, but in the aftermath of 9/11 it seemed like a very real possibility. There were just too many things about that incident that never made sense to me.
Actually, the problem in recreating the explosion is that of ambient pressure. The reason to use a different liquid is that the tests were done at sea level (actually, I think they were done at a few thousand feet above, but on the ground) whereas the aircraft exploded at about 13,000 feet. So say you were reproducing that explosion, you need to use something that has the physical, vaporization, inflammability profile at that altitude that Jet A has at 13,000 feet. This is all explained in painstaking detail in the EDL documents at the link (it starts galcit.ctu.edu I think) in one of my previous posts. From the posted link, find the /documents/ folder and they will explain it.
I think that they used a 1/3 size (IIRC) tank was also a factor. WHen you scale things up or down, you have scale effects because molecules don't scale. (This is why RC scale model planes have different airfoils than their fullsize prototypes).
Another issue on inflammability -- it is not the fuel that burns, it is the fuel-air mixture. That's why LCDR Donaldson was able to put out a match in a bucket of Jet A. If the fuel tank had been full, no problem. It was hazardous because it was empty (of all but unusable fuel).
And I have yet to meet a pilot who really believes that aircraft climbed a couple of thousand feet with the cockpit and a huge section of the fuselage forward of the wings blown off (which is how they tried to explain the "missile trails" in the sky).
You're describing the CIA video, which is kind of immaterial to the actual investigation. THis was not done to explain "missile trails" but to explain why parts separated in altitude (on radar returns) the way they did. Remember a couple of things -- the aerodynamics of the wings probably weren't instantly forfeit, and the machine had some inertia. It is possible for a damaged aircraft to zoom out of control and actually go up. Parts that had broken off would assume a ballistic trajectory, influenced by their inertia, mass, aerodynamics and, of course, gravity.
If you were to remove the forward fuselage of any conventional airplane, the center of gravity would shift aft and the immediate result would be a violent nose up. It would probably produce a stall in short order. There's a lot on this in the report of the sequence group (IIRC). There's no mystery to the breakup sequence of 800, there's all kinds of physical evidence.
But in the end, to believe in a missile you have to believe in a magic warhead that can make an explosion inside the airplane without coming through any part of the structure. In Newtonian physics, that can't happen. "When we have excluded the impossible, that which remains, however improbable, is the answer." - Sherlock Holmes.
d.o.l.
Criminal Number 18F
The rumor I heard was similar, but that the particular missile used that evening had an inert training warhead and simply passed right through, breaking the airframe, and that much of the residue found on the seats was related to the rocket fuel the missile used.
I almost fell off MY chair. not that they were terrorist attacks, but that he said it so matter of factly.
Even before I started reading all the leaked evidence of TWA 800, I became very suspicious when, after 9/11, the plane crashed on Long Island and all the NTSB personnel were new. I then found out everyone involved in the TWA 800 investigation had "retired." Some were long-time NTSB investigators, some younger and very bright and poof they were gone. Seemed too suspicious to me. The most facts on this were covered in detail starting back in 2001 by World Net Daily.
No I really do not, and that is the main reason I question the conspiracy theory around this. My point was that I have no idea how these exercises work so MAYBE it could be possible that hundreds of sailors would not have known. Still, like you I find the possibilty a stretch.
That blew me away. I did not know that. Sickening.
I am far from the first person to refer to it over the past few years here. What I always wondered is, since This Week is not a live show why it made it to air in the first place.
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