Posted on 06/22/2006 8:43:39 AM PDT by canuck_conservative
Editor's note: On the evening of July 17, 1996, at 8:19 p.m., TWA Flight 800, a Boeing 747, took off from Kennedy Airport, bound for Paris. At 8:31 p.m., over 730 people watched Flight 800 explode, killing all 230 of the people aboard.
Not long afterwards, millions of Americans watched their televisions in fascinated horror as search and rescue crews looked for survivors among the flaming debris. Only dead bodies were recovered.
Flight 800 is mostly an ugly memory for people these days. The U.S. government issued an explanation that a fuel tank had somehow exploded. Yet, they flatly denied any evidence existed of foul play, including the possibility that Flight 800 had been blown out of the air by a missile.
All but a few journalists accepted the government's version of events. Few bothered to investigate the numerous eyewitnesses, the radar records and the physical evidence that all suggested a strikingly different explanation of Flight 800's untimely demise. And those few who did question the government's version were made to look like fools or, worse, thrown in jail and prosecuted as criminals for meddling in an official investigation.
What really happened to Flight 800? ....
(Excerpt) Read more at wnd.com ...
After 10 years since the horrible explosion:
Do you have temp and ullage monitoring in tanks?...NOPE
Did AD's move the fuel pumps away from the tank..NOPE
Did they install nitrogen inerting systems?...NOPE
Did they alter the fuel to be less explosive?...NOPE
Has any flight returned to the ramp because of a high ullage/fuel temperature?...........................NOPE.
Rokke, your blowing smoke up your arss again, all they did was require a little more fuel in the CWT's of models using the center section as a heatsink. A friendly "heads" up was given to the industry to inspect the tanks, pretty minor stuff.
Only in your own mind. Everyone else can see the difference in DETAILS between your "witness report" and the one prepared by Faret & Wendell.
The first radio report of the huge fireball explosion was at 8:31:50 - 38 seconds after the initial event.
Nobody can concoct a palatable "missile(s) shootdown" scenario with those facts.
The conspiracy theorists - and press - jumped to the erroneous conclusion on the night of the disaster that the huge fireball explosion was TWA 800 blowing up at 13,800 feet at 8:31:12.
The report of Faret & Wendell and the ATC tape make it obvious that isn't what happened.
08:31:50 E507 We just saw an explosion out here; stinger bee five oh seven.
Only in your own mind. Everyone else can see the difference in DETAILS between your "witness report" and the one prepared by Faret & Wendell.
How dense can you get? -- I 'reported' seeing a short TV tape a few hours after the crash, and you're trying to compare it to a detailed eyewitness report by two pilots?
Bizarre comparison; - get real & make a rational point.
You're speculating as much as any one else, -- seeing that the FBI eyewitness accounts are all fouled up. -- No one knows for sure how many eyewitnesses said, or saw, - what. Hundreds are said to have seen the 'streak' in some accounts, and only dozens in others.
Which was at about 7500 feet according to Faret & Wendell (and may well have been thousands of feet lower than that).
Ok, F&W saw a "huge" explosion at 7500', -- check.
The initial event that disabled the 747 took place at about 13,800 feet at about 8:31:12.
Check, there was a 'less huge' explosion [center fuel tank, supposedly] at 13,800'...
The first radio report of the huge fireball explosion was at 8:31:50 - 38 seconds after the initial event.
Some here claim there was 41 second interval between the 'center tank' explosion @13,800' and the 'huge' one at 7500'. -- So? Is this interval critical?
Nobody can concoct a palatable "missile(s) shootdown" scenario with those facts.
If so, -- how does anybody concoct a palatable "center tank explosion" scenario with those same facts? -- Can you tell me?
The conspiracy theorists - and press - jumped to the erroneous conclusion on the night of the disaster that the huge fireball explosion was TWA 800 blowing up at 13,800 feet at 8:31:12. The report of Faret & Wendell and the ATC tape make it obvious that isn't what happened.
Fine. -- You tell all of us what happened. We await your brilliant solution..
At least you don't deny their report was detailed and yours wasn't.
I'm not going to read all 1200+ replies to this thread but I will put my $0.02 in on one subject that I am certain of..
1.) The "zoom climb" scenario cannot be confirmed by ground radar as civilian ground radar is passive and simply reports what the aircrafts transponder sends out, in either scenario that aircraft had SERIOUS pitot-static instrument issues going on that would preclude accurate reporting of altitude IF the nose was still attached and the installed equipment was able to transmit data which it was not.
2.) Even if the engines automatically throttle back when signal from the cockpit is lost these are HUGE engines and it will take them a very long time to spool down.
I don't know what happened but I wouldn't put anything past Gorelick ,, we had already been hit once with the 1993 WTC bombing , Clinton has refused to take UBL into custody prior to this suspicious accident and if there was evidence pointing to other than an accident it would have been ordered suppressed by the Clinton white house....
At least you don't deny their report was detailed and yours wasn't.
Another weird comment.. -- How can I make any more of a 'detailed report' than I already have? -- Read the thread, and all my remarks.
Most if not all the streak witnesses saw the same thing but didn't have a reference point with which to estimate the 7500 foot altitude of the huge fireball explosion. Some of the other airborne witnesses estimated that fireball altitude even lower, down to 4,000 feet as I recall.
"Some here claim there was 41 second interval between the 'center tank' explosion @13,800' and the 'huge' one at 7500".
Which is clearly in conflict with the first radio report at 8:31.50 of that fireball explosion.
" . . . there was a 'less huge' explosion [center fuel tank, supposedly] at 13,800'."
Two readily apparent fireballs? I don't believe there were any such witnesses. If you can locate any, please post them here.
I'd suggest that you once again carefully review the d-e-t-a-i-l-e-d report of airborne witnesses Sven Faret & Ken Wendell
The initial event that disabled the 747 took place at about 13,800 feet at about 8:31:12.
Check, there was a 'less huge' initial event explosion [center fuel tank, supposedly] at 13,800'...
Two readily apparent fireballs? I don't believe there were any such witnesses. If you can locate any, please post them here.
Are you denying the fact that 'something' exploded, blowing the nose off of flight 800, initiating the crash?
Which [the initital event?] is clearly in conflict with the first radio report at 8:31.50 of that fireball explosion.
Not at all. F&W saw a "huge" explosion at 7500' at 8:31.50. -- Read their report. -- They did not report seeing "the initial event" -- the 'center tank explosion' at 13,800', 38 seconds earlier. .
The first radio report of the huge fireball explosion was at 8:31:50 - 38 seconds after the initial event.
Some here claim there was 41 second interval between the 'center tank' explosion @13,800' and the 'huge' one at 7500'.
Which is clearly in conflict with the first radio report at 8:31.50 of that fireball explosion.
No, its not in conflict, as F&W did not report "-- the initial event that disabled the 747 took place at about 13,800 feet at about 8:31:12. --"
-- So?
Is this 38 second interval critical?
Nobody can concoct a palatable "missile(s) shootdown" scenario with those facts.
If so, -- how does anybody concoct a palatable "center tank explosion" scenario with those same facts? -- Can you tell me?
The conspiracy theorists - and press - jumped to the erroneous conclusion on the night of the disaster that the huge fireball explosion was TWA 800 blowing up at 13,800 feet at 8:31:12. The report of Faret & Wendell and the ATC tape make it obvious that isn't what happened.
Fine. -- You tell all of us what happened. We await your brilliant solution..
Hmmmmm, somebody's not to proud of their work product.
What I am about to offer will require some real intellectual honesty for anyone still reading this thread to absorb and comment on. The outright refusal of so many people to read actually source documents themselves is one of the leading contributors to people believing the hype pushed by profit seeking conspiracy advocates like the types who write for WND. Anyone with any intellectual honesty will go to the links I provide, read them themselves and understand that what they've been told folks like ANG Major Frederick Meyer said, and what he actually said regarding TWA 800 are two entirely different things. Anyone with intellectual integrity, will read his actual statements and understand that they've been very badly (and intentionally misled).
Hatteras, your characterizations of how the NTSB characterized the TWA 800 witnesses is absolutely false in several respects. First of all, the people with military experience who are recognized as witnesses were given a higher priority by the NTSB investigators. Obviously, that is because they were most likely to have some familiarity observing missile launches etc. The NTSB not only provides their statements as given to the FBI, but re-interviewed many of them independently to get even more detail. This link will take you to copies of each one of those interviews. Witness Transcripts
Now, contrary to what some people have implied on this thread, I have never asked anyone to take my word for anything. I have repeatedly suggested people read ALL the available information for themselves. And I have provided links for them to do just that. So go read Maj Meyer's interview with the NTSB. It is Appendix O under the Witness Group section at the link I sent you. It is 48 pages long. It contains the actual transcript of his interview with the NTSB and several investigation board witnesses. Those witnesses participated in the interview and included representatives from ALPA and TWA and an NTSB representative who was a longtime friend of his. I'm going to quote him directly from that transcript regarding what he saw, but you can read it yourself at the link I provided.
"I saw to -- in front of me and slightly to my left of dead front I saw a streak of light in the sky. I have no idea what it was. And my reaction when I saw it was, what the hell is that?
I observed it for somewhere in approximately three to five seconds moving in a gradually descending arc -- sort of a gentle descending trajectory. Similar to that which you would observe at night if you observed a shooting star. The difference is that it was red-orange in color and it was broad daylight."
"I want to a step back and tell you that at no time during what I observed did I ever see the airframe. I never saw anything that told me there was an airplane out there."
"And at that time I didn't know what it was. I have no idea what it was. Chris didn't know what it was. And Dennis -- because Chris was flying the approach, Dennis had moved from his normal station on the right side of the aircraft to the left side. And Dennis saw the fireball."
"Yes. It was red-orange. And that's -- I made a distinction -- and there's a lot of tape out there of me talking to news media, and everything, that it looked like a shooting star. And the two exceptions that I made were that, No. 1, a shooting star is generally white light; not red-orange in color; and this was broad daylight. You don't usually see -- but, just imagine a flat, gently curving trajectory.
A slight descent."
"I really can't give you an idea of speed. I can give you an idea that it -- it probably covered -- the streak of light probably covered two to three fingers of -- of distance -- whatever that is; five degrees of the horizon -- in three to five seconds. It appeared to be fairly rapid. It could've been a jet plane. It wasn't a bird. It's very hard for me to judge speed. And I -- and the other thing, it's not only the speed. But I've no idea of the angle. It could've been anywhere from -- you know, all I could perceive was left to right. It could've been north to south. It could've been west to east."
"It's -- let me characterize it as a streak of light. All right. It was definitely moving faster than the fireball would eventually develop. Did they seem to follow the same trajectory? Or in the same direction of flight? Yes, they seemed, from my perspective, to move in the same direction of flight. They were moving from my left of center to further left. And then, of course, when you talk about the fireball, by the time we were watching the trajectory of the fireball we had, in fact, turned the helicopter so that now the relative picture of the fireball falling had moved back into my -- the center of my windscreen."
>""I didn't say it was a missile, God damn it. I said I saw a streak of light." Now, the -- the panic -- the hysteria of the media at that time was just -- if it hadn't been such a tragedy it would've been laughable. Did it look like a missile? In some respects, yes; in others, not. I'll tell why. I've seen two kinds of missiles -- well, actually three different types I believe. SAM-ls, SAM-2s and SAM-7s. All right. Now, a SAM-7 comes at you like a corkscrew, like that (demonstrates with hands.) You see, fortunately I never saw one coming at me --"
"If you see -- if you see these other missiles, the -- they have these large -- in the first place, these missiles all had smoke trails. A SAM-l and a SAM-2 leave a trail 10,000 feet long in the air. A SAM-7 leaves a trail, too. You can see these damn spirals after the missile is gone. And, matter of fact, what you're probably seeing is the smoke because the missile's moving too fast to be seen. This thing that I observed from the angle at which I observed it was a very -- to me -- to my perception it was a very steady path. And it wasn't a long time. It was, as I said, maybe five seconds, total. That'd be the outside, as to the amount of time I saw it."
"But it was a very steady thing. It didn't have an erratic -- well, cert -- it didn't have a smoke trail. And it didn't appear to me to have an erratic flight path."
"Scott Metcalf, with the FBI. In your military experience outside the States, have you ever seen anything like this streak of light you've -- you told us about? MAJ. MEYER: No. You know, I -- trying to go back -- even -- even in -- at times much closer to the actual event than today. But even back there a day after I was trying to go back in -- in my own mind and say, what the hell was this thing? And I can't say -- I -- 1 -- and I said to people who have said, well, was it a missile? And I said, all I can know is what my body told me at that time, or didn't tell me. And when I looked up at this thing in the air nothing said, missile. Nothing clicked in my mind and said, missile. But then again, the technology of the missiles that I had an opportunity to observe was 20, 25 years earlier. so, I really don't know what it was. It was a streak of light. It appeared to be about the same color of the sun. And it occurred to me that this either could've been a window flash, or it could've been -- it's even occurred to me it could've been something that was -- that was of its own nature; perhaps even light colored by the sun.
This, I think, was not a contrail. All right. It -- it didn't have any endurance. And I really don't know what the hell it was. I -- I have not -- 1 can't recall in my life having had a -- a similar observation."
Hatteras, how many actual statements from these witnesses have you actually read?
Yes. We do.
"Did AD's move the fuel pumps away from the tank..NOPE "
Fuel pumps weren't the problem (as you would know if you'd read the actual NTSB report)
"Did they install nitrogen inerting systems?...NOPE"
The FAA and several civilian agencies just finished testing the most viable, efficient systems. It takes a long time to develop technology that is both effective and cost efficient.
"Did they alter the fuel to be less explosive?...NOPE"
Fuel will always be explosive. Fuel vapor even more so. Nothing will change that.
" Has any flight returned to the ramp because of a high ullage/fuel temperature?...........................NOPE"
How do you know? Publish some evidence to support that.
Thats an easy one...but you're not going to be REAL happy with the source.....NTSB, & CIA.
"Shortly after Flight 800 reached the peak of its ascent about 20 seconds after it exploded, a fireball erupted from the aircraft(1). This was clearly visible to many eyewitnesses. The aircraft then went into a steep and rapid descent. As the aircraft descended, it produced an increasingly visible fire trail. When the jet reached an altitude of roughly one mile, about 42 seconds after it exploded, its left wing separated from the fuselage releasing unburned fuel. The fuel's subsequent ignition and blaze produced a dramatic cascade of flame visible to witnesses more than 40 miles away(2) and detected by infrared sensors aboard a U.S. satellite. About seven seconds after the left wing detached, and 49 seconds after the initial explosion, the burning debris hit the water.”
(CIA narration, CIA climb video, produced with data supplied by the NTSB & FBI!)
So there's more wiring in the tanks? Sounds a like potential future headache!
"Did AD's move the fuel pumps away from the tank..NOPE "
One of the fuel pumps was not found, and you're being silly to assume a fuel pump could not cause a future problem in the industry.
Duh, yes fuel is powerful, can be explosive, agree, otherwise we don't leave the runway.
You've garbled your post by inserting comments where none belong, including in what are supposedly quotes from me, to the extent that I'm not going to try to unravel it.
What is sad is how you casually demean this man, and elevate ALL the other critters involved in this sham.... critters that have long since fled the scene.
My hunch is since the three agencies are a "pact" in this products outcome, you go for the most corrupt and vulnerable.
And these FOIA denials are where the REAL humor is!
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