Posted on 07/08/2006 8:31:14 PM PDT by Hal1950
SHIRLEY, N.Y. — A little past 8:30 p.m., as the blistering July sun melted in the west, a jumbo jet carrying students, honeymooners, businessmen and others to Paris exploded in a fireball, raining carnage into the Atlantic Ocean off Long Island.
It had been only a dozen minutes since TWA Flight 800 took off from Kennedy Airport.
Initially, investigators were not sure whether the calamity that killed all 230 people aboard the flight on July 17, 1996, was caused by a bomb, a missile or mechanical failure. Just two days before the start of the Summer Olympics in Atlanta, it was difficult not to suspect foul play.
People still question the official conclusion, reached in 2000, that TWA 800 was destroyed by an explosion in the Boeing 747's center fuel tank, likely caused by a spark from a wiring short-circuit.
"I think it could have been somebody shooting at the plane, or it could have been a terrorist attack," said Mona Morfis of Long Island, on a recent visit with her grandchildren to the seaside memorial garden that pays tribute to the victims and their rescuers.
The man who spent years leading the federal investigation into the crash has no such doubts.
Robert Francis, the former vice chairman of the National Transportation Safety Board, still gets missives urging him to come clean about terrorism theories or witness accounts of a streak of light heading toward the plane.
Now retired and living in McLean, Va., Francis said he never responds to "very insulting e-mails, asking me when am I going to tell the truth and asking why am I lying."
Because Flight 800 disintegrated over the ocean, Francis said, there was ample time for conspiracy theories to flourish.
"There was no ability to make a determination quickly," he said. "We were picking up the wreckage in 130 feet of water."
Investigators eventually recovered 98 percent of the wreckage from the ocean floor and painstakingly rebuilt a large part of the airliner.
"We studied if it had been a missile, what would it have done to the fuselage? We had scientists in the desert shooting rockets into old fuselages," he said in a recent telephone interview. "We didn't find a single piece of wreckage that would have pointed to that kind of explosion. So I say to the missile theorists: 'Show me something.'"
Another theory was that a missile from a Navy ship 200 miles away took down the plane, but Francis questioned why no one on the cruiser ever came forward. "You mean to tell me everybody kept their mouths shut?"
He said investigators also searched for evidence that a terrorist had launched a shoulder-fired missile from the nearby shore. "We never found any of that," he said. "They searched every marina, every wharf."
But why did so many people have doubts?
"It's more acceptable to the public if somebody did this, rather than blame it on maintenance or design," said Pete Field, a retired Marine Corps pilot who now works as an aviation crash consultant.
He said witnesses who claimed to have seen streaks of light heading toward the plane actually saw pieces of flaming wreckage falling, the official theory offered by the NTSB.
"You see trails (of light) and it's easy to get your mind confused," he said. "I do accident investigations all the time and I find that the mind traps an image, even if it's not there. Even some aviation experts will tell you they saw something that just could not have happened."
Eileen Best, who tends the garden at the TWA 800 Memorial at Smith Point County Park, said many visitors have shared their misgivings about the official conclusion.
"Many people on Long Island still have doubts," she said as she prepared the garden for a 10-year commemoration on July 17.
In addition to the 230 people from 14 countries who perished, the memorial honors the hundreds of police officers, firefighters, rescue workers and boaters who raced to the scene.
A bench at the memorial is dedicated to the Rev. Mychal Judge, the New York Fire Department chaplain who was on duty on July 17, 1996, and acted as a counselor to the mourners for years afterward. Six weeks before he became the first official victim of the terrorist attack on the World Trade Center towers on Sept. 11, 2001, Judge joined relatives at a ceremony for the fifth anniversary of the TWA 800 crash.
"Every year that you come here, you make this spot more blessed and more sacred, if that's possible," Judge said.
That's where I'd bet my money, based on precedent, motive, and a demonstrated willingness to do the deed.
SFS
I too have doubts, what's not mentioned here is any possibility that a passenger/bomber took it down.
If 747 wiring is so deficient, why haven't we seen more of the same ?
This was probably a terrorists attack but knowing Billy boy.. the clamped down on this pronto.
No evidence to it, but there are so many speculative theories.
Crap. It wasn't one mind that was confused. It was 700+ eyewitnesses that saw the same thing. They saw a streak of light come up from the surface of the ocean, and hit or merge with the plane, which then exploded. In that order. Instead of investigating it, this guy bends and twists credulity with his improbable excuses. Sorry, I and many, many other people have plenty of reason to believe that the authorities still have not given us the truth on Flight 800.
The whole TWA 800 investigation still makes me uneasy. I've never bought the story that the Navy shot the plane down; Francis makes a good point that SOMEBODY would have spilled the beans in the ensuing ten years. A secret that terrible simply could not have been kept, even in our military. The plane was out of reach of shoulder-fired SAMs (12,000 feet, IIRC).
But that doesn't explain away hundreds of eyewitnesses seeing streaks of light going *upward*. I could discount one boat of people, or just a few folks at a backyard BBQ after slamming a few brews. But hundreds?
I don't know what to think about TWA 800 anymore. I want to believe the NTSB, and in general they do a great job. But between TWA 800, Egypt Air 990, and AAL 587, sometimes I wonder.
}:-)4
Same as OKC. The Muslims were in on that one as well.
Of course no statement ever came, but much later, after 9/11, George Stefanopoulos on his Sunday show was catalouging terror attacks on America clearly names TWA 800 and no one on the panel corrected him. And as one poster mentioned, no other 747 in the 37 years it's been flying ever experienced a center fuel tank failure.
Maybe. Unless it wasn't at 13,00 feet. Anyway, missile specs of FIMS.
Raytheon Electronic Systems FIM-92 Stinger low-altitude surface-to-air missile system family
(FIM-92A) 3,500 m (conversion to 11,483 feet)
(FIM-92B/C) 3,800 m (conversion to 12,467 feet)
IR/UV homing
Warhead: 1 kg HE blast smooth-case fragmentation with time-delay contact fuze
Max speed: M2.2
In April 1990, Raytheon received a US$45.1 million contract to produce 1,383 missiles. In the following year General Dynamics reverted to the sole source supplier. The US Army requirement was for 29,108 FIM-92C Stinger-RMP rounds with last funding for procurement being provided in FY92. In FY92, an upgrade contract was placed to improve the FIM-92A/B/C performance against the latest countermeasures. Known as the FIM-92D Block 1 rounds, modifications were made to the RMP software to see its low-signature targets such as UAVs, cruise missiles and light helicopters in even more cluttered countermeasures environments. A ring-laser gyro roll sensor and a lithium battery are also fitted. First production deliveries were made of the Stinger Block 1 rounds in 1995.
If we had them, who's to say there weren't manpads on the black market in 96?
Isn't Air Force One a 747? Would they let the President on an airplane with a problem like that? I don't think so!
George Stefanopoulos stated roughly "the downing of TWA 800..."
I remember this, but would like to see documentation of it.
bttt
There's hardly any doubt that a missile brought the plane down. Several of the witnesses were pilots with experience in Vietnam, and they knew the difference between a fuel explosion and an ordinance explosion, which is hotter and whiter.
The question at the time was whether it was brought down accidentally during the naval exercises in the area, or by Muslims in a small boat. Personally, I would rule out the first, because I can't imagine that no one would have talked by now.
One of the sad things about the Bush administration is that they have helped clinton sweep all these fiascos under the rug. The point man in the FBI who presided over the investigation was promoted and given a medal by Bush's FBI director, as I recall.
Seems like the news had a shot of the radar screen showing the flight and something else seeming to "merge" with it before the plane disappeared from the radar. I remember seeing something like this in the news reports immediately following the crash.
where is the lawsuits against boeing? anybody hear of any?
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.