Posted on 03/29/2007 11:25:45 AM PDT by Hal1950
What prompts this column is an e-mail I received last week from a retired USNR commander and former TWA pilot, with whom I had had no prior contact.
He recounted a conversation that he had shortly after the mid-air destruction of TWA Flight 800 on July 17, 1996, off the coast of Long Island. He had a particular interest in the plane's demise for two reasons. One is that he was a qualified accident investigator. The second is that he had flown that very same flight a week earlier.
"It had to be a bloody missile, probably an un-armed Tomahawk, going for center-of-mass," he said to a senior flight manager of his acquaintance. "They were most likely going for a target drone and testing their capability to go-through normal aircraft traffic to get at the target."
The flight manager agreed and recounted what he had been told by a maintenance foreman at the investigation hangar on Long Island.
"They had this curtained area over in the corner with Marine armed guards in front," the foreman had told him. "But, I did see one of the right mainmounts that had a crease out of it, as if something round had passed through it. And, to me, it sure looked like an 'entry' and 'exit' hole in the fuselage."
I cite this e-mail for two reasons. One is that the accepted wisdom among many TWA pilots immediately after the crash matches closely the detailed account of what transpired, at least as reported in an extraordinarily comprehensive anonymous review that I and investigator Ray Lahr received a few months ago.
The second reason is that all of the best eyewitness accounts that I have received that might verify this scenario are second-hand. In fact, no one that I know has talked to anyone who witnessed the firing of the fatal missiles.
My partner in this investigation, James Sanders, had developed any number of discreet first-hand sources in 1996-1997, but all of these sources "went away after we were indicted." The "we" refers to James and his wife, Elizabeth, at the time a TWA trainer, both of whom eventually were convicted of the bogus charge of conspiracy to steal airplane parts.
If an eyewitness were to come forward, now would be a good time, a safer time as well. The true story might derail the ambitions of a candidate or two – Al Gore for sure, Hillary probably – but the major media would be more willing to listen before either became the party's nominee. If either is elected president, the story dies.
I can be contacted through my website, cashill.com, and Ray Lahr through his, raylahr.com.
I have sent "The Review" to perhaps 100 people with more technical expertise than I, and it has impressed everyone that I have heard from. Unlike the subjunctive dithering of the NTSB report, The Review is declarative and confident and tells its tale with the dense technical poetry of a Patrick O'Brian novel.
According to The Review's author, the first missile, the one that destroyed the plane, was large and, if not un-armed, at least failed to explode. The missile shot above TWA Flight 800, found its mark and descended on it from the rear.
"The missile's momentum was high enough to pitch the nose of the aircraft sharply upward when it landed on the top of the stabilizer," claims the author, "and alter its heading to the right when it hit the body. The missile's supersonic speed caused these changes to occur nearly simultaneously."
The stabilizer is the horizontal part of the tail. The elevator is the movable control on the stabilizer. A hydraulically driven device called the "jackscrew," located in front of the tail, changes the stabilizer's pitch angle, which causes the plane to pitch up or down.
So much information is loaded into the recovered jackscrew that author and Air Force vet Tom Kovach calls it the "Rosetta Stone" of the disaster, "the one piece of the aircraft that proves the high-speed action events that brought down Flight 800."
Apparently, the missile smashed into the stabilizer with more force than the jackscrew could handle, so much force in fact that it ripped the forearm-thick steel of the jackscrew in half. This same force pushed the tail violently down and the nose up and wrenched the plane into an aerodynamic stall. Unable to take the extra stress from the aircraft's sudden up-pitch, the wing tips fractured simultaneously.
The violent upward pitch of the plane whipsawed the fuselage and snapped the rigid keel beam, which runs under the length of the fuselage. The missile meanwhile skipped off the stabilizer and into the right side of the fuselage, which had flipped up nearly vertically and to the right.
The savage force of this combined action ripped the cockpit off of the plane, which, along with the front of the keel beam and the air conditioning units, plunged into the sea before the rest of the plane did the same.
The Review author deduced this in large part from the debris field and physical evidence, like the fractured jackscrew, but there is more evidence, of course, namely the testimony of the eyewitnesses.
From her Fire Island deck, FBI witness No. 150 watched a shiny, cylindrical wingless object move at high speed from north to south. She then noticed the object head toward "a large commercial airliner" traveling east at the same altitude. The airliner "simply 'stopped' at that moment," she told the FBI.
"As the plane came apart, its nose turned up and to the right," her FBI 302 continues. "She could see windows on the top right side of front of the plane, even though she had previously been able to see only along its spine."
"The front was carried forward and arced down with its momentum," the 302 adds. "The right wing seemed to stay with the plane."
Six days after the crash, weeks before any of this information became public, witness No. 150 described the break-up sequence of TWA Flight 800 almost perfectly. She was one of more than 750 eyewitnesses that the FBI interviewed.
Another such witness, No. 551, tracked TWA Flight from his window seat on US Air 217 overhead. He watched the 747 for 30-40 seconds as it flew eastward, its cabin lights still on. Then he saw the front of the plane explode. "The plane seemed to stop in mid air like a bus running into a stone wall – no forward motion," he told the FBI.
The Review author believes that No. 551 was describing the same dramatic stall, a result of the missile impact that No. 150 described, likely the first blow of three. The author does not try to guess the missile's provenance, but he rules out a Stinger or similar shoulder-fired missile. One can infer from what he writes that the lethal missile was likely a product of the U.S. Navy or a NATO ally.
Dwight Brumley, a retired 25-year United States Navy master chief, also watched the incident from US Air 217. He is among those Navy people who believes that if this missile had come off of a sub or a cruiser, "Somebody would talk to somebody about what they knew (or at least suspected)."
Brumley thinks it possible that there was a test of a defensive missile system by a black ops team that went awry. More likely, he speculates, "We were completely caught with our pants down and TWA 800 was just flat out shot down by an unknown missile."
"I just know," Brumley tells me, "that I saw something streaking up toward TWA 800 and that after the initial explosion she never climbed anymore. No 'zoom climb.'"
If someone knows more or different, we would certainly like to hear from him.
Seems to me it would pretty easy to debunk.
First, a cruise missile would not have a visible light at the tailpipe. That is obviously a star.
Because the diameter of a cruise missile is known, the distance of the object from the camera can easily be determined (if it were a cruise missle).
The length of the object would be a relationship between the object length, the speed of the object and the speed of the photograph. It appears close enough that everyone in the picture would have rememebered it vividly, even if they didn't see it, because they would have heard it.
Having personally tried to take photos of airplanes landing at dusk, which are a hell of a lot bigger and slower than a cruise missile, I would think that was more likely a bird or insect than a cruise missile.
I bet an objective photography expert that wasn't selling books to kooks would make a similar determination.
Let’s get to the core issue. Please tell us what you believe was the approximate altitude of the huge fireball explosion while including your supporting documentation.
This is a joke, right?
Old joke: You are standing beside a raging river and see Hillary Clinton struggling against the current trying to survive. You have a choice: you can either throw her a lifeline, or try to take a Pulitzer Prize winning photo. What f-stop would you select?
ML/NJ
-- by Cmdr. William S. Donaldson, USN Ret.
Sven Faret and Ken Wendell were flying in a private aircraft on a heading of 090° magnetic at 8,500feet approaching Riverhead Long Island. They reported 50 mile plus visibility above the haze layer that topped out at 6,500 feet. Sven saw a white light steady in the low sky at a two thirty position. His firstimpression was of aircraft landing lights pointed north, directly at them. Ken saw two lights close together.A short pin flash appeared on the surface, ground or perhaps water, then the white light exploded instantlyinto a huge fireball.
Their visual bearing was 170° magnetic to the white light(s) in the sky.Comment: These witnesses’ contributions are significant in several ways. They later determined the petroleum clouds to at 7,700 feet by over-flying the area. More importantly, they were over 32,000 yards(16nm) from FL800 when it exploded looking at a steady bright light(s) on a 170° magnetic bearing (theoutbound course of the missile).
Cashill is a rube.
You will NEVER use a Tomahak to attack a moving aircraft. He says several other things in here that are plain stupid.
THe simplest explanation is the best.
At least 2 terrorists fired missles at TWA 800. Missle #1 from landward on Long Island, Missle #2 from seaward in a boat.
Witnesses on Long Island give detailed reports of Missle #1 - Check
Witnesses on land and in the air give detailed accounting of missle #2 - Check
Fully qualified military personnel accurately describe a high explosve, re. military ordnance explosions. - Check
Missle #1 impacts the fuselage, detonating in the Center Fuel Tank. Shrapnel seen in seat backs of rows just forward of the CFT. - Check
Radar tracks the missle momentarily before the impact. - Check
Radar records a high-speed boat (attack crew #2) leaving the area. - Check
Bill CLinton, eye-ball deep in accepting MILLIONS of dollars from the Chinese and DESPERATELY doing everything possible to be re-elected in November of 1996, brings in the FBI to run the “investigation” and hides the true nature of the evidence. - Check
The coverup includes a patently ridiculous “zoom-climb” prduced by ??? THE CIA ??? (didn’t know they did accident investigation) to muddy the waters late in the game. - Check.
More nonsense.
One person with direct experience of the TWA crash is Sven Faret. Faret, who was flying over eastern Long Island with a friend in a small plane, saw the explosion. He e-mailed the Weekly his report, which describes the view at approximately 8:40 p.m., as seen from 8,500 feet over Riverhead, L.I.: "Setting sun lighting up clouds to the north, above the haze. Ground very dark, ground surface lights outlining Long Island. Ocean waters very black." Faret says he and his friend, Ken Wendell, saw "traffic at 3 o'clock low" and "a white light steady in the sky" -- TWA Flight 800. Next, he says, "A short 'pin flash of light' appeared on the ground (perhaps water). Very shortly thereafter the white light exploded instantaneously into a huge red-orange ball. My initial thoughts were 'Who's shooting fireworks tonight...' "
Faret cautions those who read his report not to read between the lines. He ends by saying, "A missile attack seems improbable, but not impossible."
There are two mysteries in Faret's report. One is the pin flash of light he mentions, of course. What was it? But the other is the apparent altitude of the airliner. Faret implies that TWA 800 was actually below him. We e-mailed him to ask for clarification, and his reply was curt and to the point. "It blew up at 7,500 feet. Period! It was actually 19 miles away, 1,000 feet below my altitude. Nobody seems to care."
Possibly his gripe is an oblique reference to the reception the FBI and National Transportation Safety Board gave Wendell and Faret. As Faret tells it in his report, "They took our report, but we felt that they did not capture the detail we expressed, or the certainty of our facts."
You should have ended your post right there.
"Missle #1 from landward on Long Island, Missle #2 from seaward in a boat."
Then missile #1 was a very large missile requiring radar guidance. At a minimum it required a 10 mile range. Since NOBODY recalls seeing ANYTHING resembling a radar guided SAM launch from anywhere near Long Island, nevermind the large armored type vehicle and associated radar trucks required for launch and guidance, I think you can throw this grossly uneducated guess in the can.
If missile #2 was launched from a boat than it had to be a shoulder fired weapon because the complexity of launching anything else from something as unstable as a boat excludes anything else.
Re: Missile witnesses...which ones gave a "detailed" accounting of a SAM launch?
"Fully qualified military personnel accurately describe a high explosve, re. military ordnance explosions."
You realize that the explosive warhead of a shoulder launched SAM contains less than 3 pounds of explosive. At the range your "fully qualified military personnel" was from the explosion, he'd be lucky to see a 3 pound warhead explode, nevermind tell what kind of explosion it was. Nothing he describes regarding the TWA 800 explosion resembles a SAM warhead explosion, and any real expert in the matter will tell you a person at that range couldn't tell the difference in the first place.
"Shrapnel seen in seat backs of rows just forward of the CFT."
There was exactly ZERO evidence found by anyone that could be considered shrapnel from a warhead or bomb of any type. Period.
"Radar tracks the missle momentarily before the impact."
Perhaps the most asinine of all your statements. Air Traffic Control radars have as much chance of tracking a small SAM as they do of blasting it from the sky with their radar energy. There is a reason why Navel ships have specific radar antennas for surveillance and target tracking.
FBI and CIA? It would be more likely TWA 800 was a cover up if they hadn't been brought it. The incident was initially assumed to be an international terrorist attack. That, by all definitions is a crime. That requires the input of the FBI. Anyone who actually knows what they are talking about with regard to TWA 800 knows this.
But hey....other than all that, your "simple" explanation is right on target...as just another hopeless conspiracy fantasy. I'm on a short layover between trips, and I thank you for the entertainment.
OBTW, "missile" is spelled with two "i's".
Rokke, officials in the US government presented a fully fictitious and aeronoutically impossible “zoom-climb” as an ‘explaination’ of what people saw.
If the center tank blew up from a spark, then there was NO REASON to present the false information. None. All it does is make everyone suspicious that the government is covering up something.
I’m not a raving moonbat. Generally, things are what they are. In the case of TWA800, The facts don’t match the government’s assertions.
bump
From: Thomas Shoemaker - Subject: eyewitness report Below is the eyewitness account e-mailed to me by Sven Faret.
BEGINQUOTE:
Witnessing the downing of Flight 800 by Sven Faret and Ken Wendell
These events outlined below are actual and accurate. No part should be discounted in any way.They are presented without personal opinion and exactly as viewed by us from our perspective. Our intent is to offer as much factual detail as possible in order to aid in this investigation. Situation:
Pilot: Sven Faret - Passenger: Ken Wendell
8500 feet over Riverhead LI, NY.
Apx 20:40 hrs, July 17, 1996
N1182J climbing at 95 knots (AC-12 privately Owned)
090 heading
Visibility 8 miles in haze below. Top of haze 6500 feet
Visibility 50+ miles above haze setting sun lighting up clouds to the north, above the haze
Ground very dark,, ground surface lights outlining Long Island
Ocean waters very black
Prior contact with Long Island departure control on 118.00
Frequency change approved, squawking 1200
Monitoring 118.00, listening to local traffic
Observation:
Being cautious of traffic in a dark sky, we had all marker lights, strobes, and sky flasher operating on our aircraft. Ken pointed out traffic at 3 o'clock low (actually 2:30). Sven saw a white light steady in the sky. My first impression was landing lights pointed towards us putting it in a northerly direction. Ken saw two lights very close together. A short "pin flash of light" appeared on the ground (perhaps water). Very shortly thereafter the white light exploded instantaneously into a huge red-orange ball. My initial response was, "Who's shooting fireworks tonight?". The magnitude of the fire ball, and altitude, quickly (less than a second) ruled that out. Immediately thereafter a large fire ball emerged from the bottom of the initial fireball, accelerating straight down, as if it had just started to fall. Like a teardrop it drew with it a tail of fire down to the water surface. We watched intently as the descending fire fell closer to the water. Sven was awaiting the fire to illuminate the water surface as it fell. At the same moment a pilot reported it to the controller on 118.00. A second pilot responded and then we reported it. We saw it hit the water, lighting up the surrounding surface very well. Large splashes could be seen around the fire. The fire on the surface was relatively small, but was spreading quickly. I asked Ken, "What was that!? Its probably the National Guard boys losing a C 130 or something...Maybe they shot down one of their own planes." We proceeded to fly over to the smoke cloud. As we crossed the shore line I looked down and saw 3 boats en route to the fire, about 25% of the way. I estimated the flames to be 6-7 miles off shore. We watched intently seeing a flashing light at the SE edge of the flames, but it soon stopped. We observed a steady blinking light drifting SW away from the scene. Ken said it appeared to be a helicopter just west of the flames. Sven thought it could have been a marker beacon on a life raft. This was about 5+ minutes after the explosion. We approached the black-gray smoke cloud on the west side. We were at 7700 feet and were at the top edge of the cloud. The cloud center was at 7500 feet. There were two small bumps upon it. There was no smoke or smoke trails above it. it was still lit up a little by the sun, clear above. There was a tornado like tail leaving the bottom of it leading down to the flames. It had a small arc in it as the winds gently moved the cloud NNW. I said to Ken, "I have an eery feeling about this place, what ever stung this thing could sting us too. Let's bolt out-a-here." We swung north. As we were turning, we saw twin engine commuter traffic above us at 8000+ traveling NW. We called Flight service on 122.6 and reported what we saw. We flew back to Riverhead and east. Over Mattituck Airport we decided that the event had to be enough of a finale for the evening. We called approach on 132.25 for clearance back to Islip. We also told that controller what we saw.
Immediate Personal Impressions:
No thoughts of commercial air traffic accident.
Some aircraft with a lot of fuel.
A missile attack seems improbable, but not impossible.
The quickness of the eruption.
A white light exploding into a fireball. Very vertical accelerating descent of debris.
The length of the flame tail extending from the descending debris.
Clear sky above the gray smoke cloud.
Dark thin drifting smoke trail down to the debris on the surface.
Post Flight Actions:
We returned back to the hanger and called our wives. We let them know that we were O.K., in case they might have heard of any air accident reports. When we got to Ken's house, we heard that a 747 went down. We called fox News and told them what we saw.
Post Media Personal Impressions:
We were interviewed by the FBI and NTSB. They took our report, but we felt they did not capture the detail we expressed, or the certainty of our facts.
Comments:
Although Sven and Ken are in no position to conclude anything, this piece of the puzzle MUST fit into any official version of the incident.
Notes:
Only burning debris was visible to us.
If that were really true, do you think the best response is to match it with an equally fictitious and impossible explanation? At best, that makes you a hypocrite. It certainly does not lend credibility to your argument. And if you are talking about the CIA video, you must not understand that the CIA video had nothing (zero, nada, zippo) to do with the NTSB accident investigation. And who says TWA 800 couldn't climb after the initial explosion? People like Jack Cashill, who find credibility in a woman stating she saw cracks forming on the fuselage of an aircraft that was over 25 miles away? I linked in post 119 a document that explains what the CIA used to create their video. And the explanation is very clear. There isn't any grand conspiracy to cover something up. They made a video using the information they had at the time (which wasn't much), and amazingly, it wasn't too far off.
The simple fact is, predicting the aerodynamic effect of catastrophic damage on an aircraft cannot be done with a pen and pencil. It is not reasonable to assume a 737 could fly with almost one third of its fuselage torn from it in flight, but Aloha Airlines flight 243 did. It is not reasonable to assume a high performance fighter could fly with an entire wing missing, but an Israeli Air Force F-15 did. People who claim something is "impossible" are most likely basing that statement on a very incomplete collection of data. The NTSB determined TWA 800 climbed between 1200 and 3000 feet after the initial explosion. They based their finding on radar data, aircraft debris fields, aerodynamic calculations from Boeing, witness statements, and the actual breakup sequence of the aircraft as supported by Boeing. Find me someone with the same resources who can prove the NTSB is wrong, and I'll listen. So far, that person does not exist.
I don't doubt your not a raving moonbat. But the scenario you described makes you seem like one. And through it, you are doing exactly what you are accusing the government of doing. That doesn't make sense.
And finally, I apologize for my unnecessary crack about spelling. That was childish.
I am of the opinion that the cause for the TWA800 crash should be labled “Unknown” at this time.
There are too many unknowns still out there that the government has not answered or not investigated.
The data is still incomplete.
Based on all of the available data, I still believe that a 2 pronged missile strike fits the data better than any other scenario.
Like what?
McClaine's observations regarding the fireball altitude make sense to me, and seem most consistent with data not subject to challenge by anyone.
ML/NJ
Thanks for providing us all with such a convincing demonstration of your obviously nonexistent analytical ability.
ML/NJ
18 Dec 1996 by Ian Williams GoddardWhat happened on the night of July 17 when TWA 800 exploded in midair? Sven Faret, pilot of a private plane, along with passenger Ken Wendell, were both flying in the area and, with an eagle's-eye view, were on top of it all. Sven spoke on FOX News and CNN the night of the crash. So what did they see?
According to Sven's written report [1], Sven and Ken were flying at 8,500 feet over Riverhead, LI, NY at about 8:40 pm, on July 17, 1996 when, accord- ing to the report, "Ken pointed out traffic at 3 o'clock low (actually 2:30). Sven saw a white light steady in the sky." That light, was TWA flight 800.
Then the report states that a "short 'pin flash of light' appeared on the ground (perhaps water)." When I asked Sven if this flash rose upwards vertically from the surface, he confirmed that it did. He also told me it was "like a rocket launch at a fireworks display," and that its point of origin was "near the shoreline or in the water."
"Very shortly" after they saw this "rocket launch" below TWA 800, their report states that:
...the white light [TWA 800] exploded instantaneously into a huge red-orange ball. My initial thoughts were "who's shooting fireworks tonight." The magni- tude of the fire ball, and altitude, quickly...ruled that out.
Notice the harmony of Sven and Ken's observation with that of these ground-level eyewitness ac- counts, ABC World News Sunday (07/21/96):
We saw what appeared to be a flare going straight up. As a matter of fact, we thought it was from a boat. It was a bright reddish-orange color. ...once it went into flames, I knew that wasn't a flare.
The New York Daily News (11/09/96):
It looked like a big skyrocket go- ing up, and it kept going up and up, and the next thing I knew there was an orange ball of fire.
Roland Penney and his family, who were in a boat at the time, reported (Newsday, 9/1/96) that they saw "a pencil-thin white trail rising up...that hit that plane."
Now back to Sven's report. Moments after TWA 800 exploded, Sven states in the report:
I asked Ken "What was that!?... It's probably the National Guard boys losing a C130 or something... Maybe they shot down one of their own planes."
It looked like the military shot-down the plane! When asked if the military conducts such activity in the area, Sven replied: "On a regular basis."
That military activity is frequent in the area is also evident in the account given by S. Beach resi- dent John Bauman (The Independent, 07/24/96), who said "people continued fishing" after the blast thinking it was probably "the Westhampton Air Force Base doing some kind of testing offshore."
CONCLUSION
With over 150 eyewitnesses who saw a "streak of light" and a "skyrocket" shoot up and hit TWA 800 initiating its annihilation, and with these wit- nesses on land, in the Great South Bay, out at sea and even up in the air, all giving virtually ident- ical accounts, to say that this is an overwhelming case for a missile hit is an major understatement.
How many criminal cases can you recall with uniform testimony from over 150 witnesses? It's a prosecu- tor's wildest dream come true. But in the la-la-land of TWA 800, anyone who considers this testimony as proof of a missile strike is portrayed as a mentally unbalanced idiot by the GovtMedia and are, on the Internet, assaulted with vicious ad hominem attacks and threats of physical violence. How strange.
For some, no amount of evidence will shatter their unfaltering faith in the FBI-NAVY-NTSB cover-up; and with all the physical evidence -- debris, radar and satellite records -- locked away, off-limits to public viewing, it's a cover-up by definition.
And speaking of a cover-up, why are we not hearing all of pilot Sven Faret and Ken Wendell's eyewit- ness testimony in the media? It's painfully clear that the major media is now following the lead of the government in suppressing all evidence of a missile strike, hence the term "GovtMedia".
The following are irrefutable facts - not McClaine's radio report:
The initial event took place at 8:31:12 at aproximately 13,800 feet.
The huge fireball exploded below 7500 feet.
The first radio report (McClaine) of anything unusual in the sky was timestamped at 8:31:50 - 38 seconds after the initial event and thousands of feet lower in the sky.
Apparently, the missile smashed into the stabilizer with more force than the jacks-crew could handle, so much force in fact that it ripped the forearm-thick steel of the corkscrew in half. This same force pushed the tail violently down and the nose up and wrenched the plane into an aerodynamic stall.
The weight of an airplane is balanced at its front wing. I think he may have his sequence wrong.
When the front of the airplane separated from the rest of the airplane, there would have been a gigantic imbalance that would cause the tail to swing down. The tail swinging down would put enormous pressure on the elevator jack screw, and probably fracturing it.
The tail did not have to be hit with anything to cause this.
His conclusion that there would be no climb is correct though.
This is irrefutable?
So did the fireball that exploded below 7500 feet start climbing after that? Or were those CIA "experts" full of $#!+?
ML/NJ
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