Posted on 06/18/2009 1:49:38 AM PDT by lbryce
Autopsies have revealed fractures in the legs, hips and arms of Air France disaster victims, injuries that — coupled with the large pieces of wreckage pulled from the Atlantic — strongly suggest the plane broke up in the air, experts said Wednesday.
With more than 400 bits of debris recovered from the ocean's surface, the top French investigator expressed optimism about discovering what brought down Flight 447, but he also called the conditions — far from land in very deep waters — "one of the worst situations ever known in an accident investigation."
French investigators are beginning to form "an image that is progressively less fuzzy," Paul-Louis Arslanian, who runs the French air accident investigation agency BEA, told a news conference outside Paris.
"We are in a situation that is a bit more favorable than the first days," Arslanian said. "We can say there is a little less uncertainty, so there is a little more optimism. ... (but) it is premature for the time being to say what happened."
A spokesman for Brazilian medical examiners told The Associated Press on Wednesday that fractures were found in autopsies on an undisclosed number of the 50 bodies recovered so far. The official spoke on condition he not be named due to department rules.
"Typically, if you see intact bodies and multiple fractures — arm, leg, hip fractures — it's a good indicator of a midflight break up," said Frank Ciacco, a former forensic expert at the U.S. National Transportation Safety Board. "Especially if you're seeing large pieces of aircraft as well."
The pattern of fractures was first reported Wednesday by Brazil's O Estado de S. Paulo newspaper, which cited unnamed investigators. The paper also reported that some victims were found with little or no clothing, and had no signs of burns.
(Excerpt) Read more at foxnews.com ...
As for the rest of the investigation:
And I heard the opposite, that it didn’t break up until impact.
I’ll see what the say on this mornings news. Maybe the dumb announcer read it wrong yesterday
They would have had the same problems with Pan Am 103 had it departed on time. As it happened the bomb detonated while the aircraft was still over land and as a result they were able to not only discover the cause but identify the bombers.
I’m no flight expert, but I saw a Moody Science film that was made almost 50 years ago about the problem of flying VFR (Visual Flight Rules) at night or in the clouds.
Flying in clouds requires IFR (Instrument Flight Rules) training, whereby the pilot relies completely upon the Instruments for his craft’s attitude, velocity, altitude, heading, etc. This is not as easy as it seems, because the body’s balancing mechanisms require sight to verify.
As an example of this principle, they blindfolded a gymnast in a revolving chair. They spun the chair and asked him to tell which direction he was rotating. When the chair stopped spinning, he thought he was rotating in the opposite direction. With a closeup on his eyes, the they removed the blindfold. His eyes rapidly vacillated side to side! He was trying to reconcile the reality that he was NOT spinning with the inner sensation he had of spinning.
The documentary played recordings of conversations with two pilots of small planes, who were not IFR qualified, flying in the clouds.
Both pilots crashed.
One of the planes, a twin engine, broke up in mid-air, due to the violent handling of the panicking pilot.
In my humble opinion, the instrumentation aboard Flight 447 stopped working, for whatever reason. The pilots were then flying blind, in the clouds, at night. The plane broke up because the pilots were unable to determine the plane’s velocity, attitude, altitude, heading, etc, and their panicky handling of the manual controls in response to the false orientations they were getting from their senses, caused the plane to break up in the air.
The key to the crash will be to determine WHY the instrumentation stopped working.
The worst of all of this for me lies in the fact that humans no longer fly our aircraft. Computers are to rule the earth?
"Getting ejected into that kind of windstream is like hitting a brick wall — even if they stay in their seats, it is a crushing effect," Casey said. "Most of them were long dead before they hit the water would be my guess."
One can only hope.
We have that video.
> We have that video.
We have all of them. They are wonderful, each and every one. It’s amazing that, even though these were filmed 40 and 50 years ago, they are still scientifically accurate to this day!
The Moody Science Classics are startling affirmations of Psalms 19:1, “The Heavens declare the glory of God,” and Romans 1:20, “For the invisible things of Him from the creation of the world are clearly seen, being understood by the things that are made, even His eternal power and Godhead; so that they are without excuse.”
I look forward to meeting Brother Moon on the “other side of Jordan”. I LOVE that guy!
At 30,000 feet without oxygen they’d have been unconscious without awareness in seconds. Hopefully the cabin decompressed before the plane broke up.
God Rest their souls and provide justice if this was a manmade disaster.
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