It’s less likely that the tank exploded, unfortunately. From an engineering point of view, a tank explosion is massively, massively improbable.
That incident was the beginning of the end of TWA as an airline. I used to fly the 800/801 flights to and from Paris on a regular basis.
The explanation doesn’t hold water, which is why people are still debating it.
There is something here that may or may not be moot. If the Navy did it, something I find unlikely as some old CPO would have coughed it up by now on his deathbed, it would have leaked.
It didn’t have to be a shoulder fired missile. It’s been an operating assumption that terrorists would need something shoulder fired to be effective.
Could have been a vehicle mounted system, and would not have had to have been all that large either.
If it were cased in something metal, then pieces of the body or the motor could have been recovered, however, and none were that we know of.
The only pattern TWA800 fit at the time was that the Clinton Admin was downplaying one major causis belli event after another. Embassy bombings, etc.
TWA looked like an escalation, and it likely was.
I doubt we’ll ever know the truth about it.
I wish I could remember the Freeper who really convinced me back in 2000 or so. He clearly had an aviation engineering background. He DIDN’T say it was a tank, but something to do with a door malfunction that then led to an explosion.
Too foggy now, only I recall the evidence did not stack up to an explosive missile, but COULD be interpreted to be a “pass through” missile that seemingly didn’t expect an airliner to be there, like a target drone. Except where there is a target, there is a hunter, and no missile parts were recovered. Extremely odd.