TWA 800: Jim Kallstrom’s Road to Redemption

American Thinker ^ | June 20, 2016 | Jack Cashill

[Kaslin]

When I see former FBI New York honcho Jim Kallstrom appear on Fox News, I see a tortured soul. As boldly honest as he has been on the subject of Islamic terrorism, this once honorable man has lived a lie for the last twenty years on the subject of TWA Flight 800. Others have lived the lie as well, but none so personally.

It was Kallstrom who spoke to the press, Kallstrom who testified at congressional hearings, Kallstrom who consoled the families of the 230 dead with the assurance he would leave “no stone unturned” in his pursuit of the truth.

When Kallstrom arrived on the scene in Long Island the day after the crash in July 1996, the truth was indeed what he was seeking. By July 30, 1996 -- less than two weeks after the 747 blew up -- FBI agents had interviewed 144 “excellent” witnesses to a missile strike. As revealed in a recently unearthed CIA memo, the evidence was “overwhelming” and the witness testimony “too consistent” for the cause of the plane’s destruction to be anything other than a missile.

1996 being an election year, however a missile strike on an American airliner involved far too much political risk for the Clinton White House. Working through the CIA, its operatives took effective control of the investigation. For reasons only he knows, Kallstrom knuckled under.

[Yaelle]

Does the dark side of the Internet have that rabbit hole??? I didn’t see the military cockpit vid of the twa 800 missile, but I saw another video that is in that rabbit hole as well, the video where Obama tacitly admits he wasn’t born in this country. Gone gone gone. I saw it here on FR and others saw it too, but it’s gone. It was a debate for Senate (from Illinois) and it was Barry and Alan Keyes, sitting around the same large table, debating. Keyes says, paraphrasing, “You weren’t even born in America,” and Obama retorts, “We are talking about the Senate here, not the Presidency.” No smoking gun but DAMN INCRIMINATING. If Obama even THOUGHT he was born in Hawaii, he would have indignantly responded with “Last time I checked, Hawaii was a state,” or some such.

[Yaelle]

Jamie Gorelick is a Democrat whore. She has been mixed up, either directly or indirectly, with more scandals than you can count. Any item that includes her name is a scandal and makes one want to throw up thinking about how corrupt our government is.

---

Her name makes you want to throw up anyway. Sounds like she is pleasing a lower midline chakra.

[Forgotten Amendments]

Bravery is to be a whistleblower.

Yup. And the bureaucracy knows no party.

On a less deadly note, I remember that one of the first things the Bush II administration made plain was that Linda Tripp would have no chance of getting her government job back. Can't have any of those loose cannons out there!

[Yaelle]

The Bushes fake it better but they are as dirty as the Clintons.

[Swordmaker]

I hate to disagree with you on this, but the math says there could have been no zoom climb. Boeing stated that the fly-by-wire 747 engines will immediately revert to idle at loss of signal so the engines will immediately stop providing thrust at the loss of the nose which contained the cockpit and the source of the signal. At that point there are only three forces acting on the airframe, lift, gravity, and drag.

The lift is lost almost immediately as the center of gravity of the plane is moved backwards drastically by the loss of the almost 57,000 pounds of the nose which balanced the fulcrum of the "teeter totter" on which the two forces of gravity and lift were contesting. The center of lift did not change as it rests above the average of the wing surfaces. Calculations demonstrate that if you remove 57,000 pounds of nose, the center of gravity moved back 11.9 feet behind the center of lift, instantly. Multiple 747 pilots have come forward to say that if you move the center of gravity of a 747 10 to 12 feet behind the center of lift, the plane will almost immediately pitch up and go immediately into a stall condition and cannot fly that far out of trim, nor is there anything that can be done to trim the aircraft that far out.

The force of drag which is being countered by the thrust of the engines is no longer being countered because the engines are now at idle, and is suddenly increased by the loss of aerodynamic presentation of the nose and instead a flat surface of the noseless fuselage is being presented to the 385 knot speed of the air colliding with the column of air in the passenger and freight cabins. Combining these, the noseless airframe pitches up rapidly presenting even more of a flat surface to a 385 Knot colliding air.

The engines (per Boeing) are at idle and producing zero thrust. Even were they operating at 100% thrust, each, if they were the maximum power Rolls Royce engines Boeing installs on 747s (they weren't, they were GEs) which can produce 64,000 Lbs of thrust each, they could only produce a combined 256,000 pounds of thrust, an amount totally incapable of lifting a 550,000 lb, the dry weight of the 747 in question, any amount at all.

The CIA claimed the plane climbed 3,800 feet above the 13,800 feet where the initiating event occurred in 18 seconds. The NTSB's cartoon reduced that by more than half, to 1200 feet in the same 18 seconds, but still, there was no energy with engines at idle to power the climb. With losing 57,000 pounds of nose, there is no way that plane could keep a trim to fly. Boeing stated that the maximum climb rate for that 747 under ideal lift conditions with the engines operating at full thrust is 3800 feet per minute! Yet both the CIA and the NTSB cartoons would have us believe that particular crippled 747 succeeded in climbing 3800 feet or 1200 feet in a mere 18 seconds. . . with the engines at idle! Impossible.

The apologists claim that the momentum of the aircraft was used up to make the climb. . . but the math doesn't work out either. Applying the math to convert ALL of the upward momentum of the aircraft's current climb at the initiating event shows the plane could make that altitude, but then the plane would fall like a rock directly beneath the initiating event, having zero forward momentum left to go anywhere at all other than drop. Instead, the 747 of Flight TWA-800 fell in a ballistic fall from the initiating event without any climb at all:

"Ballistic Fall.

The captain of the NOAA research ship Rude entered Flight 800's last secondary radar position, speed, heading and gross weight into his computer and it predicted the landing point by calculating a ballistic fall. He went to that spot and immediately found the main wreckage including the fuselage, wings and engines."

The plane was tracked by secondary passive radar until it dropped below the radar horizon, about 200 feet above sea level. We know exactly where and when it was at each sweep. We know within 4.6 seconds when the even occurred and when the bulk of the wreckage fell into the ocean. That leaves a 9.2 second margin of error due to the plane being out of radar sight. It's actually less than that because there were a couple of other passive radars and triangulations were made. However, a law of ballistics says that the time to climb to an altitude equals the time to fall back to the starting point. Ergo, if the plane was at 13,800 feet, and then climbed under either of the CIA or NTSB theories to their ultimate Zoom climb altitudes in ~18 seconds, by the laws of ballistics, it then requires an additional 18 seconds to fall back to 13,800 feet before the plane can begin to fall below that initial altitude. That's a total of ~36 seconds before the plane can start its fall from 13,800 feet.

Flight TWA-800 Secondary (passive) Radar and Debris Trails

However, DesertRhino, we know from the radar tracks that Flight TWA-800 the time between the initiating event to splashdown of the main fuselage wreckage into the Atlantic Ocean was ~43 seconds plus or minus 2 seconds. If we add ~18 seconds for the zoom climb and another ~18 seconds for the fall from the top of that zoom climb, we have accounted for a full ~36 seconds of the time which simply doesn't exist in the radar record!

We would have to allow only 5 to 9 seconds for the wreckage to fall the additional 13,800 feet. . . 2.6 miles of fall accelerated only by gravity and opposed by drag. If that were done in 5 seconds the wreckage would have to splash in at more than 1850 Miles per hour. if it were the longer 9 seconds, it would be a slower, but still absurd 1050 MPH! My calculations put the terminal calculations of the crippled 747 at only 450 mph due to atmospheric drag.

However, the main point is that ~43 seconds does not provide ANY TIME AT ALL FOR ANY ZOOM CLIMB! NONE, ZERO. NADA. ZIP! Such a climb is impossible according to the laws of physics, aerodynamics, and by the radar record!

PS: DesertRhine, I posted all of my calculations in detail on these and more back in 2002 on FreeRepublic. I also posted my detailed timeline of the event.

[Swordmaker]

Yep. The TWA800 aircraft was 25 years old. If it hadn’t been that aircraft it would have been another. The NTSB found from the investigation that the fuel tanks weren’t as safe as assumed especially after years of service. The safety changes that were made saved lives.

Then why did the NTSB wait until 2008 to require the inerting of the atmospheres of fuel tanks of the 747s and all newer planes starting in 2010 and then only retrofitting of just 60 older 747s which had to be completed by 2018? The other changes they ordered were such things as requiring no electrical wiring in fuel tanks which is something Boeing has been doing since the 1970s and had nothing to do with the modality claimed for the claimed explosion.

To get the center wing tank on a 747 to explode, they had to fill their quarter sized models with PROPANE/AIR mixes instead of Jet A. . . because the Jet A would simply not ignite even at the ideal Fuel/Air mix and temperatures they claimed it would.

Waiting 12 years after the TWA-800 disaster looks as if they did not put too much of a priority on pushing out their final rules, does it? Especially when they don't make it effective for another two years, and retroactive for twenty years AFTER the event for the very planes they say exploded. . . when almost every single plane affected will be long retired from service or sold outside of their jurisdiction!

[Swordmaker]

It seems the engines would have been way hotter, though.

The averaged position of those engines would have been center fuselage. At the speed of a Mach 2 missile, it would not have any time to differentiate between any and would select average center. . . which could be the air conditioner area.

[Swordmaker]

Did the NTSB ground all Boeing 747s after determining that it “was a fuel tank explosion?” I accepted that version (explosion) but after seeing what has been revealed about DC’s corrupt leadership, I am a missile believer.

No. They took 12 years before they issued their "final" directive ordering the "atmospheric inerting" of fuel tanks on all new commercial aircraft built after 2010 and the retrofitting of only 60 747 aircraft to be done by 2018. . . by which time almost all of those older 747s will have been retired to the junk yard, or sold outside of the NTSB's jurisdiction.

[Talisker]

The averaged position of those engines would have been center fuselage. At the speed of a Mach 2 missile, it would not have any time to differentiate between any and would select average center. . . which could be the air conditioner area.

Fascinating thought. Although a calculation would still need time to be made to average, versus determining a weighted decision. Still, fascinating, because its not an unlikely guidance scenario and so could be the default preferred choice anyway. Thanks.

[Big Giant Head]

All the witnesses saw was the flaming body, missing it’s cockpit, streaking upwards until it stalled.

Dude....

[Swordmaker]

The aircraft was probably doing about 250 knots when it exploded. If all the kinetic energy was transferred into a climb it could not have climbed a few thousand feet. That did not happen. This is just plain physics. It did not happen that way.

It was climbing at about at about 33 feet per second and doing 376 knots according to the last active radar ping received before the initiating event. It was at ~13,800 feet when the event happened.

[Swordmaker]

Radars reportedly showed a missile like strike before being scrubbed, deleted or lost.

That fast rotation military radar record was taken to the White House and never seen again. It is claimed to have shown two blips of an incoming object calculated to be at a speed over Mach 2.

[Moonman62]

I already answered here:

http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/news/3440215/posts?page=81#81

Like I said, this is like a game of Whack-A-Mole with the conspiracy people bringing up the same thing over and over again.

[Swordmaker]

There's another reason the CIA and NTSB zoom climb is untenable. The Center Wing Tank they claim exploded is not merely a tank but it is a structural member of the airframe to which the wings attach. If the explosion occurred in the Center Wing Tank, the structure would have been majorly compromised and could NOT have supported the forces necessary for any climb at all.

The Center Wing Tank was recovered from the bottom of the Atlantic and does not show any signs of being "exploded" such as walls bowed outward from the force of an explosion. Instead, where the walls are damaged, they are bowed INWARD, from a force acting from the outside.

If I recall correctly, although I don't have a photo of it, the forward spar which formed the forward bulkhead of the tank, was also bowed inwards, not outward. The G forces required for the 3800 feet climb of the CIA in 18 seconds is literally beyond the stress limits of the 747 with an intact Center Wing Tank. With a compromised Center Wing Tank, it's doubtful the wings would have stayed attached, much less carried the plane aloft that distance. Absent a good attack angle to achieve lift, and given no power, that plane did not climb.

Boeing 747-100 — Note the CWT is located below where the wing escape door is located.
The nose break point is just forward of the wing, about where the "D" ends with the door below it.

The nose of the plane broke off about 20 feet forward of the Center Wing Tank. Not where any of the forces from a Center Wing Tank explosion would be anywhere

[Swordmaker]

Like I said, this is like a game of Whack-A-Mole with the conspiracy people bringing up the same thing over and over again.

And what they have brought up has NEVER been answered. The physics challenge has never been replied to, nor has they CIA or the NTSB ever provided the calculations they used to produce their conclusions about any Zoom Climb, nor have they accounted for the extra time required for it to have occurred before the radar shows TWA-800 splashed into the Atlantic. They just stonewall. When FOI suits are presented they claim National Interest trumps them, or the privacy of the victims, even when it is THE FAMILIES OF THOSE VICTIMS requesting the data! Absurd. Stonewalls after stonewalls.

[Swordmaker]

The Swordmaker Timeline of TWA-800

This timeline was based on my examination of the radar returns, both active and passive, debris fields, wreckage recovery, and the blackbox data and eye-witness reports that I deemed credible. Other Freepers critiques and inputs were considered and when suitable, resulted in changes to the timeline. This was constructed back in September 2002 in response to a Freeper named Asmodeus whose rude and reprehensible behavior toward other Freepers he disagreed with on this topic got him banned.

• 20:31:00 — Plane flying normally, altitude 13,400 ft., climbing at 33 ft/sec.

  21:31:04 — Possible ground-to-air missile launch. Rate of climb accelerates to Mach 2.1.

• 20:31:07 — Mike Wire notices flare like object rising over house and arcing to left. in the next 8 seconds many more people notice streak, firework, etc.

• 20:31:10 — Major Fred Meyer sees "meteor like" object flash across his field of view.

• 20:31:12 — ~13,800 ft. - 0 sec. Last transponder return, everything normal, Aircraft climbing at 33 ft./second.

• 20:31:13 — ~13,840 ft. ~1 sec. Missile strikes TWA800 on left side at approximately seat row 16-17 transects the passenger cabin spewing partially burned solid rocket fuel (and leaving a red residue on seats in this area), taking out passengers and seats in rows 17-18 and exits aircraft through right side. VDR ends in loud, strange sound. Bright white Ordnance type explosion occurs just after missile exits thin walled cabin. Blast places massive overpressure on nose of aircraft and opens wide gap in side of aircraft. Parts of missile continue on momentum at speed approaching MACH 2 at a vector 190 degrees from north, ejecta from aircraft including seats, passengers, luggage to eventually land in "crosswind blast debris" field. The blast imparts a slightly more eastward vector for the ejecta which combined with the ejecta's already present eastward momentum results in the ejecta coming to rest about 175 degrees from the point of ejection.

• 20:31:14 — ~13,880 ft. ~2 sec. 400+ MPH winds acting on the gaping holes in aircraft fuselage causes the "unzip" of the aluminum skin of the nose. Windforce bends the nose up and breaks the "keel" of the fuselage. Signals to control surfaces and engines cease when wires are broken and engines revert to idle. Drag is no longer being counteracted by the thrust of the engines. The plane slows drastically.

• 20:31:15 — ~13, 900 ft - ~3 sec. Drag pulls the nose up and away from the rest of the fuselage and breaks loose on the right first and falls away to the left where it is still partially attached, twisting the aircraft toward the left and starts to fall pulling the left wing down, changing the vector of lift imparting a strong leftward force on the aircraft. Unbalanced drag toward the left is enormous. This accounts for the sudden leftward change in aircraft vector.

• 20:31:16:49 — ~13,890 ft - 4.49 sec. First post IE radar return. - The nose swings under and to the right and breaks completely loose and continues on a momentum driven ballistic fall slightly to the right (about 3 degrees) of the original aircraft vector. The noseless aircraft losing both the balance necessary for proper flight AND the thrust of the engines overcoming drag, pitches rapidly up and stalls. it may climb a very small amount during the pitch up before stall.

• 20:31:17 — ~13,860 ft. - ~5 sec. Gravity's inexorable pull starts the plane on its final trajectory. Drag is slowing the forward velocity and the uncontrolled aircraft is on either a ballistic fall or a somewhat aerodynamic fall.

• 20:31:21:13 — ~13,500 ft. - 9.13 sec. Second post IE radar return. - Uncontrolled plane pitches and yaws, lift occasionally pulls the plane in different vectors... this time a strong rightward vector. Drag continues to rip and rend the airframe just in front of the wing.

• 20:31:25:72 — ~12,300 ft. - 13.72 sec. Third post IE radar return. - More gyrations... now vectored back to the right.

• 20:31:30:37 — ~10,900 ft. - 18.37 sec. Fourth post IE radar return. - Falling steeply now. Much of the forward momentum is gone due to drag. Structural damage is weakening the Center Wing Tank's integrity and wings are no longer as strongly attached to the remaining fuselage.

• 20:31:32:?? — ~10,050 ft. - ~20 sec. Terminal velocity achieved of ~450 ft./second.

• 20:31:34:97 — ~9,100 ft. - 22.97 sec. Fifth post IE radar return. Stress is taking its toll on the wingroots. The Center Wing Tank structural members are buckling under the whipping of the plane rolling and pitching. Fuel is now leaking into the area around the Wing roots from the full wing tanks.

• 20:31:36:?? — ~8,500 ft. - ~24 sec. The aircraft takes a VERY sharp turn to the right (South) and one of the wing's fails, breaking away from the fuselage. The aircraft with only one wing starts to spin rapidly, spewing jet fuel and agitating it into the atmosphere, mixing it with air.

• 20:31:39:64 — ~7,000 ft. - 27.64 sec. Sixth post IE radar return. - Center Wint Tank explodes from spark caused by MECHANICAL breaking of metal. Volatile air-fuel mix surrounding aircraft ignited into Massive Fireball, Hot fireball begins to RISE, while burning plane falls through bottom of Fireball still spewing liquid fuel which ignites on exit from wing tanks.

• 20:31:43 — Elmer's "Streak of light" crippled plane appears.

• 20:31:44:29 — ~4,900 ft. - 32.29 sec. Seventh post IE radar return. - Still falling at 450 ft. per second.

• 20:31:47 — ~3,680 ft - End of streak - Elmer Asmodeusu's mythical "Eyewitness Myth" Explosion of Massive Fireball at 5500-7500 feet.

• 20:31:48:94 — ~2,800 ft. - 36.94 sec Eighth post IE radar return. - Shortly after the Flight TWA800 falls below the radar horizon and no further radar returns are received.

  20:31:55 - ~43 splashdown.

Total Elapsed time from Initiating Event (the missile strike) = ~43 seconds. Plus or minus 2 seconds.

[cpdiii]

It was climbing at about at about 33 feet per second and doing 376 knots according to the last active radar ping received before the initiating event. It was at ~13,800 feet when the event happened.

Thanks for that info but I assure it did not climb after exploding.

[Swordmaker]

Thanks for that info but I assure it did not climb after exploding.

My calculations show that, after the engines when to idle, the most it could have climbed using every bit of upward momentum it had was about ten feet more for 1.02 seconds. The 33 feet per second of previous climb it had be over come very quickly as it lost lift when the angle of attack changed drastically as the center of gravity was moved backwards almost 12 feet behind the center of lift, then the drag coefficient was increased massively. The force of gravity of 32 feet per second/per second would rapidly eliminate the 33 feet per second climb, making it ZERO in just about that one second as the lift was eliminated which would counter the force of gravity pulling with a downward vector. If there is any lift, the angle of its vector is probably toward the back as the plane is pitched upwards, which would add to the pitching. The vector of the velocity of the air (wind) and the vacuum of the drag is also going to be countering the air speed, but forcing the plane into a stall. There IS NO UPWARD LIFT from the airfoils of the wing and the engines are producing NO THRUST. Ergo, the only rational conclusion is there can be no zoom climb for this aircraft at all.

The only source of any energy to convert to altitude would be the aircraft's forward momentum. . . but that would require ALL of it to gain the altitude the CIA says it gained. It would have ZERO forward motion at the peak of altitude and we know it did not. Ergo, it did not get it there, so it did not gain altitude since the aircraft wound up where it would have had it not gained any altitude at all. Unless we repeal the law of conservation of energy, which Liberals are always willing to do, or God reached down and dragged it up to 17,600 in 18 seconds, or whatever additional altitude, it didn't gain altitude.

[cherry]

I think setting fire to those little children at Waco is the most horrific debacle this country has ever seen....

we live in tyranny...

[Moonman62]

I couldn’t find the word “zoom” in the NTSB document. I did look at graphs of the simulations the NTSB had done of the main wreckage path. It doesn’t look like much of a zoom to me. The paths look compatible with mathematics and physics. The main wreckage followed a ballistic path once it started breaking apart.