Actually, it is the FBI's job to investigate such an incident, if it is thought that a crime may be involved. Since airplanes just blowing up is pretty rare (there have been about 15 instances of fuel explosions from all causes in all the years of jet flight) and airplanes blowing up because somebody blew them up is unfortunately more common, the FBI took the lead at first. There was a lot of tension as the NTSB guys, who are experienced in wreckage examination, began to see that there was no evidence of a bomb or missile. FBI guys, looking at the wreck, had the same reaction a lot of people do: "It must have been a bomb. Nothing else could be so devastating." But the jurisdictional issue was ultimately sorted out. In earlier cases the NTSB has sometimes handed off to FBI when an accident turned out to be less accidental, and sometimes they've worked together.
Even in the Hindenberg accident, the FBI initially responded and continued to sit in on the investigation, in case sabotage turned out to be the cause (that was as controversial in its day as 800, 59 years and two months later). The FBI never thought it was sabotage, but they put agents on the case to liaise with the Commerce Department's aviation experts. The forerunner of today's NTSB determined that the accident was caused by a hydrogen leak ignited by an unknown source of ignition. You can find the civil report at ERAU and the FBI files in the FBI FOIA website.
The presence of the FBI & the military did provide great resources, and made it possible for this to be the most thorough investigation of an air loss ever. 95% of the plane was recovered, 230 victims were plucked out of the anonymity of a watery grave, tens of thousands of parts and fragments were pored over by metallurgists and explosives experts.
You should see an investigation of a Cessna prang with one killed. Usually the NTSB doesn't even send anybody, but has the FAA look into it, and bases its finding on the FAA report, unless it's odd. (I think most of us would agree that there is a national interest in finding the facts in a major airline crash that is greater than in studying why I did it if I stuff a 172 in the ocean).
Anyway, one of the things to come of this is better coordination between FBI and NTSB. I think the FBI Special Agents have a lot more respect for accident investigators now.
Now you also say: [FBI says] "we won't let you investigate the wreckage."
The wreckage remains sealed because of ongoing litigation, but pray tell why should FBI let unqualified people, pushing an agenda, in to see it? Their experience with Sanders was not exactly positive. We don't have the right to take Lee Harvey Oswald's gun to try out our JFK theories, either. We don't have the right to do our own autopsies on crime or accident victims. There are some things that have to be reserved to the people whose duty it is to do them.
FBI let NTSB, and its consultants, and the parties to the investigation -- the line, the unions, the manufacturers -- inspect the wreckage -- in all thousands of people. Not to mention the thousands who assisted in the recovery of wreckage and remains. If you are running a conspiracy that big, you might as well just hold a press conference and invite everybody.
And: "here is a video by the CIA that proves it was the center fuel tank."
The video purports to "prove" no such thing, it merely provides a visualization of the breakup sequence. There is a massive body opf evidence pointing at the centre fuel tank. The focus on the video by missile and bomb fans is hard to explain, unless they are (1) fixated on the CIA as a nexus of conspiracies, like Rivero and Ruppert, or (2) unable to confront evidence that doesn't come in Nintendo format.
Incidentally, the agency video shop has been used in other NTSB investigations, I just learnt.
d.o.l.
Criminal Number 18F
Criminal, You are wrong... the wreckage no longer exists. All litigation has long since been completed and after the NTSB released its final report, the wreckage was quietly disposed of. Some was sold for scrap and the rest was buried in a SECURE landfill.
The Engineering and Applied Science article also shows a graphic which answers Swordmaker's points in his "physics" post (sorry for not replying directly to your post, Sword! I have limited time). The nose section fell ballistically, the remainder continued for a bit, crippled and not as aerodynamic as it was, but still responding to the laws of aerodynamics. There were four forces working on it, lift, weight, thrust and drag. The break-up and shedding of the nose caused a huge increase in drag, but the wings were still providing lift even as airspeed tapered off. Your ballistic calculation assumes a non-aerodynamic object (like Galileo's cannonball). Bear in mind there were also winds aloft (without looking it up, the number 115kt at 30k sticks in my mind, so we're probably looking at 50-60 kt or so at 13.8) so heavier weight stuff will be closer to the pre-disaster flightpath and lighter stuff will be progressively further downwind. It's possible for stuff to be upwind if the machine changed course during the breakup sequence.
I will certainly agree with your assertion that aerodynamic forces were still acting on the aircraft after the initiating event, however the math still makes a ballistic fall the best fit for the radar data and positions of the initiating event and the final splashdown.
THRUST: According to Boeing, the engines had to have reverted to idle on loss of signal from the cockpit which WOULD have occured when the nose, along with the cockpit, was detatched. At idle, the engines produce NO THRUST.
LIFT: For lift to occur, the wing must have air moving over it at the proper angle of attack, to create a partial vacuum above the upper part of the wing. With the loss of the nose, the remaining portion of the aircraft's Center of Gravity moved instantly backwards causing an instant imbalance, pitching the mortally wounded aircraft upward to an angle that disrupts the flow of air over the wing, creating turbulence destroying the lift producing vacuum, and putting the wing into a stall condition. Absent the inherent dynamic stability of a COMPLETE 747, balanced on its Center of Lift, it is very unlikely a stable, lift producing, angle of attack could be achieved or maintained for any appreciable length of time to allow the aircraft to climb or avoid tumbling. Other surfaces and occasional, random presentation of the wing, will produce some random lift forces, but none that would be balanced. NO COHERENT OR CONSISTENT LIFT.
Were now down to only TWO of your four forces.
DRAG: The engines were producing THRUST to overcome DRAG and to provide replenishment of the energy extracted from the system to produce LIFT. When the engines ceased producing thrust at the loss of the signal, the counteracting force to the drag was eliminated. Each engine on the aircraft (assuming the largest available) is capable of producing 64,000 pounds per second of thrust, or 256,000 pounds per second for the four. (The engines were probably not operating at full thrust - I think I recall the FDR reported they were set at 50%, but I could be misremembering) As the aircraft was not accelerating, a large portion of the thrust at the moment of nose loss was being utilized merely to overcome drag. Once that counter force was removed, drag would have started SLOWING the entire system as the drag force became the only horizontal force being applied to the aircraft. This drag would have reduced the available momentum to have kept the plane moving forward, and, more importantly, drained the momentum that could have been converted to an increased altitiude in a climb.
The loss of the nose changed the aircraft's drag coefficient... increasing it enormously. The now open fuselage, is presented to a 330 MPH velocity wind that may have produced an AIR RAM condition building a massive pressure in the cabin, which may explain the finding of the two righthand seats of the LAST ROW along with some tail parts of the 747 in the debris field with the nose and NOT with the rest of the fuselage. This also indicates a loss of hull integrity at the REAR (to allow the ejection of the two seats) AND in air damage to the tail.
As the aircraft pitched up, the cross section presentation to the air in the horizontal vector was increased greatly, increasing drag relative to the direction of travel. Ergo, DRAG IS INCREASED.
WEIGHT (Gravity): The only force being applied to the aircraft that remains consistent throughout the event is constantly pulling the plane toward the ocean at 32feet per second per second. When lift is lost, gravity will overcome any upward momentum and then proceed to accelerate the aircraft downward. The velocity of the falling plane will increase until DRAG force exactly counters the force of gravity at which point "terminal velocity" is attained until impact with the ocean.
Without significant THRUST or LIFT forces we are left with a DRAG modified ballistic fall for the fuselage which I again repeat is ALL there was time for before the splash down of TWA-800 38-44 seconds after the initiating event. THERE WAS NO TIME FOR A CLIMB OF ANY KIND. Absent thrust and Lift, Gravity was not being counter-acted..
Gravity and drag are the only significant forces working on the damaged aircraft.
Other issues:
Your wind velocity figures are incorrect. The wind at 13,800 was ~14 knots (~16 MPH), not 50-60 kts. The direction was 123 degrees. The radar tracks of the lightweight debris and the debris field spread for these lightweight objects are about where we would expect given the vector of the plane and the vector of the wind.
However, there are radar returns and a third debris field that is completely counter to expectations that extends almost due South of the initiating event position. The radar returns and splashdown positions of this "crosswind" debris indicate the pieces are denser than the "lightweight" debris found in the downwind portion of the second debris field where the nose section splashed in. Some of the items found in this field came from the passenger cabin. Something "ejected" these items from the aircraft in a completely contrary to expectation vector. It is unlikely that a Center Wing Tank explosion could have been that "something" as the apparent vector of the ejecta would have required it to be ejected through the right wing... which would mean the wing would have to have been damaged or even blown off... which is not supported by the known final splash in location of that wing.
A couple of radar returns ON this vector are inexplicable... the calculated velocity of these blips indicate a speed of about Mach 2, consistent with the velocity that may be imparted to debris from a high-velocity explosive (Although one would expect to see other high-velocity debris in a 360 degree pattern) but not a low-velocity fuel-air mix explosion or with the continued trajectory of a missile part after passing through the aircraft. Or they could be random anomalies.