Former NTSB Official Doubts Accident Caused Flt. 587 Crash

www.newsmax.com | 11/12/01 | Carl Limbacher

[Freedom of Speech Wins]

Monday Nov. 12, 2001; 11:34 p.m. EST

Former NTSB Official Doubts Accident Caused Flt. 587 Crash

Aviation expert and former National Transportation & Safety Board official Vernon Grose said late Monday that he's increasingly skeptical that the crash of American Airlines Flight 587 was purely accidental.

"I am backing away from the ready idea that this is simply an accident," Grose told Fox News Channel's John Scott.

The veteran air crash prober said that he questions the sequence in which the plane broke up over Jamaica Bay before slamming into a residential area in Rockaway, Queens.

"Photographs you've already shown tonigt (indicate) the vertical stabilizer of the aircraft with the American Airlines insignia right on it (fell into) Jamaica Bay long before the engine falls off in Queens," he told Scott.

Grose said that if the vertical stabilizer detached from Flt. 587 over Jamaica Bay, which the plane traversed before plummeting to the ground in Rockaway, it suggested that catastrophic engine failure alone may not have caused the crash.

"No, I don't think that's the situation at all," he told FNC.

"The engine that came free, which apparently was the number 1 left engine, and crashed on land - that was well after the vertical stabilizer was detached from the aircraft and that tells me that somehow..... that the airplane was progressively disintegrating, not just losing an engine and then diving into the ground."

"Earlier today I thought it was simply the loss of an engine that caused this," Grose told FNC. "But I'm not convinced now.... I am becoming more skeptical."

[MistyCA]

Yikes!

[MistyCA]

Thanks. I appreciate that input.

[MistyCA]

I am unclear about where the rudder is, but in another thread several people were discussing the fact that it was left on the runway. I simply never saw anything that would verify that fact and did not ask (duh) where the information came from. Maybe I can locate those references again and find out.

[Lion's Cub]

there is no statistical argument that says it could not have been an accident

Thanks for that info.

[Magician]

Re: vertical stabilizer.

A witness in a boat in Jamaica Bay directly underneath the planes path said that an explosion at the root of the wing blew the wing off and the wing sheared off the vertical stabilizer. An interview of this witness is recorded elsewhere in FR.

[Jethro Tull]

"What I meant was that conflicting eyewitness accounts tend to be used as fodder by the feebies and the media who attempt to prove their point or agenda.

Hi Huggy.

Regarding eyewitnesses.

It's been my experience that when deemed reliable (sober, sane and coherent), eyewitnesses tend to relate a very similar version of the same story.

To the untrained investigator (the media flacks), differences in accounts are too often dismissed as unreliable. The truth is any one account depends on where the witness observed the incident. The time and surroundings also impact the version.

It's important to note that few, if any accounts, are related with the same verbiage. Nor are they told with the same emotion, etc.

But with few exceptions, 99.9% of the reliable eyewitnesses will have the same core information.

[Illbay]

It's so easy to say "people are stupid," and "the media cooperates." But any attempt at such a coverup would be seen as the pathway to glory for any young, eager journalist. Many of 'em want to be the next Woodward and Bernstein.

[Mr. Jeeves]

RE: The condition of the separated tail - A300's use a carbon-fiber composite tail instead of aluminum. That is why it is painted gray on American Airlines planes, because it isn't aluminum like a 767 tail and they can't make it match the rest of the plane. This carbon-fiber material is stronger than aluminum and it is not especially unusual that the tail separated cleanly from the aluminum hull without a lot of attached debris.

Now as to whether the tail separation was due to impact by wing material, the yaw force of a sudden thrust reversal, or mechanics Anwar and Habib spening all night checking the rivets very carefully is still open to conjecture. Where the rudder is found will answer a number of open questions.

[1234]

at 11:23 AM E.S.T. ON FNC, retired fireman/witness, says his VIEW/ opinion: INITIAL EXPLOSION FROM REAR OF FUSELAGE, ABOVE WING....

[onyx]

Me too.

[Jethro Tull]

#167: Woodward and Bernstein would never have been turned loose by the WP had the prey not been a Republican named Nixon.

[Travis McGee]

I formerly did not want to post these types of scenarios for the same reason as you.

But since it appears that our "security experts" are mindless drones, we need to rub their faces in the possibilities to spur them to action.

The see-no-evil "Ostrich Defense" went down in flames on 9-11

[michigander]

Where IS the RUDDER?

Perhaps it came off while they were towing it through the water to the shore.

A large section of the tail piece, center, of an American Airlines jet is towed to shore by a
tugboat crane, right, after a plane crashed in the Queens Borough section of New York
Monday, Nov. 12, 2001. A jetliner en route to the Dominican Republic broke apart minutes
after takeoff and crashed in a waterfront neighborhood Monday. All 260 people aboard were
killed, and at least six others were reported missing on the ground. (AP Photo/Daniel P. Derella)

[timestax]

bttt

[timestax]

bttt

[Freedom of Speech Wins]

Nobody seems to be even asking the eyewitnesses for a timeline e.g. when they heard the "explosion" to when they saw certain parts of the plane falling off.

[Z-28]

The "Birds Hypothosis" is total disinformation and total BS. These engines are designed to eat 60 frozen dead chickens a minute without damage that are fired into them by a "bird cannon" during the design phase.

A terrorist event is now being covered up for national security reasons because we need the freedom of travel the airlines provide.

[Z-28]

Most of the variability of eyewitness accounts stems not from wacko eyewitnesses, but from the inability of the investigators to ask the questions correctly, or to ask the correct questions, or to ask the correct followup questions.

Example 1: One lady eyewitness of the flight 587 crash said the "propellor" fell off. She was dismissed as a wacko because A-300's don't have "propellors." I asked my wife where the "propellor" was on an A-300 picture I have and she immediately pointed to the jet engine pod hanging from the wing.

Example 2: Many eyewitnesses of the flight 587 crash give opposing accounts of which engine was on fire or fell off, some saying the left and others saying the right. But they are never asked if they are viewing the aircraft from the forward aspect or the rearward aspect. Left and right on an aircraft are normally determined from the pilot's seat looking forward, but to many lay people looking at an aircraft head-on from the forward aspect, the #2 engine might be called by them the "left engine."

This kind of error is what researchers call "measurement error." Measurement error can easily totally invalidate an investigation or survey, or give the incorrect result.

[Z-28]

I recently read a summary of the Russian submarine Kirsch explosion and disaster. What I found amazing is that the explosion in the forward torpedo room actually caused a hugh implosive concave "dent" in the rear-of-center portion of the submarine. Experts attributed this "dent" to a hugh vacuum created by the explosion forward and water pressure, and not to a collision with another vessel.

Could an explosion cause the same implosive effect on an aircraft's fuselage?