Of course, the next problem with the missile theory is that a painstaking reconstruction of the wreckage clearly shows that the plane's metal was twisted outward from the main fuel tank area deep inside the plane and no evidence of an inward explosion on the outer skin was ever found. Next, no evidence of missile pieces or traces of missile explosive chemicals was ever detected, even in minute quantities. I'm afraid the missile theory for flight 800 is destined to become the "grassy knoll" of aircraft crashes for those bent on seeing conspiracies everywhere.
You may be right. My knowledge of the circumstances surrounding the crash extends only to the witness accounts, the altitude of the plane when it exploded, and the target range of a typical hand-held surface to air missle.
On the other hand, several significant items of wreckage were "never located" and not included in the reconstruction. The FBI admitted that there was a back room, to which they would take some items, and those weren't even recorded as found on the NTSB database. Additionally, items like seats from the first class cabin, and the nose gear doors were among the first items to come off the plane and the first to fall into the ocean. The explanation for these facts by the NTSB is strained, at best: a beam transferred the force of the explosion up to the front of the plane, which is why those things came off before things surrounding the exploding tank. Still further, NTSB workers were caught reassigning the location where some of the seats were found, "otherwise, we wouldn't have been able to explain their location to Mr. Hall."
There's a lot more than one scratchy audio tape's worth of evidence in this particular grassy knoll scenario.
Not true. First, PETN and RDX were found on pieces of wreckage, which the NTSB attempted to explain away as from a dog training exercise, even though parts of the plane that had those traces were where the dogs didn't go (like, leading edges of wings), and what about the famous "red residue," that the NTSB lied under oath in court about, and which the FBI carefully removed all traces of from the seats that had it, in the reconstruction.