Posted on 03/29/2007 11:25:45 AM PDT by Hal1950
What prompts this column is an e-mail I received last week from a retired USNR commander and former TWA pilot, with whom I had had no prior contact.
He recounted a conversation that he had shortly after the mid-air destruction of TWA Flight 800 on July 17, 1996, off the coast of Long Island. He had a particular interest in the plane's demise for two reasons. One is that he was a qualified accident investigator. The second is that he had flown that very same flight a week earlier.
"It had to be a bloody missile, probably an un-armed Tomahawk, going for center-of-mass," he said to a senior flight manager of his acquaintance. "They were most likely going for a target drone and testing their capability to go-through normal aircraft traffic to get at the target."
The flight manager agreed and recounted what he had been told by a maintenance foreman at the investigation hangar on Long Island.
"They had this curtained area over in the corner with Marine armed guards in front," the foreman had told him. "But, I did see one of the right mainmounts that had a crease out of it, as if something round had passed through it. And, to me, it sure looked like an 'entry' and 'exit' hole in the fuselage."
I cite this e-mail for two reasons. One is that the accepted wisdom among many TWA pilots immediately after the crash matches closely the detailed account of what transpired, at least as reported in an extraordinarily comprehensive anonymous review that I and investigator Ray Lahr received a few months ago.
The second reason is that all of the best eyewitness accounts that I have received that might verify this scenario are second-hand. In fact, no one that I know has talked to anyone who witnessed the firing of the fatal missiles.
My partner in this investigation, James Sanders, had developed any number of discreet first-hand sources in 1996-1997, but all of these sources "went away after we were indicted." The "we" refers to James and his wife, Elizabeth, at the time a TWA trainer, both of whom eventually were convicted of the bogus charge of conspiracy to steal airplane parts.
If an eyewitness were to come forward, now would be a good time, a safer time as well. The true story might derail the ambitions of a candidate or two – Al Gore for sure, Hillary probably – but the major media would be more willing to listen before either became the party's nominee. If either is elected president, the story dies.
I can be contacted through my website, cashill.com, and Ray Lahr through his, raylahr.com.
I have sent "The Review" to perhaps 100 people with more technical expertise than I, and it has impressed everyone that I have heard from. Unlike the subjunctive dithering of the NTSB report, The Review is declarative and confident and tells its tale with the dense technical poetry of a Patrick O'Brian novel.
According to The Review's author, the first missile, the one that destroyed the plane, was large and, if not un-armed, at least failed to explode. The missile shot above TWA Flight 800, found its mark and descended on it from the rear.
"The missile's momentum was high enough to pitch the nose of the aircraft sharply upward when it landed on the top of the stabilizer," claims the author, "and alter its heading to the right when it hit the body. The missile's supersonic speed caused these changes to occur nearly simultaneously."
The stabilizer is the horizontal part of the tail. The elevator is the movable control on the stabilizer. A hydraulically driven device called the "jackscrew," located in front of the tail, changes the stabilizer's pitch angle, which causes the plane to pitch up or down.
So much information is loaded into the recovered jackscrew that author and Air Force vet Tom Kovach calls it the "Rosetta Stone" of the disaster, "the one piece of the aircraft that proves the high-speed action events that brought down Flight 800."
Apparently, the missile smashed into the stabilizer with more force than the jackscrew could handle, so much force in fact that it ripped the forearm-thick steel of the jackscrew in half. This same force pushed the tail violently down and the nose up and wrenched the plane into an aerodynamic stall. Unable to take the extra stress from the aircraft's sudden up-pitch, the wing tips fractured simultaneously.
The violent upward pitch of the plane whipsawed the fuselage and snapped the rigid keel beam, which runs under the length of the fuselage. The missile meanwhile skipped off the stabilizer and into the right side of the fuselage, which had flipped up nearly vertically and to the right.
The savage force of this combined action ripped the cockpit off of the plane, which, along with the front of the keel beam and the air conditioning units, plunged into the sea before the rest of the plane did the same.
The Review author deduced this in large part from the debris field and physical evidence, like the fractured jackscrew, but there is more evidence, of course, namely the testimony of the eyewitnesses.
From her Fire Island deck, FBI witness No. 150 watched a shiny, cylindrical wingless object move at high speed from north to south. She then noticed the object head toward "a large commercial airliner" traveling east at the same altitude. The airliner "simply 'stopped' at that moment," she told the FBI.
"As the plane came apart, its nose turned up and to the right," her FBI 302 continues. "She could see windows on the top right side of front of the plane, even though she had previously been able to see only along its spine."
"The front was carried forward and arced down with its momentum," the 302 adds. "The right wing seemed to stay with the plane."
Six days after the crash, weeks before any of this information became public, witness No. 150 described the break-up sequence of TWA Flight 800 almost perfectly. She was one of more than 750 eyewitnesses that the FBI interviewed.
Another such witness, No. 551, tracked TWA Flight from his window seat on US Air 217 overhead. He watched the 747 for 30-40 seconds as it flew eastward, its cabin lights still on. Then he saw the front of the plane explode. "The plane seemed to stop in mid air like a bus running into a stone wall – no forward motion," he told the FBI.
The Review author believes that No. 551 was describing the same dramatic stall, a result of the missile impact that No. 150 described, likely the first blow of three. The author does not try to guess the missile's provenance, but he rules out a Stinger or similar shoulder-fired missile. One can infer from what he writes that the lethal missile was likely a product of the U.S. Navy or a NATO ally.
Dwight Brumley, a retired 25-year United States Navy master chief, also watched the incident from US Air 217. He is among those Navy people who believes that if this missile had come off of a sub or a cruiser, "Somebody would talk to somebody about what they knew (or at least suspected)."
Brumley thinks it possible that there was a test of a defensive missile system by a black ops team that went awry. More likely, he speculates, "We were completely caught with our pants down and TWA 800 was just flat out shot down by an unknown missile."
"I just know," Brumley tells me, "that I saw something streaking up toward TWA 800 and that after the initial explosion she never climbed anymore. No 'zoom climb.'"
If someone knows more or different, we would certainly like to hear from him.
And I'll ask this question. What idiot would test a missile by firing into the most densly travelled air corridor in the world? What possible reason would anyone have in doing so? What could they possibly be testing?
And ostriches ignore more than 600 witnesses scattered all over Long Island and Connecticut who just happened to see a orange/red/white streak of light climb up to the plane and meet it just at the time the center fuel tank exploded.
ML/NJ
The missle came from the water level..so it was either our government or somebody else's...or a terrorist hit.
We don't seem to want to acknowledge a terrorist outfit could pull it off...so?
Anyone who has studied aircraft crashes know that eyewitnesses are extremely unreliable.
So we agree that it would be an insanely idiotic thing to do. But then you clearly show you believe it to be the case. Which must mean that in your view the people running the military must be idiots.
The missle came from the water level..so it was either our government or somebody else's...or a terrorist hit.
But what if there was no missile?
We don't seem to want to acknowledge a terrorist outfit could pull it off...so?
I don't know...fuel tank explosion?
Indeed. It was an orange or white or red or pink missile, traveling west to east or east to west or north to south, rising from the water or the land, and striking the plane. Who can dispute that?
Your statement is the kind of gross exaggeration that conspiracy theories rely on. But to your credit, you actually supply a link to back it up. At that link you'll find this statement..."In April of 2000, the NTSB released thousands of documents representing (mostly FBI) interviews with 670 eyewitnesses." and this statement..."However, from the available witness documents, 21 eyewitnesses observed two distinct objects in the air." Maybe the reason people ignore your statement is because they know it is B.S..
You really need to understand how this works.
I am a pilot. I have aeronautical charts which have specially marked areas just south of where TWA 800 went down which contain the legend: "Warning. National Defense Operating Areas. Operations hazardous to the flight of aircraft conducted within these areas."
Pilot's flying visually are expected to find out whether such areas are "active" and avoid them if they are. The area I am referring to just south of where TWA 800 went down is active about three times a year. It was active that evening.
Pilots flying under Instrument Flight Rules (IFR) are told where to fly by air traffic controllers (ATC) and the ATC are expected by IFR pilots to give routes that avoid restricted areas. All commercial flights, including TWA 800, are required to operate under IFR.
The area in question extends up to 15,000 feet. Planes bound for Europe from JFK, like TWA 800 are normally at 19,000 feet five minutes before reaching this area. TWA 800 was ordered up to 19,000 feet, but then held at 13,000 feet by ATC to avoid any conflict with a plane inbound to Providence. The controller screwed up. He should not have allowed TWA 800 to proceed so close to this operations areas at 13,000 feet.
It sort of helps to know what you're talking about when you talk about aviation accidents. "Radar tests" are not "hazardous to the flight of aircraft." The Navy has a record of cover-ups including the USS Liberty incident and others.
ML/NJ
Since Reid is a fact, I'll go with that scenario.
But too many people saw something rise up to hit the plane.
Or aviation as a whole. For example, this statement...""Warning. National Defense Operating Areas. Operations hazardous to the flight of aircraft conducted within these areas." includes military aircraft maneuvers including anything from refueling to large fighter training exercises to basic formation work. I've spent many hours training in those areas. The last thing we wanted to deal with in a 1 v 1 dogfight was a 737 transiting through our airspace.
Funny. There have been quite a few other aviation accidents around Long Island. I don't recall any of these where even five witnesses came forward claiming that they saw a missile rise to the plane in question. Here you have hundreds of witnesses, separately interviewed, who mostly all point along lines which intersect at the point where TWA 800 was stricken.
Yes, witnesses get a lot of stuff wrong sometimes. But not when all of them are telling mostly the same story.
ML/NJ
So are fuel tank explosions.
But too many people saw something rise up to hit the plane.
That's the problem. Too many people saw too many different things rise up to hit the plane.
Yes, but it would have been accidental. I know this, because important papers fall into my underwear all the time.
I'm convinced you are correct. The idea of a test to navigate through civilian traffic is almost as stupid as a center fuel tank explosion cause by a wiring spark.
I'm sure you have some good explanation of why the CIA was employed to create a cartoon showing TWA 800 zooming 3000 feet upwards. (crossing the altitude of the Eastwinds Airlines flight whose pilot David McClaine just happened to be staring at TWA 800 all the way from its lift off at JFK. I spoke with McClaine in person for over an hour about this, when by chance we just happened to be staying at the same hotel. McClaine emphatically stated that TWA 800 did not climb at all after the explosion.)
ML/NJ
ARRL Field Day. TS-430 rig?
The sheer number of witnesses stating they saw something rise up cannot be dismissed.
To reach that verdict puts the investigators in O.J. Simpson jury company.
Air Force, and Air National Guard when I flew in the airspace off New York.
"I'm sure you have some good explanation of why the CIA was employed to create a cartoon showing TWA 800 zooming 3000 feet upwards."
Yes. At the time the FBI thought the incident was an act of terrorism. The CIA was brought into the investigation because they were the experts on international terrorism. Here's the best source of info regarding the extent of CIA participation, and why they were involved in producing the video (including what information they had available when they produced the video)
CORRESPONDENCE FROM THE CIA AND TRANSCRIPT OF THE CIA BRIEFING TO THE WITNESS GROUP
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