So there was a smoke trail from the sky to the ocean?
What a coincidence. The plane fell into the ocean.
I’m not buying the missile story due to Occams Razor. They were too high for a MANPAD and anything bigger would have attracted attention,
"I looked up because it sounded like thunder. I kept looking trying to figure out what it was. And that's when I saw a flare come off the water. The flare, trailing orange flame, shot up roughly at a 45 degree angle, then rapidly increased its angle of ascent. Then it appeared to strike something. This was the strangest thing I ever saw. Everyone calls it a 'missile theory,' but when you see something, you know what you see, and I didn't see a 'theory'." - Tom Dougherty, Flight 800 eye-witness; interviewed on Hard Copy, 1996
"We saw what appeared to be a flare going straight up. As a matter of fact, we thought it was from a boat. It was a bright reddish-orange color. Once it went into flames I knew that it wasn't a flare." - Lou Desyron, Flight 800 eye-witness; ABC World News Sunday; 07/21/96.
"It was what we would best describe as a boat flare, a reddish object going up. It went up and a few seconds later we saw an explosion in the sky. I can't say if it came off shore or on shore. At first, we thought it was a boat flare. It zigzagged a little. We thought it was strange. Then, several seconds later, we saw an eruption of fire. We never heard anything. We saw a fireball, and at that point we identified what was an aircraft. We could see it fluttering down. We were the third boat on Long Island to report the incident to the Coast Guard. It was something going up to it beforehand. Yes, I saw flaming debris go down. Something attracted us to the area before it exploded. And even my wife and my oldest daughter, we all were witnesses to it. There definitely was something there first before the aircraft went down." - Donald Eick, Flight 800 eye-witness; October 20, 1997; The Press-Enterprise, Riverside, CA.
And so on, more than 200 times.
False.
TWA 800 was flying at 13,700 ft. Well within the effective range of a MANPADS.
Man-portable air-defense systemsShoulder-fired SAMs generally have a target detection range of about 6 miles (10 km) and an engagement range of about 4 miles (6 km), so aircraft flying at 20,000 feet (6,100 m) (3.8 miles) or higher are relatively safe