Take your meds.
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Yahoo TWA 800 forum From: Jack Reed
Date: Thu Jun 20, 2002 10:09 pm
Subject:
Wextry! Wextry! More About TWA Flight 800 Airblast Loudness Finally, I've gotten a recording of an airblast signature that I believe was close to what hit Long Island witnesses to the destruction of TWA Flight 800. Read all about it in the attached Word 97 file.
http://attach1.groups.yahoo.com/v1/0LISPUx9NktuI47jDzTzx4drrbyxQkYDt47GA8vi6lhfWWGrf6_yEWuy8gZtak8uywamsguUpZQqkvu8kuZBgV65T7PcdLZXeUjamuyrUGfwqmdQ/Sort%20of.doc
Sort of, But Not Very Loud Explosion Airblast Wave
Jack W. Reed, 6/20/200
Finally, at long last, I've just gotten a recording of an explosion airblast signature, very nearly what I needed to show what all those folks on Long Island were hit by from the explosion that ended TWA Flight 800, in 1996. This recent test, conducted by ARA, Inc., for DTRA on Kirtland AFB, NM, was a 1400-lb ANFO surface burst, fired at 1700 UTC 30 May 2002. Its hemispherical airblast strength was equivalent to 1167-lb TNT (5/6) surface burst, or a 2233-lb free air burst spherical wave. That is pretty close to the 1-ton TNT that I have contended was the initiating event (IE) that destroyed TWA Flight 800.
Recorded overpressure, 24.8 Pa or 121.8 dB, was reached in 32 ms. Assuming this was half the positive phase of a sine wave gives 128 ms wave length, or 7.8 Hz frequency for a single cycle, for acoustic comparisons. Two closer gage stations were also operated, with signatures as shown, at 7.44 km and 2.24 km, with unquestioned, much louder, impacts.
Two ear-witnesses, the gage operator and an observing geophysicist, slightly disagreed on the loudness of this airblast, "pretty loud" versus "sort of loud", but certainly not very loud. Other folks were outside in the neighborhood, sunning, gardening, etc., but none were seen to be affected by this blast. They were not even curious about the instrumentation set up. On the other hand, this neighborhood has never been reluctant to complain when louder blasts rattled their houses (cages?).
In conclusion, at least this loud and strong airblast was reported in FBI witness reports from the explosion at TWA Flight 800 off Long Island. Check out relevant excerpts from their testimonials at my web site http://www.nmia.com/~jwreed.
What really blew up there? Certainly not a 20-lb TNT equivalent explosion considered by the NTSB Final Report.
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Testimony of FBI Chief Metallurgist William Tobin
Jack Reed: [quote]
Assuming that the explosion noise source location was that provided by radar for TWA Flight 800 initial break-up, acoustic arrivals times were calculated for each ear-witness report at their NTSB-provided geographic coordinates. It may also be assumed that specific events in the viewed demise of the aircraft were seen at nearly the same time by all these observers, various estimates of the relative time differences between these events and the sound arrivals should describe a constant time for each event time on the following graph. The large variations (± 10's of seconds) actually shown by the graph demonstrates the uncertainty of ear-witnesses in describing times to seconds on days after the disaster, when they were interviewed by the FBI teams. Also, when these witnesses observed these events, they had no idea of what was happening, and only made their connections after hearing and seeing TV and newspaper reports, which were also very confused in those early days. In some cases there is disagreement between witnesses at the "same" coordinates, which were provided only to 0.01° latitude & longitude, that is for blocks 3648 ft latitude, 2795 ft longitude, but representing only 2-3 seconds arrival time differences. Some said a visible event came before the sound, others placed it after the sound.
On the whole, however, it does appear that a large fireball formed, then split into two prongs and fell to the sea surface roughly 40-60 seconds after the explosion sound was originated. [end quote][emphasis added]
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