Posted on 07/17/2002 1:58:36 AM PDT by JohnHuang2
It arrived shortly before noon, Washington time, on July 17 – a fax sent to Al-Hayah in London, the most prestigious Arabic language newspaper. Sent by the Islamic Change Movement – the jihad wing in the Arabian Peninsula – the warning came one day after the group had taken responsibility for the destruction of Khobar Towers. It was as serious as a truck bomb:
The mujahedin will deliver the ultimate response to the threats of the foolish American president. Everyone will be amazed at the size of that response. Determining the time and the place is the hand of Al-Mujahedin, and the invaders should be prepared to leave ... dead or alive. Their time is at the morning-dawn. Is not the morning-dawn near?
As the sun was about to rise on the Arabian Peninsula, it was about to set on Long Island. At 8:31 Dwight Brumley, whose long Navy career included special expertise in electronic warfare, put down the book he was reading and glanced out the window of US Air 217. Night had already fallen to the east, the direction in which he looked.
"I noticed off the right side what appeared to be a small private airplane that was flying pretty much at a course right at the US Air flight," Brumley recounts. "I followed it until the fuselage and the inboard wing cut off my field of view. My first thought – that was awfully close!" Brumley estimates that the plane passed a mere 300 or 400 feet beneath him.
About 15 seconds after the small plane had passed, Brumley noticed "what appeared to be some kind of a flare," but he realized quickly that this bright, burning object ascending off the ocean was no flare. "It was definitely moving pretty much parallel to the US Air Flight and it was moving at least as fast, perhaps even faster."
As the flare-like object raced north, and Flight 800 ascended slowly and innocently east along the Long Island coast, Mike Wire, a millwright from Philadelphia working on a Westhampton bridge, saw a streak of light rise up from behind a Westhampton house and zigzag south, southeast away from shore at about a 40 degree angle, leaving a white smoke trail behind it.
Richard Goss, upon seeing the same object, turned to his friends at the yacht club and said, "Hey, look at the fireworks." Everybody turned to look, and they all watched it climb. "It was bright, very bright," says Goss, "and, you know, that almost bright pink … and orange glow around it, and it traveled up."
Vacationer Lisa Perry, on her Fire Island deck, watched an object shoot up over the dunes of Fire Island.
"It was shiny, like a new dime," says Perry. "It looked like a plane without wings. It had no windows. It was as if there was a flame at the back of it, like a Bunsen burner. It was like a silver bullet." The object was heading east, southeast toward the Hamptons.
As Paul Angelides walked out onto his Westhampton deck, he picked up what was likely the same object now high in the sky. From his angle, it appeared to be a "red phosphorescent object ... leaving a white smoke trail." At first he thought the object a distress flare, but he soon realized it was too large and moving too fast. Spellbound, he followed the object as it moved out over the ocean in the direction of the horizon.
Goss followed it, too. "It seemed to go away in the distance toward the south, and that's when I saw it veer left, which would bring it out east. It was a sharp left."
From a Westhampton school parking lot, Joseph Delgado saw Brumley's streak, the one heading north toward shore and slightly west. As he told the FBI, he saw an object like "a firework" ascend almost vertically. The object had a "bright white light with a reddish pink aura surrounding it." The tail, gray in color, "moved in a squiggly pattern." From Delgado's perspective, the object "arced off to the right in a south westerly direction."
At 8:31, FAA radar operators out of Islip saw an unknown object appear on screen and head toward Flight 800. At the same moment, FAA radar picked up something else unusual – a ship of good size nearly right under Flight 800's airborne position.
The two National Guard pilots in their nearby helicopter now picked up the streaks high in the sky. Capt. Chris Baur saw the streak Brumley had first observed: "Almost due south, there was a hard white light, like burning pyrotechnics, in level flight. I was trying to figure out what it was. It was the wrong color for flares. It struck an object coming from the right and made it explode."
Maj. Fritz Meyer, a winner of the Distinguished Flying Cross for his service over Vietnam, saw the southbound projectile clearest. "It was definitely a rocket motor," says Meyer.
Delgado saw a second object "glitter" in the sky and the first object move up toward it. He thought at first it was "going to slightly miss" the glittering object, TWA 800, but it appeared to make "a dramatic correction at the last second." Then Delgado saw a "white puff."
"From my vantage point," says Goss, "there was a direct explosion that followed, and then after that there was a second explosion that was off to the east a little farther that was much larger."
Meyer saw a bright white light also. "What I saw explode was definitely ordnance," he said. "The initiating event was a high velocity explosion, not fuel. It was ordnance."
"I then saw a series of flashes, one in the sky and another closer to the horizon. I remember straining to see what was happening," says Angelides. "There was a dot on the horizon near the action, which I perceived as a boat."
"About two seconds later," claimed Meyer, "lower, I saw one or two yellow explosions, from that the fireball, third. The first two high-velocity, the last low-velocity petrochemical explosion."
"Then a moment later there was another explosion, and the plane broke jaggedly in the sky," says Perry. "The nose is continuing to go forward; the left wing is gliding off in its own direction, drifting in an arc gracefully down; the right wing and passenger window are doing the same in their direction out to the right; and the tail with its fireball leaps up and then promptly into the water below. The sounds were a huge BOOM! – then another BOOM!"
"You could feel the concussion like a shock wave," reports Mike Wire of the initial blast. Indeed, it shook the bridge on which he was standing in Westhampton even at ten miles distance.
"The sounds shook the house," remembers Angelides. "My wife, who was on the bathroom floor drying our son from his bath, felt the floor shaking as she heard the noise and I heard her cry out, 'What is going on?'"
And then confusion, a hellish, horrific confusion. "There seemed to be a lot of chaos out there," says Angelides. Now he, Wire, Perry, Meyer, Baur, Goss, Delgado and Brumley watched as the plane's fuel tanks exploded, and Flight 800 morphed into what Delgado described as a "firebox" and others as a "fireball."
"It got much larger, maybe four or five times as large," says Brumley, who was watching the explosion from overhead. "It was the same explosion. It just got bigger. My first thought was, 'Boy, what was that?'"
"When that airplane blew up it immediately began falling," adds Meyer. "It came right out of the sky. From the first moment, it was going down."
Brumley saw the burning debris hit the water and turned to summon a flight attendant. As he did, a passenger in the seat behind him, James Nugent, cried out, "Did you see that too?" Brumley and the others were hardly alone in what they had seen. On that soft summer eve, thousands were watching the sea and the sky. More than 700 of them would share their stories with the FBI.
I notice that you are willing to debate the disinformational posts like this one about a Sidewinder bringing down TWA 800. You're willing to debate about Brookhaven National, which has nothing to do with this, and you constantly blow smoke about conflicts in some ot the witness reports. Wouldn't it be strange if we had 700 eye-witness reports and NO discrepancies?
And I notice that you seem to ignore inconvenient challenges.
Is this an indication of some problem you have, or are you paid to do this?
ML/NJ
I wasn't really thinking about shoulder-fired. There's a few "intermediates" out there, such as this:
Uh.. where did you get the sidewinder reference?
I have participated in or witnessed eleven missile firings, 9 during the day and two at night, all at sea. I'm sure that's eleven more than you've witnessed. Not a single one looked anything like the eyewitness reports. None. And I've been off active duty and don't pretend to know what is under development and what is not. On the other hand, a super-secret missile fits in quite well with your theory, doesn't it. The lack of evidence provides all the evidence you need to make into anything you want. Chalk it up to a new weapon system and then you can blame anyone and anything you want and don't have to prove a thing. Well, whatever makes you happy.
Well, it's really meant to be fired off a vehicle or a tripod but it seems it can be shoulder-fired in a pinch. The range is about 8000 meters. Would it be possible to reach the plane from land with that range?
I was looking for some kind of impression of what the missile might look like after launch. Found this video at the Saab/Bofors site (realplayer).
mms://qstream-31.qbrick.com/01580/01580_1342_4_wis_s.wmv
Oh, and these things are in use by Pakistan.
Sorry.
I misspoke. I meant stinger.
ML/NJ
Guess again.
ML/NJ
Your not posting disinformation here would suit me fine.
ML/NJ
Listen. I'm not paid by anyone to post here. I have no agenda except the truth. Would that that were the case with you.
Let me know when anything I post is misleading or inaccurate (and I'm not talking about typing sidewinder when I meant stinger, and then correcting myself quickly as I did).
You had an entire post that was both misleading and inaccurate (#31) and I called you on it (#39). You just ignored it.
A Free Republic doesn't need people like you.
ML/NJ
The word "flare" never entered the conversation between Meyer and Bauer. The question was "Is that Pyro?
Tell me that someone would have missed this at night.
It must be pointed out one more time that it was 8:12 P.M. EDT when the event occurred. It was NOT night. I personally flew over the area last year on July 17 at 8:20 P.M. EDT, and there was still enough daylight to see the buildings of Long Island, as well as air traffic out of JFK.
Unless a military training accident was orchestrated by incorrect information to ensure the elimination of one or more passengers (possible, but not probable), deniabiliy would take precedence over truth (even in the Clinton era), as there were loads of French nationals and children on board.
Most likely, a terrorist act. Testimony from numerous credible witnesses of apparent missile sightings was ignored. Not denied, just ignored, much as testimony regarding ME looking individuals in the company of Tim McVeigh on the AM of the OK City bombing.
It is likely that Flight 800 and the Murrah Building were both terrorist acts with ME participants, but the former was denied to keep the Clinton economy looking good, the later to use as a political shield against the conservative right who were pushing hard for an investigation into federal actions at Waco.
Finally, 9/11, an undeniable event, opens America's eyes....
And then take a look at Waco. No one (well, few) has ever looked real hard for this kind of connections to the Clinton administration. Maybe it's time they started.
Please point out any inaccuracy...I stated 8:31:12, the NTSB stated 8:31... I pointed out that it was not night.
Night defined by the FAA: Night means the time between the end of evening civil twilight and the beginning of morning civil twilight, as published in the American Air Almanac, converted to local time.
From the US Naval Observatory website at :http://aa.usno.navy.mil/faq/docs/RST_defs.html
Twilight: Before sunrise and againafter sunsetthere are intervals of time, twilight, during which there is natural light provided by the upper atmosphere, which does receive direct sunlight and reflects part of it toward the Earth's surface. Some outdoor activities may be conducted without artificial illumination during these intervals...
Go to http://twa800.com/images/twa-view.jpg or CLICK HERE to see what the sky looked like after Official Sunset and before the end of Civil Twilight until which, it was not officially night.
In my humble opinion, I was more accurate than the NTSB...by 12 seconds, after correcting my typo, which I apologized for... What say you?
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