THE DOWNING OF TWA FLIGHT 800: 'Hey, look at the fireworks'

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:

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.

the Navy was testing a missile by firing at another missile or a drone of some kind, and the interceptor took down Flight 800 by mistake)

I lean this way also. The area was full of military ships and planes. (A terrorist could not have operated in that area without some of our people blowing him out of the water.) But I also see it as being arranged in order to get clinton enemies. See the referenced thread.

GSA(P)

Why hasn't anyone tried to take much credit for it? If I were a terrorist and I wanted the people of America to know I did it, I would be shouting it from the rooftops. SOMEONE would have run the story, even if it was the international press...

As others who write books have theorized, it may have been a Navy missile test gone wrong. Thus the cover-up to protect Clinton's re-election chances.

But along the way you are thinking, if it was a test gone bad. I wonder why a navy crewman or two with a guilty conscience hasn't come forward.

We'll never know the truth.

It is beginning to look as if ME terrorism was involved in OKC too. Why has no one stepped up to take credit?

Do you have any sources for this? I do recall when McVeigh was caught there was a story about a Middle-eastern looking type as his accomplice. It also strikes me as amazing how quickly he was put to death. I mean we have slimeballs rotting on death row for decades running appeal after appeal, yet this one guy was executed in the span of a year or so. Don't get me wrong, I wish the system always ran that smoothly, but it does make you wonder.

If the missile was fired by the Navy then how did witnesses miss the launch.

Distance/curvature of the earth. If you were in the Navy, you know roughly how far away the horizon is. Add in buildings, roads, hills...etc. Easy to not see the launch especially if it was 10 miles offshore.

I've participated in night missile shoots and they are unmistakable. They flash of the launch can be seen for miles and the missile itself shoots out a flame as long as a telephone pole. Yet nobody reported seeing anything like that. Why not?

Again, distance. Most of the witnesses were miles away. How big is a telephone pole at 10+ miles? As for different compass headings of the missile trajectory it would just mean the witnesses are seeing it from different points of view and the color differences would be caused by local atmospheric conditions and angle of the rocket plume (brighter and whiter from the rear, for example)

I can't speak to the official explanations but I still have problems with your theory or, rather, theories. First you seem to suggest that it could have been an attempt to prevent a hijacking ala 9/11. Forgetting the time constraints for a second, your suggesting that the government tried to use a ship from a miles away to take out a target in the busiest air corridor in the world, a virtually impossible task. In a case like that the missile could lock onto almost any target and the chances of hitting the wrong plan are very high. No military commander would suggest that as a viable alternative in your hijacking scenario.

Which brings us to the second scenario, super secret military test. A couple of problems with that. If you are testing a secret weapon, why would you do it in the busiest air traffic corridor in the world and next to the largest city in North America? Secret tests are supposed to be that, secret. Testing it where literally millions of people can see it kind of defeats the purpose. A second problem. I spent 9 years active duty in the Navy and another 13 in the reserves, and in all that time I never once fired a live round of any type north of the Virginia capes, and never heard of an instance where that happened. I never once fired a missile north of Puerto Rico where the test range is. The reason is that it was too dangerous, the chances of hitting a plane that blundered into the area was too great. If this was a test of some sort then it would have been coducted hundreds of miles to the south. If this was a highly secret test of some type then it would have been conducted in one of the test ranges in the Pacific, miles from anywhere. So I can't see where your second theory holds water, either.

I'm not trying to mock you. I have no idea what caused the 747 to blow up and I not trying to suggest that I do. But I do have some experience in the military with missiles and missile firings and the idea that the plane was somehow downed by a military missile runs counter to all my experience and understanding in these matters.

I'm not just talking about a hijacked airplane, but a hijacked airplane that was about to be flown into a building in New York City.

The airplane was flying east about 50 miles east of the NYC. How would we know it "was about to be flown into a building in New York City"?

Or are you saying that it was the policy of our government to shoot day every hijacked airplane at that time?

You can see for yourself in the story that several of these witnesses were in aircraft. It would have been hard to miss a missile shoot from 30 or 40 miles away from the air, especially at night. Someone would have seen it. We're not talking a brief flash of light but a brilliant flash lasting several seconds as the missile clears the launch rail and heads up, then a long plume of flame following the missile as it heads towards it's target. The sight would have been unmistakable to any military person who witnessed it and there were a number in the area.

See Item #2 in Post #46. One of the things that prompted me to come up with this scenario is that the U.S. Navy (from what I understand) was already "on the scene."

Of course, they denied they were on the scene at first.

What you're suggesting is that based upon "information" they fired on a passenger plane 80 miles from the WTC flying straight and level in the opposite direction from their supposed target. Get real!

ML/NJ

The sight would have been unmistakable to any military person who witnessed it and there were a number in the area.

You're right. From #1:

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.

On 09/20/2001 JohnHuang2 posted an article about an interview that George Stephanopoulos had with Peter Jennings regarding President Bush being flown to Offutt Air Force Base in Nebraska and taken to the situation room on the base where he could keep in touch with Washington by teleconferencing. Following is GS remark about why that was not necessary. (Sorry, JohnHuang2, I'm new to FR and not sure how to insert your entire post.)

"Stephanopoulos, implying that this was unnecessary, made this surprising statement: "There are facilities in the White House, not the normal situation room, which everyone has seen in the past, has seen pictures of. There is a second situation room, behind the primary situation room, which has video conferencing capabilities. The director of the Pentagon, the defense chief, can speak from a national military command center at the Pentagon. The Secretary of State can speak from the State Department, the president from wherever he is, and they'll have this capability for video conferencing throughout this crisis. In my time at the White House it was used in the aftermath of the Oklahoma City bombing, in the aftermath of the TWA Flight 800 bombing, and that would be the way they would stay in contact through the afternoon."

I just wish someone could question GS about this statement and find out what he meant by saying "in the aftermath of the TWA Flight 800 bombing".

That is not a description of any of the SAM missiles the navy uses. A Standard SAM is 14 1/2 feet long and would have been spitting out a stream of smoke and flame. No way that any military person could have confused it with a flare, even for a second. Any conversation among the helo pilots wouldn't have been "Gee, does that look like a flare to you?", it would have been "Holy sh*t, who shot off the missile?"

Here is an example of what a Standard RIM-67 launch looks like in the day. Tell me that someone would have missed this at night.

Any conversation among the helo pilots wouldn't have been "Gee, does that look like a flare to you?", it would have been "Holy sh*t, who shot off the missile?"

Here is an example of what a Standard RIM-67 launch looks like in the day. Tell me that someone would have missed this at night.

What can I tell you...they were there. You and I weren't. They said they saw a missile. Why should I doubt what they saw?

BTW: A Sea Sparrow doesn't look quite that impressive coming off the launcher.

Well, it has already been established (by the FBI's very own James Kallstrom, who has been adamant in his insistence that the "center fuel tank explosion" was the cause of the crash) that the U.S. Navy did, in fact, have a number of ships off the south shore of Long Island that night and was, in fact, conducting some kind of "classified" (in Kallstrom's own words) military exercises that night.

The U.S. Navy lied about this throughout the course of the investigation (particularly about the number of submarines that were involved, which is curious in and of itself), and finally came clean only when it was clear that nobody believed them anyway.

If you are testing a secret weapon, why would you do it in the busiest air traffic corridor in the world and next to the largest city in North America?

Funny you should mention that -- the military exercises I described actually prompted the U.S. Navy to designate a so-called "no fly zone" in the vicinity that night. I should point out that Flight 800 was NOT inside this zone at any time during its flight, but it apparently was fairly close to it.

Before I go any further I have to ask you a question:

Do you believe the "official" explanation of the crash of TWA Flight 800?

I just need to know this -- I am quite certain that a) the official explanation was a lot of bullsh!t, b) the plane was brought down by a surface-based projectile of some kind, and c) the surface-based projectile was not launched by terrorists.

With these three things in mind, I'd say we are just arguing about the details of what really happened.

Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.