Retired Airline Pilot sues NTSB for "Zoom-climb" data

http://www.twa800.com/lahr/lahr-amended.htm ^ | 7/27/02 | John Fiorentino

[JohnFiorentino]

Retired airline Pilot Capt. Ray Lahr has brought suit against the NTSB for release of the data pertaining to the alleged "zoom-climb" by TWA800. NTSB has stated that this event was what the hundreds of witnesses observed prior to the TWA800 explosion.

You can view the amended complaint in it's entirety here:

http://www.twa800.com/lahr/lahr-amended.htm

[kylaka]

That's total Horseshit. Nice try though. As a commercial pilot I know what makes a flippin' airplane fly.

[Criminal Number 18F]

That means that in 1.5 seconds the aircraft pitched through 25 degrees and was completely stalled. The aircraft was in free fall.

Well, he might have been an airline pilot but he ain't no engineer or physicist. If his calculation of the pitch-up was correct (it isn't) and such a pitch up would make the machine "completely stalled," he still hasn't accounted for inertia. A half million pounds that is moving is going to keep moving in the direction it was going.

It's amusing how you defer to Lahr's experience and all (is there a bio of him anywhere? Who was he a captain for? What is he rated on?) but you don't respect the literally dozens of airline captains who were involved in the TWA 800 enquiry, many of whom were not retired and were indeed rated in the specific type of aircraft involved.

For all we know, Capt. Lahr flew DC-2s with Ernest K. Gann and has been retired since the Eisenhower presidency. Tell us something about your hero's credentials, and why you believe him. I mean, apart from the fact that you start with your mind made up and simply trust anyone who makes your tinfoil tingle.

Unlike FR conspiratroids, NTSB frequently changes its working theories as new evidence forces a reassessment.

d.o.l.

Criminal Number 18F

[cpdiii]

The center of gravity (cg) on that aircraft is just forward of the wing root. When the nose section came off it did move the cg several tens of feet aft. The center of lift on that wing would be approximately where the trailing edge of the wing meets the cabin. The cg did shift aft of the center of lift.

When the nose came off the aircraft was in a climb attitude. The drag on the open cabin at 300 knots would have give the craft a very violent pitch up attitude. I calculated the drag (dirty numbers) as I assumed a flat plate the circumference of the 747 cabin. It would have been equal to the thrust on one of those engines. This would have given it a violent pitch up. The engines on the 747 would go to idle the moment they lost electronic control from the cockpit. I also did some caluclations on a 3000 foot zoom climb with no thrust from the engines. If the speed of the aircraft were converted 100% into climb (with no drag) and vertical the momentum could carry it up 3000 feet. There is not an aircraft with no drag. The wing was stalled which creates huge drag and the front of the aircraft was gone causing even more drag. It did not go vertical.

As I said that aircraft pitched up violently, stalled, and dropped like a rock.

In closing does anyone remember any aeronautical engineer from Boeing agree with the zoom climb?

[Criminal Number 18F]

Ray Lahr

Still waiting on a bio of this worthy. He is not in the FAA database, which indicates only that he does not have a current medical (or licence that could be exercised w/o a medical). If he had a medical cert we could see what types he was rated in.

d.o.l.

Criminal Number 18F

[Criminal Number 18F]

Interesting.

there are 144 eyewitnesses who SAW A MISSILE streak up and blow the plane out of the air.

False. There are some similar number of witnesses who saw something that could be described as something like a streak in the sky. Missile fan propaganda has turned this into seeing a missile. In fact, a sufrace-to-air missile doesn't look like a streak (I've seen them fired from the ground).

Many of the witnesses mentioned that they heard something, or saw a flash, and then looked toward the event in the sky.

Including two Coast Guard Captains who were in a nearby helicopter

You probably mean two Air Force officers from the Long Island rescue squadron (102nd? 106th? I forget). But your statement that there were Coast Guard officers in a helicopter is false. Your implication that they were certain they saw a missile is also false.

one Air Force Lt. Colonel I saw on Nightline that very night (before the info shut-down began

That guy was the commander of the rescue squadron, IIRC, and not one of the witnesses. In believing the immediate information from television infotainment is more accurate than months of professional enquiry, you have made a common error. It is an interesting thing about human learning, that the first item that is learned about a given subject is stronger than subsequent ones. This is one reason it's so hard to change one's mind.

this was the Clintoon Administration

Neither the military nor the NTSB (at investigative level) is political, and both have a strong value of telling the truth. I assume you have the same value and have just been too quick on the trigger tonight (check your facts). I think we can all agree that Clinton didn't share this value of ours.

This whole mess was caused by Kallstrom and the FBI trying hard to make it a crime of some kind, a bomb, a missile, in the face of a growing mountain of contrary evidence. The irony is that people who are ill-disposed to trust the FBI (and with good reason, for the Bureau *IS* political) are now the ones who have been hornswoggled into carrying its water.

d.o.l.

Criminal Number 18F

[Rokke]

Total HorseS(&*^??? I challange you to list one thing Criminal 18F wrote in his post to you that is incorrect.

[Criminal Number 18F]

Two words: "forward throw." C'mon, you know everything is moving. Even if the explosion instantly blew the plane to little bits, the little bits would trend in the direction it had been going (of course, little bits get carried on the wind).

I'm no Ernest Gann,I'll admit. For one thing, I'm not dead! I'm also much more handsome, and from time to time I get to fly better airplanes that some of the dogs he had to drive. (I _would_ like to get typed in a DC-3 some day, now that I found out how to do it cheap. No C-87s though).

I have been bagging on poor old Lahr (who is old enough to be without a medical, poor fellow.. poor rich fellow, in Malibu, eh) and it's only fair that I offer my own conclusions, such as they are:

1) the impenetrable structure around the tank and the metallurgical and structural information is absolutely probative that the failure sequence initiated with an explosion of fuel (not HE) in the center fuel tank.

2) the initiating event of that explosion is unknown (which is the part that skeeves me) but was almost certainly electrical in nature, and accidental. NTSB offers several possibilities but doesn't pin any one down. Instead, they made recommendations (which FAA acted on) alleviating all of the potential causes.

3) the NTSB should suck it up and give Captain Lahr his data. If they got it from Boeing or from a consulting engineer, they ought to ask for permission to release it, or let Ray Lahr know where they got it and let him ask directly. There may be some issue of confidentiality for non-parties who assist an investigation involved, but really, someone ought to knock the lawyers' heads together and find a way to release the data for others to study.

4) NTSB is good. It is not infallible;in the last couple years it has reversed itself on a finding of probable cause in a major air carrier incident, and in a jet-warbird accident, that I know of. I have also seen convincing evidence in a couple of cases that NTSB was too quick on a probable cause trigger and called it wrong. However, in those cases independent investigators (often employed by attorneys, insurers, or pilots' unions) have built convincing and coherent cases based on all the evidence. The only report that addresses all the evidence and attempts to weight it in the case of TWA 800 is NTSBs. Reports by cranks with a cause to promote (viz. Donaldson) usually mishandle the evidence.

5) So far, Lahr's grasp of the aerodynamics and physics isn't impressive. A lot of guys learn enough aero to pass the written ("knowledge test" nowadays) and promptly forget it. Fair enough, you only need an in-depth understanding if you want to design planes or test them. (That should start a whole other conflagration).

d.o.l.

Criminal Number 18F

[Rokke]

So when the aircraft pitched up violently (which added to its already upward momentum) do you suppose it climbed even a little bit? Or did its wings instantly stall, providing absolutely no lift to add to its upward vector. Are you willing to admit TWA 800 must have climbed even a little higher than its initial altitude of 13,800'?

In closing, can you quote even one Boeing engineer who disagrees with the NTSB's simulation data?

[Burr5]

NO SIR, Spin Doctor. ABC didn't "report" that the Lt. Colonel said this. I WATCHED HIM SAY IT. Further, here are the televised comments of Major Meyer (ok, he's actually Air National Guard, not Coast Guard): "I saw something that looked to me like a shooting star. Now you don't see a shooting star when the sun is still up. It was still bright. And what I saw appeared to be the sort of course and trajectory that you see when a shooting star enters the atmosphere. Almost immediately thereafter I saw, in rapid succession, a a small explosion, and then a large explosion. And the large explosion engulfed the small explosion into a huge fireball that just then began to fall very slowly from the sky."

If nothing else, this lying pig of a U.S. Air National Guard Major has destroyed the contention that TWA 800 shot up 4,000 feet, as the CIA's bullshit cover-up video suggests. There are over a hundred other "liars" out there. Even the FBI, while trying to reach the Clintoon Administration's pre-determined explanation, allowed that 34 of the "missile-witnesses" were "credible".

Add to that the photograph of a MISSILE that showed up in the distant background of Linda Kabot's Long Island Party snap-shot, and I think maybe you are the one who isn't completely informed on this subject.

For all who don't buy the lie, I highly recommend James Sanders' book "The Downing of TWA Flight 800". It demonstrates how this incident was a Naval accident. It also includes much documentary evidence as well as photos.

[cpdiii]

Did it climb a few hundred feet? No the wings were stalled. Did it climb 3000 feet? No. Did it stall almost instantly? Yes. Did it climb some? Yes.

I can not find any quotes by any Boeing engineers whom supports or disagrees with the NTSBs simulation. I find that very odd.

[Rokke]

Except that the wings and the main fuselage were found in the same debris field. If the wings broke off right away, they would have landed a long way away from the main fuselage.

[Rokke]

The NTSB published its data 3 days after the CIA presented its video. The NTSB data didn't support the CIA's 3000 foot climb, AND it hasn't changed since it was published.