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

[FormerLurker]

FYI "terminal velocity" was in quotes because it referred to your huffnpuff about the falltime of "TWA 800" whereas the timeline I included referred to the falltime of the Massive Fireball flames

FYI, what you refer to as huffnpuff are facts and calculations FROM those facts. You provide conflicting statements that only prove you have no clue as to what you are saying. And BTW, do you admit that the fuel ALSO has a terminal velocity when falling through the air? Do you see that it has to be MUCH slower than that of a solid object such as the fuselage of a plane?

Instead of providing the readers with your timeline, you tell them to read "all" your huffnpuff which would obviously have to include your "correction" postings thus far.

I've included facts as they were originally known, and have gone on to consider certain aspects that weren't originally obvious. Part of the "timeline" is clearly shown in the radar graphics. That is a unequilocal fact that you cannot deny, and your blind refusal to even discuss anything of substance only demonstrates that you are nothing more than a BS artist whose only method of argument is name calling and presentation of already discredited theories.

Kallstrom didn't say those things.

Oh, I'm sorry, I was mistaken. You attribute the quotes to the CIA. So we can say that you disagree with your own source, the CIA...

According to YOUR website, ASMODEUS.COM, the CIA is quoted as follows..

In a letter to the FBI's James Kallstrom dated 28 March 1997 confirming earlier communications, the CIA stated in part as follows: [Note - the portions in bold print are supportable by eyewitness reports but the portions in italicized print are not and appear to have arisen out of inept and incomplete FBI "302 form" interviews, a subject that will be covered in more detail later in this review.]

[quote]
Just after the initial explosion at 8:31.07.5 PM, the aircraft pitched up abruptly and climbed several thousand feet from its cruise altitude of 13,800 feet to a maximum altitude of about 17,000 feet. This is consistent with information provided by National Transportation Safety Board and Boeing engineeers indicating that the front third of the aircraft, including the cockpit, separated from the fuselage just two to four seconds after the initial explosion. This significant sudden loss of mass from the front of the aircraft caused the rapid pitch-up.

The initial explosion was not seen by any known witnesses but the subsequent fire trailing from the aircraft was clearly visible to many of the closest eyewitnesses on the land and sea, and some of the witnesses in other aircraft. The rising, burning aircraft is consistent with what some eyewitnesses described as "an ascending, bright white light resembling a flare or firework".

Shortly after Flight 800 reach the apex of its ascent - about 15 seconds or so after the initial explosion - a SECOND explosion occurred. This explosion was clearly visible to many witnesses, and often was described as "a small fireball". It was not as loud as the initial explosion, but was clearly audible more than 10 miles away.

Following this second explosion, the aircraft went into a very steep and rapid descent, falling 2 miles and traveling horizontally almost 2 miles in less than 25 seconds. As the aircraft descended, it produced an increasingly visible fire trail. When it reached an altitude of about 1 mile - 42 seconds after the initial onboard explosion - the aircraft's left wing separated from the fuselage, releasing the unburned fuel in the left wing's fuel tanks. The fuel's subsequent ignition and burning produced a dramatic fireball visible to eyewitnesses more than 40 miles away, and detected by an infrared sensor aboard the US Defense Support Program (DSP) missile warning satellite.

About 50 seconds after the initial explosion - eight seconds after the left wing detached - the aircraft and detached wing hit the water.
[end quote]

---

You've indicated those comments as quotes from the CIA letter. So are you saying that now those remarks aren't valid, as they DO differ from YOUR timeline? You are apparently quite confused as to what is on your own website, aren't you?..

What about the necessary corrections you haven't yet made in your huffnpuff?

Read the posts, you'll see the appropriate corrections have been posted. If you need more, I'll be happy to oblige, but I've already proven that your timeline is impossible WITH the corrections if you'd bother to read my posts..

Your postings have been typical of those made by the skinhead wing of the "shootdown" tinfoil hats that routinely have included deliberate and deceitful spin, distortions and fabrications to obscure the issues coupled with Storm Trooper efforts to badger, bully and harass your targets.

You've got to be kidding me. "Skinhead" wing, eh? Deliberate and deceitful spin, eh? Distortions and fabrications to obscure the issues? Storm trooper efforts, to badger, bully, and harrass?

Asmodeus, you've just described YOURSELF to a tee. If you can't see that, you need some SERIOUS help. Are you forgetting to take you meds today? You haven't posted one iota of material fact, not one parcel of evidence other than your own website that you now claim doesn't say what it does, and resort to mindless attacks as you haven't the desire or aptitude to actually discuss the facts. You are one piece of work, I'll give you that much...

It's the "shootdown" tinfoil hat skinheads who deserve the credit for for the entire U.S. congress, past and present, turning their backs on the missile shootdown notion, all the press [with the exception of the "green men from Mars" guys and "shootdown" tinfoil hats] doing the same and the American people walking away with the result that the only support you have left is the now tiny number of your fellow tinfoil hats dramatized by the handful remaining in the "shootdown" chorus still posting here in FreeRepublic.

Do you shave your head before you don your tinfoil cap?

So just keep up your war dance while thumping your chest, huffingnpuffing and decreeing victory and watch the remnants of your own ilk continue to dwindle away as you keep making the effort to try to breath some life into the stillborn "shootdown" notion of James Kallstrom.

You just keep right on making a fool of yourself Asmodeus. This is really quite entertaining....

[FormerLurker]

BTW Asmodeus, you STILL haven't explained to us why exactly you claim to be an "expert" in interviewing witnesses and analyzing witness statements, and exactly what sort of investigations that you conducted in your vast "50 years of experience" as an investigator.

Just what type of investigations DID you conduct Asmodeus? Does it have ANYTHING at all to do with aircraft accident investigations, or were you simply a private investigator chasing down adulterous spouses with a camera?

[FormerLurker]

One more thing Asmodeus. You still haven't provided an email address for Dr. Harrison to speak with you concerning your statements concerning him.

[FormerLurker]

Yep, a WHOLE LOT of substance in this paragraph, a NEWBIE coming upon this paragraph would need a translator fer sure!

I think Asmodeus just had some type of malfunction, as he appears to be in a total meltdown stage... LOL

Probably took off his tin foil cap for too long and the thought beams fried what was left of his brain.

[FormerLurker]

You might want to take a look at post #631 and 632..

[backhoe]

That's very interesting... I see the "A-guy" is still valliantly trying to spin this off in odd directions, but you just can't escape the bottom-line conclusion- we weren't told the truth, by half.

One more artifact from "The Decade of Fraud(s)..."

[Asmodeus]

LOL. You're right.

Try this:

The entire U.S. congress, past and present, have turned their backs on the "shootdown" notion, there is no meaningful press support for it either and the American people have lost interest in the subject.

In short, the audience has for all practical purposes walked away and now consists almost completely of only of a handful of "shootdown" tinfoil hats, John Fiorentino the "bomb" guy tinfoil hat and a handful of others who disagree with them.

Tinfoil hats - "conspiracy theorists"

[FormerLurker]

Are you here to fill us in on your 50 year history as an investigator? What sort of investigations have you been involved in, and what are your credentials as an "expert" interviewer of witnesses and analyzer of witness reports?

[JohnFiorentino]

Picture this: They found a surface-to-air missile
Fishermen pose with a rare catch in the Schuylkill.
Associated Press

MONOCACY STATION, Pa. - It was probably the most impressive catch either had ever fished out of the Schuylkill.......

http://www.philly.com/mld/inquirer/news/local/3899917.htm

[FormerLurker]

Interesting. I wonder if any fishermen will ever find anything of interest off the coast of Long Island...

[Asmodeus]

Your questions dramatize your abysmal ignorance of the subject.

Every "shootdown" tinfoil hat has been aflicted with that same ignorance.

No bonafide expert witness report analyst has ever been or will ever be a TWA 800 "shootdown" tinfoil hat.

Expert - "A person with a high degree of skill in and knowledge of a certain subject"

[Swordmaker]

"...but I hate it when I make silly typos like that when I'm trying to prove a point."

Welcome to the typo club... a large but not exclusive membership makes it a very welcoming group.

[Swordmaker]

So we have;
t = sqrt((2 * 13,500)/32) = 29 seconds


The reason it took longer is that the plane hit terminal velocity sometime during the fall. At terminal velocity, the acceleration of gravity exactly matches the drag of the air acting on the body of the aircraft and no gain in speed occurs. In fact, that drag is present all the time the plane is falling... so the acceleration G is providing is offset by that drag. If you account for both of these factors, there is almost no time at all to account for from the loss of nose/lift to splashdown.

[Swordmaker]

Actually, Former, the terminal velocity of the aircraft was probably almost twice as fast as you allow... 450ft/sec (the figure used by Commander Donaldson in some of the charts on TWA800.com) instead of the 220 you are using... factoring that in and the timeline is right on... see my earlier posts on the subject.

Terminal velocity is variable according to the cross sectional density of the falling object. i.e. an object of 1 kg 10^2 cm presenting surface will achieve a much lower terminal velocity than a 1kg object with a 1^2cm presenting surface. Conversely, heavier objects with the same area ofpresenting surfaces will have a higher terminal velocity than lighter objects with the same area.

[Swordmaker]

58 SECONDS IS IMPOSSIBLE, as TWA800 lost its nose at about 20:31:16, and it impacted between 20:49 and 20:31:54. That means it had to have DIVED under power between the initiating event at 20:31:12 and the time it lost its nose!

Lurk,

No, according to Boeing, as soon as the engines lost the control signals from the cockpit, the engines would revert to idle... no POWER DIVE. It is not required.

Your assumption that 150MPH is the fastest an object can fall in air is not correct. A sky diver falling flat with arms and legs spread falls at a much slower terminal velocity than does the same skydiver falling head or feet first with arms and legs held closely.

Allowing for this, we find that TWA800 probably hit a terminal velocity of ~450 feet per second or about 300 MPH. Plugging that figure into your formulae and we find that it took ~14 seconds to reach terminal velocity and that it would have fallen 3136feet in that time... it reached terminal velocity at 13,800-3136 = 10,664 feet of altitude.

From that point we are looking at another ~24 seconds to fall at 450 feet per second to splashdown. Total time from start of fall to splashdown 24+14 = ~38 seconds.

Now let's subtract time from last transponder 31:12 from time of last radar hit 31:48.94 and we find we have ~37 seconds from last known operating aircraft to last radar hit before splashdown... margin of error is 2.7% close enough for experimental error, I think.

Allowing for the unknowns (actual time of IE and Splashdown) we are probably looking at the time line plus/minus 4 seconds or so.

[Swordmaker]

From the CIA letter to Kallstrom:

[quote] Just after the initial explosion at 8:31.07.5 PM, the aircraft pitched up abruptly and climbed several thousand feet from its cruise altitude of 13,800 feet to a maximum altitude of about 17,000 feet. This is consistent with information provided by National Transportation Safety Board and Boeing engineeers indicating that the front third of the aircraft, including the cockpit, separated from the fuselage just two to four seconds after the initial explosion. This significant sudden loss of mass from the front of the aircraft caused the rapid pitch-up.

Looking at the first paragraph, we find the CIA assumes that TWA800 climbed 975 meters in ~13 seconds. If, as Boeing says, the engines provided no thrust after the nose was lost, and the wings were in stall, the climb had to be ballistic. On this assumption, calculating for initial upward acceleration we find this would require an initial acceleration of ~14 gravities for one second... plus the one gravity always present... or ~15 Gravities!

The initial explosion was not seen by any known witnesses but the subsequent fire trailing from the aircraft was clearly visible to many of the closest eyewitnesses on the land and sea, and some of the witnesses in other aircraft. The rising, burning aircraft is consistent with what some eyewitnesses described as "an ascending, bright white light resembling a flare or firework".

Shortly after Flight 800 reach the apex of its ascent - about 15 seconds or so after the initial explosion - a SECOND explosion occurred. This explosion was clearly visible to many witnesses, and often was described as "a small fireball". It was not as loud as the initial explosion, but was clearly audible more than 10 miles away.

Following this second explosion, the aircraft went into a very steep and rapid descent, falling 2 miles and traveling horizontally almost 2 miles in less than 25 seconds. As the aircraft descended, it produced an increasingly visible fire trail. When it reached an altitude of about 1 mile - 42 seconds after the initial onboard explosion - the aircraft's left wing separated from the fuselage, releasing the unburned fuel in the left wing's fuel tanks. The fuel's subsequent ignition and burning produced a dramatic fireball visible to eyewitnesses more than 40 miles away, and detected by an infrared sensor aboard the US Defense Support Program (DSP) missile warning satellite.

About 50 seconds after the initial explosion - eight seconds after the left wing detached - the aircraft and detached wing hit the water.

The fourth paragraph then tells us that TWA800 travelled 2 miles down and 2 miles horizontally in a mere 25 seconds! Assuming a straight line vector (it wasn't) at 45 degrees we find the distance actually travelled by the aircraft was 14,930 feet. This calculates to an average ~407 MPH for that distance. If the plane flew a ballistic arc, the distance would be closer to 16,580 Feet at ~450 MPH average. It then lost its wing and exploded in Elmer's huge fireball. The fuselage and wing continued at a rate of ~407 - ~450 MPH for another 8 seconds and impacted the ocean.

Just what is the terminal velocity the CIA requires to do all of this??? ~597 feet per second to ~660 feet per second!!!

AMAZING!

[FormerLurker]

From that point we are looking at another ~24 seconds to fall at 450 feet per second to splashdown. Total time from start of fall to splashdown 24+14 = ~38 seconds.

Well that's the thing, I couldn't find any reference as to what the terminal velocity might have been for a plane coming down without a nose, so I took mach0.8's suggestions of 220 feet/sec (150 mph) and then 325 feet/sec (222 mph).

Do you really think that it could have reached a terminal velocity of 450 feet/sec which equates to 307 mph though? Remember, it didn't have a nose and was traveling horizontally in excess of 300 knots (345 mph) up until 20:31:30:37, then slowed to an average of 110 knots (127 mph) between 20:31:30:37 and 20:31:34:97, then apparently lost it's left wing and blew into a massive fireball where it's forward velocity went to 40 knots (46 mph). For it to have had so much forward velocity up to then, it had to be gliding as it apparently still had its wings. If it had its wings and was gliding, it couldn't have been falling downwards at 450 feet/sec (307 mph)...

In comparison, a 747 normally descends at up to 3000 feet/minute, or 34 mph. In emergencies, they've come down as fast as 5000 feet/minute, or 57 mph. Can you see how a 307 mph descent while there is a forward velocity in excess of 345 mph to be a bit high? Takes why I'm wondering if there WAS a powered dive between 20:31:12 and 20:31:16, as that would explain how the plane might have lost a significant amount of altitude...

Take a peek at the radar returns to see what I mean..