David Mayer - NTSB: I mentioned that the Safety Board interviewed the co-pilot of the national guard helicopter. The helicopter co-pilot was debriefed after the flight on the night of the accident and he reported that he saw a large section of debris engulfed in flames and falling and, that as it was falling a piece of wreckage broke off and he saw it fall in flames, as well. He didn't report seeing anything in the sky before he saw this debris. Certainly he didn't say that he saw a streak of light. A few days later, he was interviewed by the FBI and he reported that he had seen a fireball -- a pyro? or a flare type object in the sky before the flame and debris. We interviewed him in 1997 -- in January, 1997 -- about this discrepancy and he said he didn't remember the streak until the next day.
Source.
Witness 658: While piloting an Air National Guard Helicopter, "Baur first noticed what he thought was a flare and said into the helicopter's radio, "Is that a pyro?" Baur's first thought was that two things had flown into each other." He also saw the falling debris and immediately flew to the area in a search and rescue effort. From NTSB interview, Appendix N: A "white-hot..pyrotechnic... device...[which] came from the left and went to the right. And it made the object on the right explode."
Capt. Chris Baur: "Almost due south [of the helicopter], there was a hard white light, like burning pyrotechnics, in level flight," Capt. Chris Baur told investigators. "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." Two NY Air National Guard pilots with the best view of the crash of TWA 800 ....... one believes the airliner was struck by a fast-moving object coming from the east, while the other saw a fiery trail from the west.... Meyer's attention was first called to the area ...."by a streak of light moving from my right (west) to my left (east)," the same direction as the TWA flight, he said.....Baur, on the left side of the cockpit, saw a streak moving from left to right toward the approaching TWA aircraft before the initial explosion. The streak of light that Meyer saw .....was red-orange in color .....there was what Meyer describes as a hard, very sudden, yellowish-white explosion that looked identical to the detonation of an anti-aircraft shell ....."It left a cloud of smoke just like a flak explosion does," Meyer said. "One to two seconds later, there was a second, hard explosion almost pure white in color ... almost immediately there was a third explosion and fireball"....Baur also saw three explosions ...he contends that they started from left (east) and went to the right (west).... The call sign that night for Baur and Meyer was Jolly 14. The helicopter (a HH-60G Pave Hawk) was descending through 200 feet above the airport when Baur's eye was caught by some sort of light. According to the crew, Baur called out over the intercom to his flight engineer, MSgt. Dennis Richardson, "Hey Denny, is that pyro?" Within seconds he saw a hard explosion. Richardson, shifting in his seat from behind Baur, did not see the streak but did see the explosions.
The Eyewitnesses: A Brief Review of Official Declarations