Quoted: i guess that you all never saw the "Seconds fom Disaster" on the History cannel about this?

Was it anything like the History Channel special on Waco/Ruby Ridge?

Quoted: Quoted: As for the missile showing up on radar, most civilian radars don't rely on "skin paint" for objects to show up as a "blip" on their screen.  They use aircraft transponder codes.  If anyone was using a skin paint radar at the time and watching their screen, I doubt a missile would have been noticable.  The radar cross section of a missle is very tiny (depending on type of missile).  Let alone trying to track a very fast moving object, it just seems highly doubtful. May not have shown up for the operator, but it would have shown up on the tapes.

Here's the Islip radar

Adding JFK & HPN

Overall composite adding in Naval / Sikorsky @ Trevose, Riverhead & others

(agree that a missile might be too small to show up on normal radar)

ETA: more radar discussion

Quoted: MISSLE! If you buy off on that fuel pump crap, you're probably dumb enough to buy an OLYMPIC ARMS rifle too.

The real fix was considered too costly so they just did inspections.  Hey, the pilots must have felt like it was no biggie I guess.

Centre Fuel Tank Inerting

To date, two 737's, 737-400 HS-TDC of Thai Airways on 3 Mar 2001 and 737-300 EI-BZG operated by Philippine Airlines on 5 Nov 1990 have been destroyed on the ground due to explosions in the empty centre fuel tank. In 1996, the very high profile TWA 800, a 747-100 mid-air explosion was also determined to have originated in an empty centre fuel tank.

The common factor in all three accidents was that the aircraft had empty center fuel tanks. However even an empty tank has some unusable fuel which in the heat will evaporate and create an explosive mixture with the oxygen in the air. These incidents, have sparked (sic) debate about fuel tank inerting. This is universally considered to be the safest way forward, but very expensive and possibly impractical. The NTSB recommended many years ago to the FAA that a fuel tank inerting system be made mandatory, but the FAA have repeatedly rejected it on cost grounds.

Boeing is now developing a Flammability Reduction System (FRS), this uses bleed air ducted to air separation modules that remove about 50% of the oxygen. This is then mixed with air from a nitrogen generating system and sent to the fuel tank to give almost inert, nitrogen rich, fuel tank air. The FAA Technical Center has determined that an oxygen level of 12% is sufficient to prevent ignition, this is achievable with one module on the 737 but will require up to six on larger aircraft.

Boeing flight  tested a 747-400 in summer 2003 with a prototype FRS, data from which will be used to define the production system. A scaled down version of the 747 system was due to be installed on a 737-NG for flight testing in 2004. Boeing will then fit the FRS into some 737 & 747's for in-service evaluation after certification. A 737-200 has been also acquired by the FAA Technical Center for conversion into a fuel tank inerting system testbed.

On 14 Nov  2005  the FAA announced a NPRM that will require a fuel inerting system to be  installed on all airliners by 2012.

       

"The Notice of Proposed Rulemaking (NPRM) would require          aircraft operators to reduce the flammability levels of fuel tank vapors on          the ground and in the air to remove the likelihood of a potential explosion          from an ignition source."

"We're proposing to increase          the level of aircraft safety by reducing the potentially explosive          ingredient of flammable fuel vapors."

                http://www.faa.gov/apa/pr/pr.cfm?id=1982

Quoted: IMO, a missile bringing down TWA Flight 800 is a false theory.  Is it so hard to imagine there was a mechanical problem/failure that resulted in an explosion causing catastrophic damage?

I'm no airplane engineer, but I believe planes are built to pretty strict tolerances and regulations. If faulty fuel tank wiring was a serious enough issue to cause a catastrophic explosion, wouldn't you think it would be a more common occurance ?

The majority of all common everyday passenger cars and trucks are equipped with in-tank electric fuel pumps, and are produced in much larger numbers. Gasoline is MUCH more volatile than jet fuel. Don't you think with MILLIONS of these vehicles on the road there would be similar issues ???   That's not even taking into account all the backyard dumbass mechanics that service some of these in-tank fuel pumps.

I'd hate to even think for a second that my Chevy truck is built to better fuel tank standards than a 747...

Quoted: The real fix was considered too costly so they just did inspections.  Hey, the pilots must have felt like it was no biggie I guess. Centre Fuel Tank Inerting...

Inerting is one answer (as is real-time monitoring of flammability levels and dilution to maintain below LEL or use of static dissipative material and intrinsic safety barrier limiting of all electronics contained within the fuel cell) but that still doesn't conclusively ID that as the fault which brought down 103 (the asymmetry of the debris field is one thing that makes me question the CWT kaboom theory)

Here's another theory by a guy who claims that cargo door separation was the root cause (with comparisons to 103, UAL 811,  AI 182 and  CI 611) Not saying he's right, mind you, but once the powers that be have spoken, they really don't want to hear anything from the peanut gallery.

Quoted: Quoted: Quoted: As for the missile showing up on radar, most civilian radars don't rely on "skin paint" for objects to show up as a "blip" on their screen.  They use aircraft transponder codes.  If anyone was using a skin paint radar at the time and watching their screen, I doubt a missile would have been noticable.  The radar cross section of a missle is very tiny (depending on type of missile).  Let alone trying to track a very fast moving object, it just seems highly doubtful. May not have shown up for the operator, but it would have shown up on the tapes. Here's the Islip radar Adding JFK & HPN Overall composite adding in Naval / Sikorsky @ Trevose, Riverhead & others (agree that a missile might be too small to show up on normal radar) ETA: more radar discussion

Depends on the radar and the missile that mates to the conspiracy theory de jour.

Quoted: Quoted: Quoted: Quoted: As for the missile showing up on radar, most civilian radars don't rely on "skin paint" for objects to show up as a "blip" on their screen.  They use aircraft transponder codes.  If anyone was using a skin paint radar at the time and watching their screen, I doubt a missile would have been noticable.  The radar cross section of a missle is very tiny (depending on type of missile).  Let alone trying to track a very fast moving object, it just seems highly doubtful. May not have shown up for the operator, but it would have shown up on the tapes. Here's the Islip radar Adding JFK & HPN Overall composite adding in Naval / Sikorsky @ Trevose, Riverhead & others (agree that a missile might be too small to show up on normal radar) ETA: more radar discussion Depends on the radar and the missile that mates to the conspiracy theory de jour.

Flight time of a missile wouldn't be more than a few seconds, add that to the sweep rate of the radars and lucky to see it at all. I'd think.

There have to be a couple of former radar operators who can clear some of this up (without going into details of how good military hardware is)

I did come up with some fire control radar specs which would be set up to look for missiles and the like (and they are claiming 15 km range).

This could be a hive mind question...

Quoted: Quoted: I believe the plane was shot down. Too many credible and competent witnesses saw the missile, too much was done by the .gov after the incident that smacks of coverup, and it has been proven that an electrical spark could not have detonated the fuel cell in the jet. Something to do with air/fuel ratios. Dave Too high for a shoulder launched missle, and any infared missle would have gone for the engines, not the fuselage.  I've seen a DHL cargo plane get hit by a missle, the missle damaged one of the engines, the plane turned around and landed.   Too many people would know the truth if a missle hit TWA 800.  How many people would have to know the truth?  Couldn't happen.  We're talking hundreds of investigators who would know the truth, yet all of them would have to keep quiet.  Wouldn't happen.

I didn't say who shot at it or with what, but I believe it was a missile that brought it down.

Quoted: Actually, Al Queda has never claimed responsability for any of their attacks against the US. They don't call the papers like the IRA.

except for that little 9/11 thing... dozens of bombings and about a google beheadings  

Quoted: Quoted: IMO, a missile bringing down TWA Flight 800 is a false theory.  Is it so hard to imagine there was a mechanical problem/failure that resulted in an explosion causing catastrophic damage? I'm no airplane engineer, but I believe planes are built to pretty strict tolerances and regulations. If faulty fuel tank wiring was a serious enough issue to cause a catastrophic explosion, wouldn't you think it would be a more common occurance ? The majority of all common everyday passenger cars and trucks are equipped with in-tank electric fuel pumps, and are produced in much larger numbers. Gasoline is MUCH more volatile than jet fuel. Don't you think with MILLIONS of these vehicles on the road there would be similar issues ???   That's not even taking into account all the backyard dumbass mechanics that service some of these in-tank fuel pumps. I'd hate to even think for a second that my Chevy truck is built to better fuel tank standards than a 747...

Jet Fuel and Automotive gasoline are much different.  While jet fuel requires a higher flashpoint, results (I believe) are worse than automotive gasoline.  Also, the sheer quantity (you know, 10-20 gallons of auto gas compared to thousands of gallons of jet fuel) is much higher in aircaft than in automobiles.  Apples to oranges.

I guarantee more engineering goes into fuel pumps, fuel valves, wiring, etc on a Boeing 747 than what goes into your Chevy truck.  Fuel systems in automobiles are nowhere near as complex as those on aircraft.  Big time apples to oranges.

I don't understand your point that it's impossible for an accident to happen because it never happened before, and it hasn't happened since.  There's a lot of inspections that go on on aircraft, and it's possible something failed just after an inspection.  And it's entirely possible that it was a part that has never failed before so therefore a fine toothed inspection wasn't done on that part.

There are numerous aircraft mishaps that have happened and have yet to be duplicated.  Luke AFB lost an F-16 back in Sept or Oct 2003 that was attributed to improperly made 3rd stage fan blade on the F100-PW-220 engine.  An uninstalled identical engine was undergoing an engine run in a hush house at Kadena AB (IIRC), and suffered an uncontained catastrophic engine failure (it blew up like a Glock foh-tay).

These blades are NDI'd at regular intervals, yet they NDI'd fine during their last inspection.  No one could have guessed them to fail when they did.  The 2nd failure helped pinpoint the cause of the failure, and P&W was advised and began design/production on new blades immediately.

Sometimes, a part can have abnormal wear, and can fail without warning and lead to a disaster.  While highly unlikely, it can't be discounted.

Quoted: Who?  Iran Why? Retaliation for Iran Air Flight 655 How? Bofors RBS 70 Missile Guidance? Laser From? Speedboat Plausible? Yes... Australia used RBS 70 ground launchers as SHORAD system on Navy boats tinypic.com/jb6wxj.jpg A soldier from HMAS KANIMBLA'S Ship's Army Department struggles against the wind beside his covered RBS70 missile launcher during a wild storm in the Persian Gulf Can it cause enough damage? Yes, very large blast/semi armor piercing warhead Can it reach high enough? Yes Why no claim? Iran wanted retaliation, no point in inviting counter strike.

It has the specs and has been exported to 13 countries including Iran

Quoted: Quoted: Quoted: As for the missile showing up on radar, most civilian radars don't rely on "skin paint" for objects to show up as a "blip" on their screen.  They use aircraft transponder codes.  If anyone was using a skin paint radar at the time and watching their screen, I doubt a missile would have been noticable.  The radar cross section of a missle is very tiny (depending on type of missile).  Let alone trying to track a very fast moving object, it just seems highly doubtful. May not have shown up for the operator, but it would have shown up on the tapes. Here's the Islip radar Adding JFK & HPN Overall composite adding in Naval / Sikorsky @ Trevose, Riverhead & others (agree that a missile might be too small to show up on normal radar) ETA: more radar discussion

Interesting links you posted.  I don't know enough on radar further talk on this.  However, their "evidence" isn't strong enough for me to claim missile as they do.

I'd like to see them compare what happened with TWA Flight 800 to what happens when a plane gets hit by a missile.  I'm sure radar tapes could be gathered that show what happens.  When's the last time we shot something down (or had one of ours shot down)?

Do we ever "blow up" our drones that we use for live fire?  I know many missiles we fire at drones have dummy warheads, so the drone can be used again (sometimes).  And obviously blowing up a QF-4 won't yield the same results as a B747, but some of the data could easily relate.

Quoted: Quoted: Quoted: Quoted: Quoted: As for the missile showing up on radar, most civilian radars don't rely on "skin paint" for objects to show up as a "blip" on their screen.  They use aircraft transponder codes.  If anyone was using a skin paint radar at the time and watching their screen, I doubt a missile would have been noticable.  The radar cross section of a missle is very tiny (depending on type of missile).  Let alone trying to track a very fast moving object, it just seems highly doubtful. May not have shown up for the operator, but it would have shown up on the tapes. Here's the Islip radar Adding JFK & HPN Overall composite adding in Naval / Sikorsky @ Trevose, Riverhead & others (agree that a missile might be too small to show up on normal radar) ETA: more radar discussion Depends on the radar and the missile that mates to the conspiracy theory de jour. Flight time of a missile wouldn't be more than a few seconds, add that to the sweep rate of the radars and lucky to see it at all. I'd think. There have to be a couple of former radar operators who can clear some of this up (without going into details of how good military hardware is) I did come up with some fire control radar specs which would be set up to look for missiles and the like (and they are claiming 15 km range). This could be a hive mind question...

Former USN FireControlman and current Naval Officer here in Aegis world, but then I probably don't qualify for you do I?

Quoted: Who?  Iran Why? Retaliation for Iran Air Flight 655 How? Bofors RBS 70 Missile Guidance? Laser From? Speedboat Plausible? Yes... Australia used RBS 70 ground launchers as SHORAD system on Navy boats Can it cause enough damage? Yes, very large blast/semi armor piercing warhead Can it reach high enough? Yes Why no claim? Iran wanted retaliation, no point in inviting counter strike.

So does Australia, or any nation for that matter, deploy them off of small boats? That oiler is one thing, a small boat is quite another.

The hole in the theory is the forensic evidence. I think they would have noticed the 3,000 tungsten pellets.

Quoted: Hmmm... Looky here: Targeting missle flares Apparently, flares are strapped to missles, then used as targets... This puts missles, flares, white hot magnesium, etc... ALL in the same airspace... www.tpub.com/content/explosives/TM-43-0001-37/img/TM-43-0001-37_30_1.jpg

It doesn't place them together at 13,000 feet.

I don't buy the fuel tank explosion idea at all.  Like it was mentioned earlier, the Upper Explosive Limits and Lower Explosive Limits would not permit an explosion with fuel in the tank, infact the tank on a trans atlantic hop would be full enough that the mixture would be so rich that you could actually smother a fire.  Also if you were to have a center tank explosion, you would not find large sections of the plane intact like they did, except the empenage and possibly the upper section of the forward fuselage.

Quoted: For TWA800, you didn't need to look hard for evidence to see something was not as we were told. Everything pointed to it.

Everything that is except for Boeing warning for years about center fuel tank explosions, military aircraft using nitrogen to prevent such an occurance, TWA 800 being too high to hit with a missle, a missle would go for an engine, not a fuselage, no recovery of any debris that would suggest a missle, a conspiracy that would have involved so many people as to be found out in a matter of hours, etc, yeah it's clear that it was a missle.

OK here are some back of the ebay print out calculations.

Let's assume the Iranians shot down flight 800 with a Swedish missile.
-The nearest surface craft was 2.9miles away doing 30 knots, heading out to sea. This seems to be the likely candidate for a firing platform.
-The Swedish missile has a max altitude of 4,000m and a range of 7,000m. It's speed is Mach 1.6.
-The nearest radar was a ASR-9, which has a scan rate of 12.5 RPM, a peak power of 1.1MW, a pulse width of 1.0 microseconds and has a frequency range of 2.7 to 2.9 Ghz.

Given the boat is 3nm away and Flight 800 was at an altitude of over 12,000 feet that gives us a distance to the target of 7,200 yards. At a speed of Mach 1.6 the missile would have taken 12 seconds to get to the target(How many people saw a 12 second streak?). The ASR-9 would have 2, possibly 3 sweeps to detect the missile. There were three other radars which had coverage of this same area.

This is, of course, ignoring several things. One, the missile is laser guided, which means it is in a constant tail chase. The actual range would be shorter. Two, if fired off a small boat the boat would be bobbing up and down greatly decreasing the likely hood of a successful guidance. Small boats prefer to use fire and forget missiles for just that reason.

ETA: I got the altitude of Flight 800 wrong. It was at 13,800 feet. So that makes a distance to the target of ~7,560 yards. Which gives us a flight time of 12.7 seconds, and probably puts us just outside the range of the Swedish missile. That altitude puts us ~206m above the max altitude of the missile and distance to target puts us at 6912m, and that's not taking into account the missile being in a tail chase the entire time.

Quoted: I'd ask the Iranian Navy but we're not flavour of the week with them at the moment.

I was over there when a few of your boys were held as "guests" by the Iranians.

I've seen pics of  them operated off the back of small OPV's and minesweepers (RAN, Irish Navy). However, the point was it is doable from a small boat, say a 40ft cruiser. The Iranians do operate them clamped onto the flatbeds of 4x4 pickups, and they bolt all sort of stuff onto their Boghammers.

Of course, the probability of a successful intercept goes through the floor the smaller the platform you operate from and the further the distance to the target. This target was at the extreme end of the envelope for the Swedish missile, which is fairly impressive BTW.

Forensics? Well, if they were to cover up a shoot down, covering up the effects of a blast/frag warhead goes with that. ANdy

Except you can see pictures of the wreckage on the internet, and it was all over the TV when the investigation was ongoing. I think 3,000 tungsten pellets would have been noticed.

We'll never know for sure

Quoted: Quoted: Quoted: It was not a "rogue missile test" by the USN, however there are enough questions about the investigation (particularly the instant conclusion that "it was not terrorism") that put the findings in question. Specifically, the NTSB (and their non-technical chairman), the prosecution of individuals who tried to have independent test labs evaluate residue from the crash remains and the laughable video showing a noseless plane climbing an additional 4000 feet. Right.  And the 400 sailors on the shooting vessel have all managed to keep quiet about it for almost 10 years. What does the first line say? It was not a "rogue missile test" by the USN Anyone who thinks the Navy was in on this is (IMHO) nuts. If there was foul play (which I do believe is possibl, based on the nonsense pulled during the investigation) there was someone else behind it.

Sorry - I read right past the word NOT.  I am habituated to reading conspiracy theories here.  My apologies.

Quoted: Quoted: Quoted: Except you can see pictures of the wreckage on the internet, and it was all over the TV when the investigation was ongoing. I think 3,000 tungsten pellets would have been noticed. Nah!  That was the Area 51 cover up wreckage Having said that, I think my scenario is a lot more pluasible than some and has a sound motive. ANdy

Of the missile theories it's probably the "best." There is a certain..symmetry about it.

That's not to say I believe it, read my edit on my calculations post. I don't think any MANPAD was in effective range. I think the radar tapes would probably show a missile. I don't think the wreckage that I have seen backs up a missile. Nor do I think the eye witness testimony backs a 13 second flight time for a missile. In fact, the missile would probably have been running out of fuel, so the streak would have occurred earlier and not right before the explosion.

BTW, the Iranians did seek retribution for the Airbus. They attempted to blow up Captain Rodgers.

Quoted: OK here are some back of the ebay print out calculations.

I don't care what they say dport, you're alright! I don't subscribe to the enemy/terrorist missile theory either because it can't be as easy in The Real World®.

If it was that easy, terrorists would be shooting down airliners left and right. The only successful and verified airliner shoot-downs by terrorist types happened at low altitudes, in backwards 3rd world countries, with laughable "security" measures. Heck, I'm more likely to believe that we shot down the plane by accident.

Quoted: <snip> The hole in the theory is the forensic evidence. I think they would have noticed the 3,000 tungsten pellets.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
It would take more than a year and a change in administration before the FBI declassified a meaningful forensics report. The report, an analysis of spectral data recorded by the Brookhaven National Lab, revealed that 20 pieces of 0.2-inch-diameter-round shrapnel had been removed from at least one of the victims' bodies.

The report noted that these pellets had been tested because of their "dissimilarity in appearance with TWA 800 debris." As to their source, the analysts could only conclude "unknown origin." For whatever reason, the FBI still refused to reveal whether other victims were similarly injured.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------



Perhaps the "20 pieces of 0.2-inch-diameter-round-shrapnel" are tungsten pellets?

It was probably a bomb.  In the mid-90's, Team Jihad figured out if you plant a bomb on the 25 row on a 747-400, you're placing it right above the fuel tank, enabling you to bring down the plane with a relatively small charge.  They developed a timer made from a Casio watch and smuggled blasting caps in pens, then hatched a really nasty plot to bring down 10 American airliners in a single day, over the Pacific, with cells based in Manila.

They had an unsuccessful test run with a Korean liner, terrorist had the wrong seat and the charge wasn't big enough to bring the plane down.  Filipino security services discovered the big plot, called Operation Bojinka, and told us about it, which we promptly ignored. This was all planned by Khalid Sheikh Muhammed, the Kuwaiti who then went on to planning 9/11.

My guess is that the ROP had all these bombs and timers left over and decided to bring down an American plane, and succeeded.  Afterwards, Al Gore headed a commission to evaluate American airline security.  Why, if this was a mechanical failure?  Gore's commission reached some obvious conclusions about who is likely to be a terrorist, which upset CAIR and other civil rights groups, and other security measures were objected to by the airlines because of the cost and inconvenience to their customers.  So it was all rejected except the round of questions about your baggage the ticket person asks you and making sure the plane doesn't take off without the person that checked the bags.  Which forced Team Jihad to come up with a new approach, which was 9/11.

After 9/11, Clinton who was in Australia mentioned the attack seemed a lot like the TWA 800 BOMBING.  He called it a bombing, not an accident.  John Kerry also hit the news shows like Larry King, probably because he was positioning himself to kneecap Gore who was likely to run for president in 2004 and likely to be the Democrats' nominee.  But, he was very vulnerable because of his role heading the security commission, its failure to be implenmented, and hence 9/11.  Kerry knew all the truth, because he's on the intelligence committee.

So think it was a bombing, and was dealt with in the typical Clinton way of just pretending terrorism wasn't there.  I dont think it was a military missile, because maybe I dont know how things work in the military, but my guess is that they dont fire live missiles right off Long Island next to 3 huge airports.

Just my thoughts, but I don't think it was an accident.  If it were, they would have grounded ALL 747's until the answer was known.  

Not to mention a slip of the tongue by George Stephanopolis saying the BOMBING of FLIGHT 800.

TXL

The TWA Flight 800 Independent Researchers Organization, FIRO, has taken the unusual step of filing a petition with the National Transportation Safety Board, NTSB, asking for reconsideration of the findings on the probable cause of the crash of TWA Flight 800. Such petitions are entertained only if new evidence has been found or a showing that the NTSB findings were erroneous. FIRO claims that some evidence that the NTSB kept secret and which has now become available for public scrutiny is new evidence that shows that the official findings were erroneous.

Their petition cites as one important example metals of "unknown origin" that were found in the bodies of many of those who died in the crash on July 17, 1996. The FBI asked the Brookhaven National Laboratory to analyze pellets found in the bodies. They contained zirconium and barium, indicative of an incendiary device foreign to a Boeing 747airliner. The NTSB acknowledges that the source of these pellets is unknown and that the FBI did not try to determine the source.

The Suffolk County coroner, Dr. Wetli, found shrapnel in 89 of the bodies he examined. The FBI compiled a secret eight-page list describing the metal found in each of the bodies. FIRO has sued under FOIA to obtain this list. The court ordered the FBI to release it, but they are trying to get that reversed on privacy grounds, claiming it invades the privacy of the dead. That is a spurious argument because the dead have no privacy rights, but FIRO is not arguing that point. It says it is not interested in the names of those in whose bodies the shrapnel was found. What it wants is its description of the metal found in each of those bodies. It is believed that a lot of it will be pellets.

Retired Brigadier General Benton Partin, who helped design missiles for the Air Force, has said that the Brookhaven Laboratory’s analysis of the composition of the mysterious pellets suggests to him that they came from a missile. The FBI and NTSB never showed Gen. Partin or any other missile experts the Brookhaven analysis. They were content to list the shrapnel as coming from an unknown source. Their throwing a secrecy blanket over this evidence and their failure to determine its source indicates that they knew that sourcing it accurately would undermine their claim that a spontaneous fuel-tank explosion caused the crash.

The penchant of the FBI and NTSB for hiding, altering and finally destroying TWA Flight 800 evidence is very revealing. Last summer the NTSB, headed by a Bush appointee, secretly sold all the TWA 800 wreckage that had been kept at the Calverton hangar as scrap metal to be recycled. The buyer had to promise to keep it secret to get the contract.

The NTSB claims that the reason the buyer was asked not to tell anyone was to keep away scavengers and souvenir hunters. Why should the NTSB care about that once it was no longer their property? We believe they were determined to make sure it was all recycled so that none of it could be used as evidence to challenge their finding of the cause of the crash

Quoted: Yeah, my bad. I was thinking of something else. I remember the oxygen tanks catching on fire and thought they exploded.  Was thinking of a different crash where blew up and scattered debris.

You can read the voice cockpit transcript on Airdisaster.com.  Pretty chilling stuff, like (from memory):

<screams from passenger cabin>.  
<screams cease>.  
Pilot: smoke is getting too thick to see.
<end of tape>.

A fellow co-worker and I would try to freak each other out right before we had to fly on company planes with stuff like this.

Kallstrom 9/11/01 on CNN -- the attack on 9/11 was "the first act of terrorism in the U.S. since TWA 800."

Stephanopoulis 9/11/02 on ABC --

   "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."

Seymour Hersh in The New Yorker 6/3/02 --

   By 1990, in the wake of the terrorist bombing of Pan Am Flight 103, congressional committees had concluded that the F.A.A. needed more immediate access to current intelligence, and urged than an F.A.A. security official be assigned to the relevant offices in the C.I.A., the F.B.I., and the State Department. Leo Boivin, who was the agency's primary security analyst at the time, told me, "I started the program. Getting into the C.I.A. and State was no problem, but the F.B.I. effectively said no--that it wasn't going to happen. The bureau didn't want anybody in there, and we couldn't fight the bureau." In 1996, after the crash of T.W.A. Flight 800, a commission directed by Vice-President Al Gore also called for closer liaison."

The Russians have developed surface-to-air missiles that are optically tracked. They lock on to the center of mass. If the Iranians were paying us back for shooting down their Airbus over the Persian Gulf, I doubt they would publically take credit for it.

I doubt it was a missile attack, but it's not impossible.

ads.wnd.com/news/article.asp?ARTICLE_ID=24623

I think the behavior of the investigating agencies, the lack of any reaction by FAA regarding the "fuel cell explosion problem", the presence of .2 diameter metallic foreign objects in a number of bodies, the fact that missiles use said pellets, and the difficult nature of a successful missle attack in that flight envelope all seem to support the theory of a missile attack perpetrated or at least assisted by a foreign military.  

Barium and Zirconium........anybody know what the warhead in a SAM is composed of?  Composition of the pellets?

I am not anti Bush, and I don't participate in he "Bush Lied" thing, but we all know that "WMDs" was somewhat of a pretext for invading Iraq.

Isn't there a rule, that if a President decrees something is secret and cannot be let out to the public, that succeeding Presidents must abide by it?

What kind of SAMs did Iraq field at the time?

With the administration in power at the time, "bury and ignore" would certainly be the logical course of action.  Could you imagine Clinton ordering a real military response against a can of worms such as Iran or Libya?  He didn't have the sack to do anything about it.  We are damn lucky one of our allies wasn't invaded when he was in power, we would have lost a friend.

Quoted: Quoted: Who?  Iran Why? Retaliation for Iran Air Flight 655 How? Bofors RBS 70 Missile Guidance? Laser From? Speedboat Plausible? Yes... Australia used RBS 70 ground launchers as SHORAD system on Navy boats Can it cause enough damage? Yes, very large blast/semi armor piercing warhead Can it reach high enough? Yes Why no claim? Iran wanted retaliation, no point in inviting counter strike. So does Australia, or any nation for that matter, deploy them off of small boats? That oiler is one thing, a small boat is quite another. The hole in the theory is the forensic evidence. I think they would have noticed the 3,000 tungsten pellets.

From my post on p4:

It would take more than a year and a change in administration before the FBI declassified a meaningful forensics report. The report, an analysis of spectral data recorded by the Brookhaven National Lab, revealed that 20 pieces of 0.2-inch-diameter-round shrapnel had been removed from at least one of the victims' bodies. The report noted that these pellets had been tested because of their "dissimilarity in appearance with TWA 800 debris." As to their source, the analysts could only conclude "unknown origin." For whatever reason, the FBI still refused to reveal whether other victims were similarly injured.

Sounds like something non-Boeing was found in some of the passengers.

It was a bomb not a problem with the fuel "stirrers". It was a coverup by our FBI and NTSB. My father is a pilot and explained the entire thing to me one afternoon. He is on the UPS crash/incident investigation board and has a lot of experience investigating jet malfunctions and crashes.


- rem

Quoted: Quoted: Quoted: OK here are some back of the ebay print out calculations. I don't care what they say dport, you're alright! I don't subscribe to the enemy/terrorist missile theory either because it can't be as easy in The Real World®. If it was that easy, terrorists would be shooting down airliners left and right. The only successful and verified airliner shoot-downs by terrorist types happened at low altitudes, in backwards 3rd world countries, with laughable "security" measures. Heck, I'm more likely to believe that we shot down the plane by accident. That's the point of my 'scenario' it would have been a .Mil (Iranian) operation, not Johhnie Jihad and an el cheapo SAM. I don't know if the Iranians had access to the improved RBS70 Mk2 or RBS90 (both longer range, faster) in 1996, but they do have them now it seems so it is possible. ANdy

Specs on these missiles?
Dates they entered service?
Let's get some numbers here.

For those of you quoting FBI reports, links to a legitimate source with the actual FBI report. Not second hand heresay.

Quoted: Quoted: For TWA800, you didn't need to look hard for evidence to see something was not as we were told. Everything pointed to it. Everything that is except for Boeing warning for years about center fuel tank explosions, military aircraft using nitrogen to prevent such an occurance,

true

TWA 800 being too high to hit with a missle

Not true- at the edge for most MANPADS but within their range. If (and that is a big if) it was a missile, the launch point is unknown, making distance calculations unknown, except that it is greater than the height (~13,000 feet / ~ 4000m)

a missle would go for an engine, not a fuselage,

Not necessarily true - previous links show clearly that some missiles have guidance aiming for other parts (cockpit, etc.) or are laser guided.

no recovery of any debris that would suggest a missle,

- not that the .gov will admit to. yet documents obtained under FOIA show that foreign material ("pellets") were removed from the body of at least one passenger. Not fuel tank shrapnel, pellets.

a conspiracy that would have involved so many people as to be found out in a matter of hours, etc, yeah it's clear that it was a missle.

I don't buy "the Navy did it" theory for a minute, but I do not discount that other parties may have had the tools and the means to bring it down. Not "someone else did it", rather "others may have done it" Big difference.

Quoted: Quoted: Barium and Zirconium........anybody know what the warhead in a SAM is composed of?  Composition of the pellets?. Tungsten Alloys

Ahhh


refractorary metals

those were the days

Taffy

Quoted: It was a bomb not a problem with the fuel "stirrers". It was a coverup by our FBI and NTSB. My father is a pilot and explained the entire thing to me one afternoon. He is on the UPS crash/incident investigation board and has a lot of experience investigating jet malfunctions and crashes. - rem

I appreciate your dad's insight, my dad was a career AF pilot, but how can he be sure without first-hand access to the data?

Quoted: Kallstrom 9/11/01 on CNN -- the attack on 9/11 was "the first act of terrorism in the U.S. since TWA 800." Stephanopoulis 9/11/02 on ABC --    "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." Seymour Hersh in The New Yorker 6/3/02 --    By 1990, in the wake of the terrorist bombing of Pan Am Flight 103, congressional committees had concluded that the F.A.A. needed more immediate access to current intelligence, and urged than an F.A.A. security official be assigned to the relevant offices in the C.I.A., the F.B.I., and the State Department. Leo Boivin, who was the agency's primary security analyst at the time, told me, "I started the program. Getting into the C.I.A. and State was no problem, but the F.B.I. effectively said no--that it wasn't going to happen. The bureau didn't want anybody in there, and we couldn't fight the bureau." In 1996, after the crash of T.W.A. Flight 800, a commission directed by Vice-President Al Gore also called for closer liaison."

How about the head of DSP stating, ""I looked at it when I was the J-3 here when TWA 800 was shot down."

(that's a .mil link for the memo, stating he "mispoke")

The RBS 70 MK2 is the missile with the 4,000m altitude, 7km range and a speed of Mach 1.6. Which means they would have had to fire directly up to intercept at that altitude. The closest surface target was 2.9 miles away and doing 30 knots at the time of the explosion(which is some marksman to shoot down an aircraft at the very end of the missile's range doing 30 knots with a laser beam riding missile!).

The improved version, the Bolide, did not enter production until 2002, some 6 years after TWA Flight 800s tragic end.

Something else to think about.  A .2inch diameter sphere works neatly out to be 5mm. Anyone know what the frag size is for the RBS 70 MK2? Also that would mean, perfectly packed a full litre of the missile would be tungsten balls. And we know spheres are not able to be perfectly packed, so we're talking over a liter at that size. Oh and they're in a shaped warhead, wonder what the spread would be on that?

double tap

Quoted: Quoted: It was a bomb not a problem with the fuel "stirrers". It was a coverup by our FBI and NTSB. My father is a pilot and explained the entire thing to me one afternoon. He is on the UPS crash/incident investigation board and has a lot of experience investigating jet malfunctions and crashes. - rem I appreciate your dad's insight, my dad was a career AF pilot, but how can he be sure without first-hand access to the data?

I think the whole point of the controversy is that open access to the data was missing, hence all the FOIA filings. If the NTSB et al are so confident of their findings, this should not be necessary (as the data under scrutiny would support it, if it is precisely as they say)

Considering the number of people raising questions (from respected pilots and military personnel to the usual fringe loons) one would think they (agencies involved) would opt for full disclosure to quash the rumors once and for all.

Montauk Project