I was having a discussion with someone and I just mentioned that TWA800 "may" have been an act of terrorism and they looked at me like I was nuts for even suggesting the possibility.

With all the witnesses and lack of investigation and other inconsistencies, it doesn't seem like it's a psycho thing to say.

Any thoughts? Am I nuts for suggesting it as a possibility?  It was during the Clinton days, who avoided all the other terrorist attacks we had.

not

[i]Definitely[/i] NOT an accident.

I personally know a person who is EOD and was involved with the investigation.

[b]accident.[/b]

Accidental missle.

the #3 engine was burned.  Jet fuel does not burn undewater.  The shrapnel holes went in the right side and out the left.  Look up the pics on Google, and see for yourself.  Ops

You are all nuts, it was an accident.

ACCIDENT

I know 4 FAA-certified A&P 747 mechanics, including 2 TWA mechanics, one of whom worked on the incident aircraft less than 6 months prior to the incident. None of them have ever expressed any doubt that TWA800 was brought down by an explosion in the partially-filled center fuel tank, triggered by a frayed electrial power (or control) wire. The scope of the recovery and reconstruction of the incident aircraft was unprecedented in any field of forensic engineering. There are those who choose to believe in the boogeyman, and there are those who choose to believe in science and fact.

For those of you in the former category, I have some news for you:
Elvis is dead.
Mattel never made M16s.
There is no tooth fairy.
"The Blair Witch Project" was a fictional movie, not a documentary.
Stepping on a crack will [i]not[/i] break your mother's back.

Hmmm... now I'm more unsure than before.  Seems to be about 50/50 opinions.

What about the 200+ supposed witnesses that said they saw a missle?  Is that just BS or were there really witnesses?

really? i know most of the ALPA FLT 800 investigative team.  you need to do some more research.

start here:
http://www.worldnetdaily.com/news/article.asp?ARTICLE_ID=36103

Matt

[LOLabove][ROFL2]

Thats just BS. Lots of people were out in boats, or on the shore of Long Island, and saw the explosion and debries fall, and immediately began recovering wreckage and bodies. Two Coast Guard vessles also witnessed. But only a few civilian loonies that cannot even prove that they were really there talk about missiles.

And it exploded above engagement altitude for even a Stinger much less a SA-7/14/16

We have also witnessed, courtesy of DHL and the Fedayeen Sadam that when a SA-16 hits a airliner, even one full of fuel, it will come back home.

[red]Yeah it was frayed when the missile cut through it.[/red]

[blue]But if you step on a line will it break your daddy's spine?[/blue]

Here's the info on SA-7's.  I'm with ArmdLbrl on this one.

[url]http://www.globalsecurity.org/military/world/russia/sa-7.htm[/url]

Heh. I saw that the other day on a Saturday Night Live rerun, Norm Macdonald Weekend Update segment. Funny!

What's everyone's opinions on that worldnet article?  Apparently it looks like this pretty credible dude thinks the idea that it was an accident is total BS.

Plus it says radar did pick up an object travelling at 1200 knots in addition to the plane.

Things that make ya go Hmmmmm.  I mean don't get me wrong, there are a lot of tin foil hat ideas out there, but TWA800 certainly doesn't seem like a tinfoil hat thing.

I suppose the plane getting shot down might have been an Accident.

But It was shot down none the less.

Oh wait...  there was a fuel explosion... [whacko]  the public will buy into any foolish notion.

What about a Mistral?

[url]http://www.aviationnow.com/content/publication/awst/20011001/aw28.htm[/url]

IMHO you will be adding TWA 800 to Kennedy, Roswell, Area 51,etc. Everytime somebody comes up with another angle to them the Goverment just adds more black ink to the records. The more ink, the more angles

There has to be some reason the information is not totally forthcoming from the Goverment regarding such issues. You have to admitt that there are many unanswered questions to all of the above.

So none of them inspected the aircraft debris? Just trying to clarify.

OK say someone shot the thing down with a missle - who?

Terrorist by their very nature (and name) are quick to proclaim their act of terrorist in the name of ________! (fill in the blank with your cause).

It wasn't the US Navy as you'd never be able to launch a missle off of a ship (or even aircraft) without the whole crew knowing. Imagine the blast of a 12 guage shotgun going off in the room next door for refrence. You couldn't keep any Navy crew I've known quite so long about somthing like that!

on your first point:  as you may or may not recall, osama (or any other terrorist group) did not claim the 9/11 attacks.  they applauded "whoever did it," but they never claimed responsibility.

your second point:  probably true :)
Matt

[img]http://www.msnusers.com/_Secure/0RQDPAl0VDvnRhA4rwGRH2skZyDTdvAu2U7m*ID3RZKRcH0aBr9aRnv3xhnNFduIgXJmZ5N9fvgFhHH*UgT3FIWMAcYS56L5qKdTkNtwciaQ/nofilm.jpg?dc=4675451763331239491[/img]

Actually, the Islamic Change Movement (one of the dozens that make up Al Queda) did claim credit for TWA 800.  The day prior they sent warning of an imminent attack.
Now, taking credit for that attack is easy.  
What is more difficult is how oxygen was introduced into the fuel tank that would allow a spark to cause an explosion.  As a petro-chem engineer I know that you need fuel, air, and ignition source.  I'll give you the spark, I'll give you the fuel.  How did the Oxygen get in there?
And, after they inspected all those other planes, did they find one single other fault with the hundreds of planes?  Or was it just this one?
But, why would peace-loving Muslims blow up one of our planes.  It just makes no sense.  And why would Bill Clinton deny it 3 months before his re-election?

...not to mention a large-fuselage aircraft maintaining thrust and attitude for 3,000 feet of climb [i]after[/i] it's front section has been blown off...

The oxygen was in the air that occupied like 90% of the volume of the mostly-empty center wing tank.

No,
the vacuum that would ordinarily take up in those tanks is filled with fuel vapor, not air, so that things won't explode (as I understand it)
I am not an aircraft refueling expert, but that is a fairly standard practice.
You always avoid introducing air to a closed fuel source because explosion risk is so high.  As the fuel is burned, the reduced pressure causes the low vapor-pressure fuel to off-gas to offset the pressure differential.
That is why tanks are never completely emptied.  You leave fuel in them to allow for the fuel vapor to occupy the space.

not accidental

1200 knots is ~1.8 mach, Mistral speed is ~2.4 - 2.6 mach (in level flight or lower elevation? any SAM experts out there?) hmmm...

3 months before Clinton's re-election?  Didn't know that, but that further makes me go Hmmmm.

Also, I highly highly doubt it was our government, but for those that think it may have been, I HIGHLY doubt it would be the Navy that would do it.  If one believes it was the government, it was more than likely black gov and I would imagine they have their own means other than the Navy.

If it was shot down, I would say terrorists. I see no reason why it wouldn't be.

However, wasn't there like 30 military on board as well as some diplomats?

I think the "Navy did it" theories are serious tin foil material. That being said, I think it is important to consider that the aircraft was within range (albeit the outer envelope) of certain portable SAM systems (if what I read of their capabilities on the net is true)

The animation of the plane continuing to climb smoothly after the nose was gone is what made me start scratching my head... can't say it couldn't happen, sure didn't look right though...

Anyone got a link to the animation?

I'm sorry, but I have a hard time believing that TWA 800 was shot down. Like I said before I personally know one of the EOD inspectors that worked of the FAA now TSA at the time.  I've asked him about this very incident and he's said they found no sign of exposives.  If it was shot down by a MANPAD then it was at the fringe of it's max effective range and one hell of a shot.  One that any terrorist would be proud of.  

I'm a flyer on HH60 Pavehawk's and as a flyer I've seen crazy shit happen on our helicopters.  It's the nature of the beast when it comes to flying.  Before I was a gunner I was a bomb loader on F-15E's.  I've seen external fuel tanks come off in flight and rip off the entire leading edge of the wing.  I've seen holes in the horizontal stabs from where a bomb bounced off it after being released.  Shit happens.....  This was a case of chaffed wires in a fuel cell.  Those wires cause a spark and boom....  Why is that so hard to believe?  

Oh, geez here we go.

Let's see, missile. It would take a LARGE missile to take down an aircraft of that size. Not a portable system. So that means either the USN did it, or someone got a telephone pole size missile into NYS, put it on a LARGE boat, and launched it.

The USN would have to mysteriously get every sailor on board the "shoot-ship", every dock worker, and a bunch of accountants to forget about a missile launch, re-supply, and missing missile. That is real likely to happen, NOT.

Next "RADAR" spotted a missile. Most civilian "radar" isn't REAL radar. It reads signals from transponders. It doesn't do speed, or altitude, it will tell you appx where an object is. Also if a missile is launched from the surface to a target at 15,000 feet, at mach 2, it's enetirely possible that the short missile flight would be missed even by military radar, because of the speed of the missile and short duration of the flight.

The plane gained altitude after it's front end was blown off. Let's see a large change in weight, and center of gravity, as well as ap plane that is already going up. Of course it would be impossible for all those sudden changes to cause a brief climb.

200 people saw the missile. Yeah right. Let me tell you about people, they do things for a reason. Why were 200 people looking up towards what would be empty sky? Next if a missile was actually fired, the missile would be moving so rapidly that even if it cuaght people's eye, either from the motion, or exhaust flame, by the time people looked at where they saw the missile it would be gone. Waht is far more likely is that the plane exploded, people saw that looked at it. There was probably pieces falling off the plane. People don't just see things, the interpret what the see.

There's a vacuum in the fuel tank. Every fuel tank on trains, planes, or automobiles, have some type of vent system. If there isn't a vent, or an insuffecient vent, the fuel becomes VERY HARD to pump out of the tank as the internal pressure lowers. A non-vented takn would have appx 1/4 of it's capacity as usable before the fule pump was unable to overcome the lowered pressure. You also wouldn't be able to get the fuel cap off of a de-pressurized tank. If there was a vacuum in the tank, it could also cause the tank to collapse. How many people have heard of a jet's fuel tank collapsing? That's right none, they are vented.

Before you guys get all wound up about something other than an accident ask yourself this, what terrorist organization has ever created a mass causulty incident and NOT taken credit for it? Why would the NTSB or FBI fail to report a criminal act if they had evidence of that act?

A lot of this is based on the fear people have. It's scary to say that a stupid mechanical problem killed everyone on board a 600 ton jet. But it did.

[img]http://www.all-natural.com/images/downing.gif[/img]

This is the book produced by Saunders that got him thrown in jail. It came out shortly after the incident and he proved missle residue was evident on the interior seats of flight 800.
See link here: [url]http://www.naturalhealthholistic.com/twa-book.html[/url]

Mike

A large aircraft fuel tank, even when empty, has what is called unusable or trapped fuel in it.  This is fuel that cannot be extracted by the boost pumps due to being in low places within the tank structure.  The inside of a fuel tank is not smooth & tidy like your car's gas tank- there are ribs and stringers & such in there.  Lots of places to trap residual fuel.

I'm an A&P, and have been working on large aircraft since 1978.  I talked about this with a couple friends who are fuel system specialists on heavies.  The concesus is that the fuel vapor/air mixture inside a tank would be too rich for combustion, unless the tank structure was ruptured.

Yes, most fuel systems are vented to the atmosphere, but that's for maintaining appropriate pressure differential within the tank, so that it doesn't rupture on climb or collapse on descent with changes in atmospheric pressure.  Being "vented to the atmosphere" does not mean that fresh (outside) air is being circulated through the tank.

I don't have enough information on missile types and other data to speculate on who or what may have caused this.  However, in my professional opinion the spark in the fuel tank theory in BS.

I seem to recall another 747 that was brought down over Lockerbie by a small amount of explosives, small enough in fact to be concealed in a portable radio... Pan Am 103 ring a bell?



Agreed. I think the US Navy theory can be set aside quite easily.



I'm no radar expert, but I would expect that military radars would operate at higher powers and faster (sweep?) rates. If we go with a missile theory, flying @ (1200 knots to 2.6 mach) to hit a target @ 13,000 feet we get a flight time of something in the neighborhood of roughly 3 to 6 seconds, (maybe another second to cover acceleration and other effects). I don't know how often civilian radar would sweep an area (civilian radar really is more than just a transponder receiver, isn't it?) or if there was a doppler radar that could have read the signal shift reflected from such a small target, so not sure where the 1200 knot figure came from (someone else brought it up)



I'll cede that taking the nose off a plane will change the center of gravity. I'd say the additional 3,000 feet of altitude claimed to be gained by the plane after the explosion was somewhat more than a "brief climb"

Assuming the thrust of the 4 engines is sufficient to overcome the additional drag created by the huge gaping hole of the missing front of the plane, and assuming that when the nose of the plane fell off that all the control surfaces maintained their positions to maintain controlled flight for an additional 3,000 feet of climb (as claimed by the NTSB/CIA produced video) and, wait a minute, if civilian radar only reads transponders, then how the hell did they know the rest of the plane continued to climb and the nose split off and plummeted into the sea? Are there transponders in both???



How many people live within 10-15 miles of the site of the explosion? We're talking just east of the largest metropolitan area on the east coast. The event occurred on a warm July evening, do you ever sit outside or go for a walk on the beach after dinner in the summer? Do you ever look up at the sky or out across the water if you live near a lake or shore? I'd think the odds of 200 people looking directly or indirectly at the sky out of a possible population of thousands, if not tens or hundreds of thousands of people is not the least unlikely. Npw if it were in the middle of December it would be different...



Agreed that the missile itself is not what is visible (especially in the evening) but rather the exhaust flame.



I remember being out on a beach in Florida as a kid many years ago and watching a NASA night launch. I could sure as hell tell which direction it was going (yes, a booster leaves a much larger exhaust and I was also a good 50 miles further from the object). The bottom line is the people analyzing the crash discounted everyone who said they saw an object rising, even though many were experienced former military.

More theories & radar analysis [url=http://twa800.com/pages/radaranalysis.htm]here[/url]



Most failures do indeed evolve from small things. Bad design or defective components. But that in itself does not discount the possibility that this was not an Engineering-related catastrophic failure.

Remember that the guy running the show (NTSB Chairman Hall) did not get his position from being a qualified Engineer or Scientist, rather he got the job as an appointment (after being a fundraiser for the Clinton-Gore campaign)

No, I am not blaming TWA800 on Clinton.

I will say as he was a political appointee, he had a vested interest in not upsetting the political landscape for his patrons, something which a terrorist attack on US soil certainly would have done.

If they really wanted to do it right, they would have appointed an independent Challenger-like committee to find the root cause of the disaster, staffed with intelligent, qualified Engineers & Scientists (if only Richard Feynman were still around...) instead of career bureaucrats and political flaks.

(edited because getting all the "

Yossef Bodansky in his book, Bin Laden: The Man Who Declared War on America describes a very plausible theory as to what happened to TWA 800.

The book is well worth reading.

I didn't mean to imply that a fuel tank has a large open vent. Newer cars have extremely complex tank vents that are tied into the emissions controls. Meaning then tank has a "controlled" vent, that keeps the tank at slightly less than the surrounding air pressure. Surely jeys have a complex, contolled vent system as well.

Look at the damage to the plane. The front section was blown off. That means a heat seeking missile was not used, they go for engines. A radar guided missile decapitates a plane? Explain why no military types detected targeting radars being activated?

Yes I am familiar with Pan-Am 103. If you remember that was relativley quickly determined to be terrorism. Surely explosion over water makes the investigation more difficult. Also after Pan-Am 103, they changed how the load planes. They also required cargo containers to be more resistant to explosions inside them.

As far as the investigation, FBI SAC Robert Kallisch, and the NTSB shared that investigation for some time.

The FBI seemed convinced early on that it was in fact a terrorist act. SAC Kallish(sp) also had been involved in the first WTC attack investigation and seems to have been very aware of terrorist organizations, mode of attack. SA Oneill(sp) was also in that office. He was involved in the first WTC attack investigation, as well as in charge of the USS Cole investigation initially. He has also been described as the FBI's leading terrorism expert. In other words the NY FBI office involved in the investigation was up to speed on terrorism.

The NTSB, Chairman Hall, certainly a civilian aviation organization may not be as familiar with terrorism, bombs etc. But they do have experts in investigating airplane crashes. Those would be the guys looking at damage patterns, smoke, fire, and impact damage. IIRC Boeing also sent engineers to assist in the investigation as well build logs, and design specs.

One of the things that makes this "not an accident" theory fall down is this, who would want it hidden, what did they have to gain by hiding it?

When major failures like TWA 800, they often involve a series of seemingly unrelated, minor failures, or events that lead to circumstances that are right to allow a major failure.

Boy, where to begin...

TWA 800 wasn't shot down.  It was secretly diverted to a government airfield, where all the passengers were off-loaded and killed by the CIA.  Their bodies were then flown to Iraq and covertly buried in the desert, with a plan that they later be found and declared a "mass grave" to justify an invasion of Iraq based on human rights abuses.

The plane itself was then blown up, in place, at the secret airfield.  The wreckage was then stored for later use.  On 9-11-01, based on the President's plan, the wreckage was scattered on the lawn at the Pentagon to support the official government story that a plane had struck the building.  

What everyone actually saw blown up in the sky off Long Island was a weather balloon.

Ah, but that distance and elevation are for pursuit targets where the missle's velocity vector overtakes the plane's.  If there is sufficient IR target on an APPROACH target, the altitude potential of an SA 7 is MUCH higher.  And the area hit is an ideal target.  And the SA 7 is a contact/grazing fused warhead.  And it woulf cause the center furl tank to explode.

Why was there a sketch for a MANPADS booster given to the trawlers in the area?  And why was one found?  And why is this information being kept secret?  Its impossible to have been from practice as this is NOT an approved range.

[img]http://twa800.com/sanders/thermal.gif[/img]

I'm not personally familiar with the systems layouts on the 747.  I read an article that said the heat exchanger exhaust for the air conditioning system is in the vicinity of the center tank.

Aircraft air conditioning packs take very hot air from the engine compressors and pass it through an air cycle amchine, usually consisting of radiator-type heat exchangers and turbines that super-cool the engine bleed air.  The heat that is extracted from this air is then dumped overboard.  Thus, if the article I read was correct, a heat source.

Discussions like this are interesting for speculating on topics such as this.  Not having all of the facts, I'm not in a position to wave BS flags at one side or the other.  From what I've read and based on my experience, I don't buy the spark in the fuel tank.  The .gov has done their best to keep independent investigators away from this.  That begs an obvious question: Why?

A missile?  Well, over 200 people, including military and commercial pilots, some something streaking upwards.  Some described a white flash (characteristic of a high speed explosive) followed by an orange fireball.  Me?  Well, I wasn't there.

Who?  Terrorists?  I know they'd like to do something like that.  A Naval test gone bad?  Beats me.  I wasn't there.

I think, though, if anybody reads the articles and books one Flight 800 it will become clear that [i]something[/i] isn't right.  For those of you who insist that the .gov wouldn't lie to us, well, enjoy your comfort.

An SA-7 has a warhead less than 2.5 lbs.......

vs. a 600 ton jet?

Next Russian weapons are not good a "seeking" targets from in front. The field of view on the seeker is 1.9 degrees, that is mighty slim. It gets even smaller when a missiled traveling at 1,800 FPS is closing on a target travelling at 880 FPS is coming more or less at it.

I don't believe it's terrorism. The missile theory has a whole bunch of holes in it.

Look at Princess Diana's death. They are still investigating that. The British are openeing their own investigation into it in January. Why? Because apparently people don't want to believe that a drunk driver going twice the speed limit in a tunnel can crash into a large immovable object, resulting in the death of the non-seatbelted passengers in a vehicle. Yeah too crazy to believe that a simple drunk driving crash can can kill.

As far as .gov, ask yourself this, what would the gain to the .gov be keep a terrorist attack quiet? Waiting. Then ask yourself this, if the .gov called this a terrorist attack, even if it wasn't, could they use that? Ummm, I think it would have been "usable" by the government to say this was a terrorist attack, even if it wasn't.

[size=4]Wrong![/size=4] Swamp gas.

2.5 pounds of explosive brought down Pan Am over Lockerbie.  Try again.

Why were authorities looking for Stinger booster cans?[img]http://twa800.com/dredge/dredge5.gif[/img]

And now for the big big big IF.  If the acring from the scavenge pump was the culprit AND the fuel loading slips show this tank to be empty, why was the pump energized?????And if there was no fuel being pumped, why was the draw high enough to cause problems in the compromised wiring?

This stuff is Kerosene.  Jet-A  A spark in a fuel tank is not going to cause an explosion.  it isn't going to do jack shit.  Combustion is a tricky thing.  It takes the right mixture of fuel and air.  That mixture isn't what is found in a fuel tank.  Drop a match into a car's fuel tank.  It will go out.  Kerosene is even harder.
Something caused that tank to rupture.  It wasn't a frayed wire.  Whether it was a bomb, a missile or the tooth fairy I don't know.  I will tell you there is no way that an electrical arc in an aircraft fuel tank is going to make that happen.

Maybe, but remember that it doesn't take A LOT of oxygen to support cumbustion of something as flamable as fuel vapor. All you need is one small burst, the pressure skyrockets within the tank as the combustion proceeds and the heat vaporizes the liquid fuel. Tank ruptures, opening it to the atmosphere.

BOOM.

If it was a terrorist attack, it was a bomb aboard the plane. No portable SAM could reach it, and there is no way a Navy SAM accident would (or could, which is more important) be kept secret.

Unless I see solid proof, it's an accident.

I think the carcass of the plane was sent to Iraq in order to be set up at Salman Pak as a terrorist training camp. That way, we'd have justification for linking Iraq with terrorism, and thus justify the current war.

Wow. Bush set all this up almost five years before his election, and eight years before said invasion!

...and people think he's stupid! [lol]

BIG, HUGE DIFFERENCE between the forces of an internal explosion in a sealed area and a the forces from a similar sized explosion outside and object.

Why were the looking for missile parts? Could it be that they agressively looking for ANY evidence of sabotage, or terrorism, because they felt it was a possibility?

Slyvan, I'm not trying your experiment, it has Darwin written all over it. People regularly manage to blow up cars.

Not so long ago there was video of an AF retiree, who was set on fire while pumping gas. It was caused by static electricty. Turns out appx 100 similar fires have happened. That's why they say don't sit in you car when gas is being pumped, at self serve. Becuase getting in and out of the car generates static electricity. When you touch the nozzle you can discharge that electricity. Now it sounds bizzare. But it happens.

Again I'm sure that no one factor could cause an accident like that. It would be a series of minor glitches.

Then again didn't a Japan Air Lines or Korean Air Lines 747 have an inflight center fuel tank fire appx 6 months prior to Flight 800?

You go first. I'll hold your beer. [;)]