Air Disaster - Sept 30 Smithsonian Channel - TWA Flight 800

a reply to: charlyv

It's still an interesting case, but we'll just end up going 15 pages with no one moving from whatever point they started at.

I have heard so many transparently false claims from conspiracy theories over the years that I am hesitant to just accept these TWA 800 claims at face value without further digging.

originally posted by: Zaphod58
a reply to: charlyv

It's still an interesting case, but we'll just end up going 15 pages with no one moving from whatever point they started at.

That I would have to agree, however as years go on and we see simile in the way other official investigations are conducted, I would think many people would change views or at least allow for the possibility of alternative explanations.

like many, I am getting sick and tired of officials deciding that we cannot handle certain information.

a reply to: charlyv

The problem is that in many cases, the people deciding that something doesn't make sense, or doesn't add up, have little to no aviation experience. So they read something, decide it's odd and jump straight to a wrong conclusion.

a reply to: thebozeian


Regarding the lack of other such incidents within the type, and other interesting fact is the long delay in creating an AD for the type.

Just going from memory, it was more than a year after the NTSB final report. That makes me wonder that if it were legit, and public safety were really paramount, why didn't they ground the type until the problem was solved, and why did they take so much time in issuing the AD if it were so critical to the safety of the flying public?

It was a scam deal. The good guys in the NTSB tried to get it re-opened, but the politics were too large to overcome.

a reply to: Salander

Why did they give the airlines almost two years to fix the cargo doors on the 747. That was just as serious, if not more so and yet the airlines had plenty of time to comply with the AD as the aircraft came in for other maintenance.

a reply to: Salander

Must have missed the part, among other things, where FAA calculated cost of requiring inert systems in fuel tanks
at 35 billion dollars

Would have bankrupted the airlines and shut down air travel

Now explain to us how this would have been a good idea ……….

I find myself in violent agreement with you. I also don't like conspiracy theories in general, but there is so much witness testimony in this case (more than 100 witnesses who saw a self-luminous object rise up and intercept the 747 BEFORE the breakup and big fireballs).

To your 7 points, I'll add one more. The CIA cartoon that was produced and publicized at the very end of the investigation is absolute bull puckey. It is basically a cartoon depicting the theory that was concocted specifically for the purpose of dismissing the witness testimony. In that theory, the center fuel tank exploded which severed the nose of the aircraft, which subsequently dove to the ocean surface. Meanwhile, the claim is that the aircraft fuselage and wings, relieved of the weight of the nose section, then zoom climbed a couple thousand feet above the original altitude, while drizzling fuel into the air. The claim is that the falling fuel stream ignited and created the illusion of a flame rising up, which the witnesses all misinterpreted as a missile ascending.

The pilot of Eastwind flight 507 (who was a few thousand feet above TWA 800) saw a light rise from the surface, intercept the 747, at which point the 747 blew up and fell to the ocean. There was no climb at all after the first explosion.

Which is exactly what one would expect from basic flight physics. Whichever clown at the CIA created the cartoon animation obviously knew nothing about how airplanes fly. He apparently assumed that if you removed the weight of the nose of the 747 that the resulting fragment of the airframe would zoom climb because it was lighter. The reality is that for stable flight, the center of mass of the aircraft has to be slightly ahead of the center of lift of the aircraft (which corresponds to a location 25% of the wing chord back from the leading edge of the wing. On a trimmed 747, there is a separation between the center of lift and the center of mass of a few feet. If the nose of the 747 were to separate just ahead of the wings, the center of mass of the remaining fragment would instantaneously move about 20 feet rearward. At that point, the wings would still be generating their full lift, but there would be no countervailing mass to keep the fuselage fragment from pitching up violently to the vertical position, stalling the wings in the process. At that point, the aircraft fragment would still be traveling at full flight speed forward, but would present its planform surface to the oncoming ram air. The sudden pitch up combined with many 10s of g's of deceleration would be enough to instantly break all the passengers' necks and perhaps snap their heads off. This may very well explain why many of the corpses that were recovered were still strapped in their seats and were decapitated. This violent maneuver would also snap one of the wings off (whichever one was slightly weaker than the other). Once that happened, the remaining wing and attached fuselage fragment would cartwheel off and plunge to the ocean. One of the witnesses on the ground reported just this sequence of events.

The CIA cartoon that was generated after the end of the investigation was clearly just a made up story intended to make everyone shut up and go away. By the way, why was the CIA the agency that made up the cartoon? By law, the NTSB is the government agency that is supposed to have lead authority in investigating air traffic accidents unless there is a criminal or national security element to the accident, in which case either the FBI or the CIA would then have primary authority. This whole investigation was run with the NTSB notionally in charge, but with the FBI and CIA quietly manipulating events behind the scenes.

a reply to: thebozeian

originally posted by: Zaphod58
a reply to: charlyv

The problem is that in many cases, the people deciding that something doesn't make sense, or doesn't add up, have little to no aviation experience. So they read something, decide it's odd and jump straight to a wrong conclusion.

And in other cases, those in charge decide to keep things secret, to effectively cover-up the truth because it makes HQ look bad.

The government naturally covers up things that make them look bad, and that is understandable. IF some Navy ship did accidentally take down TWA800, it would be quite ordinary for HQ to spin it somehow.

You know, just as they spun Pat Tillman's death. Instead of being truthful from the start, they covered up the FF truth.

That's how government rolls. TWA800 shows the same characteristics. FBI in charge instead of NTSB is a clue. POTUS coming on TV on a Friday night is another clue. Not to mention all the evidence and witness testimony.