Stardust re-entry proves a pet theory of mine about the TWA 800 explosion.

[benburch]

You may recall the "missile" people say they saw emerging from the seaward horizon at the time of the TWA-800 calamity.

At the time I pointed out to the NTSB (and they considered) that a meteor or other space debris coming in fast and at a low angle from the East would have appeared to rise from the horizon like a missile, and that is indeed what Stardust re-entry observers saw.

Now, I believe they did find the cause of ignition in that aircraft's center fuel tank, but I wonder if other air disasters have been caused by cosmic debris in the past? Certainly meteors and space junk have hit other human artifacts ranging from automobiles to buildings. Even people have been struck.

[salvorhardin]

1. It'd be an extraordinary longshot

But certainly not outside the range of possibility. Like you said though, TWA 800 seems adequately explained without resorting to a highly improbable impact by an object from space. It'd make for a fun movie though. :-)

[MikeDuffy]

2. Can I assume you were not persuaded by Kristina Borjesson

and her investigative account in "Into the Buzzsaw" that there was a cover up in the TWA-800 disaster? Also as a formally trained mathematician and having a different standard for a "proof", could you amplify your argument a bit more for me or perhaps you really mean "credible possibility"?

[benburch]

3. No, not convinced at all.

The technical explanation was completely plausible and in line with the observed event. No cover-up.

I think the security was because Clinton was HOPING that a terrorist had done it as he wanted to have an excuse to go after Bin Laden in Afghanistan. Notice how he used it to increase airport security greatly? Clinton was very worried about just the sort of thing we got on 9/11, and wanted to have the political ability to prevent it.

[FogerRox]

4. What about the publicly announced test

of a anti aircraft missile test, (In the military range off the coast of NJ)in the same hour that TWA 800 went down.

What about the fact that any problem such as the MD-80 tail flutter, caused the entire fleet of MD-80s to be grounded, even though not one MD-80 ever went down or one MD-80 pilot lost control, even for a minute.

NO 747 was ever grounded after TWA 800. Pics of damaged wires in the scavenger tanks showed little damage. And the number of damaged wires fleet wise was very small.

The pics I saw from the Party on Long Island showed no meteor. The track showed something that could maneuver.

I have spent an odd 40 years observing the skys, have seen many showers, have seen many STUNNING trails left by meteors, Apollo 8, Command module and Descent module separate, orbiting the moon.

You are right that a meteor would appear to "rise" from the horizon, the many pics of the recent Leonid showers (199-2003) show that too. I have seen exactly the same effect you mention. See Astronomy.com or sky& telescope.com

[JohnyCanuck]

10. Yup I'll bet you've never seen any meteors alter course and zig zag

during flight.

The pics I saw from the Party on Long Island showed no meteor. The track showed something that could maneuver.




According to his FBI report, witness 649 observed a red-pink projectile leaving a whitish smoke trail like a firework ascending into the sky from behind the tree line. It slowly rose straight up and then turned to the right, accelerating and wiggling as it flew away in a southwest direction. It became smaller, almost disappearing as it ascended and approached another object (Flight 800). It looked like it would slightly miss the other object, then there was a white flash and puff of smoke. The firework took about 6 to 7 seconds to travel from the tree line to the other object. Two smoke trails arched up out of the puff of smoke and eventually became an expanding ball of fire that descended behind the tree line. <7> Flight 800 comes into view above slowly in order to reflect the witness's stated non-awareness of it until the projectile was closing in.

<snip>

The consistency with a missile strike can also be determined by analysis of witnesses statements. That was the determination of Colonel Lawrence Pence (USAF, retired), perhaps the only expert with a background in interviewing missile witnesses to review the Flight 800 witness reports. Pence states the following in an affidavit filed in a FOIA lawsuit against the government:

One of my duties in Vietnam was battle damage assessments of our aircraft in order to increase our understanding of enemy weapons. In performing these assessments, I interviewed numerous pilots and crew members who witnessed missile attacks, both ground-to-air and air-to-air. Their descriptions were quite consistent with the eyewitness descriptions given by those who saw the TWA 800 incident. Of particular note is the internal, sequential consistency of the TWA 800 eyewitnesses, i.e., a bright light rising erratically (not generally consistent with meteor tracks to my knowledge /jc) from ground level toward the aircraft, followed by an explosion and fireball. This description and sequence of events is substantively identical to that given by anyone who ever witnessed a surface-to-air missile attack in Vietnam. (16)

Additionally, while visiting the NTSB's public reading room this author discovered an official report in which the NTSB had conducted a study wherein witnesses observed and then described actual missile firings at various distances. Those known missile-witness accounts are virtually identical to Flight 800 witness accounts, as can be observed in this author's report on that study. (17)

http://users.erols.com/igoddard/TWA800/01.htm

[Poll_Blind]

5. The odds are astronomical. However, it is every day that...

...things which are astronomically improbable come to pass.

PB

[benburch]

6. I read somewhere...

that one's house is hit by a pea-sized meteor about once a decade. The reason you never know is that is moving slowly and does no damage to the house, and you'll never notice a new bit of gravel around the house.

[Poll_Blind]

9. Interesting! I wouldn't doubt it! n/t

PB

[FogerRox]

12. Ben I see meteors more than once a month-

Some nights-- I see 10 to 50. I have seen green bolides, I have seen pink white Leonids. I have seen a Leonide leave a smoke trail from the horizon to over my head (this was a good 20+ second event).

I stand out side to look for these events.

I have seen space junk re-enter the atmosphere, and break up, into a shower of pieces.

I have a small telescope.

I think what you are saying is not logical.

Meteors enter about 25,000 MPH,, at about 100,000 ft there is enough air to slow it down.as they reach the thicker part of the atmosphere (15,000 ft) the meteor slows down even more. If it was big enough to reach 15k ft.

Witness's report the "meteor" speeding up-- not slowing down, your idea that FLight 800 was hit by a Meteor is counter intuitive to what a meteor does as it decsends into the grav well.

You ask us to suspend the laws of Physics. That is generally a tuff sell.

[sweetheart]

7. About a week before

TWA-800, i had flown the same leg a week earlier, if i'm not mistaken,
on a TWA flight using the same model of aircraft i think 747-400 or something
like that. Well, when we took off from JFK, and were climbing out to sea off
rockaway, i felt deeply that i was going to die right then, that the aircraft was about
to explode. I've never in my life had that feeling until then, and it was
so so real, i was whispering mantra prayers and preparing for death.

Well, then a week later.. 800. I wondered if possibly i had been on that
very same aircraft in earlier service. Or, if i was just having a very
prescient dejavu. I felt so much in common with the people on flt800,
that it could have been the end of my life, and my briefcase and papers
wind up in an aircraft hanger on long island prodded and poked to find who
it was, one of the unclaimed dead.

I do think that the fuel line wires were frayed and sparked or whatever
the official explanation is... it is keeping with what i felt. It felt like
the plane was going to explode like it was having a heart attack. It felt
totally irrational at the time to feel such a panic given many many long haul
flights without fear or incident. But the feeling was distinctly that whilst
the plane'e engines were stressed climbing to altitude, it exploded violently,
and it felt like it was coming from the belly of the aircraft, i say "heart
attack" that the air fuselage felt at that potentital moemnt of my death,
to be a body with a heart that was exploding. I felt that the gods had
heard my whispers and granted me a repreive.

[JohnyCanuck]

8. Check it out for yourself folks.

I would invite anyone who still interested in the TWA 800 crash to review the evidence collected at www.twa800.com and www.flight800.org . The former was set up originally by an US Navy pilot and air accident investigator, Commander William Donaldson (now deceased), who spent the last years of his life debunking the government story.

CDR. William S. Donaldson, USN (ret.), challenged the official NTSB position on the cause of the crash of TWA Flight 800 in a series of letters to James Hall, Chairman of the NTSB between April 1997 and December 2000. During those four years, CDR. Donaldson worked with other Retired Aviation Professionals, including some previous crash investigators as well as persons inside the NTSB investigation itself. CDR. Donaldson has extensive experience as a Naval crash investigator and he and others concluded that the NTSB's explanation of the Center Wing Tank explosion was not credible. With the help of these other concerned aviation professionals, CDR. Donaldson produced an extensive report on the cause of the crash. The initial Interim Report was delivered to the House Aviation Subcommittee on July 16th, 1998. Since that time a great deal of new information has surfaced.

Information uncovered in early 1999 now shows that TWA Flight 800 could have been shot down by one or more shoulder-fired missiles. The FBI was briefed by military missile experts in the Fall of 1996 that Flight 800 was well within the range of a shoulder fired missile. The FBI conducted a covert dredging operation for stinger missile parts between November 1996 and April 1997. CDR. Donaldson brought this new evidence to the House Aviation Subcommittee in testimony on May 6, 1999. Unfortunately, the major media and the Congress are content to swallow the official line without question.

http://www.twa800.com/index.htm

Check out especially the bogus videos prepared by the CIA of all people to show how a 747 with the front one third of its fueslage blown completely away (allegedly by the fuel tank explosion) then climbs 3,000 feet or so trailing burning jet fuel and is mistaken for a missile rising from the surface by the witnesses. Links here:

http://twa800.com/pages/videos.htm

Read how former United Airlines Captain Ray Lahr debunks the zoom climb scenario as a physical and aerodynamic impossibility here:
http://www.foiac.org/pressrelease.htm

Check out more videos and video representations of the eyewitness accounts at Ray Lahr's web site here:
http://raylahr.entryhost.com/

Check out the eyewitness statements here: http://flight800.org/witness_evidence.htm

Check out the drawings made by the eyewitnesses here: http://users.erols.com/igoddard/TWA800/01.htm

You decide if it is plausible or credible that they were the result of witnessing a 747 with it's nose blown off rising an additional 3200 feet into the air (against all the laws of physics and principles of aerodynamics) trailing jet fuel or an incomming meteor coincidentally appearing on the scene at exactly the right location and time to present the optical illusion of a missile rising from the surface and intercepting the aircraft at exactly the same time the explosion occurred.

Personally, I am more convinced than ever that it was a missile that brought down flight 800. However don't take my word for it. Check out the web sites yourself, review the witness statements and drawings and the other aspects of the investigation (eg rocket motor fuel residue on seat fabric etc) and make up your own minds.

In his book, "The Downing Of TWA Flight 800" James Sanders related the story of how one of the TWA employees working in the Calverton hanger became so disgusted with what he saw as a deliberate cover-up that he provided to James Sanders two samples of cloth from seats from TWA 800, to be tested by an outside, NON-government linked laboratory.

On the seat fabric samples was a bright red residue which had stained three rows of seats in the aircraft, rows 17-19.

Tests on the first sample revealed elements which experts confirmed were consistent with the combustion byproducts of a military solid fuel rocket motor of the powdered aluminum and perchlorate type.

James Sanders then gave his second and last sample to CBS news for them to have tested. CBS promptly turned around and gave the sample back to the government.

Once the sample had been returned, the government declared that the red residue was seat glue, choosing to simply ignore the fact that it has been seen on only three adjacent rows of seats out of the entire aircraft.

http://www.whatreallyhappened.com/RANCHO/CRASH/TWA/twa.html

[FogerRox]

11. TV coverage the day/night of

I remember a report about a TEST- a missle test in the Militray range off NJ.

JohnyCanuck, I dont even have to read all those links.

NEVER has an airplane type gone down in civil avaition, and the Entire type has not been grounded.

NEVER NOT ONCE. NEVER

There are multiple models of the MD-80 types, the MD-80 family is probably 6-7 maybe 8 variations. When ONE of the family has a flutter in the tail, THE ENTIRE FAMILY was grounded. Thousands of aircraft were grounded because 2 pilots felt a flutter.

TWA FLight 800 goes DOWN-- in pieces---- the fucker blew up-- not that variation, let alone the family of 747s were grounded.

The reason no 747 was grounded was because FLight 800 did not blow up, so there was no reason to ground any 747. It was shot down by an errant missle test.

[petronius]

14. Where did you hear that?

"NEVER has an airplane type gone down in civil avaition, and the Entire type has not been grounded.

NEVER NOT ONCE. NEVER"

Because it's clearly not true - especially if you consider non-U.S. crashes (for example, at least 3 737s crashed worldwide in 2005, and the type was never grounded).

[FogerRox]

15. forgive me for not including the qualfiers

US Commercial aviation- my bad

Planes going down for unknown reasons

If the FAA thinks the plane is at fault-- it is grounded-- the 747 never was.

MD-80s were

please adress the larger point & forgive me my minor errors, so I can forgive you yours.

[petronius]

17. Even in the U.S., many crashes do not result in groundings

And the causes of many crashes are not known until after the investigation. More frequently, the FAA orders inspections and/or changes in maintenance procedures rather than grounding a type.

So, the mere fact that 747s weren't grounded is scant evidence of a cover-up in that case.

[FogerRox]

13. I never understood why the CIA was envolved in this-------

Joking . . . . .

[FogerRox]

16. meteor streaks & trials