Anybody up for a TWA 800 discussion?

Great Debates
1

I tried several different searches, but came up with next to nothing. I’m sure the discussion has happened before, and it cropped up in the recent “Are All Conspiracy Theories Debunkable” thread, which I didn’t want to hijack.
If anyone has previous discussions bookmarked, please feel free to link them here.

Now, right off the bat I want to say that I’m not a conspiracy nut. I think Oswald shot Kennedy; I think terrorists flew airplanes into the WTC and Pentagon, etc. As was mentioned in the aforementioned thread, however, I’ve never quite been able to reconcile the TWA 800 crash. For a long time, I essentially believed the official cause—that the center wing tank exploded due to faulty wiring (possibly having something to do with the scavenge pump.)

What I thought was hinky, even then (when I accepted the CWT explosion theory,) was the representation in the CIA animation of the so-called ‘zoom-climb’. Admittedly, I’m not an expert in aerodynamics, but I am a private pilot, and it just never seemed logical to me that the plane could lose its nose and continue to fly, let alone climb the 1,000-3,000 feet as represented in the CIA animation.

The FBI and, I think, the NTSB eventually backed away from the zoom climb, saying in effect that it wasn’t strictly necessary to their conclusion. Okay, that’s fine. It seems as though it was postulated in order to explain the eye-witness testimony of something rising toward the airplane. The CIA posited that what the witnesses saw was the burning main section of the plane in this zoom climb. Still, they didn’t really say the zoom climb had anything to do with the disaster, so I’m willing to overlook it.

If anyone is up for the discussion, I’m hoping to set up a metric for this thread, which is as follows:

  1. I accept that we’re a group of people from different walks of life, and, as such, we’re not all qualified accident investigators. There are, it appears, several people on the SDMB that have a background in the field, and their input would be welcomed, but for the rest of us, it’s basically a matter of using logic to the best of our ability.

  2. I would like to stick to one discussion point at a time; that is, in many/most online discussions or debates, the “pro” crowd posts a long diatribe listing everything they can think of. Then, someone from the “con” side goes through, point by point, and refutes this post. The problem is that some good threads of discussion get lost in the shuffle, and often times people end up talking past each other. So, for example, I propose that we discuss the radar data until we’ve made our points, then move on to another piece of evidence.

  3. I’d like to keep politics out of the discussion as much as possible. Some theorists have put a lot of the blame at Bill Clinton’s feet. If that’s where the evidence points, then so be it, but I’d like to avoid using that as a starting point.

  4. The ultimate goal here isn’t necessarily to confirm or deny the official explanation; what I’m going for here is more along the lines of a peer review process. As I work in academia, it is a process by which we base much of our writing on, and enhances the conclusion.

There will, I’m sure, be times in this thread that images and, perhaps, data points may come from websites with an obvious bias. While I’d like it to not be the case, I don’t think there’s any avoiding it. As much as possible, though, I’d like to use unrefuted data—that is, many of the conspiracy websites use graphics or quotes directly from FBI and NTSB sources. Their presence on the conspiracy website doesn’t preclude the accuracy of the data. The analysis may be biased, of course.

I really don’t have a dog in the hunt, except that I’m curious about this case. I’m not writing a book or advocating an overthrow of government or any other such nonsense.

All that said…

I’d like to begin discussion with the radar data.

The raw data has been released by the government, and is available at The Flight 800 Investigation (disclaimer: this website is a biased, conspiracy theory one; however, the radar data itself available there comes straight from the official investigation.)

Now, the gist of the discussion pivots on this: there are primary radar returns of debris from TWA 800 as it broke apart and fell to the sea. It is somewhat comparable to the radar images of the Shuttle Columbia debris falling across east Texas (although that came from weather radar.) The ISLIP radar performed one 360 degree sweep every 4.69 seconds. That means that, for example, a piece of debris could be picked up on one sweep at one location, then picked up again 4.69 seconds later at a different location.

What is important is the tracking of debris given the time and distance. From what I understand (and, I must admit, I do not have the mathematics background to confirm this) there are pieces of debris that traveled incredible distances within a very short period of time—to cover that distance, they would have had to have been traveling at supersonic speeds, while being slowed, of course, by air resistance.

If that data is correct, the question becomes: could a center fuel tank explosion push debris roughly perpendicular to TWA800’s flight path at supersonic speeds?
I have no answer to that—not enough experience with the math involved. Perhaps someone here can answer that question. If such a Jet-A fueled explosion could push the debris to these speeds (Mach 4 is what one writer theorized, based on a computer algorithm) then the radar data is consistent with the official explanation. If not, then the radar data is inconsistent with that explanation.

I am unaware of the FBI, NTSB, or CIA mentioning the debris speed in any of their published reports.

2

I was in my boat off Montauk when it happened, on the CT side of the sound. We heard what we thought was thunder…it was very foggy that day. My girlfriend at the time was pissed off at me for dragging her out fishing…I remember hearing on the radio news of the crash. Don’t know if the thunder was heat thunder or the engine exploding…but we definitiely heard something around that time.

Aside from that I got noth’in. I don’t get involved in these threads so…thats all I got.

3

For something to move perpendicular to the flight path it would have to move backwards in relation to the plane to compensate for the forward momentum. For something to travel any distance supersonically it would have to be aerodynamic or it would slow rapidly.

4

http://www.subversiveelement.com/ConspiracytwaCoverp.html I didn’t remember much about it so i looked it up and found this. I love a good conspiracy.

5

When someone comes up with objective evidence of:

  1. Missile debris recovered from the crash site, or
  2. An observer who saw a missile fired FROM ITS LAUNCH SITE, not someone who thinks they saw a missle from miles away way up in the air,

… color me unimpressed.

6

The eyewitnesses are a legitimate part of the case, but we’re not there yet. Same goes for a missile. All I’d like to focus on for the time being is the radar data–which did show a track merging with TWA800. This was explained as a ‘ghost return’ from another plane that was miles away.

I’m not saying that merging track was a missile–it’s simply a part of the radar data, which is the original topic.

However, there never was any objective evidence of a center wing tank failure, either–inasmuch as the FBI and NTSB never found or presented the smoking gun: a frayed wire, the scavenge pump, or anything else. Their theory itself is based on conjecture just as much as the missile theory is.

7

Er, cite? It’s pretty much inevitable if everything forward of the CG falls off while the engines are running full tilt. And that condition exists whether a bomb, missile, or fuel ignition caused it.

Kid, I haven’t been convinced that Oswald was not part of a conspiracy nor that Sirhan Sirhan and James Earl Ray acted alone, but this is close enough to my specialty that I can SAFELY say that Flight 800 was brought down by a sad set of circumstances, and have ever since the details of its old wiring and mostly-empty fuel tank were announced. 2 + 2 = 4, no matter how attractive the conspiratorial options seem.

8

Again, cite?

9

I had a little trouble tracking it down, because I couldn’t remember the name of the man who said it, but it was Peter Goelz, the NTSB’s managing director at the time of the TWA800 crash. When interviewed by Jim Hoffer of WABC for an article that appeared on November 29, 2006, Goelz says:

“So we know that the plane continued in flight whether it climbed 3200 feet or not is really irrelevant.”

The article refers to a court ruling that stated that a citizen investigator could have access to the NTSB/FBI/CIA records used to perform the calculations that the CWT exploded. Essentially, the plaintiff wanted the data the agencies used to program their simulation; his belief, as a retired United captain, was that the zoom climb was impossible. After 9 years, the judge ruled that he could have access to the data. The judge stated in the ruling that “taken together this evidence is sufficient to permit plaintiff to proceed based on his claim that the government acted improperly in its investigation of Flight 800 or at least performed in a grossly negligent fashion.”

The burning zoom climb explains (fairly or unfairly, I’m not making that call) the eyewitnesses who described something ascending. Based on that–actually, based only on one witness, Mike Wire–the CIA’s animation shows the plane climbing the 3,200 feet.

I was hoping you’d join the discussion, based on your responses in the other thread. You’re the one who has the closest experience…I really don’t. And your being convinced of the CWT explanation actually does go a long way. I’m just curious about what it is that you’re basing your conclusion on. Is it essentially as you say, that once you heard the CWT was practically empty, combined with the 25-year-old wiring (and the fact that the plan sat on the tarmac with its air conditioners heating the tank from below) that it clicked? Or was there some portion of the NTSB/FBI data that you can point to?

Regardless, I understand what you’re saying about the center of gravity shift on the plane once the nose dropped off. Boeing’s own figures indicated that the CoG shifted to, IIRC, 58% of the mean length of the plane’s ‘spine.’ That would result in a nose-up pitch, no doubt, but wouldn’t the aerodynamics of a big hole in the front of the plane ‘push’ it backwards? I guess what I’m saying is this: the pitch-up caused by the CoG shift couldn’t have sustained flight for very long, could it? Not long enough to climb 3,200 feet, anyway. Once the angle of attack of the wings pitched up that far, they’d lose their airflow and lift, even with all 4 engines working full tilt, and stall within seconds. I’ve never flown an actual heavy, so perhaps an airline pilot could say how long that stall would take, given the extreme angle of attack.

The other thing, though, is that one of the first lessons we learned in ground school was “the trade off”: to gain altitude, you sacrifice speed. To gain speed, you sacrifice altitude. If the 747 had indeed entered into a zoom climb, the speed should have decreased. Based on the radar data in the NTSB’s own reports, it didn’t. After the loss of electrical power, the plane’s transponder no longer sent altitude data, but the primary returns from the radar did continue to indicate airspeed after the breakup. That airspeed didn’t falter until the plane fell into the water. That, in and of itself, is curious.

10

That comes from an NTSB document leaked to the press, specifically The Washington Post (which failed to run a story, citing its inability to verify the document) and Inside Edition, which managed to verify its authenticity on camera–again Peter Goelz, who at this time was the NTSB’s PR spokesman, authenticated the document.

In it, we see:

“Ron Schleede will write a letter for Bernie Loeb’s signature to Ron Morgan for a full explanation of the FAA handling of ATC and radar tapes concerning TWA flight 800. The letter will reference the technician who did the analysis resulting in conflicting radar tracks that indicated a missile. It will also inquire why that information was reported to the White House and sent to the FAA Technical Center before the Safety Board was given access to the data.” (Emphasis mine)

The document itself is available on a TWA 800 investigation webpage of unknown bias, but it was confirmed. http://www.whatreallyhappened.org/RANCHO/CRASH/TWA/NTSB.html

11

As I’ve said before on the board, I was on the plane the week before it blew up. It was in truly horrid disrepair to the visible eye, and my own reaction on finding out it had gone down was, “Well of all the planes I’ve ever been on, that’s certainly the one I would expect.” My dad, who was also on it, agreed.

Obviously that isn’t, of itself, proof. But “proof” is for almost all things solely a compilation of lots of small items of evidence.

12

Wow, Sage, that’s interesting, and it’s honestly something I’ve not heard until now. If the interior of the fuel tank was in the same shape as the cabin interior, that does make for some darn good circumstantial evidence for a mechanical error.

The thing is, I’m not averse to that explanation…if that’s what the evidence leads to, then that’s what it leads to.

My motive is to try, as best I can, to understand the data that’s available. The investigation itself has always been clouded in some mystery, with various elements that would seem innocuous–the parameters used to calculate the CIA’s simulation, for example–remaining either classified or simply denied through FOIA requests. Even the radar data that I initiated this thread about wasn’t made available to the public for a while. While it’s apropos of nothing, it would seem like if the evidence was clear cut enough for the NTSB/FBI/CIA to form a definitive opinion, then they’d simply release the evidence for what I’m terming “peer review.” We demand it in most other circumstances, but it seems that in this case, a lot of the explanation was accepted at face value.

Of course, that doesn’t mean the explanation is wrong, just that it’s curious that we’d accept it as presented.

13

Is there any investigation which isn’t “clouded in mystery”? Ultimately, piecing together evidence is always going to be a bit haphazard until such time as someone invents a time machine.

The evidence for OJ being a murderer was pretty good and yet 12 people thought there was good reason to doubt his guilt.

There’s no rich men on death row because the ability to prove anything is inherently impossible in 99% of cases, and a good enough lawyer can make you see all the conflicting bits of data or play up the alternate possibilities, or what-have-you. So if you really, actually think about the results of any investigation into anything, you’re going to find that there’s a lot of holes and that it’s “clouded in mystery.”

To a large extent it would be less likely for there to be a clear-cut case. Really the only reason any particularly cared about this one plane enough to look at all the other possible holes in the case was because some people thought they saw a missile. But if you figure that the contrail from an airplane out to sea that is heading towards land, as seen from land, is going to be more-or-less vertical and you’ve got a ball of fire at the top, it doesn’t seem hard to envision that someone would see the two and think, “missile.” Minus evidence of a missile otherwise, it’s best to assume people were mistaken.

14

It’s been clouded in amateur, uninformed bullshit, and conspiracy theories spread by people with agendas other than finding the facts. There’s no more “mystery” than there was in the OJ Simpson case.

You’ll find the myriad conspiracy sites claiming there has never been another incident of fuel tank explosions on a large aircraft. That is simply false. There were several before, and, due to slowness in implementing improved preventive measures, several since.

You’re forgetting the sudden loss of all the weight of the forward section.

The tank itself, or all the major pieces of it anyway, was recovered. That’s best “objective evidence” of all, isn’t it? All the fractured metal was bent outward from the tank center - you can’t get that unless there was a sudden overpressure inside it. How does a missile or bomb get in there?

Remember too, that it isn’t really a “tank” as such, but an enclosed volume including most of the center wing box - the primary structural area of the airplane. The “tank walls” that, if called that, can seem inadequate to the task of bringing the airplane down are actually the very things holding it together.

The NTSB data presented directly, not filtered through an agenda.
Just ask yourself, does the missile hypothesis really make sense? Does it really fit all or most of the known facts and analysis, or do those have to be cherry picked to fit the conclusion? If there really had been a missile fired from somewhere, don’t you think somebody would have seen it or heard it? If it had been from a Navy ship, don’t you think somebody on board would have come forward and said so, either publicly or privately? It’s bullshit. Let it go.

15

Do these little nagging questions make sense in light of the missile hypothesis? If the plane climbed after the explosion, and maintained speed, that seems just as mysterious whether it’s the CWT or missile hypothesis.

The one huge obstacle, though, for the missile idea is with the solid evidence that we do have: that the way the plane broke up is consistent with a structural explosion and not a missile hit. I’m not very familiar with this conspiracy theory - how do the believers account for that?

16

I completely agree about the amateur, uninformed bullshit. That’s why I wanted a SD discussion–at the very least, there’s no agenda among our discussion here. I’m not willing to accept the conspiracy website analysis on its own merits, because I’m not sure what each individual theorist’s agenda is.

Yes, I never doubted that. In fact, just before I came back to this thread I was browsing http://www.galcit.caltech.edu/EDL/projects/JetA/background.html <---- there, which has a nice chart that shows, based on repeatable experiment, that TWA 800 was operating nicely within the factors associated with jet fuel explosiveness.

And I don’t believe anyone can refute that the CWT did explode–as you say, the bulk of it was recovered and witnesses saw the big orange fireball. The only question is whether that explosion was the cause of the crash, or a side-effect. I’m happy to go along with the official explanation, though I would like to know what data points were used to make the conclusion.

From the CalTech website above, which cites the NTSB’s final report:

“The National Transportation Safety Board determines that the probable cause of the TWA Flight 800 accident was an explosion of the center wing fuel tank (CWT) resulting from ignition of the flammable fuel/air mixture in the tank. The source of ignition energy for the explosion could not be determined with certainty but, of the sources evaluated by the investigation, the most likely was a short circuit outside of the center wing tank that allowed excessive voltage to enter it through electrical wiring associated with the fuel quantity indication system.”

Now I’m not being inherently critical here, because I doubt that, given such a large aircraft and large debris field–underwater, no less–100% certainty is even possible, whether it’s mechanical, bomb, or missile. But I’m asking the same question you are: namely, was the CWT hypothesis consistent with all the evidence, or cherry-picked from it? What “sources” did the investigation investigate?

I’m wading through the official NTSB report site, too, though at home I’m limited to dial-up, and that makes perusal of the PDFs difficult. And, my guess is, somewhere in there it will tell what sources they investigated, and why that led them to the conclusion it did. Bringing it to the Dope was just my way of asking if anyone else wanted to do the same thing. It’s a lot of information for one person alone to wade through.

True, that would affect the airspeed. But what of the loss of the aerodynamic nose? I’m trying to think of a way to illustrate it, and all I can come up with is this: if you took a drinking glass and stuck it outside your car’s window with the open end facing forward, the wind resistance would tend to ‘push’ it backwards, right? Without its nose, the 747 is like the cup, albeit with wings and engines pushing at climb thrust. Could the plane maintain enough lift given the separation of the nose to either continue flying level or climb? The separation of the nose, of course, shifted the center of gravity, resulting the the desire of the plane to want to pitch up, but at what angle of attack?

I guess what I’m trying to find out is: could the plane maintain lift, or would the severe angle of attack stall the wings almost immediately? Would the angle of attack allow enough airflow through the engines to allow them to continue to operate, or would it result in a compressor stall?

If so, then I’m fine. I’m not interested in continuing to doubt the point once it’s been illustrated–as of yet, I just don’t have the answer.

I’m confident that the tank did explode. I don’t see how it could not have, especially given the CalTech figures. That it exploded is not in question, as far as I’m concerned. The only question is whether the explosion was caused by a short circuit or something else. The NTSB report says that they couldn’t find the ‘smoking gun’ piece of frayed wire or what have you. Which is fine, I accept that it would be insanely difficult to do so. But they based their conclusions on a postulate, and I’m just trying to review the postulate.

There is a small wrinkle, though, and that’s the congressional testimony of Henry Hughes before a Senate subcommittee in 1999. Hughes was assigned to the main hangar where TWA 800 debris was taken. He testified that:

“On another occasion, in the main hangar, when I was working
there, an agent from the FBI was brought in from Los Angeles.
Apparently, from what I understood from other agents I talked
to, subsequent to my observation of this individual, he had
arrived from the West Coast, had some experience in bomb
investigations, and I saw him in the middle of the hangar with
a hammer in the process of trying to flatten a piece of
wreckage. In investigative work, you do not alter evidence. You
take it in its original state and preserve it. But I actually
saw this man with a hammer, pounding on a piece of evidence,
trying to flatten it out.” Cite

Now so far I haven’t made it further than that–so I do not know whether Mr. Hughes had an axe to grind with anyone or not, but if what he says is true, the physical evidence was tampered with. That’s a bold allegation, I know. Perhaps his testimony has been refuted…I honestly do not know.

I’m not advocating the missile hypothesis. I’m asking essentially the same question, framed in a different way: Does the official hypothesis really make sense, and fit all or most of the known facts and analysis? Was the data cherry-picked to reach that conclusion? I honestly do not know…that’s what this discussion is about. Given what dropzone and Sage Rat have posted, they tend to agree with the official conclusion. I’m not taking them (or you) to task about that. I appreciate the input, but please don’t think that I’m out to “prove” any conspiracy. I’d be just as happy to “prove” the CWT explosion theory.

17

There are several different types of theories. The one that seems to account for what you’re talking about is this:

An eyewitness on a US Air flight above the track of TWA 800 says that he saw a small, 6-seater airplane pass very closely below his flight. The theorists think that this small plane was piloted by a terrorist who had packed it with some sort of high explosive. A minute or so later, TWA 800 exploded.

The thinking goes that the Navy saw the near-miss, determined that the small plane was a terrorist, and launched SAMs to intercept it. Unfortunately, the plane was on its way, after the near-miss, to collide with TWA 800, and the terrorist plane, the 1 or 2 SAMs, all converged very near the TWA plane.

The missiles, they say, didn’t have to hit TWA…just the terrorist plane. The detonation of the SAMs, combined with the detonation of the high explosives, essentially happened so close to the 747 that it was the ‘initiating event’ to the CWT explosion.

Again, I’m not trying to advocate that theory. That’s just what some conspiracy theorists claim–and we’re all in the dark as to their agenda.

18

Not immediately. Due to inertia, velocity would change only gradually from what it had been before the explosion, until a new equilibrium was reached.

The plane was already up in the flight levels, wasn’t it? Not that much drag up there, that’s why jets fly high.

Angle of attack wouldn’t change immediately, either. Even without the nose, a 747 has a pretty high polar moment about the pitch axis.

The engines have to keep operating well into the stall regime - that falls under the certification requirements. But even if they shut off immediately, they wouldn’t be needed - the aircraft’s own kinetic energy would still be high, the angle of attack (and lift) would still increase from the aft CG shift, and the new configuration would still tend to cause a climb, at least temporarily.

I see no plausible reason to think otherwise. Do you?

19

What are you basing this on? Even small changes in plane design make huge differences in how it handles. Changing to a slightly larger propeller in my plane made a big difference in flight characteristics at low rpm.

The change in W/B from the loss of the front of a 747 plus the massive loss of aerodynamics would tear the plane apart at 450 mph. The shock wave alone would have torn the plane apart.

20

First, thank you for your input, ElvisL1ves. Thanks to dropzone, sage rat, and everyone else, as well. I know that the kneejerk reaction to a thread like this is :rolleyes:, and to a large degree I’ve always felt the same way, but my curiosity about this case is just piqued, and I didn’t have anywhere else to go that I felt would be up on the topic. So thanks, y’all.

I’ve pleaded ignorance on math and physics, so forgive me if I’m wrong here, but does that mean that the plane–in several big pieces or a bunch of small pieces–would essentially follow a ballistic pattern? That is, due to the plane climbing through the airspace at the time of the explosion, its inertia would carry it to a certain, higher point regardless of its ability to maintain mechanical flight? Sounds logical to me. I’m wondering where the CIA animation got the 3,400 feet number, though…whether that was arbitrary (to explain the witnesses’ claims of an ascending object) or if they had some data point to support it.

The raw radar data is available, and I understand some of it, but I’m not qualified to determine whether or not there’s a figure there that gave the investigators that particular climb. The possibility of it climbing that far seems irrational to me, but if the math or the radar backs it up then I’d consider it bulletproof.

The last transponder report from 800 was at 13,800 ft.

We may be splitting hairs here, as it appears the NTSB’s final report doesn’t jive with the CIA animation that showed the zoom climb from 13,800ft up to 17,200.

The CIA animation is available on YouTube…as I said earlier, I’m on dialup and it’d take forever to link it.

The NTSB’s final report, in exhibit 22C Found Here, gives the highest altitude as 15,100ft. So the 3,400 ft. zoom climb apparently didn’t happen, according to the NTSB.

That leaves, once the nose falls off, a 1,300ft. climb, which would support what you were saying earlier (if I understood you correctly.) The inertia, combined with whatever lift and thrust the wings and engines were left with, could cause that climb, I’d think.

I can’t say that I’ve seen enough to entirely discount the official story.

But to go back to the above discussion for a second…

The zoom climb scenario of the CIA animation was presented in the video to explain the witnesses’ description of an object ascending. Nevermind that several witnesses described it ascending from the surface…that’s beside the point right now. The burning hulk rising 3,400 ft. that began at the altitude of 13,800ft. does that nicely, as it gives an object in the sky, lit and trailing smoke, rising enough to be perceptible to people on the ground miles away.

But, the NTSB reported a smaller climb, so I’m wondering how visible that 1,300ft. climb would be to the witnesses on the ground. In other words, how many degrees of sky would be covered by the ascending plane?

I’m going to have to parse through the eyewitness reports that are linked at the NTSB investigation page above, and I’ll try to come back with a finite number of witnesses that described the ‘rising object’, but the conspiracy buffs are citing at least 109. I’ll see if that number is accurate.