I recently saw the “Best Evidence” documentary (eh, it’s a kind of overstatement to call it that – this is a mildly sensationalist one hour television show) on this subject.
I doubt that any of the sketpical voices they aired were new, nor was there any new concrete evidence (AFAICT). The one new thing they did was rig up a center fuel tank with heated fuel in an analogous situation and introduce a (relatively small) spark, which detonated a fairly violent explosion. This seems to cut in favor of the official explanation (the skeptics continue to say, well, it wasn’t a catastrophic explosion, though I’d not have wanted to be on an aircraft whose tank exploded in any way; and, well, but where’s the proof of where the spark occurred? (which I find a bit of an unfair criticism as they could hardly hope to expose every tiny fragment of wire).
Still, the program highlighted some of the anomalous factors in the crash (the eyewitness accounts of seeming rocket contrails, and the questionable radar tracks taken by debris).
Anyone who saw (or for that matter, didn’t see) the program revise their thoughts on what happened and whether there was a cover-up? Myself, I’m not a million percent happy with the official verdict, but nor do I see conclusive proof for the anti theory.
Notoriously unreliable eyewitness accounts and questionable radar tracks by debris from an airliner that exploded in flight are the biggest anomalies they could find? Sorry, that doesn’t even rise to the point of wanting to watch the video.
Look, I said I’m not convinced, and I came away from the documentary kind of more, not less, sympathetic to the official view, because as noted, the one “test” that they showed that might be considered a new data point seemed to suggest that a surprisingly small spark could turn 50 gallons of vaporized fuel into a fireball that sure as hell looked capable of messing up anyone’s airplane at altitude.
And yes, to answer your (possibly-rhetorical answer), the biggest ‘evidence’ of the skeptics did seem to be the “rocket trails” (reported by a significant number of people, dismissed by the FBI as being falling debris, not rising rocket, smoke trails) and the radar anomalies (CIA video showed fuselage rising after explosion, radar appears to show debris falling – they didn’t really get into enough detail to fully understand the exact nature of the disputed facts).
I suggest a CTer dangle two wires in slight contact with each other in a jar with a few drops of jet fuel, shake it up so the fuel evaporates, then connect the wires to a battery. I just ask they warn me before they try it so I can be out of range of the shrapnel.
The center wing fuel tank was nearly empty and its fuel quantity gauge was wonky. It was no longer a fuel tank but a combustion chamber. It used to be that fuel tanks, as they emptied, were filled with plain air but the NTSB is starting to require that nitrogen be used so that this doesn’t happen again.
Regarding the differing paths, the parts that were blown off would continue to travel in the same direction as they were going before, but without power behind them would quickly scrub off speed due to air resistance and follow a curved path to the water.
The rest of the plane was still under power and suddenly tailheavy. As the tail swung down its climb would become steeper and steeper until the wing’s angle of attack reached and went beyond the stall point and there was no longer any lift keeping the airplanealoft. Its path would go from a gentle climb while it was intact to one that went up and over as it climbed and then stalled. Since the fuel in the tank was burning this would give an appearance of a missile climbing, but it was really the death throes of the aircraft.
Besides Flight 800 Best Evidence investigated chemtrails and cattle mutilations? One is known by the company he keeps so I think we are safe ignoring this as so much crackpottery.
Not to take sides in this but tell us how you came to that conclusion. How many eye witnesses do you think there were, and which ones are you dismissing?
When planes crash and there are witnesses, their stories often don’t mesh with the physical evidence or each other. In the case of TWA 800 they don’t agree with each other. If some are reliable and some aren’t how do we tell them apart?
Since you won’t do the basic research I’ll answer the question I posed to you. It was over 600 witnesses, some of whom were actually watching the plane fly over.
You tell them apart when the descriptions match each other and actual data. Just as you ignore simulations when they don’t match actual data.
My reservations of the investigation are with the performance of the aircraft after separation of the nose section. A fully separated nose section at 300+ mph would not result in a climbing aircraft. It would have quickly disintegrated due to the effect of airflow on a completely exposed fuselage. A climbing aircraft is essential to the theory that people saw a burning plane ascending (versus a missile).
Also, like the Hindeburg disaster, witnesses were specific as to the color the flame. This eventually led to the discovery that it was the skin that burst into flames (it was painted with rocket fuel). The color of the perceived missile and related contrail were not consistent with burning jet fuel.
Seems to me, in the documentary/news program that I watched, that there was no missile hole in the reconstructed fuselage. They pieced together a shit load of the plane and no external puncture was found.
I believe the FAA did a fantastic job in this case. Actually they seem to do a fantastic job in all cases. I don’t subscribe to a conspiracy in this case.
A plane traveling at 300+ mph, if suddenly and violently pitched up, will climb from inertia alone. Most of its forward motion is quickly converted to vertical motion, at least for a very short time.
There’s an animation about this somewhere, I seem to recall. I’ll see if I can find it.
Ah, here’s one version (near the end). Narration: [after the midsection explosion and the plane is now in two parts] “The nose plunges downward like a bullet. The rest of the plane…soars upwards. Investigators believe that this is the trail of light eyewitnesses see streaking up into the sky.”
Further comment from me: To a small boy with a hammer, every problem looks like a nail. To a conspiracy theorist, every eyewitness account is pure gold.
1st, you’re denying the accounts of over 600 people. Discounting most of those as post explosion views you’re left with over 100 who claim to have seen an orange glow rising up from the ground with a gray contrail. Jet fuel burns very dark and plumes out rapidly. It is so distinctly different than a missile contrail, which is shown 30 seconds into the video you linked. That is exactly how the witnesses described it. And to say that all the eye witnesses at ground level can’t distinguish the horizon when describing an event at dusk doesn’t make sense.
Not denying, explaining. There’s a difference. The facts don’t support the idea that an object struck the plane. There’s no physical evidence for it. So we’re left with the choices that some missile-like object struck the plane without leaving a trace or that some people, in the heat of the moment, made a mistake observing an event like they’ve never seen before. I’m going with the physical evidence. This is why eye witness testimony is so tricky, people get things wrong all the time.
And that would be detectable from the debris reconstruction. There would be tell tale patterns on the debris from the impact. It’s not like we’ve never seen a missile hit a plane and looked at the wreckage.
This isn’t rocket scien…, um, well I guess it is, sort of.
As I’ve said before, I rarely meet a conspiracy theory I don’t like, sometimes because it appeals to the paranoia I developed in 54 years and sometimes because it’s fun to play “what if” mental games. Another mental hobby is imagining how complex and expensive I can make producing a normally cheap object, which requires improbable materials, extravagant processes, and generally throwing Ockham’s Razor in the recycling bin. However, the CTs around Flight 800 are too improbable even for me. I mean, a meteor strike? Come on!
Sorry, but since it was a common problem with older 747s to have the wiring insulation crack and cause shorts and arcing, and since it was known that Flight 800 had taken off with one tank nearly empty so it could be assumed that some fuel would evaporate and make an explosive mixture with the air in the tank, it was obvious what happened.
If you do the calculations there is about a 1/10 chance that a meteor will hit a commercial plane in a 20 year period. Which, coincidentally, is about the same chance of me getting laid.
