But your bias causes you to find common elements that prove your point, and ignore those that conflict with it. I just used your data above, which you claimed showed similar observations, but on close examination, show the opposite. Interpretation can be biased, but here we have no facts, only interpretations.
If you had 20 independent observers who saw an event without any other input from friends or news media, you might have some valid eyewitness accounts, especially if you get their testimony before any time goes by. But most people who see (or claim to see) such a dramatic event will be sharing it with everyone and receiving input from many sources. This corrupts memory (see my references about memory inaccuracy), but the memory holder may be unaware of it. Google Elizabeth Loftus for studies on this. She was able to show that humans could be made to believe in something that never happened. If an entire event can be implanted, imagine how corrupted minor details can get.
Well that and the particular airplane was an accident waiting to happen. The tail assembly was essentially glued on and there were no rudder stops at high speed.
I missed the 100th showing but yes, the event that happened 20 years ago. Did your memory fade or did you remember the obvious of what you saw?
I don’t see why it’s so complicated to understand that a thin white/gray contrail is the complete opposite of a billowing black contrail and would be reported as such.
Again, 70 years after the Hindenburg, a single person reading the eyewitness accounts made a simple observation, that hydrogen doesn’t burn orange. It cannot be confused as such. All this talk about how inaccurate eyewitness accounts are doesn’t change the basic observations people made who were actually watching the plane as it passed overhead or were looking out past Fire Island. This is not a nuanced observation like the description of a Camaro versus a Firebird (as opposed to a white sports car). The contrail description is generic enough to provide information.
We have an accurate description of a burning jet that has broken apart. The crew in the helicopter described it accurately. It fits the events beginning with the explosion of the center tank. If you read the interview I posted you can see that the NTSB is focused on the description as such. When the tank exploded, there was nothing remotely close to the description given by eyewitnesses who saw something ascending. Many of them described it as a flare that just kept traveling up. One cannot be compared to the other any more than a white sports car could be mistaken for a dark blue bus.
I would also point out, for anyone who wants to suggest that distance would have made a large contrail look small, that the helicopter pilots were further away than the people along Fire Island. And from an angle of rise, the change in elevation suggested by the CIA video was only about 1500 feet at an altitude of 13,500 feet. It would appear as a fractional change in the course of the aircraft and not as something rising up from the surface.
I remember what I saw because I saw it so many times. If I had only seen it once, I most likely would have forgotten or misunderstood many of the details.
I understand your point about repetition but if you and 30 other people described it on the day it happened it would have been generic enough to describe the information I’m talking about.
Again, if a white/gray car was in an accident would you mistake it for a dark colored bus? That is the basic level of detail I’m talking about.
Magiver, you need to make a distinction between what was seen (which may have been pretty good) and what is reported later, after being modified and distorted by news media, time, gossip and expectations. Most recorded observations are the latter.
According to Loftus, yes; something that never happened can be reported in all sincerity as having taken place. Compared to making a story up, a car->bus transition is easy. Your brain does not work like a camera recording to a DVD-R. Human memory is not a perfect, flawless recording of events. I’ll say it again: Memory is not a perfect, flawless recording of events.
You need to admit that people are capable of remembering basic facts. A bus cannot be mistaken for a car. A thin light colored contrail is the exact opposite of a thick billowing contrail. How does a burning aircraft climbing 1500 ft with black burning smoke get mistaken for a thin gray contrail (such as a flare) rising 13,5000 feet? The exploding plane was accurately described and fits with the events that followed. However, prior to the explosion people described something entirely different. Why are their observations wrong and the post explosion observations accurate? When did multiple eyewitness accounts become unacceptable in court (and therefore not viable debate material). And when did public scrutiny of these accounts become the domain of the FBI to be dismissed with a single letter to the NTSB? Why did the CIA produce a video to explain how people mistakenly thought a missile was fired? The NTSB has it’s own computer animators.
After poking around the net I found retired United Airlines pilot Capt. Ray Lahr who has been investigating this for years. Interesting read. I didn’t realize there was more than one airline crew who saw this event and The Eastwind crew was watching the aircraft the moment it exploded. They said it went down almost immediately which is in direct conflict with the CIA animated version which was necessary to explain eyewitness accounts. The timelines don’t match at all.
Captain Lahr is still fighting to get information released. His last attempt was (is) Aug 8 2008..
Magiver, it all comes down to this: You give greater weight to eyewitness accounts compared to official and scientific investigations. I do the opposite.
Either of us could be wrong. But science is on my side.
The problem is that the disrepancy between the NTSB findings and the eyewitness accounts you refer to pretty much leaves us with three options:
(1) A surface-to-air missle struck the plane while leaving no detectable trace
(2) A SAM struck the plane and the NTSB, FBI, military personnel who witnessed the launch and who knows who else are covering it up
(3) There was no SAM and the eyewitnesses whose descriptions suggest otherwise are mistaken
For a lot of us, #3 seems the far more likely possibility.
Of course you think #3 seems more likely. But you’re not responding to the actual data, you’re simply agreeing with the investigation.
Now, you want to explain to me why the FBI went out of it’s way to dictate to the NTSB that they shouldn’t allow eyewitnesses to testify at a hearing and why they are stonewalling Captain Lahr for information? All he’s asking for is data behind the simulation that show’s the plane climbing after it broke apart. The CIA made an animation to explain a point that didn’t need explaining. The idea that the plane climbed is completely unnecessary to the investigation. Great pains were taken to develop this theory. It exists only to explain eyewitness accounts. Let me repeat that. Money and time was spent to create a scenario that explains eyewitness accounts. It has nothing to do with the tank exploding. It’s a superfluous bit of animated opinion. Would you accept that a car was involved in accident because the government made an animated video that contradicts 50-100 witnesses that said it was a bus?
If you think I just stumbled onto this thread and am flinging opinion you should understand that I looked at it at great length during the investigation. I talked to engineers, fellow pilots and people in the military who understand missile technology. I understand exactly what Captain Lahr is talking about and could discuss it on a much more complex level. But frankly if the people on this board won’t accept that eyewitness accounts can distinguish the difference between a thin white line and a billowing black trail than what’s the point?
A professional flight crew was looking right at Flight 800 when it happened. They weren’t looking in the general direction they were looking AT it. They were looking at it because it represented traffic that needed to be identified. They were in the process of flicking their landing lights on and off for the visual benefit of the crew of flight 800 when the plane exploded. What they saw, and reported in real time (10 seconds) does not jive with the CIA simulation that the plane climbed for 32 seconds. A plane that was so out of CG it could not possible maintain controlled flight. A plane who’s entire control mechanism (the cockpit) was violently torn off so any inputs to control surfaces or engines were destroyed. What should have happened is that the plane immediately disintegrated because of structural failure and that is EXACTLY what the crew saw.
To giver you perspective, it would be like watching a drag race accident where the engine exploded and rose 1,500 to 3,200 feet in the air in a flaming streak. This is what the CIA is suggesting the crew saw. Can you distinguish between a car that explodes in a ball of flames and careens down the track versus an exploding engine that soars many times higher than fire works?
A square peg was pounded into a round hole in this investigation and it goes way beyond what I’ve mentioned.
I saw the movie “Crocodile Dundee” when it first came out, in 1986. That’s 22 years ago. I have not seen it since. Nevertheless, I have a VERY vivid memory of the scene where he’s by himself in the subway and is approached by a mugger who pulls out a small switchblade knife. Crocodile says, “That’s not a knife,” pulls out his hunting knife that’s about four times the size of the mugger’s and says, “That’s a knife.”
I watched the movie again for the first time in 22 years the other night. Guess what? Crocodile wasn’t alone in that incident, the woman was with him. It wasn’t in the subway, it was in the courtyard of some building. There was significant dialog that I had totally forgotten, for example the woman (who I had totally forgotten was even there) said, “Do what he says.” And Crocodile says “Why?” and she responds “Because he has a knife.” And THAT’S what provided the opening for Crocodile to say the famous line that I actually did remember correctly.
If you had asked me last week, before I watched the movie again, where that scene took place, I would have sworn under oath and penalty of perjury that it was in the subway.
But I was WRONG. Human memory is FALLIBLE.
You also make this remark:
True. But it’s also true that, inevitably, a person’s description will be colored by what they think or believe they are seeing. Very, very few people (if any) are capable of accurately describing just the facts. I mean, look at the transcript that you yourself posted of Mr. Richardson’s description. He couldn’t help but say it looked “like napalm”, more than once. He wasn’t just describing what he say, he had already compared it to his memory and found a match. And he’s supposed to be more of a trained observer than your average layman. He at least gets credit for not saying it WAS napalm, but still.
Look at the excerpts from those witnesses you posted. Five of the seven used the world “trail” to describe what they saw. The use of the word “trail” clearly implies that the person carries the implicit assumption that something MADE the trail. A truly objective description might be something like “A thin line of white smoke”.
The point is, as has been hammered by others, that you just can’t trust what people say they saw, even if at first blush they appear to be just describing and not making conclusions. The reality is that they’ve already made comparisons and conclusions unconsciously before they utter a word.
I don’t get your point about the description of “trail” at all but at least you made some attempt at addressing the actual data. It would be nice if you would comment on the flight crew who was looking right at the plane at the exact moment it exploded.
Maybe you can explain where the CIA got the idea that the plane climbed for 32 seconds. there’s no data to support it. And they refuse to release the data they used to create the animation of the event.
Sorry, but I have to call foul here; if those descriptions were any similar, they would sound scripted.
I would also like to add that the most common examples of eye-witness unreliability emphasize incidents when the accounts differ, not when they are strikingly similar.
Maybe to you, “wispy white smoke” and “gray smoke” are identical (they aren’t), but I would like to call attention to the witness numbers. Assuming that they were assigned consecutively, with no omissions, if there is a Witness #649, then there are at least 649 of them. Magiver has posted only 7 non-consecutive samples. Could this be cherry picking to give us the seven most similar? What did the others say? Did anyone say anything that might match the official report of the event or did they all disagree with it? Did anyone say they saw red or blue smoke, and if so, why don’t you believe them and toss out the others? Because they don’t fit what you want to be true?
And in a sample of 649, all of which observed the same event in the grossest interpretation (they weren’t watching a tennis match, I’ll grant you that), I would find it surprising if there weren’t 50 or more that had “matching” descriptions, especially if your criteria for a match is loose enough to include almost anything in the sky. How come Magiver could only find 7 that fit his theory?
I can’t comment on the flight crew, since I know nothing about them or what they claim to have seen.
The point about “trail” is this: You said that people don’t have to know what they’re seeing in order to describe it. You seemed to be implying that people’s descriptions would be objective and accurate. I’m making the point that people’s descriptions are never objective. They always go through the human brain and the human brain always filters. It is designed to find patterns and familiarity. And just because a certain person has not actually seen a rocket or missile in flight doesn’t mean that that person doesn’t still believe that they know what it would look like. So this person sees a long, thin bit of cloudy stuff in the sky. Right away the “match it to something familiar” part of the brain goes to work and the person thinks, “Oh, must be smoke.” It’s long and thin. Some level of knowledge in that person’s brain says, “Long thin smoke, must have come out of something moving, must be the TRAIL of a rocket or missile”, and so they describe it as a “trail of smoke”, as in most of the descriptions you cited.
All of that matching that “decided” it was smoke and “decided” that it must have trailed out of something happens completely unconsciously. Ask the person if they DECIDED that it was made by a missile and they’ll emphatically say “Of course not.” They didn’t actually say anything about a missile, but what else leaves a trail of smoke? Even if you’ve never seen a missile, most people “know” that it leaves a trail of smoke. So, my point is, the fact that these people used the word “trail” is very telling about what probably went on in their brains, unconsciously, that led them to use that particular word.
In point of fact, what they saw could have been not smoke at all. It could have been a long thin wispy cloud that just LOOKED like smoke. But once their brains did the unconscious filtering, the conscious believes that, by God, that was a trail of smoke I saw!
Your main point seems to be that burning jet fuel looks so completely different than a missile trail that there is no way in hell that a description that seems to match the latter could possibly be the former. But who says that what those witnesses were describing was jet fuel burning? A plane broke apart in the sky, and pieces went flying. Isn’t it possible that what those people actually saw was a piece or pieces of the plane flying away, reflecting light (from the explosion, maybe?) or trailing debris? It’s already been pointed out by other posters that at a long distance, and not knowing exactly what you’re really seeing, that something moving down can actually appear to be moving up.
It’s just far, far more likely that those people saw the aftermath of the explosion, pieces flying, and just unconsciously filtered that into a smokey trail, than it is that the plane was struck by a missile that left absolutely no physical evidence.
Way to skew the results of your investigation, Junior G-Men! In light of this, can we trust ANYTHING that comes out of the FBI? I thought they were supposed to be professionals.
You’re grasping at straws. You’re entire premise is that people have no clue what they’re looking at and that multiple cooberating accounts are mistaken. A cloud is not something mistaken for a moving lighted object that is ascending. It’s just common sense. A flare doesn’t look like a cloud and it doesn’t look like a burning plane that is falling out of the sky. There is no evidence at all that the plane ascended. NONE. ZERO. The idea was made up out of whole cloth. There was no REASON to create this story. It has nothing to do with the accident. Can you not understand this? More than one flight crew saw the accident, one of whom was near the same altitude. They all indicated the plane broke up and descended. You want to believe the CIA’s animation versus eyewitnesses even though the CIA has nothing to back up the ascertain. There is no transponder data or radar data to suggest it went up. The best they can come up with is that a severely damaged plane slowed down after the nose fell off and they need to account for why it slowed down. Well aerodynamic DUH.
So to recap:
A 747 severely out of CG and missing all control inputs and the entire front of the plane flies for 32 seconds (statistically not possible and no evidence presented to back it up).
multiple flight crews saw it explode and descend, of which one crew was staring directly at it at altitude.
The CIA (who has nothing to do with NTSB investigations) creates an animation of an event without any supporting data…
Many eyewitnesses provide evidence they saw something ascend.
Did the CIA have transponder information showing the plane ascending? NO, it went down with the cockpit. Did the CIA have radar tracks showing an ascending aircraft? NO. Was there a radar track of a fast approaching object that arcs around the aircraft? YES. It was dismissed as an anomaly even though it supports eyewitness accounts of an object arcing around the aircraft. An object also witnessed by another pilot who was flying as a passenger on a plane in the area.
So you have a government agency that has nothing to do with investigating aircraft disasters making an animation of an event that didn’t happen to support crash information that explains nothing… except as an explanation for eyewitness accounts of something ascending. You then have another government Agency (FBI) who goes out of it’s way to tell the ACTUAL investigating agency that they shouldn’t allow eyewitness testimony in a public hearing.
And after 20 years none of the government agencies will provide the data used to show:
A: The plane ascended
B: The plane was capable of ascending
You can also research attempts at getting forensic data from the FBI of fragments from the autopsies.
Actually, I’m finding NOBODY appears to have been watching Flight 800 before the initial explosion. It was twilight, the airplane was a couple miles up and several miles out to sea. It’s not surprising nobody was watching it. All of the eyewitness appear to have only looked at Flight 800 AFTER it called attention to itself by blowing up. This is especially true of the eyewitnesses who claim that they heard an explosion shortly after seeing the line of smoke or streak of bright light because sound would take a full minute to travel from the airplane to the witnesses on land.
This is where you prove you have absolutely no idea what you are talking about. “Statistically” impossible? What the hell do statistics have to do with it? It’s certainly not aerodynamically impossible–you still have the engines pushing and the wings lifting. It won’t fly well or long, but it will fly.
TWA800 sat on the runway for an extended period of time, in hot weather, with a nearly empty fuel tank, with the air conditioning packs pumping heat into the central fuel tank.
The airplane in question had a history of electrical faults involving the fuel system instrumentation.
During the ascent one of the pilots was recorded on the cockpit voice recorder remarking as to “crazy” fuel flow indications.
Just before the explosion, the cockpit voice recorder recorded a momentary change in electrical noise consistent with an electrical short.
When recovered, the center fuel tank quantity indicator indicated a fuel quantity which did not match the fuel known to have been in the center tank, but which was consistent with a momentary short between the fuel quantity instrumentation system and the high voltage mains.
It would be a remarkable coincidence for all these events consistent with an electrical short triggered explosion, to have occurred on a flight that was destroyed by a completely unrelated bomb, missile, or meteor.