Burning
Wreckage on the Atlantic
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THE
EVENT
The abrupt and
unscheduled ending of Flight 800 occurred at 2031
EDT, 14 minutes after takeoff. According to the
NTSB the altitude was just under 14,000 feet and
about 10 miles from the edge of Long Island
heading northeast.
DATE: 07/17/1996 20:31
LOCATION: East Moriches, New York
AIRCRAFT: Boeing B-747-131
REGISTRY: N93119 S/N: 20083/153
ABOARD: 230 FATAL: 230 GROUND: 0
DETAILS: While on a flight from New York to
Paris, France, the
aircraft exploded at FL 130 and crashed into the
Atlantic Ocean off
Long Island, N.Y. The breakup of the aircraft was
caused by an
explosion in the empty center fuel tank. The
official cause of the
ignition source remains unknown. The possibility
exists that the
aircraft was accidentally struck by a missile
launched by the U.S.
Navy while conducting missile testing
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This greatly
simplified map from the NTSB shows the
region and traffic.
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The NTSB has spent
four years and over $30 million dollars on the
investigation and still no answer to why TWA 800
crashed has been found, but neither has the final
report been issued. Most everyone agrees that
Flight 800 ended in a fiery explosion but was the
center fuel tank the cause of the airplane
explosion or merely a sympathetic effect
of being struck by a high velocity object?
Government investigators, including the FBI, have
refuted any links to terrorism and have denied
that the Navy had anything to do with the
accident. Despite that, questions and evidence
has surfaced that may contradict those claims.
THE
NAVY
One aspect that
supports the missile hypothesis has to do with
the eyewitness accounts of scores of people that
claim to have seen a missile streak upwards in
the direction of TWA 800. But was the streak
people saw actually aimed at TWA800 or did it
just appear that way and perhaps the missile was
part of a naval test no where close to any
flights? Either way the missile scenario comes
down to either a naval accident or a terrorist
plot.
Accidental downings
of commercial jetliners are not unheard of,
example Korean Airlines Flight 007 that was shot down
in 1983 by the Soviets near Japan. If I remember
correctly the excuse used by the Soviets was that
they thought it was a US AWACS radar plane and it
had violated their airspace; which is at least
semi-plausible because AWACS is based on the
Boeing 707 airframe. Another example was the Iran
Air Bus 300 shot down using the SM-2 Standard
missile in the Persian Gulf by the US Navy. Back
in 1988 the USS Vincennes claimed it was an
Iranian F-14 headed straight for them and didn’t
reply to their queries. This mistake caused the
death of 290 people. One interesting parallel is
that the USS Normandy also a cruiser (CG) just
like the Vincennes, was likely in the area of TWA
800 that fateful night.
But still how could
anybody mistake something the size of an airliner
for a military aircraft, and an airplane (F-14)
used by their own navy no less? That’s
a good question, certainly modern radar is
capable of clearly determining size, speed and
distance and an airliner can not be (easily)
confused for a fighter or attack aircraft and
even a bomber is a stretch. A calm, rational and
competent crew would not have fired.
So were the Navy
crews in the area of TWA800 calm, rational and
competent? Certainly they were not under the
pressures of a combat riddled hot-zone like the
Persian Gulf. Maybe they thought TWA 800 was an F-14?
Any modern Navy ship, something like a
frigate, could have attacked and destroyed a 747.
The Standard SM-1 or SM-2 and any of the variants
of those surface to air missiles would have made
confetti out of a 747. Radar guided and with
ranges from 25 to nearly 100 miles and maximum
altitudes over 60,000 feet would easily fit the
flight envelope for any jetliner and anything as
big as a 747 would be difficult for a guidance
system to miss. Other navy missiles that
could have been used are the Rolling Airframe
Missile and the Sea Sparrow with ranges 10 and 8
nautical miles. All these missiles have blast
fragmentation warheads and are radar guided
except the RAM which has a passive dual mode IR/radar
seeker in the nose. Radar guidance would aim the
missile towards the center of the targets mass.
But if for some
reason a Navy missile was launched and hit the
TWA flight, those in charge of the ship would
realize what happened and they would also realize
their careers would be over if anyone found out.
Still it would not be difficult to shift the
blame to a lower ranking person or persons, after
all the guy that pushed the fire button really
shot it down right? The biggest trick here would
be to keep anyone else from leaking the truth
– a daunting task, true. As far as the ships
crew is concerned this would not be overly
difficult because during any live firing of
weapons the ships crew is locked-down and sealed
into their workstations and weapons positions.
Compartmentalized like this, they only know their
own tasks and task related information. So it
would basically boil down to the individual that
fired the missile, the radar operator(s) and the
Captain.
No practice or test
mission operates with just a single ship; instead
multiple platforms monitor the test
simultaneously to gain as much information on the
performance of the weapons as possible. This
seems to preclude anyone else not knowing that
the intended target was missed. So how could such
a horrendously egregious error go undetected and
unreported? Good question, all I can say is that
if it was truly an accident the command
authorities and perhaps other personnel on site
would certainly see an immediate need to cover-thy-ass
or else get a courts martial.
One other potential
threat to TWA 800 by the Navy needs to be
explored before we move on. Were any aircraft in
the area that could have launched a missile at
Flight 800? The FAA radar logs don’t show
anything that could have had any anti-aircraft
missiles. The P-3 Orion in the area is a Navy
anti-submarine warfare plane and it only carries
torpedoes and depth bombs. Could a terrorist
launch a stinger from a Cessna or other light,
private plane? Very unlikely but not completely
impossible. The problem would be in getting high
enough to reach TWA not to mention the speed
difference: 150 mph versus 500mph. The
limitations of the Stinger missile itself would
also be a serious impediment which I’ll
explain in just a moment.
THE
MISSILE
The FBI investigated
for terrorist actions and even sent out diagrams
of Stinger missile components to alert
investigators as to what to look for:
This may be what has
diverted so much attention towards the terrorist
idea. However this theory has some serious flaws
that would have to be overcome to create a
workable hypothesis. First off, if the missile
did come from the surface of the water as per
eyewitness accounts and if it was not a navy
missile then it must have been from a terrorist
platform. Otherwise you’re left with a
foreign ship or aircraft which seems likely to be
detected in the middle of navy maneuvers. Surface
traffic records have shown at least one fast
speedboat in the area at the time, but that by
itself proves little given the busy nature of
marine traffic in New York. Still that seems the
only possible platform that a terrorist could
have launched anything at TWA 800.
But was the
terrorist just shooting blindly into the sky or
did they want to hit a specific target? They must
have had a target in mind even if it was
incidental because just shooting a Stinger into
the sky is not going to blow anything up.
Although a nearly full moon was out, it would
still have been necessary in the semi-dark to
have an accurate knowledge of the departure time,
flight path and altitude of the aircraft to
properly sight and target it.
Ok, but what is a
Stinger missile? It’s a lightweight,
shoulder fired infrared, 'fire-and-forget' anti-aircraft
weapon produced in the USA and shipped abroad
most notably to the Afghani resistance during the
Soviet invasion of that country. It is designed
to shoot down low and slow flying objects like
helicopters and ground attack aircraft such as a
Russian Su-25. But at 14,000 feet there is no way a
Stinger or any other shoulder-fired
missile could have hit TWA 800 from the ocean
surface. Any book on military hardware will give
the specifications for modern shoulder fired missiles.
None of them, SA-7,14,16,18, Redeye, Stinger etc.
could have hit TWA 800; even the best one
available, the Russian SA-18 Grouse, has a maximum
altitude of 3500m. Some people may be confusing
maximum range with maximum altitude
creating a false impression that a Stinger can
reach a three mile target by going straight up,
it doesn’t work that way. Not only that
but the speed of the Stinger is roughly the same
as the jet aircraft, making catch-up impossible.
Given all these
problems with the Stinger hypothesis (and I could
name even more) it seems especially odd that the
FBI would have been searching for residual
evidence of just such a missile. Was it
ignorance? Perhaps just an attempt to be thorough
and investigate every possibility? But then why
not search for parts from say a Russian SA-14? I
don’t think we can rule out the possibility
of disinformation being planted to discredit
unauthorized investigators.
But then what if the
terrorists used a larger missile on their
speedboat? Here we run into more problems because
any larger missile invariably requires a tracking
system such as a radar or optical telescope of
some kind, high-power source, computer controls
and/or human controllers. All this would be a
challenge to fit on a speedboat and still
maintain any speed for the get-away.
Another reason a
Manpad is unlikely is the fact that the point of
explosion was the center of the airframe. A
stinger or any other Manpad is IR guided meaning
it would hit the hottest point on the plane
– the engine or possibly the APU in the
tail, but not the empty center fuel tank. So
assuming the NTSB investigation isn’t total
garbage then we are forced to state that if a
missile was involved it must have been non-IR
guided. This leaves us with only radar guided
missiles, unless an active radar was in the nose
of the missile (making it expensive and large) it
was command guided by a ground or air radar. This
final conclusion is especially startling because
that means an operator must have known what they
were targeting and also had a (probably short)
time to react i.e. de-target the missile or turn
off the radar. One cannot accidentally shoot down
an aircraft with command guidance like this. Yes
you can mistake the target for something
else like the Iranian airplane shot down in the
Persian Gulf; but not say ‘oops I didn’t
want to blow that up’ because any modern
missile even if it goes off course must have a
paint of the target by the command radar. Even
then it’s very difficult to mistake
something as big as a 747 for anything but a 747!
The only way it might have happened is if the
radar operator was an idiot and had the radar in
Ship-Air mode and not ship-ship mode, so the
missile was tracking air targets and just went
for the biggest and closest thing painted by
radar.
Another thing
missiles have is called IFF Identification Friend
or Foe which is a system that the missile uses to
determine if an aircraft is a valid target or a
friendly plane. This equipment is usually only
used on military hardware and the idea is to
prevent fratricide on the battlefield. This
probably would not have been a limitation to a
Navy missile because IFF works on the basis that
if it doesn’t have an IFF transmitter with
the exact code then by default it’s an enemy.
Obviously a 747 would not have any IFF onboard.
Unofficial
investigators claimed to have found traces of
explosives on the seats in the plane. Since a
Stinger and similar shoulder-fired missiles have
warheads with less than 1kg (2.2lbs) of
explosives it seems unlikely to have left much of
any residue, but on SEATS, INSIDE
the plane? If those tests were accurate,
it would make more sense that the explosion was
caused by a larger missile like the Navy Standard.
At least that’s my semi-professional
estimation.
Many news-sources
and essentially all government sources flat out
deny any missile was involved in the TWA 800
crash. But this begs the question of why the need
for so much secrecy, denial and avoidance of the
missile theory by government authorities. It’s
true the FBI started from the beginning with the
idea that it was a missile but other agencies
like the NTSB thought otherwise. I don’t
think the FBI evidence, if they found any, was
ever released, it just seemed to die out. The
problem is really not so much conspiracy as it
is mitigation of options in an investigation,
which has already cost millions of dollars and
several years. Besides that it’s also a case
of too many cooks in the kitchen; so many
agencies, even the CIA, all working on the same
project is just asking for mistakes, confusion
and misleading answers. I mean when has the CIA
actually elucidated anything!
THE
TESTIMONY
Conspiracies are
tough to kill and in this case some mysterious
aspects really make me and others wonder. One of
these has to do with the DSP satellites and a
fantastic Freudian slip on the part of a
government spokesman. Basically the Defense
Support Program satellites are extremely
sensitive infrared cameras in orbit over the
Earth intended to monitor the launch signatures
of (Soviet) ICBMs.
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Classy,
artist's rendering of DSP in deep space
courtesy of USAF.
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TRW built the
DSP satellites and also the famous KH-11/
"keyhole" series.
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But they also serve
other purposes like spying on missile tests done
by foreign countries. Since this is a spy system
the full capabilities are a guarded secret, but
we know they are highly accurate even though they
orbit at 22,300 miles. Something like an aircraft
on afterburner or the Russian missile attack on a
Grozny market can be easily verified as has been
reported in the media. These satellites also
recorded the TWA 800 explosion, but what's more
critical is, did DSP see the TWA missile plume?
After all if around 100 eyewitness’ saw it
then DSP MUST have seen something. The DSP
satellite could not have seen the aircraft
explosion but not seen the missile or whatever
that bright streak of light was! Yet that’s
exactly what the Air Force claims. Not only that
but during one press conference the man in charge
General Estes said, "I
looked at it when I was the J-3 here when TWA 800
was shot down." What was
that, shot down?
Psychologically this
seems like a subconscious attempt by a basically
honest individual to counter one or more lies
with the truth, as you’ll see below. Not
surprisingly his statement was quickly corrected
with another press release and since this is a
key element and for accuracy here is the exact
memorandum, and besides, some of what he says is so
weird one has to read it to believe it!
Memorandum:
No. 035-M
March 13, 1997
MEMORANDUM FOR
CORRESPONDENTS
During the course of
the on-the-record briefing by Gen. Howell M.
Estes, Commander in Chief, U.S. Space Command, at
the Pentagon, conducted Thursday, Mar. 13, 1997,
Gen. Estes responded to a question regarding TWA
Flight 800. Gen. Estes at one point said: Gen.
Estes did not mean to say TWA 800 was "shot
down." In the context of his response to the
questions, it is clear that he mispoke and meant
to say "went down." The corrected
transcript of the question and answer sequence is
printed below with the correction in brackets.
Copies of the transcript and video tape are
available in the Directorate for Defense
Information. Q. "Gen. Estes, I'm sorry to
have to bring this up, but in Pierre Salinger's
controversial report about the shootdown of TWA
800, he charges that the U.S. Space Command has
refused to release information about a U.S. spy
satellite that was overhead on the night of the
disaster and--quote--recorded important
information about the shootdown. Can you put that
into any kind of perspective at all? Is that
true? Or can you tell us if there's anything to
that at all?" Estes. "Again not to give
you a long answer. Let me give you a direct
answer. I'll guarantee there's nothing like that
out there. I've looked since I've been there. I
looked at it when I was the J-3 here when TWA 800
was shot [went] down. I'm not telling you that
there wasn't a missile that caused this problem.
I don't know. As we know the National
Transportation Safety Board has said there are
three options on what happened. This is their
business. What I'm telling you is that in the
military I was here when that incident happened,
and I know the steps we went through. We went
back just to make sure something hadn't been
missed somewhere and took a missile count of
every single missile we had--Army, Navy and Air
Force--to make sure that something didn't happen
that we weren't aware of. We looked at the
location of every aircraft to make sure we knew
where everything was--where ships were--and we
validated to the best of our ability, and I have
to say that there isn't anybody who's going to
have better information than this, and we are
convinced that the military was not involved in
this in any way, shape or form. Now, was there a
missile attack? We have people who said that they
saw a missile. We had people back when it
happened who said they saw a missile. And the
investigators that are looking at this have
determined there is, to the best of their
ability, they have not been able to find any
evidence of this either in the pieces of TWA 800
that have come off the bottom of the ocean nor
any verification anything that they've seen off
of any location either on the shore or at sea.
This investigation continues. But there is
nothing--back to your exact question to me--there
is nothing at Space Command that we know of that
has anything to do with Flight 800 that hasn't
been released. Clearly, the defense support
program--the DSP satellites--did see the
explosion of Flight 800 because of its infrared
source that it was. And we saw it falling. And so
that‘s the piece of information that we had
from the beginning from the U.S. Space Command.
We still have it today. Nothing's changed. That
was all seen. We know of nothing--" Q.
"That doesn't show in any way, that doesn't
confirm any missile theory or add any credence to
the missile--" Estes. "It does not. And
I would tell you to be very blunt and very
factual about this that the infrared source out
of a small missile is not intense enough to for
us to see with these space- based systems. That's
the fact. OK?" Questions concerning this
Memorandum for Correspondents should be referred
to Col. Richard M. Bridges, Director for Defense
Information, (703) 695-9082 or Lt. Col. Don
Planalp, U.S. Space Command, (719) 554-3525.
FROM: http://www.defenselink.mil/news/Mar1997/m031397_m035-97.html
Now General Estes is
an expert on space defense systems, he knows
exactly what the DSP satellite system can
actually do; he should since he was commander of
NORAD and the US Space Command. Somebody is lying
here, either Estes is not telling the truth on
what DSP saw or 100 eyewitness got an upward
streak confused with down and their temporal
sense skewed as well. But it gets worse, at the
end he says
"...that
the infrared source out of a small missile is not
intense enough to for us to see with these space-
based systems". How does he know it was
a small missile?! Indeed how does he know
it was a missile at all! Is this two Freudian slips in one poorly conducted speech? Or
is it that he just was parroting Salinger’s
claims (which he seems to know a lot about oddly
enough) in order to refute those ideas? Besides
the above two cases he also says they saw TWA 800
explode and saw it falling, but then doesn’t
that make it obvious the system can track small
moving infrared objects thereby contradicting his
assertion?
OK, ok, assuming
that DSP can’t detect small missiles,
what about large missiles? I’ve already
established that it couldn’t have been a
conventional Manpad. I’d like to see Estes
say DSP couldn’t detect missiles, because
that is the whole intention of the satellite
system – to detect ICBM launches and track
the contrails! The DSP has had five improvements
in its lifespan and I don’t see any
limitations that would prevent it from tracking
the contrail of a small missile against the flat
cold Atlantic backdrop.
Either way no DSP
image of the event has ever been released (that I
know of) which merely adds another question to
the mystery.
If all this was
a cover-up why leave investigation open for so
long? Why not do one of the typical real fast
open/shut studies, you know to seal everything up
and put a label and solution on it. "Mechanical
fault, fuel tank explosion, end of story".
THE
VICTIMS
Questions still
remain, one of those that should be answered is why
would someone want to blow-up TWA 800? Random
terror? That only works if your organization
claims credit, continues on that course with
other acts and can prove they did it, otherwise
the psychological impact is pretty much lost. Was
someone on board that had enemies? That is really
difficult to know. No one on the flight appears
to fit that category. Here’s the list:
Aikens-Bellamy,
Sandra, 49 Aikey, Jessica Alex, Christian
Alexander, Matthew, 20 Allen, Lamar Allen, Ashton
Amlund, Svein Anderson, Jay Edward, 49 Anderson,
Patricia, 42 Anderson, Seana Babb, David, 13
Baszczewski, Daniel Beatty, Charles Becker,
Michelle Bellazoug, Myriam, 30 Benjamin, Arthur
Benjamin, Joan Berthe, Line Berthe, Maurice
Bluestone, Nicolas Bohlin, Michelle Bossuyt, Luc
Bouhs, Leonie Bower, Jordon Braman, Rosie, 47
Breistroff, Michel, 25 Brooks, Edwin, 81 Brooks,
Ruth, 79 Buttaroni, Mirko, 26 Caillaud, Anthony
Caillaud, Daniel Callas, Dan J., 22, TWA Flight
800 crew Campbell, Richard G., 63, TWA Flight 800
flight engineer Carven, Jay, 9 Carven, Paula
Cayrol, Jacques Chaillou, Jenny Chanson, Ludovic,
12 Charbonnier, Jacques, 66, TWA flight 800 crew
Charbonnier, Constance, 49, TWA flight 800 crew
Chemtob, Monique Christopher, Janet, 48, TWA
flight 800 crew Coiner, Constance, 48 Coiner,
Anna Duarte Cox, Monica Crandell, Pamela, 28
Creamades, Daniel Dadi, Marcel, 46 D' Alessandro,
Anna Darley, Francois Deboisredon, Cybele
Delange, Sylvain Delouvrier, Judith, 47
Dhuimieres, Dominiques Dickey, Deborah Dickey,
Douglas DiLuccio, Debra Collins, 47, TWA flight
800 crew D'Iorio, Christine Bailey D'Iorio,
Pietro Dodge, Warren, 50 Dupont, Guy Dwyer,
Larkyn, 12 Edwards, Daryl, 41 Ellison, Marie
Ersoz, Clara, 59 Ersoz, Namik Eshleman, Dougas A.
Estival, Alexandre Feeney, Deirdrel Feeney, Vera
Ferrat (first name unavailable) Foster, Rod
Foulon, Didier Fry, Carol Furlano, Rosaria Gabor,
Daniel, 27 Gaetke, Daniel Gaetke, Stephanie
Gallagher, Claire Galland, Jean Paul Gasq, C.
Unnamed passenger flying with C. Gasq Gough, Capt.
Donald Graham, Steven, 38 Gray, Charles Hank, 47
Greene, Renee Griffith, Donna Griffith, Joanne,
39 Grimm, Julia Grivet, Cyril Gustin, Anne
Hammer, Beverly Hammer, Tracy Hansen, Lars
Groenbakken Harkness, Eric, 23 Harris, Lawrence
Haurani, Dr. Ghassan Haurani, Nina Hazelton,
Sandra Hettler, Rance Hill, Susan Hocharo,
Jeanpierre Hogan, David, of Paris, Holst,
Virginia Holst, Eric Hull, James, 48 Hurd, James
III Ingenhuett, Lonnie, 43 Jacquemot, Benoit
Jensen, Susanne Johns, Courtney, 18 Johnsen,
Arlene E., 60, TWA Flight 800 flight attendant
Johnson, E. Johnson, Jed, 47 Johnson, L. Jones,
Romana Karschner, Amanda Kevorkian, Capt. Ralph G.,
58, TWA Flight 800 pilot Krick, Oliver, 25, TWA
Flight 800 flight engineer Krikhan, Margot
Krukar, Andrew, 40 Kwan, Barbara, 40 Kwiat,
Patricia Kwiat, Kimberly Labys, Jane
Lacailledesse, Antoine LaForge, Alain Lamour,
Yvon Lang, Ray, 51, TWA flight 800 crew Leim, Ana
Lockhart, Maureen, 49, TWA flight 800 crew
Loffredo, Elaine, 50 Loudenslager, Jody Lohan,
Britta Loo, Patricia Lucien, Dalila, 17 Luevano,
Elias, 42 Lychner, Katie, 8 Lychner, Pam, 37
Lychner, Shannon, 10 Manchuelle, Francois Maresq,
Etienne Maresq, Nicolas Martin, Betty Ruth, 69
Mazzola, Salvator, 36 McPherson, Pamela, 45
Meade, Sandra, 42, TWA Flight 800 crew Melotin,
Grace, 48, TWA Flight 800 crew Mercurio, Giuseppe
Merieux, Rodolphe Meshulam, Avishaim Michel,
Pascal Miller, Amy, 29 Miller, Elizabeth Miller,
Gideon, 57 Miller, Joan Miller, Kyle, 29 Miller,
Robert, 62 Murta, Angela Nelson, A. Unnamed
passenger flying with A. Nelson Nibert, Cheryl
Notes, Gadi O'Hara, Caitlin, 13 O'Hara, Janet, 39
O'Hara, John, 39 Olsen, Rebecca Jane, 20
Omiccioli, Monica, 23 Orman, Alan Ostachiewicz,
Elsie Unnamed passenger flying with Elsie
Ostachiewicz Paquet, Huguette Paquet, Ingrid
Pares, Serge Penzer, Judy Percy, Marion Price,
Dennis Price, Peggy Provette, Glenda Puhlmann,
Rico Puichaud, Elizabeth Remy, Jacqueline Rhein,
Kirk Jr., 42 Rhoads, Marit E., 48, TWA Flight 800
Rhoads, Scott, 48 Richey, Brent Richter, Annelyse
Richter, Noemie Rio, Celine Rogers, Kimberly
Rojany, Yon Romangna, Barbara Rose, Katrina
Rupert, Judith Schuldt, Mike, 51, TWA Flight 800
Crew Scott, Barbara Scott, Joseph, 13 Scott,
Michael Shorter, Anna Maria Siebert, Brenna, 25
Siebert, Chrisha, 28 Silverman, Candace, 22
Silverman, Etta, 53 Silverman, Eugene, 54
Silverman, Jamie, 15 Simmons, Olivia, 50 Skjold,
K. Snyder, Capt. Steven, 57, TWA Flight 800 pilot
Story, William R. Straus, Carine Teang, Lydie
Teang, Rachana Thiery, Josette Tofani, Mauro, 46
Torche, Melinda, 47, TWA Flight 800 crew Vanepps,
Lois Verhaeghe, Rick L., 48 Warren, Lani, 48
Watson, Jacqueline Watson, Jill, in her 30s
Weatherby, Thomas, 13 Weaver, Monica Windmiller,
Ruben Wolfson, Eleanor Wolfson, Wendy Wolters,
Bonnie Yee, Judith Zara, Jean Ziemkiewicz, Jill,
24, TWA Flight 800 crew
There were a few
financial big shots, a few engineers, teachers,
but overall like any typical flight the people
and occupations were of a diverse nature. If TWA
800 was a victim of terrorism it seems dubious
that it was anything but a random target, one
that simply guaranteed a high kill-count.
So what else could
reasonably have downed the airplane? Could some
hazardous cargo have exploded, say flammable
liquids? Possible but such materials would have
been illegally placed on the plane given strict
regulations about such things. Dangerous cargo
seems rather unlikely, but then what else
could have caused a massive explosion capable of
ripping the plane apart? Not much. My only other
hypothesis is that perhaps a foreign national
ship was training with the US Navy on that night
and perhaps they launched the missile, I
would presume accidentally. If this country had
the blessings to do training with the US Navy
they must be an important country to US interests and it would therefore be necessary to keep the
matter quiet to maintain peaceful relations with
that nation. This is purely speculation on my
part, but historical examples of such events have occurred before. One example is the USS Liberty
which was bombed and torpedoed by the Israelis
back during Lyndon Johnson’s administration.
The Israelis claimed they mistook the identity of
the ship but they knew the USS Liberty was monitoring Israeli communications. Many Americans
died in that fiasco but in order to prevent
irreparable political fallout with the Israeli
government the issue was canned; documents on the
matter are still sealed away legally and the
whole story is little known to the public. Since
it was a military ship keeping the matter secret
was much simpler than with a civilian airliner.
THE
CURIOUS CASE OF FLIGHT 1812
Incident:
Oct. 4 2001, a Ukrainian S-200 missile was
launched at 1:41 p.m. Moscow time as part of a
military exercise targeting multiple drone
aircraft. Three minutes later Siberian Airlines
SB 1812 a three engine Tu-154 disappeared from
radar screens killing 78 passengers and crew.
Location:
Black Sea 110 miles southwest of Sochi at 36,000
feet altitude traveling from Tel Aviv to
Novosibirsk.
In
October of 2001, buried under the news avalanche
of terrorism and the September 11 attacks came an
intriguing case of a civilian airline exploding
in midair over the Black Sea during missile
testing by the Ukrainian military. The Ukrainian
military initially denied that they had anything
to do with it or even entertain the possibility
of a military accident. Vladimir Putin originally
expressed agreement with the Ukrainian dismissals
and stated his preference for the notion of a
terrorist act downing the plane. "Neither the
direction nor the range [of the missiles]
correspond to the practical or theoretical point
at which the plane exploded. So the Ukrainian
military has no involvement, either practical or
theoretical, in this accident." said Defense
Ministry spokesman Konstantin Khivrenko.
Some
floating wreckage was recovered along with a few
bodies but the most important evidence, the
flight recorders, sank into the dark depths of
the Black Sea estimated at between 3000 and 6000
feet with a good 18 feet of mud at the bottom and
no radio beacon to locate. Some of the structural
portions recovered had "bullet hole"
sized punctures which some seized upon as further
evidence of a suicidal, trigger happy terrorist
blowing up flight SB 1812.
However
as appealing as this notion was given the
contemporary context, an alternative theory was
put forward that the holes in the metal could
have been caused by the fragmentation warhead of
a missile. This idea was given significant
support when the American Department of Defense
claimed to have tracked a Ukrainian missile
striking the airliner! This included infrared DSP
satellite evidence as well as intercepted
signals intelligence data from the missile test
telemetry.
The
surface to air, antiaircraft missile thought to
have struck that Tu-154 on October fourth is
known in the West as an SA-5 Gammon, or what the
Ukrainians would call an S-200. The United
States tracked the surface-to-air missile with
heat sensing satellites, monitored from the
'Defense Special Missile and Astronautics Center'
at Fort Meade in Maryland. These military
exercises were being conducted in Crimea, around
250 kilometers from the site of the crash and in
a region run by the Russian Black Sea Fleet. This
could explain the Russian adherence to the
Ukrainian story line exonerating themselves of
wrongdoing. It's of interest to note that the
missiles testing was not near the flight path of
SB 1812 at all but the S-200 has such a range
that it was more than capable of reaching the
airliner. The SA-5 is a huge, radar guided
missile with a range of between 250 and 300 km (over
160 miles). One source claims that
this commuter flight was slightly off course for
unknown reasons which may have put it within the
military training area when it shouldn't have
been but given the range of the S-200 that
probably would not have been necessary anyway.
Whatever
the case, the Ukrainian military was targeting
some 20 drones with their SAMs while tracking
the whole exercise on radar. So clearly they have
to know or at least have a pretty damn good idea
of what actually happened, and yet it's not in
their best interest to either release that
critical data or generally do much of anything to
clear the matter up when they can maintain the
possibility of terrorism while the black boxes
are conveniently lost at the bottom of the Black Sea.
An Almaz official
speculated to the Pravda Russian news service
that the Tu-154 and a drone may have both been in
the missile ground station's target area. After
one turn of the radar antenna the faster, closer
drone may have exited the detection zone, leaving
the Tu-154 in there with a large radar signature
to become the target. From: Aviation Week
& Space Technology (1 below).
I
would suggest that a parallel exists between this
incident and certain American government entities.
They have a disincentive to cooperate when the
alternative hypothesis, say a center fuel tank
explosion, is so much better to perpetuate. This
makes the truth, in both cases, difficult but
perhaps not totally impossible to find.
Ironically
perhaps, in the case of flight SB 1812 because of
that crucial satellite intelligence from the
Department of Defense, pressure was placed upon
the investigators to examine the possibility of
military responsibility in the accident. At the end of
October 2001, Ukraine's President Kuchma fired
Defense Minister Oleksandr Kuzmuk and his aides.
Kuchma also ordered an investigation of the
missiles and banned any further launches until
the investigation is over. Furthermore he
promised compensation to the victims families
most of whom were Russian Jews who had recently
moved to Israel.
This
incident provides several useful examples and
clues for unraveling what happened to TWA 800. If
TWA 800 was knocked out of the sky during a
missile testing exercise it could be that the
lack of shrapnel damage inside the aircraft was
due to the fact the missile was inert with only
telemetry equipment instead of a warhead. Either
way, critical information is still missing in
solving this case and if the Pentagon is so
willing to solve air-crash cases on the other
side of the planet, why don't they work as
diligently to solve one off the very coast of New
York?
Sources to
target here are the Air Force with DSP missile
tracking data, the Navy for its missile and
naval maneuvers at the time of TWA 800's fiery
end as well as several government radar tracking
stations in the region which may or may not have
been involved in missile testing at the time.
THE
OPINION
The eyewitness
evidence of a missile is too great to ignore,
that combined with the official denials and slip-ups
makes me very suspicious. Something is being
hidden here but it’s difficult to ascertain
exactly what that is. Part of the problem
is just believing anything the present government
says because they’ve lied so many times
before, credibility is just non-existent.
Personally I think this issue must be bigger than
just the US Navy accidentally shooting down a
jetliner, because all it would take is an apology
a huge cash settlement to the victims families (from
the US treasury) and a few court-martials and
maybe the loss of a training area. Would a
massive cover-up be worth that? Or could a cover-up
be maintained for that little? I tend to doubt
it, which is why I lean towards the foreign
military theory. Not only would the government
and the Navy probably want to keep that training
operation low-profile but if they were testing a
new or secret weapon that would also give
incentive to keep investigators out of the
picture. One other thing that could give reason
for a cover-up and that’s the fact that so
many of the passengers were foreigners –French,
Israeli, Norwegian etc. which would make
financial reparations much more difficult due to
the international politics that would enter the
picture. Still, accidents happen right?
That said, aircrash
investigations are highly complex endeavors. The
NTSB is certainly very skilled at re-assembling
the airframe piece by piece and judging
mechanical failure from the wreckage and voice
recorders. How well they can integrate extraneous
events and details all the while under intense
political pressure to wrap it all up and come up
with a ‘proper’ answer is more
questionable. Not only that but the cockpit
recorders are useless because they stopped
abruptly from the explosion. With everyone from
the CIA to the President throwing in more than
their two cents it seems like a truly daunting
task to come up with an honest, fair and accurate
final report that examines every possibility with
the utmost detail. And such a thing just won't
happen either, not in the real world. But this
shouldn’t be seen as discrediting evidence
of a missile or eyewitness accounts or any other
related information. It could indeed have been a
Navy missile that destroyed TWA 800 or something
else entirely. It’s just a known fact that
the quick and simple answer will win out,
especially in this type of an investigation
because no one wants to spend billions on the
case and the next twenty years searching through
every record, every witness and going to 200
different government agencies each with their own
bureaucracy to try and get some shred of evidence
disproving every single hypothesis.
The final report
will use the simplest answer that requires the
least credulity, most likely a freak fuel vapor
induced explosion in the center fuel tank
creating an instantaneous and catastrophic
explosion destroying the aircraft and killing
everyone on board. THE END
<Click here for
an overhead view of the radar targets>
Here are a few
URL's used in the research of this report
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