I’m not sure why it’s all of a sudden gotten new play, but given all of the lies and cover ups that the government has been seen to be involved in recently, it’s probably fertile soil for it right now. I was always sceptical of the official story, given so much eyewitness testimony about missile streaks and such, but none of the alternatives make a lot of sense either. I have no firm opinion on it.
But you know what would be an interesting investigation to reopen in this environment? Or rather, in the coming environment of late 2015, early 2016? When the Democrats are holding their primary?
Someone should do a documentary on Vince Foster. Next month (on Moon Day, in fact) will be the twentieth anniversary of his death, the circumstances of which remain a mystery to anyone actually paying attention. I have no idea who killed him, and we may never know, absent a deathbed confession or something, but I think that the likelihood that he killed himself is slight, and that he died in Fort Marcy park, vanishingly small.
I think the resurrection of TWA 800 is to revive the idea that talking about conspiracies is wacko. Low-information voters have begun to buy in on the Obama scandals, so now somebody wants to wave this in their faces and get them back on “all conspiracy talk is looney” default.
McGehee, That might backfire. At this point, I think most people are inclined to disbelieve anything the government says.
As for the 800 flight. The most likely story I’ve heard was from a fellow engineer. “Probably a set of Iranian missiles. Maybe a ‘technical’ civilian boat with a mounted 9M333 or similar. Pay back for the airliner we shot down in 1988. However, Clinton buried it to avoid a war.”
To me it seems far more likely than “center gas tank just up and blew up” or whatever the official report stated.
I looked up the specs on the 9M333. It’s max reported altitude is 3 KM and a slant range of 5 KM. The last reported altitude of TWA 800 was over 4 KM. It was above the altitude of just about all MANPADS and small SAMs. Plus, those missiles are almost all heat seekers. They would’ve gone for one of the engines, not the fuselage. Even hitting one of the engines would be unlikely to bring down a 747. Plus, TWA 800 was still pretty close to the coast when it went down. Any boat firing a small missile would have to be willing to commit suicide (not impossible) because their chances of detection would be very high. That’s heavily trafficed airspace and waterways. Firing a missile tends to give away your location and someone’s bound to notice.
Even hitting one of the engines would be unlikely to bring down a 747.
Quite so. In the early days of 747 commercial service there were several instances of catastophic engine failure including hot section explosions and even one instance of an entire nacelle ripping off the aircraft. All of these incidents likely involved far more energy release than one would get from the warhead of a MANPAD, but none of them resulted in loss of an aircraft. 747’s are tough birds.
Also agree with your comment about the empty center tank. As I recall, in addition to the heat from incident solar radiation, the tank was also effectively the heat sink for an A/C unit which was going full blast for a long time before takeoff. The residual fuel would indeed have vaporized and mixed with the air that occupied the vast majority of the tank’s volume. The design of the tankage allowed ambient air to come in as fuel was consumed to maintain neutral net pressure in the tank. It was only subsequent to this very crash that a new requirement to provide a nitrogen-only pressure compensation system in the tankage was adopted.
The movies have people believing that fuel tanks blow up but you need something Apollo 13 provided, oxygen. You could have ignitors sparking constantly in a fuel tank and never get an explosion. Ever heard of an electric fuel pump? They put many of them in the gas tank. Airplane tanks are designed so it’s even less likely. An internal combustion engine works because of carburetion.
From memory, that center tank was empty because it wasn’t needed for a relatively short flight (transatlantic is much shorter than transpacific). There will always be residual fuel in any tank. IIRC, the plane sat on a hot tarmac for a long time, long enough for the fuel to have vaporized.