These airplanes are capable of such long range, that it is normal that the center tanks could be empty on a "short" flight to Paris.
If the center tanks were empty, the pump switches were off on the engineer's panel and no fuel pump wiring was in the tank, there is no source for any explosion.
Aviation jet fuel isn't nearly as flammable as auto gasoline. With the combination of little fuel in the tank and the 13,000 foot thinner air, it is difficult to get the fuel/air mixture to explode.
THANK YOU!
I got flamed repeatedly for point this out back when this was a hot topic......
That's true, but the tanks would be pressurized to some extent, otherwise the more volatile compounds in the fuel would boil off into the atmosphere, leaving behind a more 'sludgy' fuel mixture.
Think of the gasoline you keep on hand for your lawn mower. It's in a closed container, and after a few minutes, or hours depending on the temperatures, it has a pressure built up.
That said, I've believed it was a missle from the very beginning. I just never knew about the Gorelic involvment in the cover-up. Those people were hip deep in things during the whole eigth years.
The NTSB set up tests over in England, conveniently out of sight, where they tried to recreate the fuel explosion scenario. They failed. Eventually they had to fake them in the the manner of the GM truck fiasco to get any results that they could allude to.
Jet A is like kerosine, it vaporises at about 185 degrees and even then does not explode like gasoline.