AS LONG AS I LIVE, I WILL NEVER BELIEVE THAT TWA-800 WAS AN ACCIDENT...................
It wasn't...
But as individuals, once again, we'll lose this battle, and they'll win the public trust...ad nauseum...
I was, and still retain the training and experience as a military radar operator...I'm not talking about all the "processed" imagery that is piped to most Air Traffic Controllers these days...Although there are fallbacks to their systems, it is not a common method of controlling our skys...
I had a chance after this aircraft went down to look at some tape (raw radar data) of the area in question...And after desseminating all of the clutter and other explainable returns on the screen (i.e.: running rabbits, et. al.)...
TWA800 was clearly identifiable and able to be tracked easily...
Since a ground/sea launched hand-held SAM has a short flight time, you usually only get lucky to see a single sweep return on these things if you're watching for one...So timing is more like luck than intentional...
The quality of the tape was not as good as I figured it would be, so there is not much you can do about that...
So my input and theory is based more on how this could possibly have happened...
If you are of the type that believes everything the government tells you is gospel, far be it from me to try and convince those people otherwise...
But, if you think like the bad guys in this one, the results are obvious...And something that I do not believe was as thoroughly investigated as it should have been...
- private boat (charter, no paperwork etc etc)
- scanner set to monitor departure and control freq's
- listen for a target of opportunity, TWA800 was a regular scheduled flight, in a list of many others that evening..."TWA800 heavy"...Learn the terminology...
- position yourself under the departure corridor, and wait
- The next step is elementary...
- after the attack, blend in with the recovery folks, and wait for the chance to exit the area without drawing too much attention...
- operation complete...
Then you ask yourself, who benefits from both sides of the argument of terrorist attack, or terrible accident?
Since it was investigated and determined to be an accident, who or whom benefitted from that conclusion?
If it had been determined to be a terrorist attack, who would have benefitted from that conclusion?
When you look at these events with the blinders off, it doesn't so much difuse or complicate things anymore than they already are...So the tone set at the begining is critical...In this case they did not want it to go any farther than it did in regards to a terrorist attack...So they let the conspiracy theorist take that idea and run it into the ground making it easier to dismiss and strengthen their conclusion even more...
Its been like this for as long as I can remember...
So what do we do about it?
I have an idea, but as an individual, its hard to get that wave going...
Later,
Steve