And I'm always interested in talking with people with experiences that I don't have, and I'm not trying to dismiss what you saw. All my missile experience was with Navy SAMs so while I'm familiar with the Chaparral I've never seen one in action. But correct me if I'm wrong, but the Chaparrel launcher weighed quite a bit and the missile used a heat seaking warhead. And one reason why I believe all these missile theories fall apart is because of limitations like this. Anything other than a shoulder fired SAM requires a launcher of some kind, so that leaves out small boats and the like. If it was a SAM, even ignoring the range limitations, then it used a heat-seeking warhead. Anything using a heat seaking warhead would have homed in on the biggest heat source around - one of the 4 engines. And I've seen nothing to indicated that any of them took the missile hit.
Again, I don't doubt that you saw something. It's just that the idea that it was a missile that brought the plane down just makes little sense to me, in light of what kind of missiles might have been available.
All of the available evidence points to terrorists launching a 2-pronged “bracketing” attack on what they thought was an El-Al 747.
They likely used Stinger missles launched from 2 boats under the flight path, about 3-5 miles apart.
Shoot the missles, dump the evidence overboard, wash down the boat, ride back to port with the hundreds of other boats out that day.
But the combined engine wash from a 747 is titanically different from the wash of (say) an F15, a MIG or any of the usual design targets of a AA missile. A 747 wash will easily throw cars around. I can certainly imagine a missile striking the 'wrong' part of a plane if it engaged the wash.
A launcher system for any rocket or missile can be improvised and lightened to fit an operational need, especially if safety of the operators isn’t a high priority.
I do have a problem with an IR seeker striking the center fuel tank. That is an unusual scenario, but missiles, especially old missiles, do not always operate as intended, even if it was an IR seeker it could have malfunctioned and “missed” the engine striking the center fuel tank by mere chance, plausible even if unlikely.
A Chaparral sized missile (9 feet long and 200 lbs) could quite easily be fitted to a 30 foot boat (I wouldn’t want to be on it when it launches) and an IR seeker missile could strike the center tank.
You're assuming the missile flew where it was aimed. An error of a few feet could easily happened. What was then accuracy rate back then?
I would ask you to keep an open mind during this discussion. None of us here are experts in this niche area as far as I know.