[MindBender26]

Lot of questions, eh?

[Iron Munro]

Maybe someday the US government wll finally admit what really happened to TWA Flight 800 too.

[Sacajaweau]

My guess...the gems and diamonds were never on the plane.

[E. Pluribus Unum]

TWA Flight 800 was not the first or the last terrorist attack that was covered up.

The government can never admit that they can't protect us.

Their whole $cam depends on people believing that they can.

[Siena Dreaming]

Just about a week before Sept. 11.

[gaijin]

I always thought this one was suspicious. The same for the mid-Atlantic Air France crash, too.

It’s really sad when you realize that trusting your government is really STUPID.

[Noob1999]

Probably no-one wanted to notify Clinton that a terrorist had taken down a plane over Nova Scotia - didn’t want to interrupt his torrential Lewinsky!

[I cannot think of a name]

Actually I hate to be the wet blanket here, but we know exactly what caused that crash - poorly installed entertainment system wiring that had been added after the aircraft was built. What wasn't as widely reported was that the same nitwits that installed this wiring had done the same poor job on other aircraft as well. Luckily those were inspected and found before something bad happened.

And if you want something to wear your tin foil hat about, I (my opinion) do believe there is a bad guy here - the FAA for bending over for the airlines. Once upon a time an aircraft of that size would have had three crew members, a pilot, copilot, and flight engineer.

In a situation like this, the flight engineer would have been dispatched to the cabin to see what was going on. It is quite possible that one of the ceiling panels could have been opened and the fire extinguished with a hand held. Unfortunately this was a two crew plane. The pilot and copilot were stuck with getting their information from the cabin crew (which not to be offensive, but is mainly women and homosexuals - rarely will you find anyone technical back there).

The crew flew around talking to various centers, dumping fuel, etc while the fire slowly went out of control. Again this is only my opinion, but if there are 200+ souls on board, there ought to be a third crew member in the cockpit.

[KosmicKitty]

OMG! A friend lost her husband on that flight.

[RayChuang88]

If it's magnesium, that could indicate a bomb using some sort of old-style explosive--probably home-made gunpowder.

But here's the thing: if it was an explosive device, how come when the cockpit area was analyzed the crew wasn't dead from the blast wave of a real explosion? We do know that the from the recovered cockpit voice recorder the crew tried to control the plane all the way to the point of impact.

[BBell]

If the underwear bomber had succeeded would we ever have known about it?

[Palladin]

Very interesting. Exactly the same as the downing of TWA 800.

Will we ever know the truth?

[SunkenCiv]

Thanks MindBender26.

Sept. 2, 1998, killing 229 passengers and crew. The plane carried a Saudi prince, a relative of the former shah of Iran and high profile UN officials. A half a billion dollars of diamonds and gems were also never found.

[Cboldt]

I dunno. I would think a Mg incendiary device would burn/gone (high concentration of Mg, almost all of it being converted to a Magnesium Oxide), and aluminum is commonly alloyed with Mg.

I wonder what form(s) of Mg were found?