Shoulder-launched missiles persist for only a few seconds, just like fireworks do which many witnesses said it looked like. They don't leave a LARGE plume of smoke, and certainly not if the launch platform is out at sea.
NO witness saw the lingering smoke plume.
Not true - some claimed to see such a thing. One person even took a picture of it. The FBI confiscated the photos and negatives, won't release them, and then stated "dust was found to be on the negative." I'll bet it was, only film that was in a clean room the entire time won't have dust on it. Why don't they return the picture?
how come there was no shrapnel damage on the airframe?
There are puncture holes - look at the reconstruction photos. Medical examiner Charles Wetli stated "virtually ALL the bodies had shrapnel." Is this common in plane crashes? Why did the FBI stand over the medical examiners and confiscate every piece of shrapnel that was removed, as it was removed, and didn't turn them over? (And, now they are "lost?")
How come the explosion came from inside the plane and not out?
There's an incoming puncture wound on the plane on one side, and an out-going on the other. *Just* *like* when something external passes through.
How come there are several other cases of these explosions?
There are also cases of planes being shot down. Neither has any bearing on what happened to TWA 800.
How come the only theory for which there's physical evidence is an internal fuel explosion?
Because the FBI lost all the other evidence. Major Meyer, a National Guard helicopter pilot and eyewitness to the crash, took a piece of leading-edge wing, covered with puncture holes to an airport for transport to the Washington FBI lab. It's now gone. After the "red residue" made such a fuss, the FBI removed ALL the fabric that had it from the reconstruction. It, too, is now gone.
How come spectrographic analysis shows no explosives residue? Do you know what spectrographic analysis is and why they used it?
The first time they checked samples, they found lots of explosive traces - and even came up with a bogus dog training exercise to explain away how it got there, despite the fact that the traces were found in places the training exercise didn't go. When they took the metal pieces that had hits to their Washington lab, low and behold ALL of them came back negative. Surprise. Popular Science reported one witness to the recovery effort as having seen recovery personelle pressure-washing certain pieces. This is to preserve the traces of chemical evidence that might be on them, right?
And where there is utterly no sign of a missile having been fired, except for some eyewitnesses seeing a "streak of light" which is not what a surface-to-air missile resembles?
There were over a hundred people who saw something rise "from the surface," including several military people like Meyer who had seen missiles before and swear that is what they saw then.
It's a great example of a shoddy cover-up. Plenty of clues that it's all a sham, but good enough to convince most people that nothing's going on, nothing at all.
Does it bother you that Boeing itself stated they "did not fully understand the data" used to create the CIA animation - or that the CIA was even involved in the first place in making a show for the media on "what the witnesses REALLY saw"? Does it bother you that jet fuel will put out a burning rag, but that a spark you wouldn't feel on your hand blew the plane up? How about the fact that the zoom climb scenario advance by both the CIA and two other times by the NTSB - and each of the three inconsistent with the others - is aerodynamically impossible?
How about the fact that the passengers who were right above the center wing tank were hardly singed or cut up, despite the fact that they were sitting on top of the place that was supposed to have exploded, while people in the first class cabin were all cut up, and also the first ones ejected from the airplane?
How about the fact that the nose gear doors were pushed in - and among the first objects to come off the plane?
All of this is ok with you?
At a 2000 miles an hour it would take 5 seconds to fly up and hit the plane. Count off 5 seconds, it is quite awhile.