Posted on 05/17/2003 7:23:43 AM PDT by joesnuffy
TWA 800: Pilots speak out
Posted: May 17, 2003 1:00 a.m. Eastern
© 2003 WorldNetDaily.com
After my most recent trip to Washington last weekend, I have come to one sorry conclusion: The only people who believe that a fuel-tank problem destroyed TWA Flight 800 sit in America's major media newsrooms.
They certainly don't sit in the cockpits of America's airliners. After some 200 radio and TV interviews and a score of live appearances, I have talked to at least 100 airline pilots. Of those, exactly one supported the government thesis.
What follows are some of the unsolicited e-mails I have recently received from pilots and my comments on the same. I have edited them only for length and for spelling. Not all of the pilots agree with James Sanders and me on every point in our book, "First Strike: TWA Flight 800 and the Attack on America," but they uniformly reject the government thesis.
Each of these individuals identified themselves to me. I have chosen, however, to shield their identities lest there be repercussions.
Ex-Air Force combat pilot
I loved the book. I am an ex-Air Force combat pilot, functional check flight pilot and standardization and evaluation pilot. I flew 145 combat missions. From the first announcement of TWA 800 I believed the plane was brought down by a missile. To me the strongest evidence of the government cover-up is the lack of satellite photo releases to back up the claim that there was no missile. No part of the earth is probably more under satellite surveillance than the mid-Atlantic from New York City to Washington, D.C. If the satellite photos backed up the "no missile" theory, the photos would be everywhere.
There are other interesting questions: Why, if it was mechanical failure, was the entire 747 fleet not grounded? While there were corrective mechanical changes, anything this catastrophic would have deserved far more severe reaction. Why has Boeing never protested this conclusion? Anyway, great book.
Retired airline pilot
As a pilot for 33 years, I have flown many of the different Boeing A/C, all with a center tank, many times empty, with the pumps running, and guess what? Nothing happened. Even after the TWA incident when the FAA required checks of the wiring in all Boeing A/C, even when insulation was found missing from wires, even with empty tanks … nothing happened.
None of the pilots or maintenance persons I ever talked with believed that tank explosion was caused by faulty wiring shorting out because the pumps were on with an empty tank.
Retired TWA Pilot and Accident Investigator
The item "Probe's conclusion built on faked interview" is flawed, as is the NTSB conclusions it tries to refute.
First of all, there were not 736 witnesses who saw the missile. There were 736 witness's to the explosion, but only a small fraction, something like 80 or so, saw a streak of some sort. The majority saw no such streak.
Of those who saw the streak, some said it went straight up, a few said it went down from the aircraft, others saw more than one streak, streaks were from several directions. Wire's missile was climbing at a 40 degree angle, etc.
Assuming this "missile" was a heat seeker such as the Stinger which we gave to bin Laden, it would have homed in on the hottest part of the target, the nearest tailpipe, not the fuselage. The aircraft was under climb thrust and putting out a lot of heat.
I don't know what to make of the 3,000 degree climb of the wreckage. The "video" shown alongside this article shows all four engines leaving contrails. At 13,000 degree? Ridiculous.
I don't believe the NTSB conclusions. Of 1,108 B-747s built, only one experienced this problem? Hardly. I think it was a bomb.
When the wreckage of TWA 800 was raised from the bottom and placed on a barge, I noticed the nose section was blown cleanly off. I went around and searched for the wreckage of PAA 103 at Lockerbie. The nose was blown off at the same frame!
PAA was brought down by a bomb. I think that's what happened to TWA 800. BTW, the aircraft was the same one I flew for my ATP rating in September 1972. I knew many of the crew who perished.
Note: Of the 700-plus eyewitnesses that the FBI interviewed, some 270 (FBI's figure) saw streaks of lights ascending or arcing over before the crash. Roughly one-third of those followed the streaks from the horizon. There were many more eyewitnesses who did not share their accounts with the FBI. We too believe it was a bomb, a flying bomb that was exploded somewhere under the plane.
Retired TWA pilot, senior Air Line Pilots Association investigator
Sometime in the late '80s, I was on a flight between JFK and Tel Aviv (TLV). The airplane was a 747-200. During the initial climb out from JFK, a strange rattling and metal-to-metal noise began to emanate from the throttle quadrant.
We ignored the noises as a nuisance and since everything else was normal continued on our way. At about 23,000 feet airplane altitude, the FE announced that he cannot control the cabin.
[Later] the FE announces, "I have a Differential Fault" on generator number 3. ... Not more than 30 seconds elapsed from the GenDiff announcement by the FE when he announces that he now has a GenDiff on generator number 4! We not only have the Virgin Mary in first class but Jesus Christ and the 12 Apostles just showed up.
That did it; we declared an emergency, made a 180 degree turn and headed back to JFK. We were just past Nantucket Island heading for Yarmouth in the Canadian Maritimes when we made the turn and dumped about 160,000 pounds of fuel (the natives of Nantucket can thank our crew for having never sighted a mosquito since that day).
... So we had two 85KVA capable generators, running at about half load, dead short against the wing spar. 170KA is equivalent to 1,700 100-watt bulbs; with four generators online, each was running at about one-half load when the first GenDiff occurred and three-quarters when the second went off. The spar also serves as the front portion of the wing fuel tanks which had much fuel and air.
So after F800, I always asked the question – if a dead short electrical arc of considerable power on a fuel tank did not cause us to blow up, how did static electricity cause the [center wing tank] to go off in F800?
All of the above can be quantified with crew names, airplane number and log book write-ups if necessary. I truly don't know the consequence of a dead short on an airframe. All I know is that I have five crew members who witnessed it.
PS: After the shoddy investigation by the NTSB on TWA F840 in 1979, I never had much respect for the outfit.
PPS: I just finished the book – great job. Thanks on behalf of those friends I lost.
Note: This has been shortened considerably. The pilot's point, however, is clear.
TWA pilot scheduled to fly Flight 800 on July 17
I commend you for the excellent series of articles . … I do hope the prosecutions proceed. There is nothing worse than corruption in our government.
My interest in this is that I should have been the captain of 800 that day. Management used its prerogatives and took the flight for training purposes. I lost many friends and associates on that flight. I had flown that aircraft No. 119 only several days prior to the shoot down. Justice over due. Let the trials begin!
Retired airline pilot
I am totally convinced that an outside source blew up TWA 800. In fact I went live on Fox TV on their 10 p.m. newscast that night and stated that fact. (I am their in-house spokesperson for aviation matters.) We can muster up a number of pilots with thousands of hours and years and years of experience to augment and support your theory. Please contact me if you are interested in us pursuing this any further.
Note: Yes, we are. Our best bet for genuine exposure at this time is for America's pilots to force the issue. If some pilot or pilot's organization is willing to take the lead, we are more than willing to help.
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"Altered Evidence" from Flight 800 How the Justice Department framed a journalist and his wife. Also available from WorldNetDaily's online store!
Hundreds on witnesses on LI saw a missile rise from the horizon to strike the plane. Triangulation of their reports consistently leads to a spot or two a few miles south of Long Island. These reports are totally inconsistent with a meteor strike.
ML/NJ
That was actually one of the theories the investigators looked at. The problem with it was that the breakup sequence and damage clearly shows the breakup started in the CWFT. But there is absolutely no path that a meteorite could have followed to penetrate the tank. To clarify: Imagine the tank as a box, inside a larger box that is the skin of the plane. Both boxes are in pieces, but investigators put them together. When they do, there is no straight path for a projectile such as a meteorite to follow into the tank. Anti-aircraft missiles kill by fragmentation, so if the tank blew up it must have been compromised from outside, if a missile OR a meteorite did it. But it didn't (it's trivial to tell whether a piece of metal was damaged by a projectile going in or a fuel/air blast going out). You can't get here from there. I guarantee Cashill doesn't mention that little fact in his book -- none of the conspiracy nutballs do. When confronted with physical evidence, which is still in existence, that renders their theory impossible, they start raving that the evidence was faked, or that the guy pointing out the evidence is an agent of ZOG, or something.
An SA-7 or Chinese HN-5 could not have overtaken the plane from the ground, and has to be locked on and fired from the rear aspect. The more sensitive stinger can be fired from ahead, but would still be at the very limit of its range (or beyond). FYI the Afghan mujahideen always trained to fire stingers in volleys, because one isn't that reliable. As another poster pointed out, it's a means for infantry to defend against low-flying ground attack aircraft. Missiles that hit planes at 13,000 feet are BIG.
45 Psi differential would be all it would take for the tank to fail, and a spark and residual Jet A fumes would do that. There have been two other Boeings go bang (one before 800, one after) on the ground. If the tank failed, it would fail up into the cabin, rather than down (the skin below is stronger than the floor above, to oversimplify).
Like all these guys, Cashill starts with a conclusion and then marshals only the "evidence" that supports it. If you are going to read his book, also read the official NTSB file and see how selective he has been in picking stuff that supports his idea and discarding facts that don't fit. "If the results don't match you theory, the scientist changes the theory. The hack changes the results".
I've read all this stuff, which you can also get on a CD-ROM: it's a mountain of .pdf files. It includes, for instance, the witness reports, and a lot of investigation into the missile possibility. Conclusion: it can't be possible. Missile fragments don't hyperspace through a/c structure without leaving evidence. Bombs don't go off without evidence, either.
By the way, NTSB does review its work, recently they changed the probable cause of a Colorado Springs 737 accident as they discovered a flaw in 737 rudder actuators that was very, very rare. See, we have designed out most of the things that cause planes to crash... so when a crash is caused by something mechanical these days, it's naturally a rare event caused by a bizarre chain of coincidences. (AA 587 is looking even weirder than TWA 800).
Finally, who would benefit from downing TWA 800, how, and how does this fit their usual MO? And, if it was the "Navy Mistake" that the gummint-haters on the extremist right and military-haters on the extremist left imagine it to be, how does a whole ship, or task force, maintain a cover-up? Also... the Navy has laid some pretty big eggs in the past (sinking the Japanese ship... shooting down the Iranian Airbus...) and what happened in those cases? The Navy came clean, and hammered the individuals responsible.
As you can see, I'm very skeptical of Cashill and the other agenda-driven conspiracy merchants. He has a handful of "my cousin's neighbor's a pilot and says you rule, dood" testimonials but the credentials of the people who participated in the investigation -- including the engineers that designed and built the plane and its motors and equipment -- are unimpeachable. To believe that they are participating in a coverup (a metallurgist? Who doesn't even know what the significance of his report to the overall investigation is? Come on!) requires a zealot's commitment to believe an a priori conclusion.
Oh, yeah, if it's a big conspiracy all those people in theinvestigation (most of the folks involved are not NTSB or government employees, too) are in on it, too.
d.o.l.
Criminal Number 18F
TWA-800 was climbing through 13,800 feet when the initiating event occurred. Whether it was a missile, bomb or Center Wing Tank, the plane fell ballistically from that altitude and impacted the Atlantic Ocean 38 seconds later.
The disinformation artistes are out again. Where are your buddies, Asmodeus, Rocke, and _Jim?
YOU ignore the same things the NTSB also chose to ignore in their report as well... the THIRD debris field on a vector ~100 degrees from the aircraft's vector, the Mach 2 radar track on the same vector, the numerous eyewitness accounts of a "firework," "smoke trail," "contrail," or "missile," the "red residue" that was anazlyzed by a California Laboratory to be consistent with solid rocket propellant, the impossibility of the CIA/NTSB noseless 747 "Zoom Climb" scenario to explain away all those witness reports, AND the reports from invoestigators of deliberate re-positioning, removal and alteration of any evidence pointing away from the "official" line you spout.
To believe the CWT exploded spontaneously requires one to believe too many impossible things.
And, that is the case of Mike Wire. Mike Wire is the union millwright from Philadelphia. He's a mechanic who was working on the Beach Lane Bridge in Westhampton, New York. He was taking a break from his duties – stepped outside his little booth and standing at the bridge observing when he sees come off the beach and from behind a house what he takes to be a firework.
Q: From behind the house. That is a significant point!
A: It is a significant point. It comes up from a house just above the beach and he watches it ascend from behind the house – ascend not only up, but out. And this is a critical thing. Everyone sees this object in three dimensions – it's not just moving across the horizon, it's moving south and east. It was moving out and away and it was leaving a contrail that is looped and zigzagging, as he describes it. He watched it go up, and then it disappears – another critical observation. Then, a few seconds later, he saw this huge, orange fireball in the sky and he watched the plane, fully consumed, drop out of the sky.
Q: So explain, please, why the Wire story is so crucial?
A: What is interesting about this, about Mike Wire's story – I mean, there are at least 95 people who saw the same object come off the horizon, it's not unique in that – what is unique about Mike Wire's story is, for some reason, the CIA chose to base its animation around his 302 [FBI witness statement] and directly from his perspective. So when you watch the CIA animation you're seeing it from where Mike Wire stood.
Q: However, you are not seeing what Mike Wire actually described he saw?
A: No. You're not seeing what he described, but you are seeing it from his perspective as though he described it.
Q: Explain the distinction and differences.
A: Here's what they did – and this is the most amazing part of the whole story, the most obvious part of the whole story, that any major media person who listens to or reads this right now to get on the phone, right now, and call Mike Wire. He's in the phone book – and he's happy to talk to you. What Mike Wire told the FBI when they called him immediately afterwards – in fact his buddies told the FBI. He didn't call in himself. He's not a glory hound. He went back to Philadelphia. The FBI called him there and he told them what he saw. And they recorded it in a 302.
He said, I saw this thing come off the beach – streaked out, zigzagged, white trail and so forth. And then, just a few days later, the FBI in Philadelphia comes to him at his home and interviews him. The FBI in Philadelphia was obviously not in on the game plan because they gave him a serious 90-minute interview – and this is all documented. Mike Wire told them the same story: It came up from behind the house, zigzagged out in three dimensions, disappears, orange fireball.
Q: So how could the CIA animators get it so wrong?
A: When the CIA goes to create the animation, they look at Mike Wire's documents and they acknowledge – and this is in their own supporting documentation – that in his original FBI interview, he said the object came off the beach. But, they said, that couldn't have been right so the CIA – in their own documents say – we commissioned the FBI to go back and re-interview Mike Wire.
In this later interview, several months later, the FBI goes back to interview him and Mike Wire says, "You're right! I didn't see it come off the beach. I saw it about 20-degrees above the beach. That's where I first saw this." And that's the way it is narrated in the CIA animation – this critical CIA animation that dispels all the witness tales – from Mike Wire's perspective, with Mike Wire's altered testimony, upon his having a clearer head. Q: What's the catch? A: Here's the catch! And this is the critical catch – and a stunning catch. The FBI never went back to talk to Mike Wire. They made this whole story up! I don't know whether the FBI made it up or the CIA made it up – but one of them fully concocted a brand-new story for Mike Wire and built the CIA animation around it.
Q: ... the amazing thing is, they actually did it with a straight face.
A: They did it with a straight face and the really disturbing thing is the American media rolled over. Never asked any questions. I have yet to meet the pilot or aviation expert who thought that the scenario that they created was conceivable. What they said was that the witnesses, the 736 official eyewitnesses, didn't see a missile – or two missiles – what they saw was a "plane in crippled flight."
What they argued happened is that the nose of the plane just sort of spontaneously blew off and then the plane tilted back, turned into a rocket and ascended about 3,500 more feet from its original altitude of about 13,800 up to about 17,200. And that brief ascension confused all the eyewitnesses along the Long Island shore – many of whom were seasoned ...
I have not read all the reports .... but it is pretty clear that it was a missile .... the only real questions are where did it come from, who fired it, and what type of missile was it? .... The vast majority of missiles that I fired and seen fired in the Army were "Blue Spears" (no warhead). I have personally seen a TOW go 120 degrees off course. The missile range off of Long Island is said to have been "hot". You do not need a ship .... an F-14 (made on Long Island with only a 2 man crew) test firing a new missile (new generation Phoenix ... range 150+ miles). IMHO an F-14 had a new missile, with an inert warhead go haywire .... locked on to TWA 800 and hit center of mass.
Yep ;-)
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