TWA 800: Pilots speak out

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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!

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.

Price slashed on "First Strike: TWA Flight 800 and the Attack on America"! New book by Jack Cashill and James Sanders says government lies upped drama ante for terrorists. From WND Books, available in ShopNetDaily.

Purchase Jack Cashill's stunning documentary video, "Silenced: Flight 800 and the Subversion of Justice" from WorldNetDaily's online store.

"Altered Evidence" from Flight 800 How the Justice Department framed a journalist and his wife. Also available from WorldNetDaily's online store!

It can certainly be proven that it wasn't a center fuel tank explosion. No one, yet, has been able to reproduce such an explosion.

Hmmm. Thai Airways, March 3, 2001. 737, on the ground. Like 800, the a/c was left running on the ground during a long hold (TWA was an ATC ground hold, Thai was waiting for a VIP). One stew was killed.

Want another? OK. May 11, 1990. Depending on which report you read, a Phillipine 73 was either taxiing or pushing back when its center wing fuel tank just blew up. (Guess what was going on while it was sitting?) 8 pax were killed.

On both of these machines, the structure was compromised, and between that and the fire, it was clear that if either one had blown up in the air all aboard would have perished. So yeah, it has happened other times.

In all three cases there is no doubt the tank went kB! What is puzzling and unclear, is why. Bombs have been ruled out (like I said, bombs leave very particular evidence in their wake). It looks like under some circumstances, high temperatures can alter the physical properties of Jet A and other jet fuels (this was unknown until studies occasioned by 800). Specifically, they can reduce the flash point (which has nothing to do with explosion, but is where the fuel vaporizes) to a fuel-air mixture. Then, the fuel-air mixture has to be stoichometric, or at least combustible. (In most cases short of an empty tank with unusable fuel only, the mixture is too rich -- too much fuel, not enough air -- to blow up). Then. something has to set the mixture off -- a spark from a pump? A spark from the fuel level sender system? Static electricity?

This consultant considered all the above and plumped for static as the most possible cause. His site is very interesting, be warned it's quite technical.
Cal Tech also did some testing of this for the 800 investigation, and since then, in the interests of general air safety. As they point out, the dangers of fuel-air volatility have been known since the early years of the Jet Age. AT this point, a fuel-air explosion, initiated by static discharge, is a possible explanation which does not require any of the physical evidence to be imagined away or spirited off by the SEALs of one's imagination.
Of course, just because we have other evidence of fuel tanks blowing up in planes, that might be something else if we can't blow them up that way in the lab! Unfortunately, while the statement "No one, yet, has been able to reproduce such an explosion," and variants thereof, are articulated with great vigour by Cashill and Co., the facts are quite different This page, again at Cal Tech, specifically debunks that common misconception, as well as many of the other misconceptions, misunderstandings, and outright lies that some people have told.

So, if the evidence leans so strongly one way, why do people still believe in conspiracies, missiles, whatever?

I see several reasons. One, who wants to believe that planes can "just blow up?" I mean, we all fly on planes and we like to think that they will get us where we are going, and not give us a Go Directly to Final Judgment card in the Monopoly game of life. Unfortunately, under some circumstances, they do blow up -- as the three I cited in this post did. We'd like to think that professional aircrews don't just run out of gas, or fly into mountains, but unfortunately I can point you to a few of those, as well. We'd like to think that rudder actuators don't get a wild hair and flip planes into the ground on approach, but it's happened. Anyway, we want there to be a reason, a neat tied-up package, a bad guy like the ones on TV. Osama did it! (or Bush, if you're Rivero!) But sometimes bad stuff just plain happens. Sometimes there are circumstances we didn't think about when the plane was on the drawing board. The FAA didn't used to require a failure-mode analysis on fuel systems, now it does... a little memorial to the victims of 800. That, if statistics hold, might save a life in another five years or so.

A few of the people in this fight have an agenda. They believed that there was a vast conspiracy of some kind before TWA 800, and they believe it afterward, and everything that happens is just one more article of proof. If it contradicts them, hey, the SEALs ate my homework, or the guy's an agent or informant, or something.

And a lot of well-meaning people have been sucked in by the agenda crowd. It's understandable. For instance, some of these books are decent reading and construct a plausible scenario. They don't tell you what they are leaving out (the "unknown unknowns" as Rummy says). So you have to find that out on your own. One good way is to read the NTSB stuff I posted earlier, read the Cal Tech thing in this post, by all means read Sanders and Cashill and the missile guys' websites. There is a book on TWA 800 for the general reader, Deadly Departure by Christine Negroni. it's not a very technical book and it ends with the usual liberal "Government-must-save-us-from-all-risk" nonsense.

I think that Cal Tech Misconceptions page is so important that I'll cite it again.

Read it all, make up your own mind. I did.

d.o.l.

Criminal Number 18F

Shrapnel. First, no one can say that such evidence wasn't found. The FBI locked that hanger tight. Not even the NTSB was given clearance without escort.

Ah. The all-purpose conspiracy answer--just say "well, maybe it was, but the Evil Conspiracy hid it."

That's not evidence.

Also, many telemetry packages have shrouds designed not to break apart because the test engineers would like as much data as possible. These packages can even survive impact on water for up to the first 100 feet.

Perhaps. But only if the missile hits at a relatively low velocity. SAMs smacking a 747 broadside aren't in that kind of environment.

I would suspect that the package of any missile used in such a test would EASILY penetrate a 747 without breakup.

Wrong. According to the missile theorists, this Navy missile was boosting all the way--the witnesses agree that a plume that only matches a very high-impulse booster motor was still running at the time of impact. So, if it was fired from 200 miles away, it had developed some truly fearsome velocity.

But there's the problem. A Standard Block IV fired from the Normandy (the only ship out there able to reach Flight 800--JUST barely) would have been gliding to target and not showing any plume.

Strike your telemetry-package theory. The missile in question would not have been visible from shore.

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