Can you explain how Meyer could have seen a "shootdown" of Flight 800 at 13,800 feet at 8:31:12 only 3-4 seconds before he saw the Massive Fireball explode at 5500-7500 feet at about 8:31:47 which he says he and his crewmates agreed at the time took approximately 10 seconds to fall to the surface?
If he's so unflappable and knows what he saw, how do you explain his following statement while being interviewed by an NTSB Witness Group?
"I saw a streak of light in the sky. I have no idea what it was. And my reaction when I saw it was, what the hell is that?"
You did not answer that first question. NONE of the other "shootdown" tinfoil hats have ever done so either.
Your response to the 2nd question was as follows:
"If you'll kindly provide all the folks with the URL of the specific NTSB Witness Group you're referencing; so they can read Meyer's comments first hand, in context, without your artistic input, (or deletions) perhaps I'll endeaver to reply to your last question...Or, perhaps I won't have to.
The requested reference source was included in my prompt reply but you have never answered that question either, have you.
But you DEMAND answers to two questions of your own. The first is as follows:
"Did Faret and Wendell report THE smoke cloud they describe in their personally prepared witness statement as moving NNW?"
The following report of these eyewitnesses includes the answer to your question in bold print.
These events outlined below are actual and accurate. No part should be discounted in any way. They are presented without personal opinion and are exactly as viewed by us from our perspective. Our intent is offer as much factual detail as possible in order to aid in this investigation.
Situation:
Pilot: Sven Faret
Passenger : Ken Wendell
8500 feet over Riverhead LI, NY.
Apx 20:40 hrs, July 17, 1996
N1182J climbing at 95 knots (AC-12 Privately Owned)
090 heading
Visibility 8 miles in haze below. Top of haze 6500 feet
Visibility 50+ miles above haze
Setting sun lighting up clouds to the north, above the haze
Ground very dark, Ground surface lights outlining Long Island
Ocean waters very black
Prior contact with Long Island departure control on 118.00.
Frequency change approved, squawking 1200.
Monitoring 118.00, listening to local traffic.
Observation:
Being cautious of traffic in a dark sky, we had all marker lights, strobes and sky flasher operating on our aircraft. Ken pointed out traffic at 3 o'clock low (actually 2:30). Sven saw a white light steady in the sky. My first impression was landing lights pointing towards us putting it in Northerly direction. Ken saw 2 lights very close together. A short "pin flash of light " appeared on the ground (perhaps water). Very shortly thereafter the white light exploded instantaneously into a huge red-orange ball. My initial thoughts were "who's shooting fireworks tonight." The magnitude of the fire ball, and altitude, quickly (less than a second) ruled that out. Immediately thereafter a large fire ball emerged from the bottom of the initial fireball, accelerating straight down, as if it had just started to fall. Like a teardrop it drew with it a tail of fire down to the water surface. We watched intently as the descending fire fell closer to the water. Sven was awaiting the fire to illuminate the water surface as it fell. At the same moment a pilot reported it to the controller on 118.00. A second pilot responded and then we reported it. We saw it hit the water, lighting up the surrounding surface very well. Large splashes could be seen all around the fire. The fire on the surface was relatively small, but was spreading quickly. I asked Ken " What was that!?... It's probably the National Guard boys losing a C130 or something...Maybe they shot down one of their own planes."
We proceeded to fly over to the smoke cloud. As we crossed over the shore line I looked down and saw 3 boats enroute to the fire, about 25% of the way. I estimated the flames to be 6-7 miles off shore. We watched intently seeing a flashing light at the SE edge of the flames, but it soon stopped. We observed a steady blinking light drifting SW away from the scene. Ken said it appeared to be a helicopter just west of the flames. Sven thought it could have been a marker beacon on a life raft. This was about 5+ minutes after the explosion. We approached the black-gray smoke cloud on the west side. We were at 7700 feet and were at the top edge of the cloud. The cloud center was at 7500 feet. There were 2 small bumps atop it. There was no smoke or smoke trails above it. It was still lit up a little by the sun, clear above. There was a tornado like tail leaving the bottom of it leading down to the flames. It had a small arc in it as the winds gently moved the cloud NNW. I said to Ken " I have an eery feeling about this place, what ever stung this thing could sting us too. Let's bolt out-a-here." We swung north. As we were turning, we saw twin engine commuter traffic above us at 8000+ traveling NW. We called Flight service on 122.6 and reported what we saw. We flew back to Riverhead and East. Over Mattituck Airport we decided that the event had to be enough of a finale for the evening. We called approach on 132.25 for clearance back to Islip. We also told that controller what we saw.
Immediate Personal Impressions:
No thoughts of commercial air traffic accident.
Some aircraft with a lot of fuel.
A missile attack seems improbable, but not impossible.
The quickness of the eruption.
A white light exploding into a fire ball.
Very vertical accelerating descent of debris.
The length of the flame tail extending from the descending debris.
Clear sky above the gray smoke cloud.
Dark thin drifting smoke trail down to the debris on the surface.
Post Flight Actions:
We returned back to the hanger and called our wives. We let them know that we were OK, in case they might have heard of any air accident reports. When we got to Ken's house, we heard that a 747 went down. We called Fox News and told them what we saw.
Post Media Personal Impressions:
We were interviewed by the FBI and NTSB. They took our report, but we felt that they did not capture the detail we expressed, or the certainty of our facts.
Comments:
Although Sven & Ken are in no position to conclude anything, this piece of the puzzle MUST fit into any official version of this incident.
Notes:
Only burning debris was visible to us.
There is one fact that bothers us, however. No mention is ever made of the fact that the explosion was at 7500 feet! We do not dispute the fact that something happened at 13,800 feet, but what happened after that. There is 5000 feet unaccounted for.
We would like to emphasize:
"We approached the black-gray smoke cloud on the west side. We were at 7700 feet and were at the top edge of the cloud. The cloud center was at 7500 feet. There were 2 small bumps atop it. There was no smoke or smoke trails above it. It was still lit up a little by the sun, clear above. We don’t why this has never been discussed in any scenarios.”
The second question you DEMAND an answer to is as follows:
"Is this cloud movement reported by Faret and Wendell in a direction not consistent with the upper air wind data the NTSB published in the final report?"
Please provide us all with the "final report" reference source URL you are relying on and include your answers to the two questions you were asked.
In the interim, the readers may find the following additional email Q & A of Faret & Wendell of interest, as well as the comments in the postings thereafter:
LSoft Flight 800 Forum
Date: 9 July 1999
From: Greg Thrum
Subject: Sven Faret - Questions / Answers
I recently e-mailed some further questions to Sven Faret. His reply included the following answers.
>Is my part of the message,
(SF) refers to Sven Faret's answer:
>Sven,
>Apologies for the intrusion. Some more questions on your observations of
>the FLT800 crash if you have the time. Have you seen Dan Savage's computer
graphic representation of FLT800'sdescent path from your observing position?
>(Refer http://neptune.psn.net/~savage/)
(SF) NO, I left all the debating and far fetched scenarios to you guys.
>If so, do you recall any similarities or differences to this view?
(SF) not applicable.
>In your report you say you reported the explosion, though this call is not
>on the released ATC transcript. Were you reporting in on a different frequency
>or to a different Air Traffic Control?
(SF) Dig up the 132.25 or 118.0 LI approach transcripts and the FSS on 122.2
(or 122.4)
>Were you able to observe the tornado-like tail from the smoke cloud all the
>way to the surface of the sea?
(SF) absolutely.
>Was it a single tail all the way or did it split up on the way down?
(SF) Single (looking for holes in our story or another twist, we told you what we saw.)
>Was the spreading fire on the sea generating a separate smoke cloud, ie:
>separately identifiable from the tornado like tail, or the smoke cloud at
>7,500 feet?
(SF) NO. The burning debris left the cloud and burned on the water. I ASSUME that it was generating more smoke, but the plume connected A to B. A very simple observation if you were there. We NEVER took our eyes off it. The wind shift was CLEARLY evident in the shape of the tornado plume. We could see it as it penetrated the haze layer top at 6000' +/- 75 mile visibility atop the haze layer. These that think 20 miles is far, think again.
I have retyped the Q/A section from Sven's reply, adding some spaces and the (SF) identifier,otherwise these are the questions/answers as returned to me via e-mail.
regards
Greg Thrum
LSoft Flight 800 Forum Date: 4 July 1999
From: Richard Hirsch
Subject: Being First and Being Correct
Greg Thrum has brought up a good point. It's about being first with their testimony. Capt. McClaine was the first to describe what he saw as it was happening. Not only that, but his testimony was recorded and time stamped. There is no other eye witness, in the air, on the ground, or on the water who has that degree of corroboration. You don't get more "first" than that. Capt. McClaine also had another professional observer in the cockpit with him, it was his F/O.
Sven Faret had to rely on the height of an 8 minute old smoke cloud which was being produced by a football field sized fuel fire with 50 foot high flames to establish a claim about the height of the original fuel/air cloud explosion. Before 8 minutes had passed, the original smoke had blown away and dissipated. That's why the air was clear above 7700 feet.
At no time did Sven Faret give us a time of the event he saw. He did not give us an altitude estimate. To be able to determine that the light he saw 17 NM away was "below" his altitude (only 800 feet different) is quite remarkable.
Richard Hirsch
NONE of the witnesses knew when they saw the 2000 feet in diameter Massive Fireball explosion that it took place at approximately 8:31:47 and filled the sky at about 5500-7500 feet.
LSoft Flight 800 Forum: From: Richard Hirsch
Subject: Distorting the Facts
No where in Capt. McClaine's testimony does Capt. McClaine say anything about looking at the landing light switch before pushing it to ON. Read the following from his report to Eastwind Airlines:
"As I flicked on the light the other aircraft exploded into a very large ball of flames. Almost immediately two flaming objects, with flames trailing about 4000 feet behind them, fell out of the bottom of the ball of flame. It was too dark to identify any objects or see any debris. (I thought the objects to be the wings, which were full of fuel.)"
The "looking at the landing light switch" statement was manufactured by our resident witness expert and slipped into the debate hoping that no one would notice.
Capt. McClaine told me that when he flipped on the left landing light switch the light he was looking at seemed to explode as though from his action of flipping ON the switch.
Knowing where your controls are in an aircraft are not much different from knowing where your controls are in an automobile. I know where my headlight controls are in my car an never look at them when I turn the headlights off or on. I know where the door locks are and lock/unlock the doors without looking at the door lock switches. The same is true for the automatic window controls. In fact I probably can operate almost all of the major controls without looking at them.
The important thing to remember is that Capt. McClaine did NOT say that he was looking at the left landing light switch when he flipped it to ON.
Richard Hirsch
LSoft Flight 800 Forum
Date: 6 July 1999
R From: Chris Olsson
Subject: Re: Hirsch Could Have Been A Big Help To Shelley Berman
>Imagine the skit he could have done had he heard airliner pilots toggle >switches without looking.
Pilots don't do that.
Neither Captain McClain nor any other pilot would reach up to the overhead panel and throw a switch without looking at what he was doing.
Pilots simply don't do that and there are very good reasons why they don't.
Pilots live in the real world.
For the same reason that pilots are trained not to be come fixated on external visual stimuli, they are also trained to make sure that they throw the correct switches when intended.
Some secondary flight control levers are formed in a tactile style, such that they are identifiable by feel. Thus, the gear lever is formed in the shape of a wheel and the flap lever is shaped in the form of a slab-like flap.
Electrical switches for services such as lights are not given such easily identifiable tactile forms and thus usually require the pilot to actually look at what he is doing when selecting or deselecting these services.
A Boeing (or a Cessna or a Piper) is not as simple as a Volvo or a VolksWagen. Switching on the landing lights commonly requires the pilot to look towards the relevant panel.
Conspiracy theorists seldom acknowledge reality. They don't need to and they don't want to.
Reality scares conspiracy theorists, as does everything else which impinges upon their limited range of perception.
Was McClain the handling pilot (PF) or the non-handling pilot (PNF)? Who was monitoring whom on that flight deck? Who was watching what was happening inside the flightdeck? Who was watching outside? These are very basic questions of airmanship which are nowadays known as Cockpit (or Crew) Resource Management (aka CRM). This is very basic stuff.
Who was monitoring whom? Who was looking at what switches were thrown?
The conspiracy theorists do not appear to have asked or understood the basic questions: Did the BusyBee 737 crew see anything which contradicts the fact that TWA 800 exploded inflight without any apparent impact by external forces such as a missile or shooting star?
Neither McClaine nor Faret saw a missile. There is a very good and very simple reason why no missile was seen.
Go figure.
Cheers, Chris Olsson
"Did Faret and Wendell report THE smoke cloud they describe in their personally prepared witness statement as moving NNW?"
The following report of these eyewitnesses includes the answer to your question in bold print.
__________________________________________________________
TWA Flight 800
"Witnessing the downing of Flight 800"
by Sven Faret & Ken Wendell
..."We approached the black-gray smoke cloud on the west side. We were at 7700 feet and were at the top edge of the cloud. The cloud center was at 7500 feet. There were 2 small bumps atop it. There was no smoke or smoke trails above it. It was still lit up a little by the sun, clear above. There was a tornado like tail leaving the bottom of it leading down to the flames.
It had a small arc in it as the winds gently moved the cloud NNW."...
OK Elmer, so you agree by your response that the answer to the first question is YES.
Faret and Wendell DID report THE smoke cloud they describe in their personally prepared witness statement as moving NNW.
The second question you DEMAND an answer to is as follows:
"Is this cloud movement reported by Faret and Wendell in a direction not consistent with the upper air wind data the NTSB published in the final report?"
Please provide us all with the "final report" reference source URL you are relying on...
Do I detect a note of sarcasm here, Fudd? Ask and ye shall receive, old thing...
Now that wasn't so hard, was it, FUDD? Remaining on one subject at a time might get habit forming if you try it more often.
Your answer to the second question, now, if you're not afraid to...It has a direct relationship to how I answer your questions. And trust me, old thing, they will be answered.