TWA Flight 800
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TWA Flight 800 (TW800, TWA800) was a passenger flight that exploded while flying from John F. Kennedy International Airport (New York) to Charles de Gaulle International Airport (Paris).
On July 17, 1996, the plane, a Boeing 747-131 registered as N93119 and designated by TWA as ship number 17119, exploded in mid-air off Long Island and plunged into the ocean, at Template:Coor dms, approximately 20 miles southwest of East Hampton, New York, killing all 230 people on board. Passengers included French guitarist Marcel Dadi, composer David Hogan, Jed Johnson, a former member of Andy Warhol's filmmaking team, the wife and niece of jazz saxophonist Wayne Shorter, and the sister of comic creator Geoff Johns, who later created the character Stargirl based on her. Other passengers included 16 members of the French club at Montoursville High School in Pennsylvania and their five chaperones.
The aircraft was flying more than eight miles off the coast of East Moriches, New York (on Long Island) when a mid-air explosion occurred. The aircraft banked, and the front part of the aircraft broke off. The aircraft then went into a dive, causing the wings to break off. TWA 800 splashed down into the Atlantic Ocean, and some debris burned on the surface of the ocean. These facts are generally not in question.
However, the cause of the explosion is a matter of debate. The NTSB's investigation, the only official investigation to date, concluded that the plane's center fuel tank exploded when fumes in its tank were ignited by a probable electrical spark. However, this explanation is not universally accepted, and several alternate theories to TWA 800's demise exist.
Following the crash, TWA continued to operate flights between New York and Paris under the flight number 924, retiring the number 800. In Spring 2001, TWA, in the throes of bankruptcy aggravated by this accident, was bought by and merged with American Airlines.
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Official explanation
After what has been billed as the longest and most expensive accident investigation in American aviation history, the U.S. National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) investigation's conclusions were adopted by the NTSB on August 23, 2000, just over four years after the disaster. The NTSB concluded that the flammable fuel/air mixture of the center wing fuel tank probably ignited due to electrical fault near the center fuel tank, causing the plane to explode in flight. In the intervening time between July 1996 and August 2000, the FBI agreed that there had been no criminal act after examining all the plane's recovered wreckage.
Image:TWA800reconstruction.jpg
Two unusual pauses in the cockpit voice recorder's tape, each about two microseconds long, and just before the voice recorder cuts off, suggest a short circuit in the electrical system of TWA 800, and provides a framework by which a short circuit could have existed to spark and ignite the center fuel tank of the aircraft.
In a proposed rule issued in November 2005, almost a decade after the crash, the FAA wrote that for the previous forty years, it had focused on improving fuel tank safety by reducing possible sources of ignition, and had spent no effort on reducing the flammability of fuel vapor if ignition were to occur. The FAA decided to change this tactic, and finally proposed a rule that would require operators of most large aircraft to install an inerting system in the center fuel tank, which would continuously displace oxygen within the tank, reducing the probability of an explosion if a spark or other source of ignition were to occur. The FAA stated that, including the TWA Flight 800 crash, there had been four fuel tank explosions in airliners over the previous 15 years (two others having occurred on the ground, and one having been caused by an in-flight terrorist bomb which had not otherwise structurally compromised the aircraft), and that based on this statistic, it could be expected that there would be 9 center fuel tank explosions over the next 50 years. Inerting systems, the FAA wrote, could be expected to prevent 8 of these 9 probable explosions.
Paradoxically, the less fuel in the tank, the more dangerous it is, since fuel has a higher specific heat capacity, and is slower to heat up than an air mixture.
Investigators said that witnesses who reported seeing a missile actually saw Flight 800 climbing sharply and trailing flames after it exploded. The NTSB produced simulations of the proposed climb[1], but disagreement exists as to whether radar returns from the doomed flight show the necessary ground-speed reduction to match these simulations.[2]
National Geographic's Seconds From Disaster calls this chain of events 'probable' based on evidence, while leaving open other possibilities.
Alternative theories
The NTSB's conclusions about the cause of the TWA 800 disaster took four years and one month to be published. Six months after the disaster on January 16, 1997, the NTSB's chairman, Jim Hall, stated, "All three theories - a bomb, a missile or mechanical failure - remain."[3] The FBI's earliest investigations and interviews, later used by the NTSB, were performed under the assumption of a missile attack, a fact noted in the NTSB's final report.
In the end, the FBI concluded that no criminal act had occurred to cause the crash.
Speculation at the time and in the years since has been fueled in part by early descriptions, visuals, and eyewitness accounts of this jet disaster, including a sudden explosion and trails of fire in the sky; particularly, trails of fire moving in an upward direction.
The two most prevalent alternative theories around TWA 800 are that of a terrorist bomb on board, or a missile striking the plane (attributed to American armed forces by some and to terrorists by others). Those supporting these alternative explanations for the crash typically claim that the NTSB's explanation, above, was created as a cover-up; that the NTSB did not investigate sufficiently; or that the NTSB did not have all the evidence they should have to reach the correct conclusion.
A terrorist bomb
The terrorist bomb theory was one of the first to be mentioned. The TWA 800 disaster occurred 2 days before the opening ceremonies of the Summer Olympic Games in Atlanta, and this connection was not lost on media pundits, taking into account eyewitness accounts of the nature of the explosion of the plane.
Terrorist motive was also given credence by the Centennial Olympic Park bombing, on July 27 (ten days after TWA 800). The Atlanta bombing, in this case, was and is used to tie the two events together, making one event a terrorist event because of the proximity in time to the other.
The bomb theory also received credibility when the FBI reported the discovery of plastic explosive residue within the debris of the plane, on August 27, over a month after the crash. A few weeks later, this residue was explained as the product of a bomb detection exercise performed in the plane a few weeks before the crash. This explanation is often dismissed by individuals that believe a terrorist bomb was involved in the destruction of TWA 800.
In his book Cover Up: What the Government Is Still Hiding About the War on Terror, journalist Peter Lance alleges that TWA 800 was blown up by a bomb intended to disrupt the trial of terrorist Ramzi Yousef, the nephew of Khalid Shaikh Mohammed. Lance claims that the explosion is consistent with Yousef's bomb design intended to blow up the center fuel tank of a Boeing 747 that had previously been used on a 1994 Philippine Airlines flight, although it had been improperly placed and failed to ignite the fuel tank. Lance claims that this link was never made because it relied heavily on prison informant Greg Scarpa Jr., the son of a leader of the Colombo crime family, whose credibility was undermined by people in the FBI seeking to protect many convictions of mobsters which could be overturned if Scarpa was a credible witness in a possible internal investigation into whether Special Agent Lindley DeVecchio had been leaking FBI information that allowed Scarpa's father to conduct a bloody mob war.
Missile strike (unknown/terrorist origin)
Please see The Donaldson Report for more detail on this report.
Cmdr. William S. Donaldson, a retired Naval officer, and others, conducted an independent investigation entitled "Interim Report on the Crash of TWA Flight 800 and the Actions of the NTSB and the FBI", released on July 17, 1998, two years after the explosion, and two years before the NTSB's conclusions were released.
A private researcher, Michael Hull, working with Cmdr. Donaldson, reached the key conclusion that the center wing tank exploded at approximately 8,000 feet, approximately 24 seconds after the aircraft was decapitated in a missile attack at just over 13,000 feet (a conclusion they assert radar evidence supports). A possible culprit was proposed as Islamic Jihad, using a shoulder mounted missile.
Major Fred Meyer has made the assertion that he saw TWA 800 shot down while piloting one of the first helicopters to arrive at the TWA 800 crash site, based on the distribution and appearance of wreckage [4].
Evidence from two eyewitnesses (Goss and Dougherty, interviewed by the Donaldson researchers [5]) describes how one of the missiles made a sharp turn. These accounts were used by the researchers to triangulate the launch points of two missiles. Hull and Donaldson agree that this view of where the center wing tank exploded is supported by several pilots who overflew the smoke cloud and estimated its height with their altimeters. They assert that testimony to the NTSB showed that the black smoke from the center wing tank fuel explosion was not at 13,000 feet, where the NTSB and CIA say it should have been, but was at a significantly lower altitude.
Michael Hull further asserts that the downing of TWA 800 was a success in a chain of state-sponsored terrorist attempts to shoot down aircraft in the greater Long Island area, quoting a March 1997 incident, and others, to justify this conclusion.
Missile strike (friendly fire)
Pierre Salinger, a former White House press secretary to President John F. Kennedy and ABC News journalist, prominently and repeatedly claimed he had proof that the flight was downed by a missile from a U.S. Navy ship. The document on which his "proof" was based was given to him by someone in French Intelligence [6]. It was later found not to be a government document but instead an email written by retired United Airlines pilot Richard Russell [7] that had been distributed over Usenet weeks before. Some people coined a condition called Pierre Salinger Syndrome to denote the tendency to believe anything one reads on the Internet [8].
One such theory has the US Navy conducting tests of submarine-to-air missiles, accidentally hitting Flight 800, and then covering up the fatal error. After initial denials, the U.S. Navy later admitted that USS Wyoming (SSBN-742), commissioned only days before, was conducting sea trials in the area, and that USS Trepang (SSN-674) and USS Albuquerque (SSN-706) were conducting unspecified operations in the area. These submarines, in common with US submarines in general, had no surface-to-air missile armaments as standard. Possibly one or more could have been carrying MANPADS missiles; however all three were more than 50 miles (80 km) away from the crash site, far outside the range of any MANPADS missile. Granting these facts, alternate theories have suggested that the type of missile used to strike the plane may be classified secret.
Another possible alternate theory involving the US Navy is that a missile was fired from the USS Normandy (CG-60), operating 185 nautical miles (340 km) south of the TWA 800 crash site. This is well outside of the range of currently deployed Standard missiles carried by US ships, almost double the range of the current SM-2 Block IIIB versions, and just within the future Block IV ER versions. Even if this were a test of a Block IV version, although there is no evidence for this, at the extreme range in question the engine would have long burned out and the warhead would be gliding. This contradicts the main claim that a missile was involved, which is a number of eyewitness accounts claiming to have seen a missile trail almost vertical under the explosion site. Furthermore, inventories of USS Normandy's missile complement by the US Navy, immediately following the crash of TWA 800, showed no missiles missing from the inventory.
Regardless of the possibility of any number of missiles and missile launch platforms being in the vicinity of TWA 800 at the time of the accident, no evidence of a missile impact exists within the recovered wreckage according to a study conducted by the Department of Defense's Office of Special Technology.
Nevertheless, evidence such as the following affidavit, dated January 2, 2003 (which looks very much like information that was passed around the internet shortly after the crash), is being listed as one of the articles of evidence in recent FOIA suits pressed by Captain Ray Lahr against the National Transportation Safety Board: [9] in the continuing assertion that TWA 800 was downed by a missile. The affidavit filed in Lahr's suit is by a retired United Airlines pilot, one Captain Richard Russell, [10] viewed radar tapes and took part in phone conversations which convinced him Flight 800 was a victim of friendly fire, and subsequently wrote an affidavit to this effect. (Note such anomalies as the doubling of every statement in the affidavit, the second half being a reworded version of the first half.)
Other theories
Elaine Scarry, in a number of articles [11] in the New York Review of Books has raised the possibility of electromagnetic interference being responsible for the accident.
Several websites (including [12] and [13]) claim a meteorite strike caused the crash and that the US government and Boeing for some reason are covering this up.
Yet another suggests that leaks from faulty wiring traveled to the fuselage, igniting an explosion. Some argue that this is a more reasonable explanation than one involving terrorism in that the gathered wreckage showed no signs of an explosion anywhere outside the aircraft.
Summary
A number of alternative theories surrounding TWA 800 rely on eye witness accounts as collected by the FBI. However, very few of the witnesses were within five miles (8 km) of TWA 800 at the time of the accident, according to a witness map provided by the NTSB. The vast majority of the witnesses were too far away from the accident scene to discern any significant details, and some witnesses describe events that are well beyond the visual acuity of humans.
During the investigation process, the NTSB and FBI frequently were at odds with one another over the cause, and this stimulated missile or other criminally-motivated theories. The FBI did not close its official TWA 800 investigation for years after the crash, with the implication that evidence might emerge justifying criminal suspicion.
The FBI concluded no criminal act was responsible for the crash. Nonetheless, alternative theories surrounding the cause of the TWA 800 disaster persist, and are likely to for the indefinite future.
Trivia
Author Nelson DeMille's 2004 novel Night Fall is about an investigation into the alternative crash theories of TWA 800.
The incident was used as the basis for the 2000 horror movie Final Destination and inspired one of the stories in the first issue of a comic book entitled Serina: Blade of the Pharaoh.
Comic book author Geoff Johns' sister Courtney died on Flight 800; he created the character Stargirl in her honor.
The character Chester in Neal Stephenson's 1999 novel Cryptonomicon, who has made a fortune working for a company that resembles Microsoft, builds a home that is a museum of dead technology. One of the exhibits is the complete remains of Flight 800's wreckage, reassembled and hung from the ceiling.
American rapper Immortal Technique makes alusions to the navy missile theory in his song Leaving The Past from the album Revolutionary Vol. 2 ("Bring the truth to your face with the style I run with, like the Navy missile that shot down flight 800")
A memorial to Flight 800 is located on Fire Island, New York.
See also
External links
- Flight 800 Independent Researchers Organization (FIRO)
- National Transportation Safety Board official investigation
- Accuracy in Media report
- Associated Retired Aviation Professionals site devoted to the crash
- IAMAW report on the crash investigation
- CNN coverage of TWA 800
- List of crew and passengers
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