Everybody in USAFE was briefed on the accident when it happened. That's not consistent with what we were told.
I was in USAFE at the same time, and Ron is exactly correct. It does bother me that the shooter recently made Admiral (just like his Dad did).
It certainly is possible for an aircraft fuel tank to spontaniously explode, as happened to
Philippine Airlines Flight 143.
Does this sound familar:
The air temperature had been high at the time of the accident, about 35 °C (95 °F), while the Boeing 737-300 was parked at Manila. The air conditioning packs, located beneath the center wing fuel tank of the 737 had been running on the ground before pushback (approximately 30 to 45 minutes). The center wing fuel tank, which had not been filled since March 9, 1990, likely contained some fuel vapors. Shortly after pushback a powerful explosion in the center fuel tank pushed the cabin floor violently upwards. The wing tanks ruptured, causing the airplane to burst into flames.
This is exactly the TWA 800 scenario. It happened in 1990, luckily before takeoff.
Whatever caused the TWA 800 fuel tank explosion, it was NOT a missile. TWA 800 was out of the envelope for a manpad, manpads hit engines, not fuselages, and no manpad has nearly enough energy to cut as 747in half. Even an air-to-air missile can't do that. For example,
KAL-007 flew for over ten minutes after it was hit by an air-to-air missile.
The only kind of missile that could cut an airliner in half would be a very large radar guided surface to air missile, like an SA-5 or Patriot. A weapon like that injects its target with thousands of fragmentation sharps and also a devastating pressure wave. The missile and the target merge into one mass of metal.
No missile components were found in the wreckage. No holes in the aircraft's skin.
No missile can cut a B747 in half and leave no trace.
There have been a few instances of civil airplanes being hit by inadvertent missile fire. The best example was
Siberia Airlines Flight 1812, which was accidentally shot down by an Ukrainian SA-5 (aka S-200) missile.
In that case the aircraft skin was peppered with holes and
missile components were found embedded in the wreckage.
For 18 years I was a Wild Weasel and Raven Electronic Warfare Officer. We studied radars and missiles every day. We had to know the details of how they kill airplanes, so we could kill them before they killed us.
I spent a year running a live weapons range. I've operated over dozen different friendly and not-so-friendly SAM systems. Whatever killed TWA 800, it wasn't a missile.
And of course the whole notion that an inadvertent missile firing could be kept a secret by the thousands of people who would know about it beyond ridiculous. Not only would an entire ship's crew, from the captain to the laundry tech would have to stay silent for decades, the FBI (who inventoried all the missiles in the darn Navy), the Navy supply system, and the entire NTSB would be in on the conspiracy. Only an idiot, or Alex Jones would believe that.
One wonders why the guy peddling this movie
didn't speak up at the time?
I wish the government could operate tenth as effectively as the conspiracy story sellers would have us believe. If government could, socialism would work.
Strong message follows.
