-Caveat Lector-
Flight 800: Accident Or Terrorist Attack? - Part 2
Was Mechanical Failure Theory Wrong?
Joey Mac Lellan for Suffolk Life Newspapers
December 15, 1998
The National Transportation Safety Bureau (NTSB), with assistance from
the Justice Department and the Central Intelligence Agency, has
maintained that the cause of the explosion that downed TWA Flight 800
on July 17, 1996 was an electronic malfunction in the Center Wing Tank
(CWT).
However, Commander William S. Donaldson (Retired) author of the
109-page Interim Report on the Crash of TWA Flight 800 and the Action
of the NTSB and the FBI is disputing those findings. The report was
given to the Congressional Subcommittee on Aviation in July - two
years after the FL800 incident.
The NTSB office in Calverton declined to comment and no one answered
the phone at the Washington D. C. office number Calverton provided.
Declining to comment on Donaldson's report, FBI Agent Joseph
Valiquette said, "This was one of the most thorough investigations
ever conducted by the FBI." Valiquette, a spokesman for the New York
FBI office, added that the FBI's investigation on Flight 800 "for all
intent and purpose is closed, but we still maintain contact with the
NTSB and will jump back in if any criminal cause is found."
Donaldson's group, Associated Retired Aviation Professionals includes
such notables as Admiral Thomas H. Moorer, USN (Ret.) former chairman
of the Pentagon's Joint Chiefs of Staff; Rear Admiral Mark Hill, USN
(Ret.) former commander of the USS Independence; and Brigadier General
Ben Partin, USAF (Ret.) who designed the Continuous-Rod Warhead for
the BOMARC anti-aircraft missile.
They are suggesting that FL800, carrying 235 passengers and crew
members, was destroyed by two high powered anti-aircraft warheads -
one fired from near the Moriches Inlet, and the other from an
unidentified ship about 17 nautical miles off shore.
"Like most Americans," said Donaldson, "I was concerned when TWA
Flight 800 mysteriously exploded" and initially followed the
investigation in the media because "it was so unusual for something
like this to happen to a Boeing 747 without an obvious external
cause."
In the report, Donaldson charges that the NTSB has used "propaganda"
to convince the media and public that a Boeing 747, containing Jet-A
fuel, could explode despite the fact that Jet-A fuel is non-flammable
kerosene, that the tank was actually devoid of fuel in the first
place, and that "not one single piece of center wing shrapnel has been
located in Flight 800 baggage containers, water tanks or anywhere
forward of the Center Wing Tank."
The commercial Boeing 747 aircraft began its career in the seventies.
Since that time, "there has never been an in-flight explosion in any
Boeing built airliner of Jet-A kerosene fuel vapor/air mixture in any
tank, caused by mechanical failure," wrote Donaldson.
Yet, in congressional testimony and statements to the media, the NTSB
"cited the loss of an Air Force 707 and 3 KC135 air to air tanker
aircraft to fuel tank explosions as examples of mishaps similar to TWA
FL800," wrote Donaldson, who was a flight instructor and Air-Wing
Safety Officer in charge of crash investigation for mishaps ashore and
afloat.
Officials at the Air Force's safety center, out West stated "there is
no record of a 707 loss, and all three KC135s were fueled with JP4, a
fuel as volatile as automobile gasoline."
FL800 had Jet-A fuel "which is similar to regular kerosene [and] will
not easily light with a match, unless the fuel is misted in the
atmosphere or aerated by a fuel injector," according to Donaldson's
report.
Even after admitting publicly that it knows "little about the
flammable properties of Jet-A fuel," the NTSB told the media that a
CWT explosion had caused the Philippines Air 737 crashed in 1990.
Donaldson, however, noted that video and still photography taken after
the Philippines Air 737 fire was extinguished, "show the Center Wing
Tank did not explode."
The plane's "undercarriage, wheels and center wing box (tank) were
structurally sound enough to carry the load of engines and fuel ...
under tractor tow," he noted. "Had the Center Wing Tank actually
exploded in the manner the NTSB leadership suggests, the aircraft
would have dropped on the ramp ..."
The latest data, shows "Jet-A fuel to be safer than previously
described in the Aviation Fuels Handbook. In other words, the
inference that Jet-A fuel posed some heretofore-unknown risk factor
has proven to be totally false," Donaldson states.
"The amount of fuel vapor, and therefore the potential flammability in
a tank is primarily dependent of the temperature of the liquid fuel in
the tank," wrote Donaldson.
The liquid fuel temperature in the Boeing 747's CWT can be easily
taken through the tank's low point drain while the plane is on the
ground. This is often done, he said, to check for water ice or
contaminants "in a simple two-minute procedure at virtually no cost."
Despite this information, the NTSB recommended that the Federal
Aviation Administration impose "multiple safety recommendations that
would have cost billions if implemented," the report states. "All were
based on the assumptions that B747 lightly fueled Center Wing Tanks
are dangerously flammable during warm weather and that FL800's loss
was initiated by a spontaneously exploding tank."
Like the unsubstantiated flammable nature of Jet-A fuel, the NTSB,
according to Donaldson, misled the public and commercial airline
industry when it also claimed that the CWT has a tendency to heat up.
In October 1997, Donaldson said he took the temperature of a Boeing
747's CWT from an aircraft turning around at JFK for return trip to
Europe. "The temperature was 69 degrees Fahrenheit, one degree hotter
than ambient air temperature, despite the fact all the air-pacts had
been running for the hour the aircraft had been on the ground awaiting
takeoff.
In an effort to support its CWT accident theory, the NTSB and the FBI
had secret tests conducted in the United Kingdom. The outcome of those
tests "are effectively classified secret."
Donaldson suggested that the tests were conducted using a
propane-filled CWT instead of a Jet-A fuel because "Neither the NTSB
nor any of its contractors has been able to practically demonstrate a
Jet-A kerosene vapor/air explosion."
"In practical ignition tests done with Jet-A fuel, (taken from a 747
center tank after a transatlantic flight) heated to produce vapor in
closed containers ... demonstrated that the vapor will not ignite
until the Jet-A fuel is heated to 185 degrees," said Donaldson who
participated in this test. "The igniters produced temperatures in
excess of 3,000 degrees and were located 12 inches above the fuel
surface."
In layman's terms, he said, "if the tank were ignited at the right
place with a very hot ignition source, the burn in the tank might
reach a singularly unimpressive 60 pounds per square inch (PSI)."
A 60 psi burn in the CWT, he added, "is unimpressive because it could
not produce the level of destruction and airborne breakup evidenced in
the fuselage structure forward of the wing to the nose of the
aircraft," which is what happened on FL800.
More important, wrote Donaldson, "The core theory of the NTSB is based
on a false assumption that there was sufficient fuel in the Center
Wing Tank of TWA Flight 800 on takeoff to cause an explosion."
That assumption, he said, "is contravened by the testimony of TWA
Captain Albert Mundo, a fully qualified TWA 747 Captain and Flight
Engineer.
Through Mundo and TWA records, Donaldson documented that "there was no
fuel in the Center Wing Tank" that could have exploded. Mundo, he said
was the assigned engineer responsible for FL800 before it took off for
a non-stop, 10-hour flight from Athens, Greece to JFK in New York.
Three days after FL800 exploded, Captain Mundo reported to the NTSB
and the FBI that he "depleted the fuel to near zero" by transferring
the CWT fuel directly to Number Two Main Tank, but "somehow" that was
"converted to 600 pounds of fuel [in the CWT] by NTSB investigators."
Donaldson coldly notes in his report, "there has yet to be found one
piece of physical evidence that supports the NTSB's contention that
FL800 was brought down by an initiating event of an explosion of air
and aviation kerosene vapor caused by a mechanical failure in the
aircraft's Center Wing Tank."
"It is this investigator's opinion that the fuel did eventually enter
the dry TWA FL800 Center Wing Tank through the CWT left side body wall
(RIB) brought about by the same over pressurization that occurred in
the entire left wing tank system by the detonation of a full-sized,
proximity fused, anti-aircraft warhead."
The NTSB insists that "the CWT spontaneously exploded due to
mechanical failure," but the evidence indicates a different scenario.
Examinations of the CWT parts, said Donaldson, "clearly show any over
pressurization of the Center Wing Tank came after two ordnance
explosions, and an implosion insult of the CWT itself."
Pieces of the left wing tested by NASA laboratories "found residue ...
contaminated with nitrates," an indication of a missile explosion.
NASA was then ordered to stop testing by the NTSB, according to
Donaldson.
Some examples of missile activity include the facts that the debris
field indicates that "the first place the pressure hull was breached
[was] about 35 feet forward of the front wall of the center tank,"
that there was "Forward fuselage skin failure in tension on the bottom
and compression of the top," that the "Last valid data line of the
DFDR ... registers powerful explosive pressure wave and the angle of
attack points directly at source of explosion coming from low left."
In addition, the report states, "Eyewitnesses observed vertical
stabilizer failure after the two ordinance explosions, but prior to
the third (petroleum) explosion at 7700 feet. They also place a large
piece of the vertical stabilizer, found floating without sooting, a
mile southwest of the fuselage/wing impacted and fire area."
Another piece of the vertical stabilizer is still missing, noted
Donaldson, further charging that "NTSB officials were caught by a TWA
investigator and two sergeants with the New York City Police
Department falsifying this database because the only rational
explanation ... would be catastrophic failure ... consistent with an
airbursting weapon and totally inconsistent with a Center Wing Tank
problem."
Reprinted with the permission of Suffolk Life Newspapers
Riverhead, New York Tel: 516-369-0800
Tomorrow: Part 3 of the TWA 800 Series "Bogey at Seven OClock: Report
Supports Missile Theory But Not Friendly Fire
Read Part 1: Military Aviation Group Calls For Congressional
Investigation
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