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Essay on TWA Flight 800 Crash
TWA Flight 800: An Introduction
On July 17, 1996 TWA Flight 800 exploded in the evening sky off Long Island and fell into the Atlantic, killing all 230 people aboard. Since the July 17, 1996, crash of TWA Flight 800 near Long Island, New York, and the cause remains mysterious; the persistent mystery of one of the nation's worst aviation disasters is now a forgotten media spectacle.
The $40 million federal investigation concluded that a fuel tank explosion, leaving the question of the blast's origin unanswered, perhaps brought down the plane.
The debris was recovered from the sea floor and the plane mostly reconstructed. One would have thought that such a close inspection would disclose the cause, however, surprisingly, this has not been so. Or in any case, the official examiners have not told us the cause.
Eyewitnesses stated seeing a bright object flashing towards the 747, and said that the object changed course as it approached the jet.
This perceptibly suggested a missile attack, and in the succeeding months this possibility was considered in some press reports (the New York Times, 96-07-19; the Washington Times, 1996-07-24; the New York Post, 96-09-22).
On the contrary government authorities have firmly resisted the missile theory, attempting to convince the public that the cause was mechanical failure.
On 97-06-03 Bernard Loeb, the top official of the National Transportation Safety Board referred to the disaster as "an accident" and strongly implied that it was "the accumulation of combustible fuel vapors" in the central fuel tank, which was responsible. What if TWA 800 not only was blown out of the sky by a missile, but it was a missile fired by a U.S. Navy ship? There is evidence that this is the case, and it would not be the first time that....
