So...I can understand how a plane can gain altitude...if it has wings, functional rudders, intact control systems, and a capable pilot. What I am not understanding is how a plane that just blew apart from an explosion can gain altitude.

Track, no.  Detect, yep.  And that's what has been reported.

How'd it range TWA 800 again? You need to be shooting telephone poles to do that.

Just because the front fell off doesn't mean the engines shut off like a light switch. Plus without control inputs the control surfaces will all stay in their last commanded position. The cg change from losing the front of the fuselage will pitch the rear up. The aircraft will also be on autopilot at that point in the climb.

I watched an MI17 run for an hour on an LZ, pitched over on one side, pancaked, with one crushed fuel tank. Weird shit happens during a crash.

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When you detect the position, speed, and vector of something, most people would call that tracking.

China Lake modeling said that two different shoulder launch missiles (one with a bigger motor) could have hit twa800 from numerous launch points with probability >0.

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I lean toward this. Rumor has it the aircraft just ahead of 800 was El Al.

I believe the “Navy shot them down” was misdirection that was easily disproved.

TC

So it was hit by a stinger launched from like 100ft away?

The shooter was on the wing the whole time.

According to the china lake sims, a low-envelope shoulder launch could have hit from 13700ft below and 3.5 to 4.5km in front of the 747 path.

A higher performance shoulder launch could have hit from 13700ft below and up to 8.5km in front or a shorter distance behind. Each of the red dots is a firing location that could score a hit.

And it's not moving at 1500mph on a max range shot.  It's not going a whole lot faster when the motor is still burning.

Even the worst theories in this thread critical of US Navy are nothing compared to Iran.

They shot down a ukrainian airliner killing 176 and shot one of their own ships with a missile killing 19.

https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.nytimes.com/2020/05/10/world/middleeast/iran-ship-dead.amp.html

Quoted from Wikipedia.

So let's go consider the most important nugget in there: there was never any direct radar data showing the altitude of TWA 800.

Every number given was an estimate based on post-processing software or computer modeled simulations the NTSB claimed to have run.

We have zero actual evidence indicating it climbed any appreciable distance at all after the initial explosion.

If the scenario is some grunt on a RHIB with his face blacked out firing a Stinger why would that high speed life taker use an open Baofeng for comms?
One tends to negate the other in this crazy theory.

China Lake said a dud has enough KE at 13700ft to pierce hull.

I don’t know how fast the missile is moving at 15 seconds or 19 seconds or how fast the plane is traveling laterally.

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It appears that vector sum of missile and 747 at impact is 500m/s which is 1200mph.

I maintain that any military involvement would be from the smallest headcount, cheapest, most commodity equipment / weaponry, and some type of pure training fuckup rather than exotic large weapon test or a fuckup during some actual counterterror mission.

You use the motorola FRS or icom ham or whatever because you arent conducting a ts-sci weapon test or intercepting a russian stealth plane - you are fucking around doing routine training on a beautiful clear night out on the water with your bros, and then later you are heading in to the city for jager shots.

Most rounds are fired in practice, not in anger. Even more true on the US coast.

Whatever happened (spark, bomb, small missile, large missile, meteorite, dragons) was by definition a rare/unlikely/statistical anomaly event.

All major air disasters are improbable. Otherwise nobody would ever fly.

Exactly, it was simply included to try and explain away 200 eye witnesses to a missile.

Some old TWA 800 threads from the archives:
https://www.ar15.com/forums/general/TWA-Flight-800/5-422587/
https://www.ar15.com/forums/general/What-happened-to-TWA-flight-800-/5-577000/

Same threads. Different crazies.

IBTL?

McDonnel Douglas did this. They hate Boeing. Boeing, a year later bought MCD out. American Airlines bought out TWA.

Delta bought the Pratt 757’s. American kept the Rolls.

Joos did this.

That’s a cool secret. Shooting down a 747 on climb out to Europe packed full of people is not a cool secret.

Blind faith in a government  that has a track record of lying, corruption, and scandals is totally the definition of sanity.

Party before country right?

What medium range SAM available in 1996 fits aboard a yacht?

If you want to take down a specific airliner flying out of a busy airport a SAM strikes me as a poor tool for the job.  Too much risk of hitting the wrong plane.  An onboard bomb makes much more sense.

Tracking with a volume search radar implies detection on multiple scans that can be correlated into a track of a single target.  I doubt you would get that against a fleeting target like a missile with a mechanically scanned radar designed for tracking airliners.  In fact, I doubt you would get enough to ID it at all.

Marines used taliban stingers to shoot down a 747 at night off the coast of Long Island?

I believe it was stated in the Jack Cashill TWA video that a specific air traffic controller was ex-military and had experience watching missile impacts to radar tracked targets and he reported to his supervisor that it looked just like that.
The next day he wanted to review the radar recordings and they were already confiscated by top men.

Believe it... Or not!!!

You are correct macro.  A 747 without a nose can not gain altitude.  The aerodynamics are impossible and the CG problems alone would bring the aircraft down.

How exactly would a radar image of a missile impact to an IR tracked target differ from a radar image of a missile impact to a radar tracked target?

This makes the most sense.

 The crazy guy wearing  underwear on his head and screaming about lizard people does not require me to have trust in the govt in order to know he's a fucking whackjob.


Can we go back to the Iranian F-14's with ground to air missiles attached?  That was hilarious.

I wasnt saying in that post that a US source used a recovered taliban stinger. I was merely pointing out that the earlier post “It's been what, 40 years since we gave them to use in Afghanistan” was completely wrong using dates 1988 and 1996.

Here are some “facts” that various retards have fought tooth and nail in this thread:

1) the term “band iv” appearing on the purported china lake mwir image slide and posted on cmdr donaldsons website posthumously was indeed common and correct terminology used to describe one of the IR optical bands emitted by jet exhaust, one of the bands used by shoulder launched IR seekers, and one of the bands emitted by ircm. People got FUCKIN STOOPID saying that the terminology was never used, only applied to ircm rather than the seeker detector or the jet signature itself etc etc. i posted perhaps 20 various documents from US mil, foreign military like sweden, SPIE journals, manufacturer datasheets, brac documents talking about the ft worth facility closure, etc and still maybe forty posts in this thread said “derp derp ain’t no Band IV missiles, slide ain’t real, go back to copier repair, have you even Navy bro?”

2) all branches of the US military and SOF forces have stingers, train with live stingers sometimes, shoot stingers off big boats sometimes, shoot stingers off small boats sometimes, shoot live stingers off beaches sometimes, train at night sometimes, and presumably, could shoot at night. The vast majority of stingers that have been fired by US forces have been fired in a training setting (both live and inert), conus, near US coasts. I posted photos of US forces firing at night, firing from small boats, firing from large boats, firing off coasts, firing live ordnat Firebees, firing live ord at tiny cheap orange drones, etc. responses: “derp derp US never shoots live stingers, nobody ever has a live one on deck, you’d wake up everybody on the “ship”, paperwork accounting is too tight to allow a stinger to be launched at a particular time and place versus any other without a million people knowing….”

3) shoulder launch IR seekers would seek the hot exhaust directly under the 747 center tank as documented in china lake text report and MWIR photo from china lake released via donaldson website. Response “derp derp that photo is a dirty plane at takeoff bro, photo isnt real, photo isnt from china lake (even though they discussed this exact photo in their official report”. Response “ derp derp heat seeker stngers always hit engines, a big plane always has enough remaining engines to make it back to base”

4) FBI spent seven months paying scallop boats to dredge specifically for stinger kicker housing and battery. I posted the hand-drawn pages from FBI SA bongardt with his pager number, the FBI trawler operation instructions and command center phone number etc taken from donaldson site. I posted the timeline of scallop dredge, the map, and the testimony from Alpha Omega crew that they had found a kicker motor housing in October and threw it back before being hired as one of four-five FBI contract boats. “Derp derp a scallop boat can’t pull a small object off the ocean floor (probably said while eating scallops), derp derp FBI would never use such cheesy documents, derp derp stingers only have one main motor”

Whenever i post info clearly documenting that a previous poster is provably fucking wrong, “derp derp stop changing the subject”

Nothing i am posting is proof that a stinger takedown DID happen but it all supports the possibility that it COULD happen.

I maintain that:

A) a missile best explains the 270 witnesses
B) a very small missile is most likely due to cost, small crew size, inventory numbers, frequency of fire, wide proliferation among US forces / global forces / non state forces, lack of recovered/disclosed missile impact damage or HE warhead damage in the 746, etc etc
C) a small missile could have been fired from any of the many acknowledged US military craft, the three US mil boats acknowledged to exist but not named by kallstrom, or many other unidentified non US mil boats
D) many FBI were sure it was a stinger missile for months of search and we don’t know their many sources of nondisclosed info including sigint humint etc that led them down that path
E) the only reason CIA joined the party is to tell a lie to nullify the 270 witnesses so they must be important

Rapier
Iran possessed the system already at the time
Strip off the wheels and a few other things to conserve weight or space.  Easily fits in a small container to smuggle in or transfer over.   Scuttle yacht, that was stolen anyways.   No evidence unlike with a small freighter you don’t particularly want to sink.  



Has adequate range

Interviews the most credible witness and the senior NTSB investigator confirming one or more missile strikes on TWA800:

When you said this "There are over 500 unaccounted US made stingers in taliban hands"

I said it's been forty years since we gave them to the muj. I then asked you how the battery packs work and how long are they good for.

Do you have any idea how many Sailors would have been witnesses to that and how difficult it would be to have them all remain silent?

You give the government far too much credit.

The battery unit has a few different subsystems that do different things. It has a container of pressurized argon gas. The gas gets vented pre fire and the expansion of the gas soaks up heat to crycool the “band iV” seeker detector. It is the same reason a cannister of pellet gun CO2 gets cold and frosty when it vents and expands. Over time, the pressurized argon can leak or the tank can be damaged by rough handling.

The second thing the BCU has is a thermal battery which creates chemical heat and converts it to electricity to charge up the missile electronics and launcher electronics. I don’t know if it is Peltier junction or what. I dont know how it deteriorates over time. It gets hot enough after use that you have to grab it touching only the bottom to not burn your hand, and toss it aside lest it burn up your launcher.

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From wiki:

To fire the missile, a BCU (Battery Coolant Unit) is inserted into the gripstock. This device consists of a supply of high-pressure gaseous argon which is injected into the seeker to cryogenically cool it to operating temperature, and a thermal battery which provides power for target acquisition: a single BCU provides power and coolant for roughly 45 seconds, after which another must be inserted if the missile has not been fired. The BCUs are somewhat sensitive to abuse, and have a limited shelf life due to the pressurized argon leaking.
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Somebody was out doing routine training in small boats, adjacent to NYC, with live antiaircraft ordinance?

Incidentally, the guy on scallop boat Alpha Omega who claimed to have snagged a kicker motor in October before joining the FBI search said it looked a little bit different than the US made stinger kicker he was shown.

https://fas.org/irp/dia/manpads_components.pdf

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So...

The terrorists pulled of this amazingly bad ass attack, but then didn't claim it?

That totally negates the value of the attack.  If you are a terrorist going into an attack like this, you already know that one of the mitigation measures used by the target nation is going to be claiming it was a fluke accident and no attack at all.

Where is the Haji video?

Could have been inert warhead with full motors?
Could have been not so routine training?
Could have been iranian or mooojahadeeeeeen with black market or foreign?

My point in focusing on a training fuckup is that we know of 26 commercial airliners taken out by shoulder fire, and we know the military fires 2000 manpads in the USA every year as a matter of routine training.

Probably 1900 of those training missiles are shot at cherry point, san clemente island, fort irwin, and a few other bases.
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Some are shot directly off the decks and some ships even have a metal hoola hoop where arfcommers once stood proud
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Maybe 10 per year are shot from a rubber raft
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The point is, the US military fires infinitely more manpads conus than terrorists do.

If they had (or if they did) recover the battery unit or kicker, both would be serial number components and you could figure out exactly where it came from (training stocks, cia supply to muuuuj, foreign military sales)

That is the crux of why they trawled so long with scallop boats.

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As far as why parts of a drone, who knows, what is the context? Was it a firebee, firebat, was it a BQM that went astray, or even a MGM-13 Mace that was converted for target drone work in the 60's after they became obsolete. God only knows, "Long Island" being populated as some preclude from target work off shore? You are literally talking about the "cradle of aviation" and a myriad of defense things. Grumman, Republic, Fairchild, the list goes on and on. They did a million things out there, hmmm short hop from Calverton or pack up everything to China Lake/Fallon? Do the math,

I also know a good deal of people that saw it first hand, they are not stupid and know what they saw going up (not igniting fuel going down).

But, I wouldn't look at MANPADS regardless if Comm-Bloc or ours. They don't work that way, they don't take aircraft down that way. The quote you put from the AF Flag officer is correct in the reasons for dispelling Stinger/Redeye, period.

The FBI running with the "Stinger" thing? IDK, how about incompetence of a single agent (I went to a briefing by another agency, now I'm an expert) and then instiutional ego?  

A Hawk or a Rapier on a vessel, it's not inconceivable. It's not like we didn't give the Iranian's a shit ton of Hawks before the Shah fell.

We're vulnerable in so many ways, they don't want the masses all scared and this is another one of those cases, which is why the truth was suppressed. Think about it, you're average person has no concept that 3 simple ex-Soviet Frog's or Scuds hidden in a shipping container "launcher" (1 east coast, 1 gulf of Mexico and 1 pacific coast) by any litany of state sponsored or, quasi state sponsored actors, launched from the sea with low yield nukes tuned for maximum Compton effect, air burst, and the majority of the Continental US is in 1850 at best.

Plus this is America, after they change their Facebook profile pictures, no one gives a F anymore. They have bread, their circuses, what do the masses care? Not in the slightest... Sure 20 years from now, someone will make a "death bed confession" like McNamara about Tonkin Gulf, and who cares? no one.    

Further we're talking "Clinton" administration and the epitome of "Brain Drain", forcing so many out. People from those agencies that do "dark shit in dark places", so that apple cart doesn't get upset were gone, forced out.

I actually was on the wreck much later in the hanger, I'm not in aviation but when you go through classes with NTSB they generally do a show and tell with the wreck afterwards. They are apparently scrapping it now, it was tragic, humbling.

Those people were murdered and it wasn't by Boeing

It's the summation of the forces and moments, the distances over which those summations act, and kinetic and potential energies over those distances.

In this case, it's the net gravitational force downward, versus the center lift, and the distances or separation of the centers of those forces.  Coupled with body drag, lift drag, et cetera.  All of those forces, acting over the distances of travel bleed off the initial kinetic energy of the aircraft at the time of the explosion, as well as altitude that is gained/lost.

In this case, the aircraft pitched backwards because its center of gravity moved significantly aft of the the center of lift, pitching the aircraft, and its momentum, upwards.  

As the aircraft lost speed to aerodynamic drag, and the loss of kinetic energy that was converted in to potential energy (height), the wing lift decreased, decreasing the pitching moment, perhaps with the wings being in aerodynamic stall prior to this or after this, but as that speed and lift bleeds off, what was left of the aircraft would pitch back downwards.  The pitch and aircraft energy bleed was significant enough that the disabled, fluttering flight surfaces wouldn't have had a profound effect, and even of fully functional flight surfaces might not have had much control.  If roll was stable, as the aircraft pitches forward and loses altitude, it would increase speed and increase lift, and this lift would decrease the rate of downward pitch, possibly even reintroducing upward pitch if the speed became high enough, and the remains of the aircraft remains wings-level with respect to roll.  But, as stable as these aircraft are, enough roll was present that that it never went into this subtle oscillation, and the roll/pitch/speed combinations would eventually degrade the upward lift component to something negligible.

At least the monster is wearing OSHA approved anti-slip footwear.

No telling how many of these gremlins were lost along the way, prior to today's much improved safety standards.

I trust one post from rstel01 more than any govt-provided evidence.

Incompetence of one or two FBI is certainly possible.

The “manpad theory” may have been purposeful disinformation too.

Basically the only thing i am sure of is that the witnesses saw something go up.

Iranian hawk, foreign design, test missile expt,

I just think “very small missile” is a possibility playing the numbers of how many of those fuckers get shot every year.

If you were going to take own a 747 with a MANPAD, would you do it several miles off shore at/past the MANPAD's max altitude/range?  Or would you fire from 1/2 mile from the end of the runway where you would be sure to get a hit/kill?  With the second, you could hop in a car an disappear into NYC traffic.

Agreed.

Libya not only did not claim PanAM 103, they also denied responsibility even after they paid a settlement to US victims of the bombing.

Why didn't they claim that? Where was their jihadi video?  No one else claimed it either.  There is precedent for a successful downing of a US airliner not being claimed by terrorists.