- Cashill, Jack.
TWA 800.
Washington: Regnery History, 2016.
ISBN 978-1-62157-471-2.
-
On the evening of July 17th, 1996,
TWA Flight 800,
a Boeing 747 bound from New York to Paris, exploded 12 minutes after
takeoff, its debris falling into the Atlantic Ocean. There were no
survivors: all 230 passengers and crew died. The disaster happened in
perfect weather, and there were hundreds of witnesses who observed
from land, sea, and air. There was no distress call from the airliner
before its transponder signal dropped out; whatever happened appeared
to be near-instantaneous.
Passenger airliners are not known for spontaneously exploding
en route: there was no precedent
for such an occurrence in the entire history of modern air travel.
Responsibility for investigating U.S. civil transportation accidents
including air disasters falls to the National Transportation Safety
Board (NTSB), who usually operates in conjunction with personnel
from the aircraft and engine manufacturers, airline, and pilots'
union. Barely was the investigation of TWA 800 underway, however,
when the NTSB was removed as lead agency and replaced by the
Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), which usually takes the
lead only when criminal activity has been determined to be the
cause. It is very unusual for the FBI to take charge of an
investigation while debris from the crash is still being recovered,
no probable cause has been suggested,, and no terrorist or other
organisation has claimed responsibility for the incident. Early
FBI communications to news media essentially assumed the airliner
had been downed by a bomb on-board or possibly a missile launched
from the ground.
The investigation that followed was considered highly irregular
by experienced NTSB personnel and industry figures who had
participated in earlier investigations. The FBI kept physical
evidence, transcripts of interviews with eyewitnesses, and other
information away from NTSB investigators. All of this is
chronicled in detail in
First Strike, a 2003 book by the author
and independent journalist James Sanders, who was prosecuted by the
U.S. federal government for his attempt to have debris from the
crash tested for evidence of residue from missile propellant and/or
explosives.
The investigation concluded that Flight 800 was destroyed by an
explosion in the centre fuel tank, due to a combination of
mechanical and electrical failures which had happened only once
before in the eighty year history of aviation and has never happened
since. This ruled out terrorism or the action of a hostile state party,
and did not perturb the Clinton administration's desire to project
an image of peace and prosperity while heading into the
re-election campaign. By the time the investigation
report was issued, the crash was “old news”, and the
testimony of the dozens of eyewitnesses who reported sightings
consistent with a missile rising toward the aircraft was forgotten.
This book, published on the twentieth anniversary of the loss of
TWA 800, is a retrospective on the investigation and report on
subsequent events. In the intervening years, the author was able
to identify a number of eyewitnesses identified only by number
in the investigation report, and discuss the plausibility of the
official report's findings with knowledgeable people in a variety
of disciplines. He reviews some new evidence which has become
available, and concludes the original investigation was just as
slipshod and untrustworthy as it appeared to many at the time.
What happened to TWA 800? We will probably never know for sure.
There were so many irregularities in the investigation, with
evidence routinely made available in other inquiries
withheld from the public, that it is impossible to
mount an independent review at this remove. Of the theories
advanced shortly after the disaster, the possibility of a
terrorist attack involving a shoulder-launched anti-aircraft
missile
(MANPADS)
can be excluded because missiles which might have been available to
potential attackers are incapable of reaching the altitude at which
the 747 was flying. A bomb smuggled on board in carry-on or checked
luggage seems to have been ruled out by the absence of the kinds
of damage to the recovered aircraft structure and interior as well
as the bodies of victims which would be consistent with a high-energy
detonation within the fuselage.
One theory advanced shortly after the disaster and still cited
today is that the plane was brought down by an Iranian
SA-2 surface
to air missile. The SA-2 (NATO designation) or S-75 Dvina
is a two stage antiaircraft missile developed by the Soviet
Union and in service from 1957 to the present by a number of
nations including Iran, which operates 300 launchers purchased
from the Soviet Union/Russia and manufactures its own indigenous
version of the missile. The SA-2 easily has the performance
needed to bring down an airliner at TWA 800's altitude (it was
an SA-2 which shot down a U-2 overflying the Soviet Union in 1960),
and its two stage design, with a solid fuel booster and storable
liquid fuel second stage and “swoop above, dive to attack”
profile is a good match for eyewitness reports. Iran had a motive
to attack a U.S. airliner: in July 1988,
Iran Air 655,
an Airbus A300, was accidentally shot down by a missile launched by
the U.S. Navy guided missile cruiser USS Vincennes, killing
all 290 on board. The theory argued that the missile, which requires
a large launcher and radar guidance installation, was launched from a
ship beneath the airliner's flight path. Indeed, after the explosion,
a ship was detected on radar departing the scene at a speed in excess
of twenty-five knots. The ship has never been identified. Those with
knowledge of the SA-2 missile system contend that adapting it for
shipboard installation would be very difficult, and would require a
large ship which would be unlikely to evade detection.
Another theory pursued and rejected by the investigation is that TWA
800 was downed by a live missile accidentally launched from a U.S.
Navy ship, which was said to be conducting missile tests in the
region. This is the author's favoured theory, for which he advances a
variety of indirect evidence. To me this seems beyond implausible.
Just how believable is it that a Navy which was sufficiently
incompetent to fire a live missile from U.S. waters into airspace
heavily used by civilian traffic would then be successful in covering
up such a blunder, which would have been witnessed by dozens of crew
members, for two decades?
In all, I found this book unsatisfying. There is follow up on
individuals who appeared in First Strike, and some
newly uncovered evidence, but nothing which, in my opinion,
advances any of the theories beyond where they stood
13 years ago. If you're interested in the
controversy surrounding TWA 800 and the unusual nature of the
investigation that followed, I recommend reading the original book,
which is available as a Kindle edition. The
print edition is no longer available from the publisher, but
used copies are readily available and inexpensive.
For the consensus account of TWA 800, here is an
episode of
“Air Crash Investigation” devoted to the
disaster and investigation. The 2001 film
Silenced,
produced and written by the author, presents the testimony of
eyewitnesses and parties to the investigation which calls into doubt
the conclusions of the official report.
November 2016 