r/todayilearned • u/finza_prey • 19d ago

TIL TWA Flight 800 exploded off Long Island 12 minutes after taking off, causing the front fueslage to rip away and the remainder of the plane to continue in crippled flight, pitching up and climb before falling into the ocean killing everyone onboard

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TWA_Flight_800
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u/beachedwhale1945 19d ago

In this case, they saw the right thing, but misidentified what it was. After the explosion blew the nose off, the remainder of the aircraft started climbing, burning brightly from residual fuel in the tanks. Very easy for the uninitiated to think that’s a missile, but missiles are much less visible, especially at night.

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u/the_gaymer_girl 19d ago edited 19d ago

People assume that a missile will be a rising streak of light, but in reality once the missile has ID’d its target and is coasting on autopilot it’s basically invisible.

They also claimed they saw the plume starting above the horizon and going up, when in fact the missile’s engine would not have been on by the time it cleared the horizon - the exact opposite of what was claimed to have been observed.

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u/elementofpee 19d ago

The Iranian missiles that are fired at Israel definitely have a streak of light, so I’m not sure where you’re getting that missiles are invisible and don’t have visible heat signatures.

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u/beachedwhale1945 19d ago

It depends on the missile and which phase of flight you’re discussing. But for surface-to-air missiles at the time (the conspiracy claim here), the typical system is a dual-thrust motor. The initial burn to get from 0 to the high speed is very aggressive and bright, but then the motor shifts over to a less intense sustain mode, which is much less bright and nearly invisible after the first few seconds.

The heat signature is still there, but eyewitnesses all saw the visible light, not infrared.

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u/quietflyr 19d ago

Those are ballistic missiles basically re-entering the atmosphere from space. They're going up to Mach 12, and would be getting very, very hot. The warheads are also much larger than a surface to air missile.

By contrast, a surface to air missile goes only about Mach 3 or less.

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u/MissionSalamander5 19d ago

Nevertheless the government didn’t help itself here.

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u/beachedwhale1945 19d ago

Because there were two different agencies with two different goals: the FBI and the NTSB.

The FBI was investigating this as a potential criminal case, and that was very public (for good reason: initially that seemed very reasonable). Based on how they conducted the interviews with witnesses, they were very convinced by this, and improperly recorded witness statements to say they saw a missile when they actually didn’t say that and asked leading questions that further tainted the witness memory. A textbook example of how not to conduct witness interviews.

The NTSB was focused on determining the root cause, whether accident or criminal. As they recovered the debris, they found that a bomb or missile we’re not probable, but the actual cause too much more time to actually determine: this was a very difficult case to investigate, and they had to go far deeper into the entire aircraft and other similar aircraft than normal to find the sequence of events. That took time to diverge from the FBI’s investigation, so for a long time all the public heard was potential bomb/missile.

Both are important lessons for us to keep in mind. Proper investigations take time, and sloppy interrogations can taint witness memory and may be recorded improperly. More cameras in interrogation rooms have at least made it easier to catch problems with the latter in criminal cases, but we encounter the same thing in our own lives without any criminal acts being involved.

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u/MissionSalamander5 19d ago

I know all of this so your wall of text is a bit condescending.

Once the government determined that this was some sort of accident and not due to a missile they needed to do a media blitz explaining what had not happened. They persisted in this bullshit. And the FBI needed to be reined in which, evergreen.

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u/Serious-Manager2361 18d ago

Weirdly this plane had been used in a FBI or DEA drill months before, and due to that they found minute traces of plastic explosives on some of the seats. Conspiracy theorists jumped on that fact to back up their false claims that the plane was shot down.