On that CIA "Zoom Climb"

[HankB]

On the topic of "friendly fire" . . . when a SAM on a ship is fired, EVERYONE on the ship knows it. Most everyone in the rest of the battlegroup knows it, too. Given the downing of a US commercial aircraft, I don't believe hundreds, perhaps thousands, of sailors could've been kept quiet, especially considering that the odds are some of them would know surviving family members of the downed victims.

As far as an "accidental" spark inside the fuel tank causing the blow-up . . . I don't believe that, either.

 

[Stealth101]

Her is a link to web sites that has some very intresting data!

www.twa800.com

http://flight800.org/

I also think it is intresting that the Navy was doing training exersises in proximity......while not a definate smoking gun....an intresting coincidence!....some feel that it was a Sam and not a stinger !

 

[publius]

The CIA tape was made from Flight Data Recorder information.

So this part of the article I posted is false? OK, got a link for the truth?

Ray Lahr went looking for answers. He wanted to know what calculations the NTSB and the CIA had used to come to their conclusion that TWA Flight 800 zoomed upwards 3,200 feet after it lost its nose, and he was entirely willing to work within the system. Lahr began by exchanging letters with NTSB Chairman Jim Hall – 14 in all. Despite the NTSB's public mission, Hall proved adamant about refusing to release any information.

Lahr tried to communicate with Dennis Crider, the NTSB technician who worked singly on the project, but Crider stonewalled him. In fact, Crider kept his data to himself, a violation, says Lahr, "of all of the rules of accident investigation." Without independent verification, the data offered pilots and engineers no clue as to how to deal with comparable incidents in the future.

Ever patient, Lahr submitted separate Freedom of Information Act requests to the NTSB and the CIA. The CIA told him it had used data and conclusions provided by the NTSB. The NTSB told him that it could not release information because it was proprietary to Boeing. And Boeing, from day one, had testily distanced itself from the conclusions drawn by the CIA.

 

[agricola]

jimpeel,

I'd tend to follow your viewpoint - Governments do not tend to cover-up terrorist attacks, and we have seen no follow-up attacks nor any claims of responsibility (one would expect there to be some if they had pulled this off).

Like stealth says, you give 270 different people 270 different views of the same scenario and you get 270 different opinions on what happened.

 

[Ryder]

Why did the CIA get involved

Uhhhhm... So that mention of the Navy missle frigate on a training mission in the vicinity would cease to appear in these stories? Just a guess. It might re-appear in the next one for all I know.

 

[jimpeel]

They say that a stinger would not have been able to loft as high as the aircraft as it was out of its range. That is true if it were fired from the ground. If it were fired from a small aircraft, however ...

 

[Ryder]

They say

I'm either hard of hearing or practicing selective listening cause I can't remember believing anything the government has told me for a longgg time.

 

[publius]

Sure it can. It will convert whatever airspeed (kinetic energy) it has to altitude (potential energy) until it stalls the wings, then it will go into post-stall gyrations and/or break up.

You are correct. I guess I should have said, it won't gracefully climb 3000 feet like the CIA says it did.

I've got a half dozen hours in a 727-200 full-motion, full visual simulator. Among other things, I got to stall a 727. If you just jerk the yoke back, it'll gain altitude and then stall all right, but not any 3000 feet. Much less.

With all the drag created by the loss of the nose, and with the dramatic pitch up that could be expected, I just think TWA 800 probably climbed very little, if at all, after the loss of the nose section.

The CIA saying anything about a plane crash makes me suspicious. It would be so even if they said something completely plausible. What they said is, to me, completely implausible.

From another article on the same subject:

According to the Boeing data, the aircraft weighed 574,000 lbs. before nose separation. The nose weighed 79,394 lbs. The center-of-gravity was at 21.1 percent MAC before nose separation. After nose separation it was at 57.8 percent MAC. This means that the center-of-gravity moved from about one foot in front of the center-of-lift to about 11 behind it, a profound shift.

The sudden shift created a huge nose-up torque of about 6,000,000 ft-lbs. As Lahr notes, "It would be like putting both people on the same side of a teeter-totter." The aircraft would have pitched through 45 degrees in two seconds and would have kept right on going. According to Lahr, the most the 747 could have climbed before stalling at 25 degrees and going into free fall was about 200 feet.

 

[M1911Owner]

I did some model rocketry when I was a kid. One of the factors you have to take into account in designing a model rocket is keeping the center of mass forward of the aerodynamic center of the design. Otherwise, the design is unstable, and will try to fly back-end-first.

The same thing applies to an airplane. If the center of mass is behind the aerodynamic center of the vehicle, the aerodynamic forces will cause it to quickly flip end-over-end, so that it starts trying to fly with the tail pointing forward.

I don't know how strong the TWA aircraft was, but I doubt that it would be able to turn end-over-end without breaking up.

Hence, loss of the nose section would be expected to cause the aircraft to tumble end-over-end, with the probable immediate disintegration of the airframe.

 

[publius]

The situation is similar, 1911, but a rocket is lifted from the rear end by thrust from the motor(s). Very few airplanes have more thrust than weight. The engine is just there to move it forward, and most of the lifting force comes from the wings.

For those who may still be confused by all this, the quotation in my last post about a teeter-totter (I always called it a see-saw) really illustrates the problem with the CIA's explanation of TWA 800. Think of the wings as the support in the middle of the see-saw. Although the wings are long and swept back, you can think of all their lifting force as being concentrated in one place, just like the support on the see-saw, and we call that place the center of lift.

Airplanes are always built and loaded so that their center of gravity is forward of the center of lift. Translation: if your see saw is shaped like an airplane, the heavier person is sitting on the nose of the airplane, the lighter one on the tail. During normal flight, that smaller wing on the tail of the airplane is always pulling downwards, which is kind of like putting a weight belt on the lighter person. It produces a balanced see-saw or airplane.

OK, so you've got your heavy person and your light person wearing his weight belt. In the case of TWA 800, what happened was, the heavy person jumped off! The effect on a 747 of losing the nose would be nearly as pronounced. One moment, it's balanced. The next moment, it's really, really not balanced.

Meanwhile, for that moment at least, the wings are still pushing upward with the same amount of force. Problem is, they can only do that so long as air is flowing reasonably smoothly over both the top and the bottom of the wing. As soon as the wing is tilted far enough, relative to the oncoming air, that air is just hitting the bottom side of it, and can no longer go smoothly around the leading edge and across the top side of it, that wing quits lifting the airplane at all, and becomes a giant anchor. again.

That, my novice friends who are still reading, is what is called "stalling" an airplane. If it happens to one wing, but not the other, you'll have lift on one side of the plane, an anchor on the other, and the result is what's called "spinning" an airplane. It's good fun, but very hard on airplanes and their gyroscopes, even those that are built for it.

A 747 is definitely not built for it. With no pilots present to make sure that both wings stalled at the same time, it is most likely that they did not. Moments after the nose departed, flight 800 entered a spin and broke up. I know it. Anyone who knows anything about aviation knows it.

 

[TheeBadOne]

The Gubberment!

Ok, now that I got that out of the way ( ), I've not seen once credible bit of evidence to support a missle theory. Much of the stuff put forward as fact by people who say that happened has been debunked quite well. I've watched a couple documentaries on this incident. A bunch of "witnesses" doesn't hold too much water in this case. (At least not with some/any/a bit of physical evidence.

Origionally posted by JimPeel:
They say that a stinger would not have been able to loft as high as the aircraft as it was out of its range. That is true if it were fired from the ground. If it were fired from a small aircraft, however ...

Care to explain the application of said missle from a moving small aircraft?

 

[publius]

Hey Thee,

Got any shred of credible evidence that the zoom climb that the CIA says happened is physically possible? I'd sure be interested in seeing that.

 

[artherd]

Withought re-hashing it all, publis is 100% correct on all counts of aircraft behavior. It would have gone instantly unstable, pitched up, and spun. All in about the time it took you to read that.

Now, this object closing at 1200KTS. That'd be ground speed coming from radar. Pretty quick, but not missile quick. Missiles travel much faster (we can discount the Stinger, because it's range really is outside of that engaugement envalope. I know, I worked for a company who built parts for the stinger, and the Sidewinder.)

Most missiles travel in the Mach 3 range, some are as high as mach 4 or 5.

Now, a fighter aircraft is well within the 1200KTS speed range. And at 30,000+feet they are all but invisible. (no whitnesses.) Plus going mach with impunity is easy if you are over water, and headed away from land.



Did we shoot down our own aircraft?


Did we actually think it was the El-Al flight and GOOF UP? Would it have been the CIA carrying out such an operation in (barely) international watters? Has the CIA just test-fired a Hellfire (albit an air-grounder) from a Predator UAV?

I don't know, but I'm not prepared to rule it out. And that answers an uncomfortable number of questions about the incident.

I do know the Hellfire story is true.

 

[publius]

Our missile? Someone else's? A bomb? Maybe. Maybe even a wire in a fuel tank, though I rather doubt it.

In any case, this thread isn't really about that. What we know is: the CIA produced this video. That by itself is kind of strange. The video has this really implausible scenario. It just plain couldn't happen.

What I want to know is: why was the CIA lying to us about this particular plane crash? And why such a lame lie? I mean, it's crazy. When my government does something crazy in an incident where hundreds died, I want to know why.

 

[artherd]

publius- the usual reasons I am sure.

1) We did it for 'reasons of national security'. Ie, they thought we were protecting the greater intrests of the country, or someone's ajenda or ???. Who the hell knows, maybe there was an unspeakable threat onboard that plane that really had to go down. Maybe the CIA just thought so. Maybe it was a more sinister reason, or no reason at all. Maybe somebody had proof that Regan was an alien, who knows. Well, the CIA do, but they're not talking.

2) They thought they could get away with it. The 'zoom climb' sounded right and technical enough for the CIA director at the time, so it went out. OOOPS, it didn't stand up to professional public scrutiney. Can't exactly backpedal can they? So they do what they do best. Lie. More. And harder this time. Try and convince people to play into their hand. The CIA are professional bull???? artists, their JOB is to convince people into playing into their hand willingly. Often this is done with the best intrests of said parties, ah, poorly considered, to say the least. There is a very good reason the CIA has no dommestic charter! (offically.)

 

[publius]

I've considered possibility #1. If I'm the President, and I know that we'd be in grave danger if a 747 reaches its destination, I'd do what I could to make sure it didn't arrive. Of course, if I'm President Clinton, I'm too busy playing with cigars and interns, but that's another story....

On #2, it's just shocking incompetence. I thought our spooks were supposed to be better than that. All they had to do was to ask one reasonably experienced pilot what happens when a 747 loses its nose.

 

[UnknownSailor]

For those considering the possibility that the center wing tank blew up just as the Government said it did.....don't.

When the investigators went to try to recreate the accident, with a certer wing tank placed on a test stand, it could NOT be made to blow up without adding external stuff that wasn't mounted on TWA flight 800 at the time of the incident. The "stuff" in question was a spark-plug. And, to make matters worse, when the tank did "explode", it merely blew out (not off) one side of the tank, like a tire. The big, dramatic explosion that supposedly blew the nose right off the airframe was NOT made by the center wing tank blowing up.

 

[org]

ATC radar would never see anything as small as a missile. Most of the time they can't even get a skin paint on an airplane and rely on the transponder to see it.

At 340K a climb of 3000 feet would be easy. The airplane pitches up, increasing the angle of attack initially and it goes up until it either stalls or breaks up. But how far? Don't know and suspect the flight recorder didn't either. Sure, it's out of balance. That wouldn't stop the initial climb.

As was previously noted, all bets are off on the recording equipment when the nose comes off.

Three people can't keep a secret. Dozens to hundreds????

Do I know anything about aviation? Probably not, but I've got seven type ratings (4 in transport jets) and 17,000 hours. Does that make me right? Not necessarily, but it gives me the background to make a guess based on what little evidence we really have. My guess is that the fuel tank blew up, and the airplane pitched up and climbed for a number of seconds. The engines probably kept running for at least a short time, which may or may not have aided in the climb. The teeter totter theory ignores the fact that the tail was still there resisting and slowing the pitchup. The tail wouldn't have stopped it, but would have kept it from being an instantaneous thing.

 

[publius]

Unknown Sailor,

I remember reading about that, but I can't remember where. You got a link?

Org,

Yes, the tail would resist, but a sudden increase of 6 million ft-lbs? I'd slow a train a little if I stepped in front of it.

My guess is that the fuel tank blew up, and the airplane pitched up and climbed for a number of seconds.

In case you missed it in the first post, the "number of seconds" offered by the CIA was 42. Just how long do you think the tail could resist the massive shift in CG?

Another question for ya: if you climb 3000 feet in 3/4 of a minute, you're climbing at 4000 feet per minute. How fast do the transports you're typed in climb when they're intact?

Edited for punctuation, and to ask, has anyone here ever flown a conventional aircraft where the CG was aft of the CL?

 

[org]

Pluribus, without knowing how large the cg shift was, it's hard to tell what effect the tail would have. I must admit I don't remember how much of the nose was gone. In any event, unless ripped off, the tail wouldn't allow the fuselage/wings to pitch up at any rate that could be termed instantly.

34 seconds to climb 3000 feet is no problem. The A300 climbs up to 4000fpm+ depending on load. you have to remember that this is sustained climb, though; not a zoom climb started from 340K. The DC8 performs similarly. Same caveat. It's not hard to see off the scale climb rates without pulling very hard at all from level high mach flight. It doesn't last forever, and the airspeed is dropping, but it would get you through 3000 feet of climb in (much) less than 34 seconds. This is with just a pull up to maybe 15 to 18 degrees nose up, then hold it. If the airplane was out of control due to cg shift, it would continue to pitch up and the climb rate would continue to increase until the airspeed dropped or the airplane came apart due to G forces. If the pitchup was fast enough, it would come apart quickly and if the pitchup was slower, it might not come apart at all until it stalled and started down. In the latter event, it could go up a long way, especially if the engines kept running for a while. The thing that makes all this a guess anyway is the nose being gone, and the changes in aerodynamics.

IMHO, the airplane would have come apart RIGHT NOW if the pitchup rate was extremely abrupt...the wings and tail would be gone and there would be no climb at all.

Like I said, I don't represent any of this to have happened, it's just my guess, and I'm not sure if it's much better than anyone else's. Based on what I've experienced, it seems reasonable.

I have doubts that a missile was involved at all, since there was a massive amount of damage done. A manpad would have been really stretched to even score a hit, and the warhead isn't that big. Manpads generally are heat seekers, and if the nose was blown off, the hit certainly wasn't in an engine. The recent A300 incident in Iraq would be more typical than the damage done to 800. If it was a radar missile, it would involve a tremendous amount of logistics to get a launcher with radar to the vicinity, fire it, score a hit, and escape. Not to mention keeping everyone involved quiet. The Navy? Naaaahhhh.

The remaining possibility is a bomb placed in the belly cargo pit. That's the scenario that makes sense if you eliminate the fuel tank blow up.

 

[publius]

Pluribus, without knowing how large the cg shift was, it's hard to tell what effect the tail would have.

I posted the magnitude before, but here it is again:

According to the Boeing data, the aircraft weighed 574,000 lbs. before nose separation. The nose weighed 79,394 lbs. The center-of-gravity was at 21.1 percent MAC before nose separation. After nose separation it was at 57.8 percent MAC. This means that the center-of-gravity moved from about one foot in front of the center-of-lift to about 11 behind it, a profound shift.

The sudden shift created a huge nose-up torque of about 6,000,000 ft-lbs.

If the airplane was out of control due to cg shift, it would continue to pitch up and the climb rate would continue to increase until the airspeed dropped or the airplane came apart due to G forces.

That's true, assuming the pitching stopped when the nose was pointed straight up. Of course, there's no reason to assume that it would stop.

If the pitchup was fast enough, it would come apart quickly and if the pitchup was slower, it might not come apart at all until it stalled and started down. In the latter event, it could go up a long way, especially if the engines kept running for a while.

To create a climb that would last long enough to explain away the hundreds of people who claim to have seen fire rising into the sky that night, the pitching would have to occur pretty slowly. I don't think there's any way that airplane pitched up slowly. It pitched up violently. Violently enough to cause a stall/spin, and/or violently enough to break up the airplane on the way to the impending stall/spin.

 

[MarkDido]

"Uhhhhm... So that mention of the Navy missle frigate on a training mission in the vicinity would cease to appear in these stories? Just a guess. It might re-appear in the next one for all I know."

When the Navy fires a missle during an exercise, there is a tremendous amount of off-ship assets involved. There will usually be one or more ships in the area keeping the range clear of surface craft, a NOTAM is issued to all pilots to keep out of the area (which is usually a restricted airspace area) and generally, an E-2C Hawkeye will be airborne to keep an eye on everything that's flying.

In my 23 glorious years in Uncle Sam's Canoe Club, I have never participated in a night shoot. Too many things to go wrong considering the safeguards that I've listed above.

 

[jimpeel]

The center fuel tank is located under the wings. An explosion large enough to blow off the front of the craft would also be powerful enough to blow off the wings.

Even in the event the wings stayed on, how much force, with the center undersection blown out, could they withstand especially with the added forces of the air needed to lift the craft another 3,000 feet?

Anyone remember this one?

From http://www.wildlandfire.com/descr/descr_air.htm#air4

T-130 Lost: T-130 crashed on the Cannon Fire on the Humboldt Toiyabee National Forest near Walker CA on 6/17/02. Steve Wass, Craig LaBare, and Mike Davis died. We will miss them. The NTSB had not come up with a finalized report by 02/03, but went public with a preliminary probable cause of metal fatigue in the central wing box lower skin. The report said that the T6 metal planks are brittle, having small fractures like those that develop when a paperclip is bent back an forth. Age and/or use is hypothesized as creating them. The C-130s (and the PB4Ys) have been permanently grounded. KOLO-TV, a Reno NV television station captured the crash on videotape. This photo is courtesy of FOX News. Contact them for a larger version of the picture. See links below for investigation information.

 

[publius]

An explosion large enough to blow off the front of the craft would also be powerful enough to blow off the wings.

No, TWA 800's nose did blow off, but the wings did not separate at that exact time, at least, not according to anything I've read. I think they came off pretty soon afterwards, but they apparently were not blown off by whatever blew the nose off.

 

[TheeBadOne]

The Gubberment!!!