THE MYSTERY OF FLIGHT 587
(The FBI Will Never
Find the Terrorist Who Caused the Crash)
(BJNews, November 15,
2001) On Monday, November 12, 2001 American
Airlines Airbus A300 Flight 587 crashed and burned, just two minutes and 24
seconds after take off from JFK International Airport in New York City. Within
minutes the speculation for the cause ran from aircraft failure to terrorist
attack. Immediately, both the FBI and the NTSB began a formal investigation.
The NTSB was in charge of investigating the crash and the FBI would take over
if evidence of sabotage were found. So far, the investigators have eliminated
a number of possible theories, such as birds damaging the engines, simple
engine failure, or possible bomb or missile attacks.
On Tuesday,
the 13th, during the NTSB press conference, one of the reporters asked,
"What about the possibility of a thrust reverser failure?" The
reporters were told there was no evidence of that and its not possible for
that to occur during flight. What the NTSB and FBI failed to tell the
reporters is that it is not possible for there to be a thrust reverser failure
in flight, UNLESS the thrust reverser controls were sabotaged by a terrorist.
Instead, the investigation seems to focus on the possibility that wake
turbulence from a 747 jumbo jet which had taken off just minutes before Flight
587 had caused the damage to the plane and caused the crash.
What is
confusing to most knowledgeable aircraft investigators is that this is
completely impossible. It is not possible for any type of turbulence to rip
off the tail of an airplane, and then have it go out of control in such a way
that both engines would also fall off. In August 1985 a Japanese Boeing 747
with the vertical tail assembly completely torn away continued to fly in large
circles for over half an hour before it hit a mountain. But only because the
pilots were busy trying to figure out what happened to the plane and did not
watch where they were going. It did not go into an instant out of control spin
with complete loss of the engines.
The Air Force's
B-2 Flying Wing stealth bomber is a perfect example to prove that a plane with
absolutely NO vertical fin or stabilizer is able to fly and does not instantly
become unstable and crash. The B-2 uses modern "fly-by-wire"
computers to keep the plane flying straight and level. The original flying
wing design from the 1950's also flew but using manual flight controls made it
rather difficult to steer with no rudder. The Airbus A300 uses a modern
"fly-by-wire" computer system and would fly quite easily with
complete loss of the vertical fin and rudder. The NTSB's claim that the loss
of Flight 587's vertical fin and rudder might be the cause of the loss of the
control of the plane which caused it to crash is both misleading and
deceptive.
Any theory
blaming the failure of the vertical fin and rudder assembly as the cause
cannot account for why the engines would fall off the plane. Any theory
blaming an engine failure as the cause cannot account for why the tail
assembly would snap off cleanly with no appearance of blast damage from an
exploding engine. Thus there would need to be three separate simultaneous
failures, of the tail assembly and both pylons holding the engines on the
plane to account for those three effects observed before the plane crashed.
Most air accident investigators would easily conclude that the chances of
three simultaneous airframe failures all occurring at the same time is not
probable. It must be one or the other but not all three. It would be much
easier to conclude that something else actually caused all three failures.
Thus the breaking off of the tail and both engines is not the cause of the
crash, but is the effect of some other single failure which caused the crash.
And what would that be?
If the left
engine thrust reverser had either partially or completely actuated during
flight, it would cause the plane to go into a flat spin to the left. The
airplane would spin something like a flat Frisbee with the right engine
pushing forward and the left engine pushing backwards. Within a second of the
flat spin occurring, the sideways wind blast would rip off the tail assembly
since it was never designed to take such a side blast of air.
As soon as the
tail assembly broke off there is now very little wind resistance to the flat
spin. At this point the engines would cause the aircraft to spin even faster
with the g-forces away from the center of the spin becoming so great that both
engines would be violently ripped off the wings and thrown outward away from
the plane. This accounts for why the engines were found so far away from the
crash site and why the tail came off first. Thus a single point failure, the
in-flight actuation of the left engine thrust reverser, can account for all
three observed phenomena of the clean breaking off of the tail and the failure
of both engine pylons holding the engines. But how can that happen when there
are so many safety devices to ensure that it never occurs?
That is quite
simple. The American Airlines Airbus was parked overnight in preparation for
its flight to Santo Domingo the next morning. During the night, a terrorist
saboteur disguised as a ground crew mechanic could reach up in the back of the
left jet engine and with a pair of diagonal cutter pliers simply cut the
hydraulic line going to the thrust reverser actuator and the control safety
sensor lines. The next morning about an hour after the jet engines were
started, the hydraulic fluid now under pressure would drip from the cut line
until none was left in the line and the thrust reverser would simply slowly
drift into the full on condition while in flight and a catastrophic crash
would occur only seconds later.
Until
September 11th, 2001, nobody would have believed that 19 airplane hijackers
armed only with box cutters could bring down both towers of the World Trade
Center. But now we know better. Is it now so hard to believe that a single
terrorist armed with a pair of pliers could bring down an A300 Airbus? This is
called "asymmetric warfare," or "thinking outside the
box," or simply using low-tech tools in a new way to destroy the
high-technology of an advanced culture.
Is it possible to
show that the in-flight actuation of the left thrust reverser is the actual
cause of the Flight 587 Crash? Yes. But you would probably ask, "How do
you know such things?" First, I have been a pilot since 1962. I have put
planes in almost every possible flight configuration. I am not a flight
instructor, but for years I taught ground school classes in airframes,
aircraft engines and air navigation. Second, I have degrees in mechanical and
electrical engineering and physics, and for many years I was assigned to do
failure analysis for many NASA Space Shuttle incidents.
In 1983, two
communications satellites were left useless in low-orbit because the firing
mechanism to launch them into hi-orbit failed. Several years later Shuttle
flights recaptured the failed satellites and I was tasked to determine the
cause of the failure. In three days of analysis I found the cause and the
controls were redesigned and the failure never occurred again.
In 1987, the
Air Force was launching a secret satellite from the Shuttle using a Boeing
supplied launch system. The actuators for the launch system were made by UTC.
Final checks before launch showed that one of the actuators appeared to be
faulty and had failed the initial tests at UTC but somehow had been installed
into the Shuttle anyway. My task was to prove that the actuator was not faulty
but only appeared faulty due to an improper testing device. In four days I
found the faulty test device and proved the launch actuator was in fact ready
for space flight.
I did my
usual scientific analysis "dog and pony show" for two Air Force
Generals, and the Vice-presidents of both Boeing and UTC. Everybody was happy.
The Air Force got their satellite on orbit on schedule. The VPs from Boeing
and UTC were happy since they did not need to pay the $5 million penalty the
government would assess for unstacking the Shuttle to replace the
"defective" launch actuator and for delaying the project. Thus, what
I am about to explain comes from many years of flight experience, along with
years of experience in aerospace failure analysis.
According to
the publicly available information from the NTSB, the Cockpit Voice Recorder
(CVR) shows everything was normal in the flight until about 107 seconds after
the initial run-up of the engines as Flight 587 began to roll down the runway
for takeoff. At this point in time the plane is about 3,000 feet in the air
and the sound of an "airframe rattle" is heard in the CVR record. No
explanation was given for this noise. But as I propose, what was happening was
the left thrust reverser was starting to close and this caused the plane to
turn to the left. The pilot would compensate by using his feet to apply right
rudder to bring the nose back to straight flight by turning to the right.
When applying
strong right rudder this usually causes the left wing to tilt upward so most
pilots would instinctively also apply opposite or left aileron to keep the
plane straight and level. Most pilots would recognize this flight
configuration as a side-slip. This would be a rather strange maneuver for a
commercial airliner especially during take off. This is often called the
"poor mans air-brakes" since this odd configuration results in the
opposite compensating controls surfaces to stick out in the wind and really
slow down the aircraft.
I have done
this maneuver many times in small aircraft to quickly lose airspeed or drop in
altitude in preparation for landing. During this condition the burbling air
flowing over the extended control surfaces makes a lot of noise and seems to
make the plane shake, rattle and roll. This would account for the airframe
rattle noise heard on the CVR at 107 seconds into the flight. The pilot
probably thought he had overcompensated and was worried about losing too much
airspeed and so then returned the controls back to normal and the rattling
momentarily stopped. But the plane continued to turn back to the left.
Seven
seconds later, one of the flight crew comments about "air
turbulence" with no further comment, and it would seem the pilot again
tried to compensate for the strong drift of the plane to the left caused by
the partially closing thrust reverser by again applying strong right rudder
and opposite aileron as the same rattling sound is heard again several seconds
later at 121 seconds into the flight. Four seconds later, at 125 seconds into
the flight, the first officer calls for "full power" presumably to
compensate for the side-slip maneuvers which had really slowed the plane down
to dangerously slow speed. This was a fatal mistake, but not caused by the
pilot.
As soon as the
power went to full, the spinning effect caused by the partially or fully
actuated thrust reverser would cause the plane to now spin out of control in a
flat spin. Two seconds later, at 127 seconds, the CVR shows one of the flight
crew makes a comment about being out of control. No more comments are made
after that and the recording ends 17 seconds later when the plane hits the
ground. But what happened when the captain called for full power?
If the pilot
were holding full right rudder and almost full left aileron to compensate just
as the left thrust reverser came into the full on position, the application of
full power would have greatly increased the turn to the left and would have
created a huge side force on the tail and rudder assembly which simply broke
off cleanly and fluttered away. Within another second, without the vertical
tail assembly to slow the spin, the plane would have begun to spin violently
to the left about the center of gravity of the airplane. It now was not an
airplane but a giant spinning Frisbee, or maybe a giant horizontal boomerang.
Yes, you can take a scale model airplane and holding one wing throw it like a
boomerang and make it fly. I know, since I used to do that as a kid. It works.
A modern swept-wing jet aircraft with the tail torn off is simply a boomerang
with a large stick, the passenger cabin, stuck in the middle.
Since the
pilot had been holding opposite or left aileron, as soon as the plane started
to spin, the left wing would be going backwards. But with the left aileron in
the upward position the left wing becomes a lifting surface which keeps the
spinning plane level, since both wings are lifting. The plane is now spinning
horizontally with the full power from both engines increasing the spin faster
and faster until both engines break off and are flung sideways away from the
plane. As soon as the tail assembly broke away and the spin started, the plane
became like one of those spinning centrifuges used by the astronauts for
testing at high g-forces.
Within a
second or so the people at the front and back of the plane were being thrown
violently away from the center of the plane with a tremendous force. The seats
with passengers in the very back of the plane were probably ripped out of the
floor and thrown to the back of the plane. The flight crew at the front of the
plane were thrown violently forward with such g-force they were instantly
rendered unconscious or killed. This would explain why no more comments from
the flight crew are heard after applying full power. The plane was spinning
horizontally to the left completely out of control.
With the
engines still running at full power, they broke away ripping the fuel tanks in
both wings and Fight 587 became a flaming Frisbee. Something which nobody, and
especially none of the people who witnessed the accident, had ever seen
before. Small pieces of the airframe along with the engines were thrown by
centrifugal force away from the flaming plane, giving the appearance of an
explosion blasting parts away.
This also
accounts for the many strange witness reports. I watched the news channels
live and heard many witnesses swear that they saw the left engine come off
first. Many other witnesses also were just as sure that the right engine was
the first to come off. How to account for these strange opposite reports?
Simply, all those witnesses had never seen a plane in a flat spin before.
In a flat spin
most of the plane's forward motion is stopped and the plane is like a spinning
flaming Frisbee floating in the air. The flames hid the shape of the plane and
the witnesses could not see the plane spinning, they only saw a ball of fire
with pieces of plane blasting out from the center. At that point the concept
of right or left engine no longer has any meaning, they are both going in the
same circle. Thus depending on where the witness observer was standing when
the first engine dropped off, half of the people would see it as going to the
right and the other half would see it as going to the left. Thus both groups
of observers were correct in reporting what they saw, they only misinterpreted
what it meant.
There were
even professional pilots who reported they saw the plane in a "spinning
nose dive." Is it possible that they were also mistaken? Is it possible
the plane was not in a nose dive but was actually spinning flat with one wing
going backwards, all caused by a thrust reverser actuated in flight? Since the
other pilots reported they saw a flaming spinning plane arcing into the
ground, and since they too probably had never seen a plane in a flat spin,
they simply assumed what they saw was a spinning plane nosing into the ground.
Is it possible to prove that it was not a plane nose-diving into the ground
but a flat spin caused by a terrorist? Yes.
When the plane
began the flat spin right after the tail assembly broke off over Jamaica Bay,
the passengers in the front and back of the plane would experience high
g-forces which threw them to the front and back of the plane. But those
passengers in the center of the plane between the two engines and over the
wings would simply spin around with no lateral g-forces. They would just spin
around similar to sitting and spinning on a rotating piano stool. For them the
plane simply floated downward as they rotated. What would happen to them?
According to a statement made by New York mayor Giuliani in a news conference
on Wednesday November 14th, the rescue workers recovered 262 bodies including
"a man still holding a baby." How is that possible if the plane had
nose-dived into the ground?
A nose dive
into the ground would have produced such a violent forward force that all
objects in the plane would have been thrown forward with most of the seats
ripped out of the floor. Certainly no man can be strong enough to hold on to a
baby through that force, unless instead the plane was in a flat spin. For the
passengers in the center of the plane the force would have been downward as
the plane hit the ground and the baby would be simply forced deeper into the
man's lap as he sat in the passenger seat. Is that sufficient evidence to
prove the plane was in a flat spin at impact with the earth and the crash was
caused by a thrust reverser being actuated in flight? Yes. It could not have
been a forward nose dive.
Further
evidence is shown by the fact that on the many live news videos of the crash
scene as the firemen are putting out the flames, a large section of the
central portion of the plane is lying on the ground almost intact but in
flames. If the flaming spinning Frisbee of Flight 587 had impacted the ground
in a flat spin the front and back ends of the plane would have impacted with
high rotating speed and thrown pieces of the plane, including the Flight Data
Recorder in the rear of the plane many blocks away. But the center of the
plane would be left intact. Analysis of the debris field would show material
from the front of the plane went in one direction while material from the back
of the plane went in the opposite direction.
Is there clear
evidence for sabotage by a terrorist? Yes. But it seems the FBI does not want
to know. Maybe the airlines, especially American Airlines, do not want anybody
to know they are so easily vulnerable to terrorist attack. For whatever
reason, it seems the NTSB and the FBI do not want to know what happened to
Flight 587. The clear evidence for the flat spinning impact is shown by the
condition of the passengers and seats in the front and rear of the plane
compared to the conditions in the almost intact center portion of the plane.
Is the NTSB going
to reassemble the plane parts to investigate that? According to NTSB Chairman
Marion Blakey in the news conference on Tuesday the 13th, the NTSB was not
going to reassemble the plane for analysis. The two engines are being sent
under sealed bonded cover to American's Tulsa, Okla. facility for disassembly
and analysis. But it would seem the engines were not the cause of the crash,
so that is an investigative dead end. The real evidence, the conditions of the
cabin and fuselage which would show and prove the plane crashed while in a
flat spin, is simply going to be carted away and tossed in the trash. The FBI
will never find the terrorist who caused the crash, if they are not looking
for one.
----------- Marshall Smith
Editor, BroJon Gazette
NEW FLIGHT DATA RECORDER
UPDATE NOV. 17, 2001
The above article was prepared and written based only on data from the Cockpit
Voice Recorder. The NTSB has since then released data from the Flight Data
Recorder showing the position of controls and configuration of the aircraft.
It is entirely consistent with the above analysis, including the turns to the
left, right, left, right with the "rattling" occurring during the
two turns to the right. Followed quickly by the loss of the vertical tail
assembly, then the rapid break into a flat spin.
The FDR data shows: "
... the Airbus began a series of oscillations, yawing from left to right, then
back again. Seconds later, the data stream from the Airbus's rudder 'becomes
unreliable,' (meaning it had torn off) ... the jet began rolling to its left
side ... the flight data recorder shows the Airbus rolled 25 degrees to the
left, even though the pilots applied full-right roll control. The recorder
also shows the jet dropped into a 30-degree dive, and began revolving rapidly
toward the left."
Note, it does not say it "began rolling
rapidly" to the left. It says it "began revolving rapidly" to
the left. And that would be known as a flat spin. The rapid revolving was due
to the engines at full power. Most pilots would recognize the 30-degree drop
at the end as slowing to the stall speed as if the plane were simply stalling
or entering into a recoverable vertical spin. A single engine plane would be
very difficult to fly into a horizontal or flat spin. But any twin or mulit-engine
plane like the A300 can easily enter a non-recoverable flat spin when reaching
the stall point if the forward thrust on each side of the plane's centerline
is not equal. The worst case being equal and opposite thrust around the
plane's center of gravity caused by an inflight actuation of a thrust reverser.
The NTSB continues to insist there is no evidence of a
terrorist attack. (The Brojon Gazette throws up its hands in complete
disbelief.