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WorldNetDaily
SATURDAY AUGUST 26 2000
It was only frayed wiring?
© 2000 WorldNetDaily.com
Not to worry, says the National Transportation
Safety Board, the cause of the TWA tragedy was
sloppy routing by Boeing of some low-voltage
wires to the central fuel tank. In future, the
Federal Aviation Administration is not going to
allow such sloppy routing.
According to the NTSB, such sloppiness
allowed coupling between frayed high-voltage
and low-voltage wires. When a high-voltage
pulse somehow got coupled into the practically
empty -- except for some fumes -- fuel tank, it
was like a sparkplug igniting the fuel-air
mixture in the engine of your SUV. According to
the NTSB, the "explosion" of the ignited fumes
1) instantaneously chopped all electrical power
to the cockpit, 2) blew off the whole front-third
of the plane, 3) ruptured the wing fuel tanks and
4) set fire to the resulting fuel-air mixture, which
burned until the aft two-thirds of the plane hit
the water.
Oh, yeah?
When a sparkplug ignites the fuel-air mixture in
the confines of one of your SUV cylinders, does
it blow away everything forward of the firewall?
Of course not. And when hundreds of gallons of
a rich fuel-air mixture are ignited in the
semi-confined afterburner of a fighter jet, does it
instantaneously chop all electrical power to the
cockpit and blow off the whole front-third of the
fighter jet? Of course not. Why? Because those
fuel-air mixtures burn. They don't detonate, they
deflagrate.
What's the difference? Well, here are a few
important definitions:
Deflagration: A subsonic gaseous combustion
reaction, propagating through unreacted
material by conduction, convection and
radiation, with the flame front advancing and
the reaction products retreating behind the
flame front.
Detonation: A supersonic combustion reaction
propagating into unreacted material with the
flame front or shock front advancing and the
reaction products being driven in the same
direction.
Fuel-air bomb: Consists of a container of fuel
and two separate explosive charges. The first,
low-explosive charge, merely disperses the fuel
from the container into the atmosphere. The
second, high-explosive charge, then detonates
the fuel-air mixture, creating a massive blast
wave.
The distinction between a subsonic deflagration
-- like in your engine or in a jet afterburner --
and a supersonic detonation -- like from a pellet
of the high explosive -- is important.
Confined or not, the fuel-air mixture will
deflagrate unless the fuel air mixture effectively
becomes an extension of an already existing
detonation. That is, in the above definition of
"detonation," the fuel-air mixture becomes the
"unreacted" material the shock front is
advancing through. The fuel-air bomb mixture --
even though not compressed or confined --
detonates because the fuel-air mixture
effectively becomes an extension of the
high-explosive detonator.
Now, back to the NTSB and the alleged frayed
wiring in the almost empty TWA 800 center fuel
tank.
In tests of an almost empty central fuel tank, the
NTSB apparently had some difficulty getting
such a low-pressure fuel-air mixture to
deflagrate. But the NTSB fuzzed up the issue by
calling the deflagration "an explosion." They
announced that they had been able to get a
simulated TWA 800 fuel tank to "explode."
Well, that's not a lie, but then it's not exactly the
truth, either.
It's not as if the NTSB and the FBI didn't know
the difference. Here is the official FBI
reconstruction of the hauntingly similar Avianca
Airlines Flight 203 tragedy of Nov. 27, 1989:
1.IED (improvised explosive device)
detonates in area under seat number 14F
and frame station 783 on passenger cabin
floor.
2.Passenger cabin floor penetrated.
3.Passenger cabin fuselage skin and top of
center fuselage fuel tank middle bladder
section penetrated.
4.Passenger cabin relatively slowly begins
to decompress and to pressurize center
fuselage fuel tank.
5.A fuel / air explosion and fuel ignition is
initiated in top of center fuselage fuel tank
spreading rapidly thru (sic) vent holes to
right and left number 2 fuel tank wet wing
sections and back into passenger cabin as
pressure in fuel tank exceeds cabin
pressure.
6.Structure integrity of center fuselage wing
box section and right and left wet wing
fuel tank sections of number 2 fuel tank
bulkheads are violated.
7.Fuel in wet wing fuel tanks numbers 1 and
2 is ignited.
8.The APU (auxiliary power unit) located at
rear of center fuselage wing box section is
blown to rear of aircraft by the force of the
fuel / air explosion within this center
section fuel tank.
It is important to note that in the FBI Avianca
reconstruction there was first a detonation of a
high-explosive device which penetrated the
central fuel tank, which then resulted in a
fuel-air explosion, which was then followed by
the "ignition" of the fuel in the wing tanks. The
Avianca fuel-air "explosion" in the center fuel
tank didn't blow off the front third of the aircraft.
It blew an auxiliary power unit aft, but was not
the principal cause of the loss of the aircraft.
But in the TWA 800 tragedy, we know that
something supersonic -- something that was over
before the sound of it could reach the cockpit
sound recorder -- instantaneously chopped all
electrical power to the TWA 800 cockpit. A
concurrent powerful blast wave separated all of
aircraft forward of the wing -- including the
cockpit -- from the rest of the plane.
Then the fuel tanks in the wings of the plane
"deflagrated," burning brightly for many
seconds.
All that is consistent with what hundreds of
people on the ground reported. First, they heard
a detonation, then they looked and saw a big
explosion, then heard a big explosion and then
saw a brightly burning fire which lasted for
many seconds.
You think we ought to tell the NTSB what we
suspect, that some person or persons unknown,
did to TWA 800 what had already been done to
Avianca 203? Don't bother. Here is an excerpt
the report of the International Association of
Machinists and Aerospace Workers, an official
Party to the NTSB TWA 800 investigation:
An explosion did occur within the
center fuel tank during TWA Flight
800. We have not been a party to any
evidence, wreckage or tests that
could conclude that the center tank
explosion was and is the primary
contributor to this accident. ... We
find that its explosion was as the
result of the aircraft breakup. The
initial event caused a structural
failure in the area of Flight stations
854 to 860, lower left side of the
aircraft. A high-pressure event
breached the fuselage and the
fuselage unzipped due to the event.
The explosion was a result of this
event!
By "high-pressure event" they mean a
detonation, a supersonic shock. Like from a
bomb, detonated inside, or a missile warhead,
detonated outside, which penetrated the central
fuel tank. Like, what the FBI claims happened
on Nov. 27, 1989, to Avianca Airlines Flight 203.
Now, of course, the Clinton-Gore administration
is chock full of people who claim to believe that
butterflies can cause tornadoes. Maybe they also
really believe that a frayed wire can blow a
Boeing 747 out of the sky. But early in the
morning after the TWA 800 tragedy, President
Clinton had an emergency cabinet meeting,
from whence his spokesman emerged to
announce that -- not to worry -- there was no
reason to suspect terrorist activity. So how
could you have the slightest doubt that he was
telling the truth?
Physicist James Gordon Prather has served as a policy
implementing official for national security-related
technical matters in the Federal Energy Agency, the
Energy Research and Development Administration,
the Department of Energy, the Office of the Secretary
of Defense and the Department of the Army. Dr.
Prather also served as legislative assistant for national
security affairs to U.S. Sen. Henry Bellmon, R-Okla.
-- ranking member of the Senate Budget Committee
and member of the Senate Energy Committee and
Appropriations Committee. Dr. Prather had earlier
worked as a nuclear weapons physicist at Lawrence
Livermore National Laboratory in California and
Sandia National Laboratory in New Mexico.
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