Flight 800: Accident Or Terrorist
Attack? - Part 3
Bogey At Seven O'Clock: Report Supports Missile
Theory But Not 'Friendly Fire'
By Joey Mac Lellan for
Suffolk Life Newspapers
December 16, 1998
Most of the evidence collected by the National Transportation
Safety Bureau (NTSB) and the Federal Bureau of Investigation
(FBI) indicates that TWA Flight 800 was destroyed by one or more
heat-seeking Stinger missiles, according to Commander William S.
Donaldson, USN (Retired), the author of the revised 124-page
"Interim Report on the Crash of TWA Flight 800 and the
Action of the NTSB and the FBI." In an earlier interview,
Donaldson, a member of the Associated Retired Aviation
Professionals (ARAP) group, said that three U.S. manufactured Man
Portable Air Defense System (MANPADS) Stinger missiles have been
reported missing from Afghanistan. Under President Ronald Reagan,
Afghan rebel forces began defeating Russian forces because the
United States supplied them with hand-held ground-to-air missiles
(such as the Stinger) to cut down on helicopter support for
Russian troops.
The commander noted that authorities knew the Stingers were
smuggled into Canada and had "crossed the U.S.-Canadian
boarder," but then contact was lost with the
"Iranian-connected group believed to have stolen the
Stingers." He added that the use of a hand-held Stinger was
initially dismissed because it was believed the Stinger did not
have the range to hit Flight 800 and because the amount of blast
damage appeared to be more than a Stinger would do. The commander
said he has since learned from "military experts" that
a Stinger will go as high as 15,000 feet and depending on
programming could cause extensive damage, especially if more than
one was used on the same target. Flight 800 exploded at about
13,800 feet, killing 235 passengers and crew members.
Donaldson also noted that the missiles could be "modified
Soviet (surface to air missile) SAM 6," which could be
carried on any ocean-going vessel as covered deck cargo.
Information on the physical breakup sequence of the plane, the
way the plane was scattered throughout the Debris Field, shrapnel
evidence found in the passengers, and the final recordings taken
from the Flight Recorder (Black Box) all prove the plane was
destroyed by at least one missile blast, said Donaldson. The most
important portion to the puzzle, he said, is that so many
eyewitnesses have explained the same, or similar, descriptions of
the incident. In the report, Donaldson notes, "If one
assumes that a 'reliable' witness can report an observation
correctly in only one out of five observations, then there is
only a 20% probability that an event reported by such a witness
would have actually taken place as described ... With 40 such
independent and similarly 'reliable' witnesses, the probability
rises to 99.99% that the event reported did indeed take
place." According to Donaldson, "More than 150 credible
witnesses - including several scientists and business executives
- have told the FBI and military experts they saw a missile
destroy TWA Flight 800."
Most of the descriptions of the incident coincide with the
following: Witnesses reported seeing a man piloting a dark
25-foot to 35-foot "cigarette-type," round-hull speed
boat that came into the Moriches Inlet from the Great South Bay
and idled for a time. Just prior to the FL800 explosion the boat
then sped off in a southeast direction. Some 20 minutes later,
said Donaldson, witnesses for more than 20 miles described seeing
a missile going up just before the plane exploded in the air.
Donaldson hypothesized that the speed boat traveled about seven
nautical miles into the Atlantic Ocean and waited for FL800 to
get closer. As the plane approached the boat's location,
Donaldson suggested that he fired the heat-seeking missile at the
nose of the plane which had its belly exposed at an estimated 30
degree climb into the sky. The commander suggests that the
missile was attracted to the refrigeration and air exhaust vents
near the fuselage and left wing but struck the nose instead, and
a second missile appears to have struck the wing, causing a
severe explosion into the side of the passenger and Center Wing
Tank portions of the plane which then resulted in a large, fiery
petroleum explosion. The night Flight 800 was shot down, Major
Fred Meyer was piloting an Air National Guard HH60 helicopter
between 200 and 300 feet above ground level, heading south to
Gabreski Airport in Westhampton Beach. "He described it as
transcribing a smooth, slightly descending arc from right to left
streaking across the sky terminating in a 'hard or high velocity
ordinance explosion,' followed by a second 'bright white
ordinance explosion,' followed some seconds later by a petroleum
fireball that grew to a very large dimension."
Donaldson notes, Major Meyer possesses "unique training and
experience" since he was awarded the Distinguish Flying
Cross after obtaining more than 40 saves as a Navy combat search
and rescue pilot off the coast of North Vietnam. Meyer's
co-pilot, Captain Chris Baur, said, "Almost due south [of
the helicopter] there was a hard white light, like burning
pyrotechnics, in level flight ... it was the wrong color for
flares. It struck an object coming from the right and made it
explode." Baur said he "told officials repeatedly that
I thought a missile hit the plane." According to the report,
Tom Dougherty, walking with friends along the beach in Hampton
Bays, "heard a crackling thunder-like noise, followed ... by
another thunder-like noise at which time they observed a missile
... arcing out to sea. After losing sight of the missile, they
saw a bright white light or glow above the cloud or haze layer at
sea followed by the observation of burning pieces of aircraft
flopping out of the sky."