It is about 8.20 pm on July 17, 1996, when the flight takes off from John Fitzgerald Kennedy Airport in New York Trans World Airlines 800 direct to Rome with a stopover in Paris. But, 12 minutes after take off, the plane explodes inexplicably and crashes into the Atlantic Ocean, killing the 230 people on board. L’accident Twa Flight 800 is the second most serious ever to occur in the United States and has given rise to the most complex and costly investigation in the history of American air disasters.
The accident
The day of the tragedy, the Boeing 747-131 of the airline Trans World Airlines departing for Rome had arrived in New York from Athens at 16.38. The plane was supposed to leave at 7pm, but due to a ground fault and a problem with the luggage of one of the passengers, it took off about twenty minutes after 8pm. At the time of departure it is already evening, but the visibility is good. . At 20.25 the Twa 800 is allowed to climb 21,000 feet from the Boston control tower, but at 20.30 the aircraft disappears by radar, while it is at about 13,700 feet. A National Guard Black Hawk conducting a drill near Long Island, flanked by a helicopter, launches a Mayday. Later the crew of the two vehicles will declare that they have seen glimmers in the sky and gods fiery fragments fall into the water.
When the means of the National Guard arrive at the scene, a shower of debris is pouring into the sea and part of the aircraft’s fuselage is on fire. There were many witnesses to the tremendous explosion of flight Twa 800. An Ansett 767 reports having witnessed two explosions while in flight, confirming the statements made by the crew of the National Guard aircraft. The same thing declared the commander of an Eastwind Airlines Boeing 737, who reported to the control tower in Boston: “We saw something explode in front of us … about 16,000 feet [4.900 m], then he fell into the water “.
The investigations
At around 20.50 the National Transportation Safety Board was notified of the incident and an investigation team was sent to the scene the following morning, assisted by theFbi. The many witnesses who witnessed the explosion of the Twa claimed to have noticed a “ascending light strip“head from the bottom up, just before the explosion. The witnesses’ reports alarmed the investigators, who began to investigate a possible terrorist attack. The FBI was frightened by an episode that occurred a few days before the disaster, during the Atlanta Olympics. A bomb placed under the stage where a concert was to be held caused 2 deaths and 111 injuries. The culprit was not found until October, which led investigators to suspect that the Trans World Airlines flight may have been at the center of another terrorist episode.
According to the black boxes, the plane took off and began climbing smoothly, but around 8.30pm the black boxes stopped recording and nothing more was heard of what happened on board. In the last few seconds of the recording, the typical noises of an aircraft breaking up in flight were heard. This fact, coupled with the evidence, led the investigators to lean towards a structural failure or an explosion.
The NTSB analyzed all the hypotheses for four long years, such as a structural failure caused by a “metal fatigue “, probable corrosion or mechanical failure. The second hypothesis they took into consideration was that of one bomb or a missile, which may have hit the aircraft. But, despite checking the data recorded by the airport’s long-range radar revealed several presences close to the aircraft at the time of the crash, it was determined that none of these vehicles crossed TWA’s Boeing. On 23 August 2000, four years later, the cause of the accident that killed the 230 people aboard the Trans World Airlines Jumbo was attributed to the explosion of fuel vapors in a tank, probably due to a short circuit.
The conspiracy theories and the end of the investigation
However, the final report of the NTSB was contested by some supporters of the terrorist trail. Initially this thesis was also fed by the media, which in the months following the tragedy reported the testimonials of the hundreds of people, who from the ground or from adjacent aircraft, would have seen the famous light trail from the ground towards the aircraft and hit it. The bomb theory was also considered by FBI investigators, but the NTSB debunked the theory, arguing that the testimonies often contradicted each other.
Another oddity, which remained a mystery that the FBI investigated, was the discovery of traces of explosives on some residues of the aircraft. After careful analysis of the samples in question, traces of Rdx, Petn and nitroglycerin were found, which caused a lot of press coverage. But another revelation came shortly after to complicate the discovery made. Twa’s Boeing had been used during the Gulf War to transport vehicles and men. It was also noted that the same aircraft was used by the FAA to teach dogs to sniff explosives. Therefore the plane was considered “contaminated “ and the discovery of the explosive was not considered relevant to the investigation.
In the final report, drawn up on 23 August, it was written that the break on board the aircraft “It wasn’t caused by a bomb attack or a missile“. The investigation established that the causes of the explosion were the following: “The explosion of the central fuel tank (Cwt), caused by the combustion of the fuel vapor present in the tank. The energy source for the ignition of the explosion cannot be determined with certainty but, from hypotheses formulated in the investigation, the most likely is that a short circuit has occurred outside the Cwt and that the overcurrent has penetrated into the Cwt through the electric cables of the fuel gauge “.
Despite the definitive report from many years earlier, in 2013 some former NTSB investigators claimed in a documentary that Twa Flight 800 was almost certainly shot down by a missile. According to investigator Hank Hughes, Twa’s Bob Young and Air Line Pilots Association’s Jim Speer, the wake witnesses saw that evening was a missile that hit the plane, killing 230 people. The evidence of the downing of the Twa 800 flight by a missile would then have been manipulated and made to disappear, to cover up the mistake committed by the military vehicle.
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