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MUSIC

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Tonight, one of the worst aviation disasters in American history.

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Planes don't just disappear from the air.

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We just saw a Korean out here.

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Two hundred and thirty people killed when their jetliner explodes off the coast of Long Island.

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Virtually anything on the water in the vicinity is moving into the rescue area,

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and they're there so quickly that there's actually falling wreckage

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still coming out of the sky.

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We'll uncover the top theories for why the plane blew up.

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Maybe a bomb was placed on this airplane.

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Aircraft fuel tanks are considered explosive environments,

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and they have to be isolated from ignition sources.

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Is the US government engaged in an actual government cover-up?

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And explore new clues that might offer the answers.

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Two missiles fired to hit another target, but they went awry.

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What really happened to TWA Flight 800?

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July 17th, 1996.

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JFK International Airport.

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It's a hot, humid summer night in New York City.

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TWA Flight 800 sits at the gate awaiting departure.

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TWA 800 had a flight plan to go from New York to Rome

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with a layover in Paris.

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On board the flight that day, there was a total of 230 people.

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There were 192 passengers, 18 crew members, and 20 off-duty employees.

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Most of them, they were there because they were working the second leg of the flight.

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The crew, they are by the book professional.

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Chief pilot Ralph Kovorkian is experienced on other aircraft,

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but he's moved into the biggest airplane in TWA's fleet.

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The Boeing 747.

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Flight engineer Richard Campbell is also well-trained.

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Because Richard had reached the age of 60,

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which at the time that was the pilot retirement age,

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he decided to stay on with the airline as a flight engineer.

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The first leg of the flight from JFK to Paris

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is projected to last just over seven hours.

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But the flight is delayed for 62 minutes.

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There was a baggage issue.

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Apparently, the flight attendants had found a bag,

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and they were not sure who the baggage belonged to.

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So it took quite a while to match that piece of baggage

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to the appropriate passenger.

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As you can imagine, the passengers are getting restless.

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They're all sitting in the airplane, ready to take off.

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At 8.07 p.m., the crew fires up the engines.

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The plane taxis out to the runway.

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And at 8.19 p.m., TWA Flight 800 takes off into mostly clear skies.

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The air traffic controller is communicating directly with these airplanes.

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Each one has a call sign.

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Each one has a transponder, which tells the plane position to air traffic controllers.

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At 8.30 p.m., air traffic controllers give TWA 800 clearance

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to go from 13,000 to 15,000 feet.

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This is their last communication with the plane.

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So Flight Engineer Campbell goes ahead and adds climb thrust.

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And they start climbing up to 15,000 feet.

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At 8.31 in 12 seconds, there's a transponder ping

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with a Pennsylvania air traffic control station.

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Then something strange happens.

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Just 12 minutes after takeoff, Flight 800 disappears from radar.

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A disappearing blip is pretty alarming for an air traffic controller.

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So they tried to contact them, but there was no response.

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And then they were asking for nearby airplanes to tell us what was going on.

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This pilot flying over Long Island calls in and says he's seen an explosion in the air.

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The pilot reports that this explosion occurred at about 16,000 feet over Long Island Sound.

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And suddenly reports start coming in from pilots all over the area.

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We saw two fireballs go down to the water. There's a big smoke coming up from that.

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Something has exploded and the debris just rained down into the water.

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They just went down to the water.

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And then there's an outpouring of reports from people on the ground.

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They report seeing a big fireball and also debris just raining out of the sky.

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Emergency radios sound the alert.

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There's a major plane crash into the ocean, and the search is on for survivors.

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Virtually anything on the water in the vicinity is moving into the rescue area.

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And they're there so quickly that there's actually falling wreckage still coming out of the sky.

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There's burning debris. It's mass chaos.

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And from all of this wreckage, they can actually see that this was the 747 from Flight 800.

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It begins one of the longest and most expensive aviation accident investigations in history.

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Within 20 minutes of the initial reports, people in Washington, DC begin to take action.

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Our government is doing everything we can to continue the search for survivors and to find out the causes of this accident.

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For the next two days, Navy divers calm the area searching for survivors.

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But they don't find any.

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When the families first learn that something has happened to the airplane, they gather at JFK to try and find out what happened.

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And all the news photographers and cameramen are out there and they put the families on edge.

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It's a terribly traumatic moment for them.

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So they make the decision to move them into the airport hotel, which is about a mile away.

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And that comes to be known as Huffman.

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Along with the grief, there are also questions. What happened to TWA Flight 800?

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This is a very tense time. The bombing in Oklahoma City had just occurred in 1995.

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Terrorism was everybody's mind, so people had this idea that terrorists were targeting aircrafts.

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We were a heightened alert because we had all these things that happened prior.

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Just before this happened, we had the World Trade Center bombing and also the Kobar bombing in Saudi Arabia.

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In the 1990s, the idea of a major terror attack was a huge blow.

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So it was the first thought that this was a terrorist attack.

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Investigators look into how terrorists could have brought down the plane,

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focusing their attention on what happened before takeoff.

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There was the big 62-minute delay for a bag.

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So people wondered, what happened to the plane?

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The plane was in a very dangerous situation.

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The plane was in a very dangerous situation.

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There was the big 62-minute delay for a bag.

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So people wondered, was there a bomb in that bag?

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It happened earlier with Pan Am Flight 103 over Lockerbie, Scotland.

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That bomb, which was in a bag, killed 259 passengers and 11 people on the ground.

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So new high-tech scanners were put in place to find even thin layers of plastic explosives.

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But unfortunately, JFK did not yet have such a system installed and working.

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The National Transportation Safety Board begins the long process of reassembling the aircraft to determine a possible cause for the crash.

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They were able to recover close to 95% of this aircraft from the bottom of the ocean.

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And once that process was done, the FBI was able to send samples of the aircraft into the lab

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to check for any sort of residue.

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And there was a very small trace of an explosive residue that was on a floor panel.

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Because trace amounts of explosives were found, the FBI focused on the possibility that maybe a bomb was placed on this airplane.

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But there's another possibility, based on eyewitness accounts.

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Many of the eyewitnesses reported seeing an actual streak of light.

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So that made the FBI think that maybe it's not just a bomb on board.

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Perhaps it was instead a missile attack.

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The question is, where was the missile launched from?

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The leading idea was that it was launched from a boat.

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Once the residue is reported and then the idea of a missile is reported,

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oh, that leads to widespread tension.

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People are on edge.

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Airport and other security around the world is now tightened.

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It's just a matter of trigonometry.

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I mean, any high school kid can figure it out.

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It's a missile.

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It's got to be a missile.

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People really believe that this was some sort of terrorist attack.

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But some raised doubts.

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There's one huge problem here.

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No terrorist organization is taking credit for this attack.

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Isn't that what terrorist organizations do?

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Because if they want to create terror, you need to know who they are and why they did it.

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And we're not seeing that here.

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It's not the first time that the NTSB has investigated an aircraft that might have been brought down by a bomb.

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But the NTSB is a lot more hesitant than the FBI to leap to conclusions about the causes of a specific incident.

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They have institutionally a long history of carrying out accident investigations.

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And they understand that by following their procedures, they're likely to be able to draw the most accurate conclusions.

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The FBI's purpose is to enforce laws.

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And as a result, these two are going to come into conflict.

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So the NTSB's explanation to this is that this aircraft was used before to transport troops from the Gulf.

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And those troops could have had some sort of explosive residue on them.

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While explosive residue might have been left over from the Gulf War, investigators also consider something else.

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So they look at the history of the aircraft, where was the plane before that, and maybe a month and a half before the accident.

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The NTSB found that the airplane has been used for training.

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K9 explosive destruction dogs.

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And when they checked with the dog handlers, one of the pouches that carry RDX explosive was punctured.

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And traces of it may have wound up on the back of the seat or on the floor in the front side.

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With regards to the people who were on the ground who saw this all unfold, the NTSB said they didn't see any sort of missile-like impact on the aircraft.

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And those people were mistaken based on their perspective on the ground seeing this all happen.

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The safety board has found no evidence that the crash of Flight 800 could have been caused by a bomb or missile.

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The families that are grieving are really looking for closure that they can't get from the NTSB.

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They want to know what happened, but sometimes there's no way to really rush the process.

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The transportation board has no firm estimate of when its findings will be ready, but cautions that it could take years.

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Our work will continue, and we will spare no effort to determine the cause of the crash of TWA-800.

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That makes a lot of Americans very nervous. They want answers.

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The NTSB is slow delivering answers.

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So, independent researchers are doing their thing. They're looking at the data, and they come to the conclusion that maybe we're not looking broadly enough.

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Maybe there are other ideas that have not yet been considered.

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September 1996. It's just two months since Flight 800 crashed, but the two federal agencies investigating the disaster are at odds.

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The FBI says it's likely a terrorist attack. The transportation board doesn't agree, but insists it's too early to speculate.

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Then, researchers from outside the government propose their own theory.

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An NTSB official makes an offhanded comment in the media about the remoteness of a missile strike being about the same as a meteorite strike.

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And so, that comment actually does send people off looking at the possibility that it was a meteorite.

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News corporations are reporting on TWA-800.

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This is a sensational story, and as a result, a lot of different theories are really starting to circulate.

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In particular, there are astronomers that contact the NTSB to raise the possibility that this was in fact a meteorite strike based on eyewitness accounts.

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The eyewitnesses report seeing a streak of light and a fireball. Well, guess what does both?

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Meteors across Earth. People report seeing fireballs all the time.

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There's over two tons of meteoritic material falling to Earth every day.

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And sometimes those meteors make impact.

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In America specifically, we know of three cases where cars were hit with meteors in the last century.

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That could cause real damage.

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Take, for example, a recent fireball over Chellumens, Russia.

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It broke windows and injured people on the ground.

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So, yeah, you could bring down an airplane from a meteor.

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Statisticians collect the data and crunch the numbers about meteorites.

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To calculate the odds, one could strike a plane.

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About 3,000 meteorites make it through the Earth's atmosphere every year.

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About 125 a day.

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And on any given day, there might be 5,000 aircraft flying over the United States.

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Which sounds like a lot, but the odds of a small meteorite hitting an aircraft are still extremely small.

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In a 100-year span, the chance of a meteor bringing down a plane is just 1%.

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A meteor not large enough to be detected by NASA, but yet not too small,

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that it would completely burn as it's going through the atmosphere.

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The possibility of that small enough meteor to impact a plane that's traveling about half the speed of sound

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is minor.

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That said, it's still worth a pause.

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Searching for proof that a meteor strike took down the plane, theorists consider the wreckage of Flight 800.

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Based on what we understand about meteorites entering the atmosphere,

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the size of meteor needed to take down an airplane is only about the size of a baseball.

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And if the meteor hits the fuel tank and the wing, it could definitely trigger a big explosion like the eyewitnesses saw.

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Some suggest the plane may have been hit by fragments from a meteor.

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Some scientists' analysis of the wreckage did lend to the theory of Ebolaid, which is a meteorite that explodes in the air.

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And some of the wreckage did reveal puncture points.

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If a meteorite happened to explode near the aircraft, perhaps some of the meteorite shrapnel could have punctured the 747.

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But many witnesses say they saw a streak of light coming up toward the plane, not coming down on it from above.

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Taking together is all a quirk of perspective and how it enters the atmosphere.

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Remember, the Earth's surface is curved, so that adds another dimension to perceiving exactly where things occurred in the night sky.

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Scientists raising the meteorite theory urged the NTSB to do further research, but they resist.

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They just found it highly unlikely.

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And because these experts are essentially inserting themselves into a well-established investigation, this is another case of non-experts trying to dictate how an aviation accident investigation will be carried out.

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Not only is there a very low expected frequency for this kind of occurrence, but also, even if it did occur, that it would have caused the damage that we saw.

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If it wasn't a terrorist attack or a meteorite, then what could have caused the explosion?

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A few months into the investigation, the safety board is convinced of one thing.

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So if they put forward a theory that the airplane actually broke in half...

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When the explosion happens, the front of the aircraft is severed from the back of the airplane.

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So imagine the front of this Boeing 747 like a bullet shearing off and collapsing.

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The back end of the aircraft starts heading upwards because the engines are still spinning.

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Inside, it's a nightmare.

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They're looking at the sky, and there is no front end.

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So they come to the conclusion that maybe the streak of light that I witnessed this saw going upwards was this second half of the airplane on fire still moving upwards in the sky.

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And that's why the pilots did not have time to call in to say there was a problem.

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Because this was a sudden event.

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Could the answer lie hidden in the recovered wreckage of the Dune 747?

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This reassembled airplane in that hangar in Calverton, I've heard the term Frankstein aircraft, which looked like literally tiny pieces, big pieces.

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Whatever they could find, they put together.

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Just trying to find answers about what happened that day.

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Two important factors may be the age and condition of the airplane.

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The Boeing 747 that is TWA Flight 800, it's a relatively old aircraft.

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It's 25 years old. It's flown for over 93,000 hours, which is the equivalent of flying continuously for 10 and a half years.

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It's one of the earlier versions of the famous 747.

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And if properly maintained, the plane could last many, many, many years before it reaches an age where you can no longer repair the parts and you decommission it.

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Around the 1980s, airline mechanics started to notice that there were cracks on old Boeing 747 airplanes.

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And this was really on the structural part of the aircraft, in the upper deck, the lower deck, as well as the nose of the aircraft.

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On TWA 800, the NTSB find cracks that are an inch to one and a half inch.

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Now, an old airplane like this 747 that was almost 25 years old, you get cracks.

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But every airplane that has worked that long has cracks.

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It comes from the routine pressurization and unpressurizing of the airplane cabin.

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So if you shake up a soda, you do the same thing.

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You pressurize the container.

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And what happens if that container is punctured? Boom.

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Cracks are extremely dangerous.

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Any sort of crack to the fuselage of the aircraft, when the airplane is experiencing any sort of stress, that crack can just tear the airplane apart.

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So if they're not addressed, cracks could really lead to catastrophic results.

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In 1986, the FAA required investigations of older aircraft, including TWA flight 800.

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So when you look at the NTSB report, they went through the maintenance logbooks for this aircraft.

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And there were no major mechanical issues.

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This was an aircraft that had flown tens of thousands of hours, and components do break down over time.

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In the spring of 1997, investigators learned of problems with the Dune Plains maintenance.

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The inspectors who evaluated the wreckage found that the people who regularly inspected the airplane actually missed some cracks.

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It had gone through the normal safety checks, but still the plane wasn't fully sound.

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The NTSB found evidence of metal fatigue, of some stress cracks caused by pressurization of the aircraft.

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They found some hairline cracks in what we call shear ties that keep the skin attached to the airplane.

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And they also found several hairline cracks in the winged spar.

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Spars are connected to the keel beam that basically keeps the wings attached to the airplane.

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But were these cracks big enough and in areas that could cause a plane to break apart?

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Part of the investigation led them to take a deep dive of the fuselage, and they found that there were cracks in the shear ties that were on the wing,

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but it wasn't anything that would have caused an explosion of any kind.

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The investigators reported that none of these cracks were serious enough to have contributed to this tragedy.

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Just like you can have a rock hit your windshield, at first it's just a little tiny star, looks like an asterisk,

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but what makes it dangerous is when it travels.

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Well, the same thing is true with the cracks in the airplane.

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They had not combined with each other to create a slung crack in the structure,

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and therefore could have not contributed to the catastrophic breakup of the airplane while in flight.

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Analysis of the wreckage confirms for the NTSB that structural defects didn't take down Flight 800,

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so they looked to the flight data recorder for clues.

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Along with all the wreckage that they found, they found the airplane's black box,

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and the black box keeps a record of the data that the airplane is producing,

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as well as all the conversations between the pilot, co-pilot, and crew.

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Initially, they were concerned that because the casing was cracked,

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they would never be able to recover any of the conversations that was going on the cockpit,

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but as soon as they got it back to DC and they put it in a tape,

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they were able to play that full communication.

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I'm sure it was a very emotional moment,

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but it was in their final words that the crew was able to communicate what was going on,

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and that really helped investigators get closer to what they believed caused the aircraft to explode.

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The 1996 flight 800 disaster remains under investigation for four long years,

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as government officials clash and families of victims grow increasingly frustrated.

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Then, in August of 2000, the National Transportation Safety Board announces it finally has what it says

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are the answers so many are waiting for.

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Answers gleam from the airplane's black box.

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There's a lot of routine chatter.

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It's the type of things that you would expect to hear on any civilian airline flight.

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Everything seemed routine, with the exception of just before they were ready to close the doors.

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There was this hour delay because of this mismatch of the bag and the passenger,

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but the passenger was on board all the time.

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On the black box, we can hear Captain Ralph Kivorkian joke like,

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all right, we won't tell them that, talking about telling the passengers that they made an oops.

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Flight engineer Campbell responds,

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if we knew that, we'd have a mutiny back there.

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At around 8.19 p.m., they take off uneventfully,

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and from the point of view of air traffic control, everything is going fine with Flight 800.

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At some point, Captain Kivorkian made a comment to,

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boy, look at her, she's climbing like a homesick angel.

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That's a term we use when the aircraft climbs very rapidly.

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In other words, she's really climbing high towards the sky.

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After this was said, the second pilot in the flight deck, Captain Snyder,

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had said that the airspeed was bleeding off,

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which means the aircraft is flying faster than usual,

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and it really wasn't anything to be worried about.

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Cross-checking the transcript with the flight data,

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it just confirms that nothing out of the ordinary is really happening here.

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So at around 8.30, Boston Air Traffic Control advises TWA to climb from 1.000 to 1.500,

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and at this point, Captain Kivorkian says, climb thrust.

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Flight engineer Campbell responds, the power's set,

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power's set were the last words that were heard in the flight deck,

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and then 37 seconds later, the airplane explodes.

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But while most of this is all normal chatter on a flight deck,

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there's one earlier exchange that intrigues crash investigators.

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Just a few moments before the CVRS stops recording,

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Captain Kivorkian comments, check out that crazy indication on number four.

300
00:26:01,000 --> 00:26:03,000
What he's saying is sort of equivalent to

301
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riding in your car and having your gas gauge malfunction.

302
00:26:08,000 --> 00:26:13,000
Because this is an old airplane, and the 747 has so many fuel tanks

303
00:26:13,000 --> 00:26:15,000
that are interconnected in each wing.

304
00:26:15,000 --> 00:26:21,000
Those gauges were not that reliable, so you occasionally get some weird indications.

305
00:26:22,000 --> 00:26:28,000
But this time, the safety board believes it's a sign of trouble inside one of the fuel tanks.

306
00:26:29,000 --> 00:26:32,000
Just a few days after the accident,

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one of the investigators sees that the center wing tank bowed out.

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So something happened to make the center tank explode from the inside out.

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Aircraft fuel tanks are considered explosive environments,

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and they have to be isolated from ignition sources

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because you don't want to have any chance that something will ignite in those areas

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because there's fuel there.

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Captain Kivorkian's statement about the strange readings from the fuel tank

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gives investigators a clue as to the source of this fuel tank explosion.

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You have electrical components inside the central fuel tank

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to tell you if they're running short on fuel.

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But if a short circuit somewhere causes a high amount of voltage

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to arc between two pieces of metal inside an area filled with fuel vapor,

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a catastrophic explosion is likely to occur.

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The NTSB believes that's exactly what happened.

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So the NTSB theory is that there was an electrical spark that exploded the tank outward

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and blew the aircraft apart.

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The inescapable conclusion that the cause of the in-flight break-up of TWA Flight 800

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was a fuel-air explosion in the center wing tank.

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Investigators hone in on the electrical system, which connects the fuel gauges to the tank.

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Looking for what could have caused the explosion,

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they find evidence of frayed wiring and damaged installation in the maintenance reports.

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00:28:12,000 --> 00:28:16,000
They see that there are anomalies in the electrical system.

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00:28:16,000 --> 00:28:23,000
The wire, which has gone in 25 years earlier, has been subjected to vibration and salt

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00:28:23,000 --> 00:28:27,000
and chemicals and pressurization and abrasion.

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The wires were the ones installed back in 1976 or so and hasn't been replaced.

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00:28:34,000 --> 00:28:38,000
Some of those wires would fray, some of the installations start to break,

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00:28:38,000 --> 00:28:42,000
and if they're short, now you have your ignition source.

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Not everybody is satisfied with these conclusions.

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This explanation faces a couple problems.

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Number one, it's coming so late, people have gotten used to the idea that perhaps there was a terrorist involvement.

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But secondly, it's only their best guess, like a multiple-choice test where you don't know the right answer,

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but you can rule out most of the rest.

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00:29:01,000 --> 00:29:06,000
They think this is the right answer, but they cannot point to absolutely conclusive evidence.

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00:29:06,000 --> 00:29:10,000
We know that the center fuel tank exploded, we've known that for a long time.

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00:29:10,000 --> 00:29:14,000
We don't know what initiated that explosion.

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00:29:14,000 --> 00:29:22,000
While evidence strongly points to degraded wiring, the NTSB is never able to pinpoint the exact cause of the explosion.

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It becomes very difficult in the aftermath of TWA Flight 800's destruction to determine how such a spark might have reached the fuel vapors inside the central wing fuel tank.

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By the time the investigation results are announced, many people are dissatisfied and they wanted answers,

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and the federal government just wasn't able to give them answers quickly enough.

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In its August 2000 official report on the crash of Flight 800, investigators at the National Transportation Safety Board

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said a fuel tank inside the wing caught fire, which triggered the plane's explosion.

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00:29:57,000 --> 00:30:06,000
Some believe it was a spark created by defective wiring, but others seek clues in a different flight that ended tragically.

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Two years after the tragedy of Flight 800, there was a Swiss Air 111 that tragically crashed off the east coast of Canada,

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killing all 229 people on board.

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Examining these two flights, Flight 800 and Swiss Air 111, there are a lot of similarities that are a bit uncanny.

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Both flights took off from the same airport, JFK, at the same time, 8.19pm, and the same day of the week, Wednesday.

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And tragically, both planes went down very early in their flights.

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Like TWA 800, the Swiss Air plane ignites mid-flight without a definitive cause.

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The entertainment electronics which was stored next to the cockpit is where the fire started, and then it spread to blankets.

356
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And before you know it, the entire plane is engulfed in flames.

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00:30:58,000 --> 00:31:06,000
Like Flight 800, the Canadian officials are unable to figure out exactly what triggered the fire in the first place.

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Investigators in both crashes speculate that defective wiring is to blame, but aren't able to pinpoint the exact source.

359
00:31:14,000 --> 00:31:20,000
Given all the similarities between these two flights, is there something else that could cause both planes to go down?

360
00:31:20,000 --> 00:31:25,000
As they were figuring out the factors that led to both of these crashes and what they might have in common,

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researchers noted that both pilots on the planes briefly lost radio contact shortly before things went haywire.

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00:31:32,000 --> 00:31:38,000
So given these similarities, the question becomes what could cause communications to go out?

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00:31:38,000 --> 00:31:43,000
And it's the same thing that could create navigational problems and other electronic problems on a flight.

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00:31:44,000 --> 00:31:48,000
Electromagnetic interference

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Electromagnetic interference, it's a real problem.

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There's a reason that you have to put your cell phones into airplane mode, and we try to minimize other forms of electromagnetic interference.

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When it comes to aircraft, they're very sensitive. They have a lot of instrumentation.

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00:32:03,000 --> 00:32:09,000
They have a lot of electrical components that are subject to the possibility of interference.

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00:32:09,000 --> 00:32:17,000
Some argue that there's only one source capable of generating enough electromagnetic interference to bring down a plane.

370
00:32:17,000 --> 00:32:20,000
The U.S. Military

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What these researchers found was that when we look at Swiss Air 111, which again took off at the same time,

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the same day of the week from the same airport, they did find something interesting.

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The Fleet Area Control and Surveillance Facility is a Navy organization that monitors the air and sea space off the coasts of the United States.

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Documents provided the first couple of weeks of September 1998 did show military operations off the eastern seaboard.

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Specifically, the document reports that during that week there was a small-scale ECM notification that stands for Electronic Countermeasure Notification.

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And that's a training exercise for electronic war games.

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So instead of using bombs and bullets, what they use was electronic warfare.

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They're sending out signals that could interfere with the electronics of civilian flights.

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00:33:12,000 --> 00:33:21,000
And the records further show that Navy jets were actually in very similar area to the Swiss 111 flight at the time of this incident.

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So these independent researchers put forth the idea that the electronic warfare jammy signals sent out by these military jets

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somehow interfered with the electronics of Swiss Air 111, leading to the fire that ultimately brought down the plane.

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00:33:36,000 --> 00:33:47,000
But even with the presence of the military exercises in the area, debate remains whether there was enough electromagnetic interference to bring down these flights.

383
00:33:47,000 --> 00:33:58,000
The EMS spectrum can cause problems, but we really haven't had a lot of incidents where we pointed towards electromagnetic interference as potentially downing an aircraft.

384
00:33:59,000 --> 00:34:12,000
Even though the surface of the earth is constantly bombarded in the electromagnetic spectrum, times that it would be most at risk of causing a problem would be in the descent of the aircraft and not in midair.

385
00:34:13,000 --> 00:34:19,000
The NTSB report cited about 11 sources of electromagnetic energy in the area.

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The largest of them emitting about 800 watts with a peak of about a thousand watts.

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00:34:24,000 --> 00:34:37,000
This energy decays with distance and when you tally all the sources at an altitude of 13,000 feet at one airplane, I don't think we have enough energy to trigger an explosion in the center wing tank.

388
00:34:38,000 --> 00:34:43,000
Even so, speculation about the military's role in the crash continues.

389
00:34:43,000 --> 00:34:55,000
It is unfortunate that a small number of people pursuing their own agendas have persisted in making unfounded charges of a government cover-up in this investigation.

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00:34:57,000 --> 00:35:04,000
A lot of people will point to government cover-ups and government conspiracies because the government isn't always good at dispelling the rumors.

391
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Sometimes the government doesn't come out and dispel these conspiracy theories because to do so would require revealing evidence that shouldn't be in the public domain.

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00:35:20,000 --> 00:35:28,000
It's been more than 20 years since the National Transportation Safety Board released its August 2000 report on Flight 800.

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00:35:29,000 --> 00:35:32,000
Some relatives of the victims continue to dispute its findings.

394
00:35:32,000 --> 00:35:46,000
With the help of researchers, these families have discovered evidence allegedly withheld from the NTSB of nearby live-fire military exercises showing an object headed toward the plane just before it exploded.

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00:35:47,000 --> 00:35:57,000
Some of the family of the victims of Flight 800 now think that maybe there is a cover-up going on and maybe this was a direct military attack.

396
00:35:58,000 --> 00:36:04,000
The idea that the U.S. military could accidentally shoot down a passenger plane isn't wild speculation.

397
00:36:04,000 --> 00:36:10,000
It actually happened just eight years prior to the explosion of Flight 800.

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00:36:10,000 --> 00:36:17,000
In 1988, the USS Vincennes had actually shot down an Iranian airliner originating out of Tehran.

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00:36:17,000 --> 00:36:25,000
They thought that it was actually an Iranian Air Force fighter aircraft and fired two surface-to-air missiles downing the civilian airliner.

400
00:36:26,000 --> 00:36:30,000
That occurred in 1988. It was still fairly fresh in the public's mind.

401
00:36:31,000 --> 00:36:39,000
Some of the family now say that if the military is responsible for this, then they too should be held accountable for the tragedy of Flight 800.

402
00:36:40,000 --> 00:36:48,000
Families of the victims never gave up and they want to bring their own investigators to their investigation.

403
00:36:49,000 --> 00:36:59,000
In June of 2022, the family spiled a lawsuit against the U.S. Navy and two government contractors to pursue this theory and hopefully discover the truth.

404
00:37:00,000 --> 00:37:05,000
The lawsuit alleges that the government knows full well what happened but covered up that information.

405
00:37:05,000 --> 00:37:08,000
Because they allege the government caused a crash.

406
00:37:09,000 --> 00:37:18,000
According to this theory, the Navy shot down the plane during war games then covered it up.

407
00:37:18,000 --> 00:37:26,000
The lawsuit says that this was a friendly fire. There were two missiles fired from a Navy missile but they went awry.

408
00:37:26,000 --> 00:37:34,000
It was supposed to hit another target but hit the bigger airplane with more heat signature. That was a TWA-800.

409
00:37:35,000 --> 00:37:51,000
According to their lawsuit, the Navy's radar caught the actual debris from the airplane exploding and measured the velocities of the particles and said that they were moving at 4,000 miles per hour, which is four times faster than the speed of sound.

410
00:37:51,000 --> 00:37:57,000
Their allegation states only a U.S. military-grade missile could cause the debris to move at that rate.

411
00:37:57,000 --> 00:38:05,000
They allege that the radar data from those tests was withheld from the NTSB but given to the FBI within minutes of the crash.

412
00:38:07,000 --> 00:38:13,000
And so without analyzing the radar images, the NTSB concluded there was no evidence of a missile.

413
00:38:13,000 --> 00:38:24,000
None of the participating bomb technicians nor myself have seen any indication of high explosive effects on any of the wreckage recovered from Flight 800.

414
00:38:25,000 --> 00:38:28,000
This theory has its detractors.

415
00:38:28,000 --> 00:38:40,000
They claim that only a missile could create such high velocity debris. I'm not convinced of that. A meteor is going to be moving faster than a missile but the devil's in the detail.

416
00:38:41,000 --> 00:38:48,000
The idea that fast-moving debris could only have been caused by a missile strike is contradicted by the facts of physics.

417
00:38:48,000 --> 00:38:57,000
Fast-moving debris from the aircraft was almost certainly created by the explosion of that aircraft and not by an intersection with some form of missile.

418
00:38:59,000 --> 00:39:03,000
But what about the allegations that the Navy wargames shot down the plane?

419
00:39:03,000 --> 00:39:17,000
That scenario also has no merit because a destroyer was alleged to have shot a missile. That destroyer was actually maybe a hundred miles plus south and none of the missiles on it had the range to bring down the plane.

420
00:39:18,000 --> 00:39:24,000
No fragments from any surface-to-air missile have ever been found in the wreckage or near the wreckage of Flight 800.

421
00:39:24,000 --> 00:39:31,000
Also, the missile theory does not explain why the aircraft lost communication with the ground.

422
00:39:33,000 --> 00:39:38,000
The Transportation Board still insists that the investigation is and should be closed.

423
00:39:39,000 --> 00:39:49,000
The recovered wreckage of TWA Flight 800 was kept in a hangar outside Ashburn, Virginia for 25 years and was used as a training aid for other NTSB investigators.

424
00:39:51,000 --> 00:39:56,000
Families had nothing. Many of them did not have the remains of their loved ones.

425
00:39:56,000 --> 00:40:05,000
Allowing them that opportunity to go into the hangar, seeing the wreckage, had to be a tremendous relief to them.

426
00:40:06,000 --> 00:40:11,000
You know, losing somebody is extremely hard, especially if you don't get to say goodbye to them.

427
00:40:11,000 --> 00:40:18,000
But this is also such a big moment because Elise is done with this building and they're going to destroy all of the pieces.

428
00:40:18,000 --> 00:40:23,000
So it's kind of forcing a lot of these families to really say goodbye.

429
00:40:23,000 --> 00:40:26,000
You know, like the book is closed, the chapter is closed.

430
00:40:27,000 --> 00:40:32,000
Perhaps their lawsuit will at last bring the families of the victims the closure they seek.

431
00:40:32,000 --> 00:40:37,000
But we may never definitively know why TWA 800 crashed.

432
00:40:37,000 --> 00:40:44,000
I think it continues to capture public imagination because it was one of the first real sensational events that happened at the dawn of the internet.

433
00:40:44,000 --> 00:40:49,000
And so people got online to share ideas and theories and they wanted answers.

434
00:40:49,000 --> 00:40:53,000
So in that narrative void, people came up with their own conjecture and their own answers.

435
00:40:53,000 --> 00:40:59,000
History is full of tragedies and in many cases we don't actually ever find a conclusive answer.

436
00:40:59,000 --> 00:41:00,000
That's right, down.

437
00:41:00,000 --> 00:41:09,000
And when you have people that are involved because their family members died tragically, people will still wonder about what happened to TWA 800.

438
00:41:10,000 --> 00:41:20,000
While the latest theory gets tested in a court of law, the cause of the crash of TWA 800 continues to ignite debate.

439
00:41:20,000 --> 00:41:25,000
I'm Lawrence Fishburne. Thank you for watching History's Greatest Mysteries.