Sixteen years ago yesterday, TWA Flight 800 went down off the southern coast of Long Island. The official explanation was that a fuel tank exploded.
It’s not true.
I know because I was a witness, driving over the bridge from Westhampton to Dune Road with my daughter and her friend in the car, having just gotten them ice cream cones. I saw what happened. At the time, I had no idea that the explosion was an airplane.
It appeared to me to be fireworks. I said to the girls, “look, someone is shooting off fireworks” and pointed to the sky. We continued over to drive. Shooting fireworks are fun enough to point out to children, but that’s about as far as it goes. As the emergency vehicles later swarmed Dune Road and the beach, I learned that it was TWA Flight 800.
I knew no one on the plane. I had no horse in the race. I saw what I saw.
I told the government. I was thanked for my cooperation, and never heard from anyone again.
There are others who saw what I saw. Some people have theories about what happened. I do not. I offer no explanation. A reporter friend once challenged me to explain away the government’s evidence to support what I saw. I declined. I have no interest in explaining away anything.
I saw what I saw. Sixteen years later, I still saw what I saw.
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Of course, eyewitness testimony is the least reliable.
/irony
Facial recognition, not occurrences. This is why details matter.
/wrinkly
My best friend was on that plane. I never accepted the official explanation, nor did many of the families who lost loved ones that day. That we may never know what really happened makes dealing with the grief all that much harder.
I’m sorry to contribute to your grief.
What’s interesting is the effect the cover-up (if true) had on the perpetrators. If it was a rogue act of terrorism, then any political motive of the terrorists was rendered moot by the fact that no one believes it was terrorism. If it was (gasp) some act done by certain corners of the government itself, then it’s pretty academic.
Just curious: how would a fuel tank explosion be inconsistent with what you saw? Was the explosion too big or something?
(Not trying to challenge your veracity or perception — just trying to understand.)
I observed what I thought to be a firework shoot from the water up toward the sky, curve and explode. It was not an explosion in the sky, but clearly something that went from the water upward for a significant distance.
Plane was probably shot down because it was hijacked. That would explain both the apparent presence of a highly sophisticated missile, and also the government reluctance to tell the Truth.
Well, the plane was in flight for only 12 minutes till explosion. So the plane had to be hijacked within just a few minutes of takeoff, determined to be hijacked by the ground, and surface/air missiles (they keep these on Long Island?) authorized and tasked to shoot it down all in 12 minutes. Seems implausible.
Oh and also considering that the plane was headed out to sea, and this ocurred prior to 9/11, before everyone thought that hijackers would crash the planes into populated areas. So why immediately shoot it down?
I din’t know it was only 12 minutes. That does seem too quick for a hijacking to have taken place.
I came very close to booking that flight to spend a week with my two sons who were already in France visiting their maternal grandparents. Decided not to because they were coming home in a week’s time. For me and them, it worked out well. Not so at all for those who flew and their devastated family and friends. It haunts me to this day.
Sounds like survivor’s guilt. A weird thing, but still very real.
Just to add my 2 cents, my uncle was a mechanic for twa working that evening at jfk and they were told it was a rocket attack…until they were later told it was mechanical failure. As in the mechanic were told by non-mechanics it was mechanical failure. The official story is just sad to any victim of that attack and the population at large.
I didn’t mean that. Actually, thank you for the post and keeping this in people’s minds 16 years later.