(intense music)
- Tonight, one of the worst aviation disasters
in American history. (explosion)
- Planes don't just disappear from the air.
- 230 people killed when their jetliner explodes off
the Coast of Long Island.
- Virtually, anything on the water in the vicinity is moving
into the rescue area and they're there so quickly
that there's actually falling wreckage
still coming out of the sky.
- We'll uncover the top theories for why the plane blew up.
- Maybe a bomb was placed on this airplane.
- Aircraft fuel tanks are
considered explosive environments
and they have to be isolated from ignition sources.
- Is the US Government engaged
in an actual government coverup?
- And explore new clues that might offer the answers?
- Two missiles fired to hit another target,
but they went awry.
- What really happened to TWA Flight 800?
(intense music)
July 17th, 1996, JFK International Airport.
It's a hot humid summer night in New York City.
TWA Flight 800 sits at the gate awaiting departure.
- TWA 800 had a flight plan to go from New York to Rome
with a layover in Paris.
Onboard the flight that day,
there was a total of 230 people.
There were 192 passengers, 18 crew members,
and 20 off-duty employees.
Most of them, they were there because they were working
the second leg of the flight. (intense music)
- The crew, they are by the book Professional.
Chief Pilot Ralph Kevorkian is experienced
on other aircraft, but he's moved into the biggest airplane
in TWA's fleet the Boeing 747.
- [Laurence] Flight engineer Richard Campbell is
also well-trained.
- Because Richard had reached the age of 60,
which at the time, that was the pilot retirement age,
he decided to stay on with the airline as a flight engineer.
- [Laurence] The first leg of the flight from JFK
to Paris is projected to last just over seven hours,
but the flight is delayed for 62 minutes.
- There was a baggage issue. (intense music)
Apparently, the flight attendants had found a bag
and they were not sure, who the baggage belonged to,
so it took quite a while to match that piece of baggage
to the appropriate passenger.
As you can imagine, the passengers are getting restless.
They're all sitting in the airplane ready to take off.
- [Laurence] At 8:07 PM the crew fires up the engines,
the plane taxis out to the runway, and at 8:19 PM,
TWA Flight 800 takes off into mostly clear skies.
- The air traffic controller is communicating directly
with these airplanes.
Each one has a call sign.
Each one has a transponder, which tells the plane position
to air traffic controllers.
- [Laurence] At 8:30 PM,
air traffic controllers give TWA 800 clearance
to go from 13,000 to 15,000 feet.
This is their last communication with the plane.
- So, Flight Engineer Campbell goes ahead
and adds climb thrust,
and they start climbing up to 15,000 feet.
- [Laurence] At 8:31 and 12 seconds,
there's a transponder ping
with a Pennsylvania Air Traffic Control Station.
- Then, something strange happens.
- [Laurence] Just 12 minutes after takeoff,
Flight 800 disappears from radar.
(brooding music)
- A disappearing blip is pretty alarming
for an air traffic controller.
So, they tried to contact them but there was no response,
and then, they were asking for nearby airplanes
to tell us what was going on home.
- This pilot flying over Long Island calls in
and says he's seen an explosion in the air.
The pilot reports that this explosion occurred
at about 16,000 feet over Long Island Sound.
- And suddenly,
reports start coming in from pilots all over the area.
- Something has exploded and the debris
just rained down into the water.
- And then, there's an outpouring of reports
from people on the ground.
They report seeing a big fireball,
and also debris just raining out of the sky.
(intense music)
- [Laurence] Emergency radios sound the alert.
There's a major plane crash into the ocean
and the search is on for survivors.
- Virtually, anything on the water in the vicinity is moving
into the rescue area and they're there so quickly
that there's actually falling wreckage
still coming out of the sky.
There's burning debris, it's mass chaos.
- And from all of this wreckage,
they can actually see that this was
the 747 from Flight 800. (brooding music)
- It begins one of the longest
and most expensive aviation accident investigations
in history. (brooding music)
- Within 20 minutes of the initial reports,
people in Washington, DC begin to take action.
- Our government is doing everything we can to continue
the search for survivors and to find out
the causes of this accident.
- For the next two days, Navy divers comb the area,
searching for survivors, but they don't find any.
(brooding music) (water trickles)
- When the families first learn that something has happened
to the airplane, they gather at JFK
to try and find out what happened.
And all the news photographers and cameramen are out there
and it puts the families on edge.
It's a terribly traumatic moment for them,
so they make the decision to move them
into the airport hotel, which is about a mile away,
and that comes to be known as Heartbreak Hotel.
- [Laurence] Along with the grief, there are also questions.
What happened to TWA Flight 800?
- This is a very tense time.
The bombing in Oklahoma City had just occurred in 1995.
Terrorism was in everybody's mind, so people had this idea
that terrorists were targeting aircrafts.
(intense music)
- [Officer] Go, go, get in back, get in back!
- We were a heightened alert because we had all these things
that happened prior, just before this happened,
we had the World Trade Center bombing
and also the Khobar bombing in Saudi Arabia.
- In the 1990s, the idea of a major terror attack
on or above American soil is a huge story.
- So, it was the first thought
that this was a terrorist attack.
- [Laurence] Investigators look into
how terrorists could have brought down the plane,
focusing their attention on what happened before takeoff.
- There was the big 62-minute delay for a bag,
so people wondered, was there a bomb in that bag?
It happened earlier with Pan Am Flight 103
over Lockerbie Scotland.
That bomb, which was in a bag, killed 259 passengers
and 11 people on the ground.
So, new high-tech scanners were put in place
to find even thin layers of plastic explosives.
But, unfortunately, JFK did not yet have
such a system installed and working.
(intense music)
- [Laurence] The National Transportation Safety Board
begins the long process of reassembling the aircraft
to determine a possible cause for the crash.
- They were able to recover close to 95% of this aircraft
from the bottom of the ocean.
And once that process was done,
the FBI was able to send samples of the aircraft
into the lap to check for any sort of residue,
and there was a very small trace of an explosive residue
that was on a floor panel.
- Because trace amounts of explosives were found,
the FBI focused on the possibility
that maybe a bomb was placed on this airplane.
- [Laurence] But there's another possibility
based on eyewitness accounts. (intense music)
- Many of the eyewitnesses reported seeing an actual streak
of light, so that made the FBI think
that maybe it's not just a bomb on board.
Perhaps it was instead a missile attack.
The question is where was the missile launched from?
The leading idea was that it was launched from a boat.
(intense music)
Once the residue is reported,
and then the idea of a missile is reported,
oh, that leads to widespread tension.
People are on edge, airport, and other security
around the world is now tightened.
- It's just a matter of trigonometry.
I mean, any high school kid can figure it out.
- It's a missile. - It's gotta be a missile.
- People really believe that this was
some sort of terrorist attack.
- [Laurence] But some raised doubts.
- There's one huge problem here.
No terrorist organization is taking credit for this attack.
Isn't that what terrorist organizations do?
Because if they want to create terror,
you need to know who they are and why they did it
and we're not seeing that here.
- It's not the first time that the NTSB has investigated
an aircraft that might have been brought down by a bomb,
but the NTSB is a lot more hesitant than the FBI to leap
to conclusions about the causes of a specific incident.
They have institutionally a long history
of carrying out accident investigations
and they understand that by following their procedures,
they're likely to be able to draw
the most accurate conclusions.
The FBI's purpose is to enforce laws and as a result,
these two are going to come into conflict.
- So, the NTSB's explanation to this is
that this aircraft was used before to transport troops
from the Gulf and those troops could have had
some sort of explosive residue on them.
- [Laurence] While explosive residue
might have been left over from the Gulf War,
investigators also consider something else.
- 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
The NTSB found that the airplane has been used
for training canine-explosive deduction dogs,
and when they checked with the dog handlers,
one of the pouches that carry RDX explosive was punctured
and traces of it may have wound up on the back of the seat
or on the floor in the front side.
- 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
and those people were mistaken
based on their perspective on the ground.
Seeing this all happen.
- The Safety Board has found no evidence that the crash
of Flight 800 could have been caused by a bomb or missile.l
- The families that are grieving are really looking
for closure that they can't get from the NTSB.
They want to know what happened,
but sometimes there's no way to really rush the process.
- [Laurence] The Transportation Board has no firm estimate
of when its findings will be ready,
but cautions that it could take years.
- Our work will continue, and we will spare no effort
to determine the cause of the crash of TWA 800.
- That makes a lot of Americans very nervous.
They want answers.
The NTSB is slow delivering answers,
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.
Maybe there are other ideas
that have not yet been considered.
- [Laurence] September 1996, it's just two months
since Flight 800 crashed,
but the two federal agencies investigating the disaster,
are at odds.
The FBI says it's likely a terrorist attack.
The Transportation Board doesn't agree
but insists it's too early to speculate.
Then, researchers from outside
the government propose their own theory.
- 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.
And so, that comment actually does send people off looking
at the possibility that it was a meteorite.
(dramatic music)
- News corporations are reporting on TWA 800.
This is a sensational story and as a result,
a lot of different theories are really starting
to circulate, 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.
(dramatic music)
- The eyewitnesses report seeing a streak of light
and a fireball, well, guess what does both?
Meteors across Earth.
People report seeing fireballs all the time.
There's over two tons of meteoritic material falling
to Earth every day.
- [Laurence] And sometimes, those meteors make impact.
- In America specifically, we know of three cases
where cars were hit with meteors in the last century.
That could cause real damage.
Take for example, a recent fireball
over Chelyabinsk, Russia. (people faintly speaking)
It broke windows and injured people on the ground.
So, yeah, you could bring down an airplane from a meteor.
- [Laurence] Statisticians collect the data,
and crunch the numbers about meteorites
to calculate the odds, one could strike a plane.
- About 3,000 meteorites make it
through the Earth's atmosphere every year.
About 125 a day, and on any given day,
there might be 5,000 aircraft flying over the United States,
which sounds like a lot,
but the odds of a small meteorite hitting
an aircraft are still extremely small.
- [Laurence] In a 100-year span,
the chance of a meteor bringing down a plane is just 1%.
- A meteor, not large enough to be detected by NASA,
but yet not too small that it would completely burn
as it's going through the atmosphere.
The possibility of that small-enough meteor
to impact a plane that's traveling about half
the speed of sound is minute.
That said, it's still worth a pause.
- [Laurence] Searching for proof
that a meteor strike took down the plane,
theorists consider the wreckage of Flight 800.l
- Based on what we understand about meteorites entering
the atmosphere, the size of meteor needed to take down
an airplane is only about the size of a baseball
and if the meteor hits the fuel tank in the wing,
it could definitely trigger a big explosion
like the eyewitnesses saw.
- [Laurence] Some suggest the plane may have been hit
by fragments from a meteor.
- Some scientists' analysis of the wreckage did lend
to the theory of a bolide, which is a meteorite
that explodes in the air
and some of the wreckage did reveal puncture points.
If a meteorite happened to explode near the aircraft,
perhaps some of the meteorite shrapnel could have punctured
the 747. (intense music)
- [Laurence] But many witnesses say they saw a streak
of light coming up toward the plane not coming down
on it from above.
- Taken together, it's all a quirk of perspective
and how it enters the atmosphere.
Remember, the Earth's surface is curved,
so that adds another dimension to perceiving exactly
where things occurred in the night sky.
- [Laurence] Scientists raising the meteorite theory,
urged the NTSB to do further research, but they resist.
(intense music)
- They just found it highly unlikely.
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.
- 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.
(intense music)
- If it wasn't a terrorist attack or a meteorite,
then what could have caused the explosion?
A few months into the investigation,
the Safety Board is convinced of one thing.
(intense music)
- So, they put forward a theory
that the airplane actually broke in half.
- When the explosion happens,
the front of the aircraft is severed
from the back of the airplane.
So, imagine the front of this Boeing 747
like a bullet shearing off and collapsing.
The back end of the aircraft starts heading upwards
because the engines are still spinning.
Inside, it's a nightmare.
They're looking at the sky and there is no front end.
- So, they come to the conclusion that maybe the streak
of light that eyewitnesses saw going upwards was
this second half of the airplane on fire
still moving upwards in the sky
and that's why the pilots did not have time to call in
to say there was a problem because this was a sudden event.
February 1997, while the FBI118
still believes terrorists brought down Flight 800,
Transportation Board investigators say no.
Could the answer lie hidden in the recovered wreckage
of the doomed 747?
- This reassembled airplane in that hangar in Calverton,
I've heard the term Frankenstein aircraft,
which looked like literally tiny pieces, big pieces,
whatever they could find, they put together just trying
to find answers about what happened that day.
- [Laurence] Two important factors may be the age
and condition of the airplane.
- The Boeing 747, that is TWA Flight 800,
it's a relatively old aircraft, 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.
- It's one of the earlier versions of the famous 747.
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. (whoosh)
- Around the 1980s, airline mechanics started to notice
that there were cracks on old Boeing 747 airplanes
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.
- On TWA 800, the NTSB find cracks that are an inch
to one-and-a-half inch.
Now, an old airplane like this 747
that was almost 25 years old, you get cracks,
but every airplane that has worked that long has cracks.
- It comes from the routine pressurization
and pressurizing of the airplane cabin.
So, if you shake up a soda, you do the same thing,
you pressurize the container, and what happens
if that container is punctured?
Boom. (intense music)
- Cracks are extremely dangerous.
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.
So, if they're not addressed,
cracks could really lead to catastrophic results.
- In 1986, the FAA required investigations
of older aircraft including TWA Flight 800.
- So, when you look at the NTSB report,
they went through the maintenance log books
for this aircraft and there were no major mechanical issues.
- This was an aircraft that had flown tens of thousands
of hours, and components do break down over time.
- [Laurence] In the Spring of 1997,
investigators learned of problems
with the doomed plane's maintenance.
- The inspectors who evaluated the wreckage,
found that the people who regularly inspected
the airplane actually missed some cracks.
It had gone through the normal safety checks,
but still, the plane wasn't fully sound.
- The NTSB found evidence of metal fatigue
of some stress cracks caused by pressurization
of the aircraft.
- They found some hairline cracks in what we call
shear ties that keep the skin attached to the airplane,
and they also found several hairline cracks
in the wing spar.
Spars are connected to the keel beam
that basically keeps the wings attached to the airplane.
- [Laurence] But were these cracks big enough and in areas
that could cause a plane to break apart?
(intense music)
- 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,
but it wasn't anything that would've caused
an explosion of any kind.
- The investigators reported
that none of these cracks were serious enough
to have contributed to this tragedy.
Just like you can have a rock hit your windshield, at first,
it's just a little tiny star, looks like an asterisk,
but what makes it dangerous is when it travels.
Well, the same thing is true
with the cracks in the airplane.
They had not combined with each other to create a long crack
in the structure and therefore, could have not contributed
to the catastrophic breakup of the airplane while in flight.
- [Laurence] Analysis of the wreckage confirms for the NTSB
that structural defects didn't take down Flight 800.
So, they looked to the flight data recorder for clues.
- Along with all the wreckage that they found,
they found the airplane's black box
and the black box keeps a record of the data
that the airplane is producing as well as
all the conversations between the pilot,
co-piloting, and crew. (intense music)
- Initially, there was concern that
because the casing was cracked, they would never be able
to recover any of the conversations
that was going on in the cockpit.
But as soon as they got it back to DC and they put it
in a tape, they were able to play the full communication.
- I'm sure it was a very emotional moment,
but it was in their final words
that the crew was able to communicate what was going on
and that really helped investigators get closer
to what they believed caused the aircraft to explode.
- The 1996 Flight 800 disaster remains under investigation
for four long years as government officials clash
and families of victims grow increasingly frustrated.
Then, in August of 2000,
the National Transportation Safety Board announces it
finally has what it says are the answers
so many are waiting for.
Answers gleaned from the airplane's black box.
- There's a lot of routine chatter.
It's the type of things that you would expect to hear
on any civilian airline flight.
- Everything seemed routine with the exception
of just before they were ready to close the doors.
There was this hour delay because of this mismatch
of the bag and the passenger,
but the passenger was on board all the time.
- On the black box,
we can hear Captain Ralph Kevorkian joke like,
"All right, we won't tell 'em that," talking about telling
the passengers that they made an oops.
Flight Engineer Campbell responds, "If we do that,
we'd have a mutiny back there."
(intense music)
- At around 8:19 PM, they take off uneventfully,
and from the point of view of air traffic control,
everything is going fine with Flight 800.
- At some point, Captain Kevorkian made a comment,
"Boy, look at her, she's climbing like a homesick angel."
That's a term we use when the aircraft climbs very rapidly.
In other words, she's really climbing high towards the sky.
- After this was said, the second pilot in the flight deck,
Captain Snyder had said that the airspeed was bleeding off,
which means the aircraft is flying faster than usual
and it really wasn't anything to be worried about.
Cross-checking the transcript with the flight data,
it just confirms that nothing
out of the ordinary is really happening here.
So, at around 8:30, Boston Air Traffic Control advises TWA
to climb from one 3,000 to one 5,000.
And at this point, Captain Kevorkian says,
"Climb thrust." (aircraft humming)
Flight Engineer Campbell responds,
"The power's set."
"Power's set," were the last words that were heard
in the flight deck, and then 37 seconds later,
the airplane explodes. (intense music)
- [Laurence] But while most of this is all normal chatter
on a flight deck, there's one earlier exchange
that intrigues crash investigators.
- Just a few moments before the CVRS stops recording,
Captain Kevorkian comments,
"Check out that crazy indication on number four."
- What he's saying is sort of equivalent to driving
in your car and having your gas gauge malfunction.
(intense music)
- Because this is an old airplane,
and the 747 has so many fuel tanks that are interconnected
in each wing, those gauges were not that reliable.
So, you occasionally get some weird indications.
- [Laurence] But this time,
the Safety Board believes it's a sign of trouble inside one
of the fuel tanks. (aircraft whooshing)
- Just a few days after the accident,
one of the investigators sees
that the center-wing tank bowed out.
So, something happened to make the center tank explode
from the inside out. (intense music)
(plane wing booms)
Aircraft fuel tanks are considered explosive
environments and they have to be isolated from ignition sources
because you don't wanna have any chance
that something will ignite in those areas
because there's fuel there.
- [Laurence] Captain Kevorkian's statement
about the strange readings
from the fuel tank gives investigators a clue
as to the source of this fuel tank explosion.
- You have electrical components inside
the central fuel tank to tell you if they're running short
on fuel, but if a short circuit
somewhere causes a high amount of voltage
to arc between two pieces of metal inside an area filled
with fuel vapor, a catastrophic explosion is
likely to occur.
- [Laurence] The NTSB believes that's exactly what happened.
- So, the NTSB theory is that there was a electrical spark
that exploded that tank outward and blew the aircraft apart.
- The inescapable conclusion that the cause
of the in-flight breakup
of TWA Flight 800 was a fuel-air explosion
in the center-wing tank.
- [Laurence] Investigators hone in on the electrical system,
which connects the fuel gauges to the tank,
looking for what could have caused the explosion,
they find evidence of frayed wiring
and damaged installation in the maintenance reports.
- They see that there are anomalies
in the electrical system.
The wire, which has gone in 25 years earlier,
has been subjected to vibration and salt and chemicals
and pressurization and abrasion.
- The wires were the ones installed back in 1976 or so,
and hasn't been replaced.
Some of those wires would fray.
Some of the installations start to break,
and if they're short, now you have your ignition source.
- [Laurence] Not everybody is satisfied
with these conclusions.
- This explanation faces a couple of problems.
Number one, it's coming so late.
People have gotten used to the idea
that perhaps there was a terrorist involvement,
but secondly, it's only their best guess.
Like a multiple-choice test where you don't know
the right answer, but you can rule out most of the rest.
They think this is the right answer,
but they cannot point to absolutely conclusive evidence.
- We know that the center-fuel tank exploded,
we've known that for a long time.
We don't know what initiated that explosion.
- [Laurence] While evidence strongly points
to degraded wiring, the NTSB is never able to pinpoint
the exact cause of the explosion.
- 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.
- By the time the investigation results are announced,
many people are dissatisfied and they wanted answers
and the Federal Government just wasn't able
to give them answers quickly enough.
- [Laurence] In its August 2000 official report
on the crash of Flight 800, investigators
at the National Transportation Safety Board said
a fuel tank inside the wing caught fire,
which triggered the plane's explosion.
Some believe it was a spark created by defective wiring,
but others seek clues in a different flight
that ended tragically.
- Two years after the tragedy of Flight 800,
there was a Swissair 111 that tragically crashed off
the East Coast of Canada, killing all 229 people on board.
Examining these two flights, Flight 800 and Swissair 111,
there are a lot of similarities that are a bit uncanny.
Both flights took off from the same airport, JFK,
at the same time, 8:19 PM, and the same day
of the week Wednesday.
And tragically, both planes went down very early
in their flights.
- [Laurence] Like TWA 800,
the Swissair plane ignites mid-flight
without a definitive cause.
- The entertainment electronics,
which were stored next to the cockpit is where
the fire started and then it spread to blankets,
and before you know it,
the entire plane is engulfed in flames.
Like Flight 800, the Canadian officials are unable
to figure out exactly what triggered
the fire in the first place.
- [Laurence] Investigators in both crashes,
speculate that defective wiring is to blame
but aren't able to pinpoint the exact source.
Given all the similarities between these two flights,
is there something else that could cause both planes
to go down? (intense music)
- As they were figuring out the factors that led
to both of these crashes and what they might have in common,
researchers noted that both pilots
on the planes briefly lost radio contact shortly
before things went haywire.
So, given these similarities, the question becomes
what could cause communications to go out?
And it's the same thing
that could create navigational problems
and other electronic problems on a flight.
(dramatic music)
- Electromagnetic interference, it's a real problem.
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.
When it comes to aircraft, they're very sensitive.
They have a lot of instrumentation,
they have a lot of electrical components that are subject
to the possibility of interference.
- [Laurence] Some argue that there's only one source capable
of generating enough electromagnetic interference
to bring down a plane.
The US military. (whoosh)
- What these researchers found was that when we look
at Swissair 111, which, again, took off at the same time,
the same day of the week from the same airport,
they did find something interesting.
(intense music) - The fleet area control
and surveillance facility is a Navy organization
that monitors the air and sea space off the coast
of the United States.
Documents provided the first couple of weeks
of September 1998 did show military operations off
the Eastern Seaboard. (intense music)
- Specifically, the document reports that during that week,
there was a small-scale ECM notification
that stands for Electronic Countermeasure notification,
and that's a training exercise for electronic war games.
So, instead of using bombs and bullets,
what they used was electronic warfare.
They're sending out signals that could interfere
with the electronics of civilian flights.
And the records further showed that Navy jets were
actually, in very similar area to the Swiss 111 flight
at the time of this incident.
So, these independent researchers put forth the idea
that the electronic warfare jamming signals sent out
by these military jets somehow interfered
with the electronics of Swissair 111 leading
to the fire that ultimately brought down the plane.
- [Laurence] 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.
- 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.
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.
- An NTSB report cited about 11 sources
of electromagnetic energy in the area.
The largest of them emitting about 800 Watts
with a peak of about 1,000 Watts.
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 you have enough energy
to trigger an explosion in the center wing tank.
- [Laurence] Even so, speculation about
the military's role in the crash continues.
- It is unfortunate that a small number
of people pursuing their own agendas have persisted
in making unfounded charges of a government coverup
in this investigation.
(whoosh)
- A lot of people will point to government coverups
and government conspiracies
because the government isn't always good
at dispelling the rumors.
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.
- [Laurence] It's been more than 20 years since the
National Transportation Safety Board released
its August 2000 report on Flight 800.
Some relatives of the victims continued
to dispute its findings.
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.
- Some of the family of the victims of Flight 800 now think
that maybe there is a coverup going on,
and maybe this was a direct military attack.
- [Laurence] The idea that the US Military could
accidentally shoot down a passenger plane,
isn't wild speculation.
It actually happened just eight years prior
to the explosion of Flight 800.
- In 1988, the USS Vincennes had actually shot down
an Iranian airliner originating out of Tehran.
They thought that it was actually
an Iranian Air Force Fighter aircraft
and fired two surface-to-air missiles downing
the civilian airliner. That occurred in 1988.
It was still fairly fresh in the public's mind.
- 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.
- Families of the victims never gave up and they want
to bring their own investigators do their investigation.
- [Laurence] In June of 2022,
the families filed a lawsuit against the US Navy
and two government contractors to pursue this theory and,
hopefully, discover the truth.
- The lawsuit alleges that the government knows full well
what happened, but covered up that information
because, they allege, the Government caused the crash.
(intense music) (missile whooshing)
- [Laurence] According to this theory,
the Navy shot down the plane during war games,
then covered it up.
- The lawsuit says that this was a friendly fire.
There were two missiles fired from a Navy vessel,
but they went awry.
It was supposed to hit another target
but hit the bigger plane with more heat signature
that was TWA 800.
- According to their lawsuit, the Navy's radar caught
the actual debris from the airplane exploding
and measured the velocities of the particles
and say that they were moving at 4,000 miles per hour,
which is four times faster than the speed of sound.
- [Laurence] Their allegation states,
only a US military-grade missile could cause the debris
to move at that rate.
- They alleged that the radar data
from those tests was withheld from the NTSB but given
to the FBI within minutes of the crash.
- And so, with without analyzing the radar images,
the NTSB concluded there was no evidence of a missile.
- 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.
(missile booms)
- [Laurence] This theory has its detractors.
(missile booms)
- They claim that only a missile could create
such high-velocity debris.
I'm not convinced of that. A meteor is gonna be moving faster
than a missile but the devil's in the details.
- The idea that fast-moving debris could
only have been caused by a missile strike is contradicted
by the facts of physics.
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.
- [Laurence] But what about the allegations
that the Navy war games shut down the plane?
- That scenario also has no merit
because a destroyer was alleged to have shot a missile,
but 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.
- No fragments from any surface-to-air missile have
ever been found in the wreckage
or near the wreckage of Flight 800.
Also, the missile theory does not explain
why the aircraft lost communication with the ground.
- [Laurence] The Transportation Board still insists
that the investigation is and should be closed.
- 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.
- Families had nothing.
Many of them did not have the remains of their loved ones.
Allowing them that opportunity to go into the hangar, seeing
the wreckage had to be a tremendous relief to them.
- You know, losing somebody is extremely hard,
especially if you don't get to say goodbye to them.
But this is also such a big moment
because the lease is done with this building
and they're gonna destroy all of the pieces.
So, it's kind of forcing a lot of these families
to really say goodbye.
You know, like the book is closed, the chapter's closed.
- [Laurence] Perhaps their lawsuit will at last bring
the families of the victims, the closure they seek.
But we may never definitively know why TWA 800 crashed.
- 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.
And so, people got online to share ideas and theories
and they wanted answers.
So, in that narrative void, people came up
with their own conjecture and their own answers.
- History is full of tragedies and in many cases,
we don't actually, ever find a conclusive answer.
- Just went down. - And when you have people
that are involved
because their family members died tragically,
people will still wonder about it.
What happened to Flight 800?
(dramatic music)
- While the latest theory gets tested in a court of law,
the cause of the crash of Flight 800 continues
to ignite debate.
I'm Laurence Fishburne.
Thank you for watching History's Greatest Mysteries.
(dramatic music)