FS> On May 9th 1976 it was on approch to Madrid and was struck by
FS> lightning and crashed near Huete, Spain.
SF> Well, that's *one* explanation. TIME Magazine on August 5, 1996,
SF> wrote on page 30:
® The Boeing 747 that was TWA Flight 800 had been flying for a
quarter of a century without incident. The entire 747 fleet has been
a bulwark of rugged dependability, with one anomalous exception. On
May 9, 1976, a Continental Airlines Boeing-747-100, the same model as
TWA Flight 800, leased by the prerevolutionary Iranian air force,
exploded in flight and crashed near Madrid, killing 17 crew members.
U.S. authorities who investigated the crash never came up with a
certain cause of the disaster. But a commonly held hypothesis blamed
a possible fuel leak, in one of the wing sections above the engines,
that might have mixed with air and created a pocket of explosive gas. ¯
WM> pocket of hot air.
  ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^   That about sums up TIME's explanation!
Well, you know, jet fuel is explosive, and JP-4 fuel, which the airlines
used to use until they began switching to Jet A fuel in the mid-1970s,
was more explosive still. A fire could start if fuel vapor mixed with
hot air. Aviation Fuel, I think, ignites at 100 degress Fahrenheit. The
only thing is, is it probable, or even possible, for thsis to happen, at
least that way?
Matthew Wald wroyte in the New York Times August 8, 1996, that Boeing
engineers said that the 747 has drill holes on the underside of the wing
to let fuel flow out (in otrder to prevent explosions)
Okay, now but what if, BOTH fuel and HOT AIR leaks out to the underside
of the pane? Can that happen? In the case of TWA Flight 800, the
transfer of fuel from the right wing to the left wing (through the
center fuel tank?) began 4 minutes before the end. This would give some
time for a certain amount of fuel to leak out if there was a hole. (The
only way if there was a hole that it would not leak out is if the drain
was blocked)
The fuel might cling to side of the plane, pushed up by the air, too.
Then just a bit before the explosion, the plane began climbing. This
could have caused the liquid fuel to run along the iunderside of the
plane  - until, maybe, it hit a hot spot. The hot spot might be there
because not only a fuel pump or pipe, or maybe the right fuel tank
itself, was cracked, but also some titanium bleed air ducts. What I want
to know is, is that possible - I don't mean by accident - you probably
couldn't have such serious damage to the structure of the plane without
human intervention, but is there a way in which it could be damaged so
that this could happen?
I assume TIME Magazine must have got that explanation for the 1976 crash
somewhere else - it said that was a commonly held hypothesis.
The current issue of the American Spectator (July 1997) has yet another
idea. Here the idea (no doubt leaked to them from somewhere) says that a
very small bomb placed over the center fuel tank might ignite vapors in
the center fuel tank. Thispparently, is the current "explanation" of the
November 27, 1989 destruction of the Avianca Airlines 727 near Bogota,
Columbia. The leaker evidentally mentioned Ramzi Youssef, the master
builder of the World Trade Center, who is supposed to have had a plot to
destroy 12  U.S. jets on a single day by having passengers carry on
board the materials for a bomb and leaving them behind.
Personally, I believe that that entire plot was merely a ruse and a
strategm to cover up his involvement in the Oklahoma bombing by
providing an explanation for his presence in the Phillipines in the fall
of 1994. He is supposed to have tried iyt out - but if he did, he would
have seen it didn't work. One day, "Youssef" (not his real name) boarded
a plane bound for Tokyo and got off leaving a small biomb in his seat.
It killed a Japanese tourist. Now the city he got off at was Cebu City,
a city he may not otherwise have had an occasion to visit, Terry Nichols
was theer at the same time. (In addition Stephen Jones had some
information from an associate of Yousse's in the Phillipines who had
become an informer that Nichols may have met him back in 1991 and 1992)
Anyway I don't believe these plots were real and what they were was a
cover for the most senstive plot of all - the Oklahoma bombing. Now when
you see Ramzi Youssef's name invoked, you wonder at this Z so I think
THAT idea isn't true either. The Avianca plane probably wasn;t brought
down that way either exactly.
That explanation was the first one reached by Colombian investigators,
who were helped by the FAA. (that a small explosion in the cabin pierced
the center fuel tank)
Then the notorious FBI lab got involved. A man named Richard Hahn was
sent to assit them. *He* concluded that a fuel-air mist had filled the
cabin, and that had exploided, after a previous explosion in which the
fuselage and center fuel tank were pierced by something containing RDX
and PETN (famous compunds used by Middle East terrosts)
This was quite different from what Walter Kosgaard had said. He had said
the center fuel tank exploded.
Anyway aman named Dandeny Munoz was put on trial. In the meantime
another person in custody "confessed" to bombing the plane and a
Colombian government building 9 days later and said he used
ammonium-basd gelatin dynamite.
At the trial, Hahn testifued taht dynamote wasn't powerful enough - it
couldn't have caused the pits and only an explosive with a force of
20,000 ft/sec could do that. That testimony, the FBI crie lab reoport
says, was wrong. {itting can be created with a lower force especially in
aluminum, as opposed to steel, which hahn had studied, and most
dynamites are more powerful than he said. There was a mistrial, and Hahn
testified again in a seciond trial in which he was convicted. In between
the trial, Frederic Whitehurst, the famous "whistle-blower" or supposed
whistleblower I should say, changed his mind and said maybe theer really
wasn't PETN and RDX in the original debris and instead maybe it came
from contamination. Hahn didn't mention what Whitehurst said at the
secind trial and the FBI lab report calls that a serious error. It
claims that thgeir suiperiors failed to resolve the difference.
In addition Whitehurst said the evidence was consistent with gelatin
denymiete. But this opinion was "misleading and overstated" He also did
not recognize or correct for errors in his own original testing and that
was the first time he brought up the idea of contamination of samples.
It seems to me that the gelatin confession was an attempt to get
somebody else off. And what Aviation Week reported April 28, 1997 page
44 is simply not detailed enough to make any kind of a guess as to just
how striong a bomb exploded where in that 1989 crash.
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