firedocs media/politics article
Section: TWA 800 : A deliberate mystery?
Eyewitness: Ordnance Blast Downed TWA
800
By David E. Hendrix The Press-Enterprise
A military eyewitness to the TWA Flight 800 disaster who was the
first rescuer on the scene says the jetliner and 230 people
aboard were knocked out of the sky by an explosive projectile,
probably a military warhead, and not by some internal mechanical
catastrophe.
Frederick C. Meyer, one of two Air National Guard helicopter
pilots who witnessed the jetliner's breakup, said he was not sure
what the projectile was and did not know its source. A Jane's
military expert said Meyer's description of the incident matched
that of a missile detonating.
Meyer said he cannot say the object that struck the Boeing 747
was a missile, but is convinced he saw an ``ordnance explosion''
burst near the plane just before it blossomed into a deadly
fireball.
Although the ex-Navy officer and Vietnam War helicopter pilot
previously had described what he saw to investigators and to the
media, he said he was breaking his self-imposed silence on his
conclusions about what occurred. He said the reason he was
speaking out now was because of FBI and National Transportation
Safety Board statements that a mechanical spark most likely
touched off fuel tank fumes and caused the July 17, 1996, air
disaster. He also noted that investigators had treated him
perfunctorily and did not ask him many questions or anything
about his conclusions when they talked.
``I'm not a professor with a Ph.D. in explosion-watching, I'm an
eyewitness,'' Meyer, an attorney, said. ``I know what I saw. I
saw an ordnance explosion. And whatever I saw, the explosion of
the fuel was not the initiator of the event. It was one of the
results. Something happened before that which was the initiator
of the disaster. Everyone involved in the FBI and NTSB are
intelligent enough to know that.''
NTSB officials confirmed that Meyer's conclusions were new to
them and that he had not previously offered his beliefs to
investigators. An FBI spokesman said the agency does not comment
about statements of an individual witness. NTSB and FBI official
s said there was no physical evidence a bomb or missile downed
the plane. The FBI has said it expects to withdraw from the probe
soon because it has no physical evidence that would indicate
there was a criminal cause.
There have been other eyewitness reports about missile-like
streaks followed by an explosion but these have been primarily
from people on land or in boats. The FBI and the NTSB have said
they believe that the central gas tank explosion was most likel y
touched off by an internal event. They have not shut the door
entirely on other prevailing theories -- that a bomb or missile
caused the disaster --but they have belittled them.
More specifically, NTSB spokeswoman Shelly Hazle said the
possibility that an outside object, such as a missile fragment or
meteor, struck the plane is among the six crash theories
receiving most official attention. Four of the theories center on
a spark or static electricity setting off center fuel tank vapors
and another looks at a small bomb with a shaped charge under a
passenger seat detonating over the center tank.
Meyer, in a series of interviews with The Press-Enterprise from
his Shinnecock Hills, Long Island, N.Y., office, said he had not
offered his opinions during several brief meetings with FBI and
NTSB investigators because he wanted to present facts, not
conclusions. However, he chided FBI and NTSB examiners for not
asking him any questions during individual sessions, the first
two of which he initiated.
Capt. Chris Baur, his co-pilot that night, could not be reached
for comment and has declined interviews, reportedly under orders,
since shortly after the disaster. But published reports quote
investigators as saying Baur thinks he saw a missile.
Meyer said he saw a streak from the west of the spot where the
TWA exploded seconds later. Baur said he saw a streak from the
east.
Meyer said the accounts are not contradictory if there were two
projectiles, such as two missiles or a drone target and a
missile, approaching from opposite directions. Meyer said he
believes there were two projectiles but said he could only
testify about the one he saw. He vigorously rejected efforts to
discuss Baur's reported comments, saying that would be
inappropriate and would detract from the substance of each
account.
Meyer, 57, tells this story:
He, Baur and flight engineer Denis Richardson were practicing
instrument landings for Baur around Francis S. Gabreski Airport,
a former Air Force Base on eastern Long Island, at about 8:30
p.m. on the Wednesday evening TWA 800 crashed. Meyer was watching
forward, southwest, for possible conflicting aircraft. Baur, his
head down, was reading instruments. Richardson was facing the
side from the left gunner's position to watch for aircraft.
At 200 feet above the ground, Meyer could see the top of the sun
as it dipped below the horizon. It was still daylight at their
elevation. That's when he saw the streak of light.
''Right in front of me, slightly to the left of centerline, at a
distance that I then estimated as 10 miles and an altitude that I
estimated at approximately 10,000 feet, I saw a streak of
light.''
The light, he said, was reddish-orange and ``had a trajectory of
a shooting star: virtually horizontal, with a gradual descending
curve.'' The streak lasted three to five seconds and disappeared.
``About a second, and then further to my left, along the same
trajectory as the streak, I see a violent explosion, which
resembles a flak explosion, and I've seen those. It's
yellowish-orange and red in color and it generates a little black
cloud of s moke, and the smoke generally congeals above the
explosion and above the light. It is a high-velocity explosion.''
Flak is antiaircraft cannon fire that explodes near its target
and fragments into shrapnel. Meyer described a high-velocity
explosion as ``now you don't see it, now you do.''
``A second or maybe a second and a half later, at an altitude
that looked like the trajectory was bent downward a little, I saw
a brilliant white explosion. I don't know what it was. It looked
somewhat like a white phosphorus round, but not exactly. It was a
separate, distinct explosion. They were not concentric. They were
two different explosions, the second to the left of the first.''
Next came a low-velocity explosion, a fireball that grew in size
and continued moving to the left, or east. The third explosion
could either have been two separate ones that merged or just one
large event, Meyer said. The entire sequence took 12 to 15
seconds from the initial sighting of the streak to the fireball,
Meyer said.
Baur said in interviews shortly after the accident that he saw a
streak moving from left to right, or east to west, before the
first explosion. That first burst was a ``hard white light,''he
was quoted saying in a March 10 story in Aviation Week and Space
Technology. The magazine attributed its account to unnamed crash
investigators who quoted Bauer.
``I was trying to figure out what it was,'' the story quotes Baur
as saying. ``It was the wrong color for flares. It struck an
object coming from the right and made it explode.''
But Baur's head was down when Meyer first saw a streak. Meyer
said his view to the left was partially blocked by Baur's body
and the cockpit's structure.
``I'm just in total awe and saying (to myself) `What in hell is
that?''' Meyer recalled. ``I, I, just don't know what it is,'' he
said, still stammering and groping for words a year later.
The eerie scene played out in silence, the explosive sounds
muffled by the men's ear plugs and helmets and drowned out by the
HH 60 Blackhawk helicopter's engine and whirring blades.
Baur broke the mesmerizing moment, asking if the crew was
watching ``pyro,'' short for pyrotechnics, a term used for
dropping flares. A C-130 crew from Meyer's 106th Air Rescue Wing
was to practice night air refueling with the helicopter and then
drop flares in practice.
Paul Beaver, a missile specialist for Jane's, a British
publishing house with expertise in military equipment and
research, called Meyer's account ``very compelling evidence of
some kind of projectile'' hitting TWA 800. Beaver of Jane's
Information Group said the description fit that of a longer-range
missile warhead detonating near a target.
Beaver has been naval editor and aerospace and defense editor for
Jane's. He is a pilot, British army reserve officer and has fired
air-to-ground missiles.
Beaver said during interviews Monday that the first
reddish-orange burst Meyer saw was consistent with an exploding
warhead. Some missiles explode near a target and send shrapnel
hurling into the aircraft to cause structural damage.
The white explosion could be solid fuel used to propel missiles,
Beaver said, which he called just as dangerous and destructive as
a warhead. ``It has the right look,'' he said of the white
detonation.
The British destroyer HMS Sheffield was destroyed by the solid
fuel propelling a French-made Exocet missile during the Falklands
War with Argentina in 1982, Beaver said. The anti-ship missile's
warhead did not explode when it struck the Sheffield but the
propellant did and caused fires that spread out of control.
Twenty men were killed, 24 injured and 242 crew members saved.
There are some tandem missiles but they are used against tanks
and not known to be antiaircraft weapons, Beaver said. Tandem
missiles have a warhead that first explodes near a hardened
target, and a second which then penetrates the weakened armament.
Missiles do emit a reddish exhaust trail but that normally is
when the weapons first launch, Beaver said. Missiles and drones
can leave a trail of smoke if the solid fuel is not functioning
properly, he said.
``It sounds like a projectile,'' said Beaver, who acknowledges
the mechanical theory of TWA 800's destruction has drawn his
support to date.
After seeing the explosions, Meyer and his crew decided to
investigate, radioed the tower, and accelerated almost due south
toward the fireball, which they saw hit the water.
The helicopter crew was the first to reach the disaster site,
arriving while bodies and flaming aircraft parts still rained
from the sky into a growing lake of fire floating on the ocean.
The crew skirted 50-foot flames billowing from jet fuel while
looking for possible survivors but found none. They spotted a
life raft but it was empty.
Meyer said it was several minutes before the combination of the
debris, number of bodies and radio report of a missing jumbo jet
brought to reality the scope of the disaster.
Meyer was interviewed by media in the first few days after and
said he couldn't conclude he saw a missile, a word he still
avoids. ``I don't know,'' he said. ``It could have been. But
there is a big difference between could have been and `I saw a
missile.' ''
He is adamant, however, that what he saw came toward the plane,
not from it. The word he uses is ``ordnance'': an explosive
projectile.
``I saw ordnance explode,'' he said. ``A military warhead. Could
I be wrong? Hey, I've been wrong before. But I don't think so on
this one.''
A Navy ship gun's explosive round is one example of ordnance,
Meyer said. He saw it during gunnery practice as an officer
aboard a destroyer and was close to flak pulling an aerial target
for gunnery practice off the Philippines and while waiting to r
escue downed pilots over North Vietnam.
The missiles he saw and had shot at him had erratic paths, not
the smooth trajectory he saw before the explosions and death fall
of TWA 800. That's why he did not conclude ``missile,'' he said.
``I have no idea what that streak of light was,'' Meyer said.
``It could have been a number of things. It could have been the
tailpipe of a missile. But I know the explosions I saw were
ordnance. The first two I saw were ordnance. The third was petro-
chemical.''
Baur, who is a pilot for the Customs Department, has been
directed by government officials not to talk about the crash,
according to military sources.
Meyer said he sought out FBI agents at the East Moriches Coast
Guard station the second day after the crash and finally talked
to two, who asked no questions. After a week of fitful dreams, he
said, he asked FBI agents to meet him at the home of a military
colleague and told the story again.
That was his last FBI-only session, although agents attended two
other briefings he gave, he said. One of those sessions was in
January, when a four-member NTSB team talked to him for five
minutes. Another was when he briefed his Air National Guard un
it's leaders.
NTSB spokesman Peter Goelz said Meyer was free at anytime to
offer his conclusions, testimony or assessments and that both the
FBI and NTSB continued to ask witnesses for reports. Goelz said
he agreed with Meyer that Meyer was no explosives expert. Meyer
said he can't believe the NTSB believes what it is reporting.
``When the prestigious organization that I have come to respect
in 30 years of aviation, the NTSB, announces that they have
concluded that the center wing fuel tank was the cause of the
destruction of the aircraft, I just can't believe it.
``The conclusion that an explosion in the . . . tank could have
been caused by an overheating air conditioner or a spark from a
12-volt fuel pump is ludicrous,'' he said.
Meyer also criticized freelance journalist and investigator James
Sanders, whose book, ``The Downing of TWA Flight 800,'' concludes
that Meyer was part of a U.S. military project guarding a Navy
missile test. Meyer called the allegation a ``lie,'' and said his
unit never had been involved in joint exercises with the Navy.
Some people, including Sanders, believe TWA 800 was downed in a
``friendly fire'' accident during a missile test -- struck by an
unarmed missile that went through the plane, somehow touching off
the gas tank explosion. The Navy, FBI and NTSB have said the Navy
did not shoot down the jetliner and did not have aircraft or
ships with anti-aircraft missiles close enough to do so.
Sanders said he did not want to battle with Meyer, but when
putting together all the evidence of Navy, Coast Guard, Air
National Guard and other assets, Meyer's comment about no joint
operations ``does not appear accurate.''
Meyer did say that most military personnel with whom he has
talked believe TWA 800 was shot down by a missile. As for whose
missile, he said: ``There, you've really got the question.
There's no way I can give you a definitive answer.''
Meyer no longer is in the Air National Guard. He was retired
mandatorily from military service in May when he was passed
overfor promotion to lieutenant colonel, two years short of an
automatic age-triggered end to his flying status.
Lt. Col. Jim Finkle, spokesman for Meyer's former unit, said the
helicopter pilot was not promoted because he had failed to
complete a required Air Command and Staff College course. ``The
only reason I joined the unit was to fly,'' Meyer said. ``I had
had offers to go to staff and be promoted but I told them I was
having too much fun flying.''
Meyer said a superior officer suggested that Meyer should not
discuss what he saw about TWA 800 until after the NTSB concluded
what caused the accident. Meyer said he did not take the
suggestion as an order but imposed his own gag because of bad
expe riences with the media.
For instance, he said, one TV program used a clip of an interview
to make it appear he thought a meteor might have struck the
jetliner, something he does not believe. ``I have never seen a
shooting star during daylight,'' he said.
Meyer said he felt it necessary to share his unique perspective
with the public, given the investigation's apparent course.
``I've been in the service for 25 years and have had access to
military secrets,'' he said. ``If they had a secret, they could
call me into a room and tell me what was happening in conformance
with secrecy standards and then tell me not to speak.
``But to say nothing and ignore me and then to put out
information that is false, is to make me ask questions and
conclude that something is wrong. What are they trying to cover
up? `They' is however high it goes.
``I got a moment of time that evidently I don't share with any of
the other 4 million people on Long Island on that day. That's
what I have to contribute to the truth of this incident.''
NTSB officials say their investigation may last another
year,while the FBI has said that lack of physical evidence of a
bomb or missile may lead them to end their involvement in two or
three months.
The NTSB plans to hold a public hearing in Baltimore in December
to review evidence and take testimony. NTSB spokesman Peter Goelz
said he did not know if Meyer would be asked to testify because
witness lists were not complete.