Originally Posted by
BRDuBois
My video shows the nose hitting just under 400 feet from the first impact on the railway embankment. The CAB said it slid the remaining 820 feet, which would start the slide before the trees.
Thanks, that what I couldn't tell for sure, and so that's in sync with the report.
The plane did not slide inverted, and it could not slide upright and tail first and leave us with inverted tail-first wreckage. Therefore it could not have slid tail first the final 820 feet.
No one is asserting the plane slid inverted the entire 820 feet, not even the CAB - hence their comments regarding disintegration along the way.
As Flaps and everyone else has pointed out, the inversion of the tail section most likely happened near or at the end of the sequence. I would remind you, for example that one witness quoted in newspaper articles described approaching the tail section just before an explosion occurred in it.
Even you wrote just before the quote above,
The CAB explicitly said the plane slid tail first the last 820 feet, though it doesn't explicitly say the plane was upright the whole way.
Well, yes, that's exactly our point.
This is how solutions are found. You start with a conjecture, a hypothesis, and look for evidence that either supports or refutes it. I challenge anyone to describe a mystery that was solved without any conjectures.
No. In an investigation of this type, you
start with observation and collection of evidence. Only after that, and
based on observation and evidence, do you begin propounding theories. Even the wildest conjectures in theoretical science derive from previous observations and some sort of evidence.
Starting with a conjecture then looking for evidence to support it is the basic definition of confirmation bias. And starting with a conjecture then looking for evidence to refute it is very close to the definition of prejudice, or leaves one with the impossible task of "proving" a negative". You
start with the
evidence, always.
Unfortunately, at this point, there is not yet enough evidence to construct the accident sequence reliably in full detail. On the bright side, you have a fair amount of data regarding the beginning of the sequence, and you have photos of the end...which is better than having nothing at all.
I did, by the way, read the title of the thread, I am, as you know, trying to provide "Help researching..." the crash. But conjecture is not research. The two terms are not synonyms.
Last, no, I don't believe you personally have ever questioned the CAB's conclusions as to the cause of the accident. You've made it very clear you have no disagreement with them there.
However, I just don't agree the CAB's report is necessarily "wrong". Failure to describe what they were not required to describe - the exact breakup sequence upon impact - is not the same thing as "wrong". Nonetheless, I'll admit that gets us into mainly semantics, so I'll just reiterate what I said before: the report was indeed poorly worded, and an incorrect inference was all to easy to draw, absent the photos necessary for clarification.
I do think the diagrams and other data that would make things clearer (
e.g., the wreckage chart, Lockheed's flight path calculations, etc.) still exist somewhere, in Lockheed's warehouse, or buried in incompletely-indexed microfilm at another National Archive location or a university library collection. Your FOIA request (an excellent step) may also bear fruit.
I remain committed to helping with that research, if you have no objection, and hope you understand I have the greatest respect for what you are trying to do, and for your perseverance in the face of considerable difficulty.
My best regards still,
c