IGh,
thanks! I didn't know about AA Flight 1.
Yankee Whiskey, I say again, you need to get to grips with the physics of freezing water. You are persuading me rather well that one cannot learn it just by doing.
Screwball, thanks for the kind words. There is some reason behind it. I actually think airsupport is an impostor. I have had lots of dealings over the years with alternative-explanation theorists. Some of them are right, most of them are clearly wrong (some of them stupidly wrong, like Pierre Salinger). But all of them have been only too glad to provide reams of information, usually far more than one wants or that is useful, about their theories. Airsupport says one thing, expressible in one or two short sentences, and then goes aggressively ad hominem if one asks him for any details. This behavior just doesn't fit type. The guy doesn't appear to have any clue about engineering (I cannot imagine any serious engineer describing a component that failed 30+% over spec strength as "seriously weakened") and acts rapidly to deflect any engineering query. I think he's just trying to spread an internet rumor and chose the wrong forum.
Speaking of alternative-explanation theorists, I would like to mention two in particular.
One is the cluster of people around (was it?) the Boeing wiring lab who were distributing reams of information in 1995 about wiring defects (degradation and so on) in older transport airplanes and no one apparently would listen to them. (One should not forget in this regard the prescient work done by Pat Cahill at the FAA Technical Center.) Then came TWA 800 and the colleagues at the NTSB discovered all about the extent of the problem with aging wiring. Not to denigrate their excellent investigative work, but I do think it was a bit mean not to credit the others who were on the case years previously. I didn't say anything about it, though.
The other is Robert Allardyce, who through doggedness and selective application of the FOIA uncovered some USG data (radar data showing the track over Alaska; data from CIA OTH backscatter radar mid-ocean) which is inconsistent with the ICAO explanation of the nav error undergone by KAL 007. That discrepant data has still to be explained. I don't necessarily buy Allardyce's explanation, but he has done the hard work necessary to get the data. There is some hope that we might learn more in 2008, for that is then 25 years hence and much government information is declassified after 25 years.
PBL