Hi,
I followed closely all this Concorde tragic event from the beginning (as lambda citizen) and also read all the reports of BEA and the reports from the British inquiry side.
Also read the report of the judicial process.
The case is very simple ...
It's the metal (titan) part loss by Continental aircraft who launch the events of the crash or it is not.
If you follow the BEA report .. the conclusion is that is the metal part involved ...
But in the judicial process .. the experts were not able to explain the exact processus who followed after the collision with the metal part ...they were not able to remake it in laboratories ... they have just some toughts.
Mr Arslanian and so the BEA (the BEA boss at time) when questionning about the other thesis (fire before collision with part) discarded (why? no reasons unless some as explained in a post above) the reports of the firesquad crew and also the report of the crew of the plane waiting aside (president Chirac aboard)
One can ask .. what is the more embarassing option for the frenchs (and this is a lot of french parties involved) .. ?
Fire before or after metal part collision ?