SaturnV>JBS, I am not surprised that you denigrate the competency of the lawyers for the Sikh defendants in the various Crown prosecutions associated with the loss of Air India 182.
JBS>I do not denigrate the competency of the criminal lawyers for Air India Flight 182, I've talked to them, they know about crime but nothing about airplanes. They can not even ask questions because they don't know why planes fly or crash.
SaturnV>Of all the various scenarios for what happened to TW 800, and there are many, yours is the only one based on an initiating failure of the forward cargo door.
JBS>So?
SaturnV>Is it perhaps because that TW 800 was at 13,600 feet with a differential pressure of 3.5 psi, and UA 811 was between 22 and 23,000 feet with a differential pressure of 6.5 psi, and how does one then explain why, with the same failure mode, UA was able to successfully land and TW 800 catastrophically breaks apart?
JBS>My Smith Table is for matches not mismatches. I could put in a match that there was sufficient differential at initial event time to cause the rupture of the cargo door if the midspan latches just pass off center a bit. They were not on the ground or depressurized in the air. There was 38000 pounds to 96000 pound of pressure pressing on the inside of that curved door with lone midspan latch holding eight feet of fuselage slice together. Oh, and have I mentioned there are no locking sectors on those midspan latches, I think I have actually, over and over again ad nauseum, sorry, but it just sort of flows....
But...you did allude to a stage 7 question that is always asked by open minds: I'm impressed. Why did United Airlines Flight 811 land without nose coming off? I wrestled with that for two years. My answer, and it could be wrong, is that the rectangular hole in the nose was much smaller than the others, probably because the pull in hooks keep the door from flying open for 1.5 seconds allowing a partial decompression. The pilot thinks the nose stayed on because he was off autopilot and did not fight the large yaw he encountered when the door blew open.
SaturnV>Why is it that you omitted a variable involving the CVR? Is it perhaps because the CVR on United 811 functioned all the way to landing?
JBS>The table was for matches and the CVR on United Airlines Flight 811 is the model, it had the sudden sound on the CVR followed by the abrupt power cut to the FDR like all five. Some of the matches may be insignificant while other matches were left out. I matched up similarities such as a fingerprint expert might do. The partial print of United Airlines Flight 811 matches the prints of the other five while not matching up to the other 30 or so hull losses of other Boeing 747s.
SaturnV>And how to explain away the sudden abrupt loss of CVR and FDR power in TW 800 from a progressive (albeit rapid) failure of the hull when the CVR and FDR power and data cabling run along the top of the cabin?
JBS>I don't explain it away, I embrace it. The power was lost probably because the main equipment compartment is adjacent to the forward cargo compartment.. The power was cut probably from the explosion of the decompression not the nose coming off although with China Airlines Flight 611 it appears power was cut when the tail came off.
But, good questions. The actual sequence of events instant by instant is one I am very curious about and need much computer simulation power and data to determine.
SaturnV>And there is your variable of the number of unrecovered bodies in all five crashes being at least nine. What the relevance of this is escapes me,
JBS>You could ask me.
SaturnV>other than the fact that there were nine unrecovered bodies for UA 811. However, once again, you have the facts wrong. Last I read, they had identified all but two of the bodies from TW 800, and hoped to identify even these two.
JBS>Well, a body is a body and not fragments of bone which has DNA. They have identified all I thought but there were many bodies never recovered. The significance of nine is of course United Airlines Flight 811. Pan Am Flight 103 had ten never recovered bodies and that was after searches which retrieved fingernail sized pieces of plastic. Ten missing bodies which were actively searched for on land and nine on sea is an important clue that they were not there to be found; they probably were sucked in and vaporized into bone fragments by engine three. There are several reports by those on United Airlines Flight 811 or had victim relatives that some were sucked into the engine three of United Airlines Flight 811 but not a word in the AAR.
SaturnV>However, once again, you have the facts wrong.
JBS>However, once again, you have to make the insult.
SaturnV>Loeb appears to be specifically referring to you, and having never examined the wreckage of TW 800, how do you maintain credibility on a witness stand in the face of such a statement?
JBS>Ah. Another question.
Well, first of all Loeb is not an aircraft accident investigator, and second I'm not on a witness stand trying to persuade a non aviation jury, and third, his statement is contrary to the actual evidence which you can see with your actual eyes of the actual wreckage. I think Loeb actually believes what he said even though the shattered door is there to see with most of it still missing. He certainly refused for five years to ever respond to the hundreds of emails I sent to him. For NTSB to say that there was no evidence of an inflight separation of the forward cargo door of Trans World Airlines Flight 800 is to ignore: Missing midspan latches, missing manual locking handle, missing torque tubes and bellcranks, missing pressure relief doors, calling an aft cargo door sill the forward cargo door sill, the wreckage distribution that shows the first parts to come from the aircraft came from just forward of the wing and of course the many many matches to United Airlines Flight 811. The conclusion of latched and locked and intact forward cargo door for Trans World Airlines Flight 800 is based on one line in one exhibit by Wildey which says that the bottom eight latches were latched and locked and therefore the entire door was latched and locked. To say a door is latched and locked without knowing the status of two of the latches and the position of the manual locking handle is wishful thinking for those who want that cargo door closed.
But, if you want to believe other's opinions and do not trust your own judgment, do not look at the actual blown away and shattered forward cargo door of Trans World Airlines Flight 800, do not look at the shattered forward cargo door Pan Am Flight 103, or read about the shattered door of Air India Flight 182, or look at the shattered top part of the China Airlines Flight 611 aft cargo door.
Using opinions of others as proof is not good enough for science when the evidence is there for you to see. Look at those doors and tell me that ‘ that there was absolutely no evidence of an in-flight separation of the forward cargo door’. Your opinion is what counts.
There is clear evidence and it’s in color and in focus, on web site corazon.com.I would show images that clearly show the ruptures at the midspan latches of Trans World Airlines Flight 800 but can't post them since the img function does not work for me. I'll keep trying.
If you want to list all the opinions of those who believe bombs and fuel tanks are exploding and causing 747s to crash, you will have a long list. To list the opinion of one who believes the cause is the same as United Airlines Flight 811 is a short list, me.
What is your opinion based on the actual evidence? Looking at those shattered doors with those similarities, do you think those doors were all latched and all locked and all intact until water or ground impact?
You can plead ignorance of course, but then this is not complicated logic but plain looking at something and trying to figure out what happened to it.
Cheers,
Barry
JBS>To the skeptics:
I appreciate all the criticism, really. There is no in house team to bounce ideas off or phone calls to experts to confirm this or that. The adversarial technique is fine with me. Most truth is determined while someone is crying.
The proof that you care is you are not walking away disinterested. You may care that the conventional wisdom for the causes of those crashes remain where it is but you do care. Indifference is the opposite of love. I think we all love aviation.
And I also believe you believe there is something to this mechanical explanation for five Boeing 747 accidents called the shorted wiring/forward cargo door rupture/explosive decompression/inflight breakup and the shorted wiring/aft cargo door rupture/rapid decompression/inflight breakup explanation or you would have walked away after a cursory reading of the explanations.
But... the facts just keep on coming up on the side of the mechanical explanation and away from conspiracy plots or fires that start with no ignition source.
The more you dig, the more you will come around to the mechanical explanation. The more you stick to the evidence you can actually see or confirm from your prior experience, the more you will see the most likely, the logical, the one with precedent is the wiring/cargo door explanation.
So, keep on coming with apparent flaws in my reasoning. I have the belief over the years that the wiring/cargo door explanation always fits the facts when presented accurately.
As far as plots go, there are none. Just as the auto manufacturers preferred for years to believe their Corvair did not turn over easily, air bags do not kill, fuel tanks do not rupture in Ford Crown Vics or GM trucks, Firestone tires do not blow out suddenly, and on and on, so does Boeing not believe they have a serious problem with nonplug cargo doors or faulty wiring in early model 747s.
What do do about it? Well for years I’ve been reluctantly saying, ‘Wait until the next one.” Well the next one may have happened and it still may make no difference. That is discouraging. But so what? Press on is the only answer.
On 747 plastic models the passenger doors are all marked while the cargo door outlines are missing, the status of cargo doors which are part of the exploded cargo compartments of real accidents is omitted and pictures absent, press reports on the strange evidence that the investigators feel important enough to comment on or try to retrieve from the ocean is absent in the press. It’s as if those doors did not exist, are unworthy of attention, and trivial.
Anyone that knows the danger of pressure cookers, seen soda or beer cans opened after shaking, or knows firsthand the power of explosive decompression never considers non plug doors trivial whether in submarines or airplanes or space capsules as doors or hatches that open when they shouldn’t have caused fatalities in those vehicles.
I do enjoy the forum and thank PPRuNe for providing it for us. Any thinking about aviation safety is good thinking.
Cheers,
Barry