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Old 12th Mar 2016, 01:23
  #57 (permalink)  
BRDuBois
 
Join Date: Nov 2015
Location: Seattle area
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I get a lot of drive-by psychoanalysis from this project. I'm used to it.

The first published version was actually draft 13, so by the time I released a version there was a lot of evolution behind it. I'm a writer; I do many drafts. It took quite a bit of writing before I realized what the CAB/ALPA errors implied about the flight and therefore the crew. It started just as I stated in the document - with no expectations.

The wire strike evidence that you allude to does not exist. There was a bare statement in a report saying the plane was at about a 70 degree angle when it hit the wire. From that you deduce that it was measured from the breaks, with absolutely no evidence of that and good reason to doubt it. And you treat that conjecture as if it were evidence itself. This is ludicrous.

I understand that you differ in interpreting the object on the tracks. It's very hard to make out, and it's only by some reading between the lines that we can make a determination. Evidence on that point is pretty good, but clearly circumstantial.

It falls to me to rewrite history because the CAB and ALPA did such a crappy job of it. The errors in the official reports are obvious and egregious. You have said that they don't go to the cause of the matter, which is true. But they are nonetheless evidence of a slapdash approach that treats the physical evidence in an almost offhanded manner. This gives me all the permission I need to state the obvious truth. They got almost everything except the root cause wrong.

As I say in the document, you should treat with suspicion any relative who says the crew did better than was reported. You should probably treat with suspicion any claim at all by a relative. But it landed in my lap so I have to do the job. The evidence was out there for 55 years and no one else did it.
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