More shrapnel photos
 

Heli-phile has found a phenomenal source. Professional news photographer who knows what to shoot and has a great camera. Dozens of shots of DAMAGE. 100% this was shot down.

https://secure.flickr.com/photos/jeroenakkermans/

This guy is THE GUY for this. He is a region expert and even has an entry in the Dutch Wikipedia. Here is my translation:

Jeroen Akkermans started at RTL News in 1989 as a producer, editor and reporter at the special European desk. In 1991 Akkermans became a correspondent in Moscow. His earlier experience was for Super Channel, Reuters TV and European Business Today. In Russia, he made the documentary Hostages of the Gulag.

In 1994 he received the Dick Scherpenzeel Prize for his reports on the war in Chechnya.

From 1996 to 2001 Akkermans was a correspondent in London. <snip boring stuff>

After 2001 Akkermans, based in Berlin, travelled Eastern Europe and the Balkans as a correspondent for Yahoo! News.

On August 12, 2008, his leg was injured during a Russian bombardment in the Georgian town of Gori. Cameraman Stan Storimans was killed in the explosion. In 2009 Akkermans returned to Georgia and made a documentary based on this missile attack. Akkermans, together with the widow of Stan Storimans and Georgian survivors of the attack on Gori sued Russia the Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg. [result not given in story]

In 2009 he published a book, There Are Limits, about the euphoria and disappointments of Europe.

In 2011 Akkermans made the documentary Chernobyl, 25 years after the disaster.


He knows what to look for, knows what he's seeing. And must understand the language (even if maybe he can't speak it).


AHHH he didn't just arrive, he's been there for a while, he has albums from various earlier stages of the conflict. Guy's a war correspondent.

This may seem a little far fetched........ Would there be any evidentiary value in examining the effect of a BUK 11 missile warhead being detonated close to the cockpit of a scrapped B777? The Asiana Airlines’ wreck could be put to good use & I'm sure the Ukrainians would be delighted to donate a warhead.

The beam coverage in the vertical is only 6 or 7 degrees but, for comparison, the widest air-to-air beam on US F-16s is only 6 degrees, with pilot controls to narrow that to 4 or 2 degrees for better target separation and more rapid position updates.

The rest is up to a poor man's C&C - they have somebody at the end of the runway who texts an order for one pizza, extra tomato sauce, for pickup at some time. Once you know what airbase, how many planes, what type, you start scanning the appropriate 120 degree field repeatedly, adjusting the antenna angle so you build an overlapping picture that covers the possible altitudes. If you get the expected number of returns at about the predicted flight time, you lock one up and shoot. If you don't fully understand the system, get too excited, or are bad with geometry and algebra, you can read the altitude and closure rate wrong, not notice the target return is a bit too strong (or mistake that for lower and closer), etc.

Even if you know what you are doing, since the TELAR has to emit to locate the target and then provide illumination for the duration of the engagement, you might be in a hurry as the other side, once they notice your side can reach planes above MANPAD altitudes, may have anti-radiation missiles that can kill you. One of the nice features of an integrated air defense system is that missile launchers and radar emitters don't have to be collocated or even locally manned, making the job of sorting targets less pressured.

Used to get quite defined radar returns on the Airbus around Europe, would be a red segment starting at the aircraft and extending to the edge of the radar display fanning out to around 10 degrees at the edge. I always wondered what the was until one day I flew with a captain who was an ex tornado driver. He was 100% sure that when this happened it meant we were being tracked by a ground radar station! he said that when he was stationed in Germany the radar operators regularly trained by locking onto passing airliners! Now I don't know if any of that is true but it seemed reasonable as this always happened over Germany and on multiple different aircraft. Made me wonder whether you might see this sort of return as the SAM raced towards you, not that you could do anything about it.

As an aside, is it true that all EL AL aircraft are equipped with counter measures?

Assuming you believe what you read on Wikipedia......

One American senator is busy making a knee-jerk call for flares on US aircraft too according to the Washington Post....

Just for clarity, any "countermeasures" installed on airliners are designed to defend against heat seaking manpads at low altitude, primarily during before/after landing/takeoff phases. They would provide zero protection against radar homing SAMs like the Buk-1m.

I'm pretty sure it is common for military to practice radar tracking and lock on to civilian traffic even in the west.
As for mistakes being made - read Dan Hampton's "Viper Pilot". On returning to Turkey after the first strike against Mosul, with dozens of aircraft stacked over the base waiting to land the guys saw a SAM launch. One of the Patriots defending the base. Seems someone left it on "auto" and when it saw all the radar returns it launched. Fortunately didn't hit anyone nor did any Weasel strafe the battery.:)
This for an army with 6 months or so notice to go to war.

Wishful speculation, but I hope US yesterday back down on blame and guilt would be a pretext for a behind the scenes negotiated confession from someone, “we did it, it was a terrible mistake”. IMHO it wouldn't really otherwise make sense for the US administration to lower the heat on Russia, especially for domestic reasons.

So much buzz about "black boxes" in media... I do not believe that UK investigators will hear the crew saying that they see Dr. Evil (or Mr. Putin) in a fighter shooting at 777. They will likely see/hear nothing.



Studying debris seems more interesting to make sure what elements actually hit the plane. This could at least prove that it was (or was not) BUK. If not (i.e. no BUK shrapnel found), then the story would begin anew.


There were some discussion here about A2A R-60. This looks very unlikely. The missile is too small and, more important, having a passive IR seeker, it would be heading toward one of the engines. And even if coming from the front it would explode some 5-10 m near the engine, i.e. well away from the 777 cockpit. Then, if the engine were hit, it should not be a fatal damage to the aircraft. Known cases when R-60 was used show that even a (much smaller than 777) planes (F-15 and Israeli Kfir) were able to continue flying, at least did not fall apart. Continuing on the A2A "option", R-27 (by the way, Ukraine manufactured at the "Artyom" plant) is much more serious thing, with semi-active radar-based guidance and a 40 kilo warhead (i.e. 12 times as much as R-60).

Have you seen the pictures of the cockpit area & wings?

Would be very surprised if chaff/flares were in El Al, can you imagine the mayhem of an accidental discharge on the apron...., can you chaff this type of radar missile? Thought it was only the low level stuff? I heard a few years back in Muscat Oman, a C17 was coming in and they had forgotten to disarm the auto chaff/flare system, she was firing off flares on final every time the SSR painted her. Those living below not happy campers!

Trouble with an airliner at altitude, it's a drum tight aluminium balloon, one good jab with a sharp object.....

Dumping it into a lake presents an obvious problem that eventually Ukrainian army will take the area and fish the thing out of the lake. There aren't any particularly deep lakes or rivers around anyway. The biggest local river is Seversky Donets, with average depth 2.5 m. Blowing it up so thoroughly as to destroy all identifying properties is also problematic (it's a big hunk of steel, after all). The safest way is to get it into Russia and let it disappear on the other side of the border.

Snizhne is 20 km from the border with Russia as the crow flies, but that particular part of the border is under firm Ukrainian control. You are not going to have a solid chance of sneaking it through that way. You have to go through one of the separatist-controlled border crossings. The primary one is Krasnodon/Izvaryne, far to the northeast, that's the one that Russia uses to send most of its heavy military equipment to the rebels. There are multiple Youtube videos showing convoys of tanks and other armored equipment heading through Krasnodon. The preferred route seems to be Krasnodon-Luhansk-Donetsk, for whatever reason. (E.g. http://ukraineatwar.********.nl/2014...-vehicles.html)

As to why they have to go through Luhansk instead of going straight for the crossing, that is harder to explain, but there may be reasons. Many roads in the area are passable on paper but not in practice, because of blown bridges & such.

Jeroen Akkermans photos
 

Wel, I'm sure Mr. Akkermans has a "great camera" as quoted in a previous post. Actually, doesn't everyone these days? And isn't he a photographer? But he also isn't above falsifying his work.

Take a look. In the posted Flickr link there's a photograph of a pair of souvenir clogs which sit remarkably neatly alongside one another. Then follows another version of the same image however alongside the clogs this time there's part of an over-ear headphone. No doubt this was done for scale but however you look at it it's still tampering with the evidence at a crime scene. Trivial - and yes, he's Dutch, but...

MH17: Malaysia PM Najib's secret deal wins praise for breakthrough

Kudos to the M'sian PM. Pragmatic leadership.

hamster3null: great stuff sourcing some Kiev'ian activist site as credible evidence of "that's the one that Russia uses to send most of its heavy military equipment to the rebels".

And to the Dutch alike. Those with the biggest justification for outrage has been those most diplomatic and pragmatic. The rest then seem to use this tragedy for their own political gains.

It´s a drum tight damage tolerant aluminium balloon, designed and tested to take some jab with fast and sharp objects, like those resulting from an uncontained engine failure. So it takes a little more than poking a needle into it. But an AA missile designed and tested for its intended purpose as well will of course do the trick.

"we thought it was parachutes"
 

I think someone posted this yesterday, but I didn't read it at the time (it's in Italian).

«Così è stato colpito l&rsquo;aereo» - Corriere.it

Long and short of it is, the writer interviewed a young separatist at the refrigerated-train station , who told him his unit had shot down a plane belonging to Kiev. The soldier was not at the BUK . He was loaded onto a truck and told "we" had just shot down the plane. White objects were seen floating down from it, which they thought were enemy soldiers escaping by parachute. They were driven to the site to capture or fight these enemy.

On arrival they discovered the white falling items were civilians (the first he found was a girl aged about 5) and the luggage was not military equipment. They started opening things to find out for sure. And after that his unit guarded the scene all day and night.

The writer comments on the innocent simplicity of how the story was told, a genuine narrative; the speaker a local resident, 31 year old former coal miner.

This fits with the early videos, the bags opened, the handful of passports, the comments "these are civilians, these are foreigners, who let them fly here?" the officer blessing himself after replacing the toy. Of course officially by then they were denying having such a weapon.

The separatists are going to lose, sooner rather than later. In places where people feel a need to take up arms to get what they see as fair treatment, losing usually puts them in an even worse situation. In 3 or 4 months' an offer full and frank disclosure about MH17 may save a lot of their lives. (Yeah I know there is no death penalty in Ukraine. But there's plenty of easy death).

Yeah, granted the "aluminium balloon jab" was a bit simplistic, but I guess I'm just a bit shocked at the degree of breakup of MH17, the "cripple7" is a strong aircraft, the 'Frisco accident demoed that, but I'm trying to make sense of this. Not that degree of breakup would have made any difference to the poor pax. This missile it seems, tracks to a predicted intercept point, so it makes sense it hit the cockpit area as evidence suggests so far at this early stage. A large hole there and would explosive decompression have broken the cockpit away? Possibly then violent pitch up/pitch down causing the wings to fail and that would probably do it.

This airframe was blown apart in the air and smashed into the ground across a wide area.
How can cutting any parts lying on the ground be classed as "destroying the evidence"?
It looks like the aircraft was downed by a group using weapons supplied by Russia. Do we now hold the US responsible for deaths caused by Isreal using weapons supplied by the US?

Tampering?
 

re Akkermans the photographer.

So he put earphones next to a souvenir for scale? so? the souvenir clogs are flotsam, not evidence. Do you think he enlarged the holes in the wing, for effect? or aren't you going to look at that?

My point was, yes, he had a great camera; yes he is a photographer, a professional photographer, so his pictures are worth looking at because he knows what to photograph. Did you read his bio? he's been there, done that, (been wounded too), he knows what's important to document.

Google "Continuous rod warhead".

"he knows what's important to document"

which is why his data and account of events over there needs to be dis-credited ASAP by some, it would seem

Broke in air, burned on ground
 

Decompression on a craft perforated by a few hundred fist-sized holes? certainly.

The cockpit and the tail section ended quite far apart, in clean condition. If the missile exploded low enough, some shrapnel could have hit the fuselage where it narrows, helping to detach the rear section. Cockpit and port wing show a lot of missile damage; the tail I can't see yet.

A lot of the main fuselage is missing/smashed/incinerated, to the extent that the OCSE (political) observers are claiming the "rebels took the fuselage away" . There still exist small sections of fuselage, one piece of overhead lockers that I've seen, a big curled section standing on end....

The port wing seems to have taken much of the initial blast, and broke off, unburned. Starboard wing and engine seem to have stayed attached, ended up burning. Fire started only on impact when the centre fuel tanks ruptured. The port wing by this time too far away to flash over to that. Cockpit would have separated early on, or just held on by a thread until ground impact, which was most likely not nose first.

Fuselage+right wing unit would have tumbled, raining out people and cargo on both ends; most would not have burned, the ones who did will be hard to recognise. Most would not be strapped in (mid afternoon and awake) and seats were dislodged from the floor (or the floor from the frame) by the missile impact, though some appear to have concertinaed on ground impact (some empty).

They were not "drained of blood" as that silly rebel said. But they would not have bled a lot, perhaps that's what he meant. By the time they got whatever hitting the ground injuries they got, they were indeed dead, combinaton of freezing and no oxygen up there. Horrible as this is, at least they'd not have known what hit them, literally, unconscious while still in the first surprise stage of what's happening??.

See for yourself
 

Google it, to see what to expect, then look at the IMAGES which TELL THE STORY

https://secure.flickr.com/photos/jeroenakkermans/

In brief, no, this was a nice old style missile with much smaller warhead shrapnel. Enough to do the job though. The newer bigger spinning rods just let them be more sloppy with the aim and still not miss.

Akkermans' photographs
 

He may well be a first-class news photographer. There are plenty out there. I have no wish to discredit the value of any illustrative content in these photographs. However "dressing the set" should be confined to studio photography - there's NO excuse at a crime scene, no matter what the nature of the items disturbed.

As for "knowing what to photograph", other than taking the obvious shots of airframe parts peppered with holes made from the ingress of sharp objects, many of which have appeared previously under many different bylines, you couldn't go wrong in this situation and his photographs resemble everything else shot at the scene. You'd have to be an air accident investigator to really know what to photograph other than the obvious.

And speaking of the obvious, the core information about this crime became available within about 12 hours of the event - well before those involved had time to "manage" the situation - and no objective person is likely to arrive at significantly different conclusions. The subsequent 5h!t-storm of obfuscation by every party with an interest (Russians, separatists, Ukranian government, USA) is already starting to obscure the picture.

MH17
 

The route was approved by Eurocontrol ATC, safe per ICAO, IATA.

However the airline has a responsibility to apply contingency planning as is done with high terrain on a route. Escape routes are planned by an airline to cater for the event of engine(s) failure or a depressurisation over areas of very high terrain.

Therefore it is no excuse to say that the route was approved by the Eurocontrol ATC. It must be assumed that an engine failure or depressurisation can occur at anytime. A B777 at a cruise altitude cannot maintain normal cruise altitude with a 50% loss of thrust due to an engine failure. At the sort of weight at that stage of flight, the one engine inoperative maximum altitude would have been in the region of 20,000 to 23,000 feet (depending on actual weight and air density). The point is that it is not relevant to say that as the upper limit of the war zone is 32,000 feet and as the aircraft was at 33,000 feet it was therefore, "safe". No consideration was given to a possible engine failure, depressurisation or cargo fire, requiring an immediate descent and placing it well with the assumed missile range. As we now know, 32,000 feet was a painfully flawed assumption in any case.

This route was taken for purely commercial reasons, now the airline is hiding behind an ATC approval. Since then, they have also flown over Syria.

There is an english version of the article, provided by the paper itself.
Enlightning...

How Malaysian Plane was Shot Down - Corriere.it

Absolutely correct. On takeoff, landing and enroute you plan for engine failure. A minimum altitude of 32,000 feet does not allow for engine failure.

balpa criticizes airline safety assessments
 

BBC News - Balpa criticises airline route safety assessments
I flew for a British Airline that deliberately lied to us re terrorism and were forced by Balpa to accept our life insurance risks; it's about time the public became aware of the gambling with their lives...let alone the crews.
In the 70s we I flew into 5 of these zones...three were with the risk of being shot down and two with being blown out of the skies. There is a file on one incident...but this is closed under the official secrets act ...still (1976).

One factor that hasn't been widely discussed here is who benefits if the action was deliberate? The Ukraine.

Dear BB97 and Flap 5,

AI, SQ and many others were in the vicinity if not on the same route during that time. Do they consider engine drift down as well? By your standard, all other airlines too hidding behind an ATC approval. Do you know that SQ immediate response was they don't use that airspace but later issued an apology as " insensitive statement"?

Is Syria a prohibited airspace or has the airline's country regulator imposed a ban? FAA ban does not necessary means everyone else in the world must follow. Situation on the ground fluctuates from time to time.

Isn't there some fighting in Iraq? So many flight still going over the top of it.

The Russia accusation of MH17 being off track, look carefully at the airways they qouted, it was L69 where MH17 was in fact on L980.

Easy to finger point, next time point it in the mirror!!

No KatSLF, not correct. An immediate driftdown from FL330 would be required at that weight (I am a B777 captain), so you would be below FL320 well before exiting the war zone. The whole argument is irrelevant anyway because 32,000 feet does not protect you from a missile. No civilian airliner should fly anywhere near a war zone, period.

Remember that in war, "friendly fire" accounts for many deaths and injuries (I am also an ex military pilot). If professional military personnel can mistake their own forces, how safe do you feel as a civilian airliner above these "military" people on the ground who are not true professionals? They are rebel insurgents, often intoxicated and they have their finger on the trigger. Still want to risk "gliding into Russia" KatSLF? Oh and if the aircraft depressurises, it won't be gliding. The crew will execute a Rapid Descent.

Actually the photographs show that the whole forward fuselage broke away many frames aft of the NLG bay (I can count around 15 frames between NLG bay and end of picture), somewhere between door 1 and the cargo door I would assume.

@KatSLF
Just to remind you that there was known to be at least one passenger from the Lockerbie disaster who was for a short period both alive and conscious after they had impacted the ground.

Typically it would take between 30 seconds and 1 minute for those passengers not incapacitated in the accident but ejected from the a/c to loose consciousness though lack of oxygen at that altitude. Whether many would regain consciousness as the oxygen levels increased on the way down is another question.
I would also expect windblast type injuries to abound to arms and legs as they would not have been falling like a trained parachutist would.

Saying that if a missile defense system were fitted to a commercial airliner it would not be effective against a radar guided missile is a statement I question. Consider the facts.

MPADS missiles are a desirable weapon for terrorists and are a potential threat to civil aviation for many obvious reasons. Therefore, it seems logical to equip airliners with anti-MPADS systems, with flares being one way to counter these missiles. However, there are so few commercial airliners fitted with defensive systems that's it's hard to draw any conclusions about them at this point in time. Are they effective? Are they too dangerous? The potential danger associated with flares is of major concern and that is one reason American Airlines has been testing JetEye, an automated system to detect an attacking missile and defeat it using a powerful laser.

What is known is that military aircraft equipped with the capability to eject flares to counter heat-seeking missiles can just as easily dispense chaff, using the same system, in an attempt to counter radar guided missiles. This is nothing new. I first dispensed chaff from a flare dispenser 48 years ago. AirForce-1, which is technically a military aircraft can dispense flares as well as chaff and is also equipped with sophisticated Active Electronic Counter Measures.

Is the time ripe for airliners to be fitted with anti-missile systems and if so, what kind? Certainly a flare dispenser would be loaded with chaff if the radar guided threat were more serious than that from an IR guided missile, but is the radar threat more serious? Should airliners also use active ECM?

I don't claim that these are ALL the civil aircraft shot down with missiles, but a quick search shows 6 were downed by shoulder fired IR missiles (Air Rhodesia Flight 825, Air Rhodesia Flight 827, 3 Transair Georgia airliners on 3 consecutive days, and Lionair Flight 602) killing a total of 285 people.

Three were downed by sophisticated radar guided missiles (KAL-007, Iran Air 665, and MH-17) killing 857 people.

Of the ones downed by MPADS, they were, for the most part, landing or taking off in an active fighting zone and/or carrying military personnel. In one case, the airline was warned it would be shot down if it continued to carry high ranking enemy soldiers. In other words, if you're flying in and out of a war zone on an airliner, expect some risk.

The ones downed by radar missiles, on the other hand, carried no such apparent risk. None of them were flying into or out of an active war zone and it has to be assumed none of the passengers knew they were putting themselves in harm's way.

When it comes to civilian airliners three times as many innocent, unsuspecting people have been killed by sophisticated radar missiles fired by organized military forces as have been killed by shoulder fired missiles operated by irregular forces operating in known combat zones.

Does that mean that anti-radar counter measures should be a higher priority than anti-IR measures? Personally, I think and all IR defense is short-sighted. In any case, a quick look at the history of missile intercepts and civilian airliners does strike me as interesting and somewhat counter-intuitive.

Actually, it seems he was travelling light....those photos were all taken with a Samsung EK-GC100. I'm not sure I'd fantasize over any 'Point & Shoot' compact as being a 'great camera'.... by their very design they are inherently limited and constrained.

Indeed. Given the competitive nature of professional photography and the fact they make their money making photos, they have to take decent photos.

Also those people accusing him of tampering with the crime scene, how do you know he did ? Another journo / rebel / whatever person might have moved the stuff around and he just spotted the photographic composition.

The flight deck floor under the commander's seat appears to have similar perforations to the outer skin on the port side (10 pence piece size holes with the primer showing underneath) (only one visible on starboard) and the remains of the windows look heavily sooted (or it may be mud - it's probably been lifted or moved off the ground)

Is the FDR fed telemetry from the avionics bay perhaps it won't have had much time to do a lot.

Sorry, photo for reference: https://secure.flickr.com/photos/jer...s/14715119004/

ekw: "You've got to remember that in the heat of the moment protagonists will often try to take the credit for positive outcomes, whether they are in the loop or not. The early boasts are entirely understandable."

I think this is a really important point. Given the prevalence of false internet claims I think it is incredibly disengenuous to rely upon those statements to lay blame and justify critical international policy actions. I'm sure intelligence agencies are smarter than that but if they are not it would explain a lot.

I think there are so many examples here where the publics in many countries are being treated like fools.

As for the media, there was a time (short-lived it seems) when journalists were intrepid questioners of truth. Now they appear to be nothing more than spineless servants regurgitating perfunctory propaganda.

Yesterday I read that some hunks of the nose of the plane has been cut loose and hauled away soon after the crash. (this could just be another tidbit from one of the many departments of lies and misdirection that are in full gear) . However is it possible that some good satellite photos could have recorded the initial crash conditions. I know it was overcast and cloudy but perhaps some other spectrum could image through the clouds with some detail. Anyone know how long before the skies cleared of clouds? One can imagine the radome and nose might have looked like swiss cheese.

"The cockpit and the tail section ended quite far apart, in clean condition. If the missile exploded low enough, some shrapnel could have hit the fuselage where it narrows, helping to detach the rear section. Cockpit and port wing show a lot of missile damage; the tail I can't see yet. "

Not sure there's any indication of the tail coming off until shortly before the end, nor the port outer wing section, and there's certainly nothing that looks like the shrapnel damage found at the cockpit anywhere that far back.

The well-photographed cockpit remains (actually the bottom half of the forward fuselage) and a lot of bits that seem to be universally from the forward part of the fuselage, including windows and a portion of fuselage including an emergency exit and the starboard side Malaysian flag are all clustered towards the western end of the wreckage path, 6km away from the tail, which is only about 700m south of the main wreckage.

The tail, APU, outer port wing, some other bits of what are possibly horizontal stabilizers and interior furnishings are right at the eastern edge, not far south of the main fire from the centre section wreckage with at least one wing and the engines and MLG. The early Akkermans shots are mostly from round here and he's carefully photographed two seat row markers on overhead lockers - 17 and 31, which are from the front over the wing back to nearly the tail, suggesting that some of the rear fuselage ended up here too. The 'ia' of 'Malaysia' on the port side of the fuselage, which is from around the wing root is here, too, along with the tail fuselage piece with the aircraft registration on.

There are quite a few largish bits visible on the satellite photos which no one appears to have photographed, possibly because they're unreachable by foot or far from roads. Something looking like a wing section is within the chicken farm to the west of the tail crash site.

It's notable that the wreckage trail bends round to the left as it goes on, ending up about 30 degrees from the original aircraft direction.