Missiles Are Fired to Test Theory in 1996 TWA Crash

Investigators seeking answers to the 1996 explosion and crash of Trans World Airlines Flight 800 fired Stinger missiles into the air from a Florida beach last month to determine whether it is possible that streaks of light seen by several witnesses could have been missiles.

While investigators said they will need several weeks to analyze data from the unannounced tests, sources familiar with the tests said initial observations have turned up nothing to cast doubt on the National Transportation Safety Board’s preliminary determination that no missile hit the plane. The board determined shortly after the crash that the plane’s nearly empty center fuel tank exploded, but they so far have not determined a source of ignition.

The Boeing 747 exploded and fell into the Atlantic Ocean, killing all 230 people on board, on July 17, 1996, 12 minutes into a flight from New York’s John F. Kennedy Airport to Paris. Numerous witnesses saw streaks of light in the sky. Investigators have stressed that they still have no physical evidence of a missile or a bomb.

Board investigators, however, decided that their probe could not be considered complete unless they made a detailed scientific comparison between what the witnesses said in their first interviews with FBI agents and the sights and sounds a missile would make in exactly the same atmospheric conditions and lighting as that evening on the Long Island coast.

“This was a dotting of the I’s and a crossing of the Ts,” a source said. “Some concluded it would be very nice to know for certain what you would see. What would a missile look like?”

In probing the air disaster, neither FBI nor board investigators could find explosive residue or any of the telltale markings and metallurgical changes that indicate presence of a high-energy blast. The FBI, which long ago announced that it was no longer looking for a smoking bomb or missile, chose not to participate in the latest tests.

“A missile did not strike or explode inside this plane,” said an investigative source. “There is no evidence, and there is no possibility it could have happened and not left evidence.”

The answer to how closely the tests and the witness reports mesh is still several weeks away and will be part of the evidence presented at the board’s final hearing in late August, when it is to determine a “probable cause” for the crash. In the meantime, the raw data from the tests are being closely held.

Sources said, however, that the tests were conducted with “no preconception of what would happen.”

The tests were conducted in late April at Eglin Air Force Base near Pensacola, Fla. That time of year was chosen because the lighting conditions on the Gulf Coast would be just about the same as the conditions off Long Island in mid-July.