Original subtitles

(intense music)

- Tonight, one of the worst aviation disasters

in American history. (explosion)

- Planes don't just disappear from the air.

- 230 people killed when their jetliner explodes off

the Coast of Long Island.

- Virtually, anything on the water in the vicinity is moving

into the rescue area and they're there so quickly

that there's actually falling wreckage

still coming out of the sky.

- We'll uncover the top theories for why the plane blew up.

- Maybe a bomb was placed on this airplane.

- Aircraft fuel tanks are

considered explosive environments

and they have to be isolated from ignition sources.

- Is the US Government engaged

in an actual government coverup?

- And explore new clues that might offer the answers?

- Two missiles fired to hit another target,

but they went awry.

- What really happened to TWA Flight 800?

(intense music)

July 17th, 1996, JFK International Airport.

It's a hot humid summer night in New York City.

TWA Flight 800 sits at the gate awaiting departure.

- TWA 800 had a flight plan to go from New York to Rome

with a layover in Paris.

Onboard the flight that day,

there was a total of 230 people.

There were 192 passengers, 18 crew members,

and 20 off-duty employees.

Most of them, they were there because they were working

the second leg of the flight. (intense music)

- The crew, they are by the book Professional.

Chief Pilot Ralph Kevorkian is experienced

on other aircraft, but he's moved into the biggest airplane

in TWA's fleet the Boeing 747.

- [Laurence] Flight engineer Richard Campbell is

also well-trained.

- Because Richard had reached the age of 60,

which at the time, that was the pilot retirement age,

he decided to stay on with the airline as a flight engineer.

- [Laurence] The first leg of the flight from JFK

to Paris is projected to last just over seven hours,

but the flight is delayed for 62 minutes.

- There was a baggage issue. (intense music)

Apparently, the flight attendants had found a bag

and they were not sure, who the baggage belonged to,

so it took quite a while to match that piece of baggage

to the appropriate passenger.

As you can imagine, the passengers are getting restless.

They're all sitting in the airplane ready to take off.

- [Laurence] At 8:07 PM the crew fires up the engines,

the plane taxis out to the runway, and at 8:19 PM,

TWA Flight 800 takes off into mostly clear skies.

- The air traffic controller is communicating directly

with these airplanes.

Each one has a call sign.

Each one has a transponder, which tells the plane position

to air traffic controllers.

- [Laurence] At 8:30 PM,

air traffic controllers give TWA 800 clearance

to go from 13,000 to 15,000 feet.

This is their last communication with the plane.

- So, Flight Engineer Campbell goes ahead

and adds climb thrust,

and they start climbing up to 15,000 feet.

- [Laurence] At 8:31 and 12 seconds,

there's a transponder ping

with a Pennsylvania Air Traffic Control Station.

- Then, something strange happens.

- [Laurence] Just 12 minutes after takeoff,

Flight 800 disappears from radar.

(brooding music)

- A disappearing blip is pretty alarming

for an air traffic controller.

So, they tried to contact them but there was no response,

and then, they were asking for nearby airplanes

to tell us what was going on home.

- This pilot flying over Long Island calls in

and says he's seen an explosion in the air.

The pilot reports that this explosion occurred

at about 16,000 feet over Long Island Sound.

- And suddenly,

reports start coming in from pilots all over the area.

- Something has exploded and the debris

just rained down into the water.

- And then, there's an outpouring of reports

from people on the ground.

They report seeing a big fireball,

and also debris just raining out of the sky.

(intense music)

- [Laurence] Emergency radios sound the alert.

There's a major plane crash into the ocean

and the search is on for survivors.

- Virtually, anything on the water in the vicinity is moving

into the rescue area and they're there so quickly

that there's actually falling wreckage

still coming out of the sky.

There's burning debris, it's mass chaos.

- And from all of this wreckage,

they can actually see that this was

the 747 from Flight 800. (brooding music)

- It begins one of the longest

and most expensive aviation accident investigations

in history. (brooding music)

- Within 20 minutes of the initial reports,

people in Washington, DC begin to take action.

- Our government is doing everything we can to continue

the search for survivors and to find out

the causes of this accident.

- For the next two days, Navy divers comb the area,

searching for survivors, but they don't find any.

(brooding music) (water trickles)

- When the families first learn that something has happened

to the airplane, they gather at JFK

to try and find out what happened.

And all the news photographers and cameramen are out there

and it puts the families on edge.

It's a terribly traumatic moment for them,

so they make the decision to move them

into the airport hotel, which is about a mile away,

and that comes to be known as Heartbreak Hotel.

- [Laurence] Along with the grief, there are also questions.

What happened to TWA Flight 800?

- This is a very tense time.

The bombing in Oklahoma City had just occurred in 1995.

Terrorism was in everybody's mind, so people had this idea

that terrorists were targeting aircrafts.

(intense music)

- [Officer] Go, go, get in back, get in back!

- We were a heightened alert because we had all these things

that happened prior, just before this happened,

we had the World Trade Center bombing

and also the Khobar bombing in Saudi Arabia.

- In the 1990s, the idea of a major terror attack

on or above American soil is a huge story.

- So, it was the first thought

that this was a terrorist attack.

- [Laurence] Investigators look into

how terrorists could have brought down the plane,

focusing their attention on what happened before takeoff.

- There was the big 62-minute delay for a bag,

so people wondered, was there a bomb in that bag?

It happened earlier with Pan Am Flight 103

over Lockerbie Scotland.

That bomb, which was in a bag, killed 259 passengers

and 11 people on the ground.

So, new high-tech scanners were put in place

to find even thin layers of plastic explosives.

But, unfortunately, JFK did not yet have

such a system installed and working.

(intense music)

- [Laurence] The National Transportation Safety Board

begins the long process of reassembling the aircraft

to determine a possible cause for the crash.

- They were able to recover close to 95% of this aircraft

from the bottom of the ocean.

And once that process was done,

the FBI was able to send samples of the aircraft

into the lap to check for any sort of residue,

and there was a very small trace of an explosive residue

that was on a floor panel.

- Because trace amounts of explosives were found,

the FBI focused on the possibility

that maybe a bomb was placed on this airplane.

- [Laurence] But there's another possibility

based on eyewitness accounts. (intense music)

- Many of the eyewitnesses reported seeing an actual streak

of light, so that made the FBI think

that maybe it's not just a bomb on board.

Perhaps it was instead a missile attack.

The question is where was the missile launched from?

The leading idea was that it was launched from a boat.

(intense music)

Once the residue is reported,

and then the idea of a missile is reported,

oh, that leads to widespread tension.

People are on edge, airport, and other security

around the world is now tightened.

- It's just a matter of trigonometry.

I mean, any high school kid can figure it out.

- It's a missile. - It's gotta be a missile.

- People really believe that this was

some sort of terrorist attack.

- [Laurence] But some raised doubts.

- There's one huge problem here.

No terrorist organization is taking credit for this attack.

Isn't that what terrorist organizations do?

Because if they want to create terror,

you need to know who they are and why they did it

and we're not seeing that here.

- It's not the first time that the NTSB has investigated

an aircraft that might have been brought down by a bomb,

but the NTSB is a lot more hesitant than the FBI to leap

to conclusions about the causes of a specific incident.

They have institutionally a long history

of carrying out accident investigations

and they understand that by following their procedures,

they're likely to be able to draw

the most accurate conclusions.

The FBI's purpose is to enforce laws and as a result,

these two are going to come into conflict.

- So, the NTSB's explanation to this is

that this aircraft was used before to transport troops

from the Gulf and those troops could have had

some sort of explosive residue on them.

- [Laurence] While explosive residue

might have been left over from the Gulf War,

investigators also consider something else.

- So, they look at the history of the aircraft

where was the plane before that,

and maybe a month and a half before the accident

The NTSB found that the airplane has been used

for training canine-explosive deduction dogs,

and when they checked with the dog handlers,

one of the pouches that carry RDX explosive was punctured

and traces of it may have wound up on the back of the seat

or on the floor in the front side.

- With regards to the people who were on the ground

who saw this all unfold, the NTSB said they didn't see any

sort of missile-like impact on the aircraft

and those people were mistaken

based on their perspective on the ground.

Seeing this all happen.

- The Safety Board has found no evidence that the crash

of Flight 800 could have been caused by a bomb or missile.l

- The families that are grieving are really looking

for closure that they can't get from the NTSB.

They want to know what happened,

but sometimes there's no way to really rush the process.

- [Laurence] The Transportation Board has no firm estimate

of when its findings will be ready,

but cautions that it could take years.

- Our work will continue, and we will spare no effort

to determine the cause of the crash of TWA 800.

- That makes a lot of Americans very nervous.

They want answers.

The NTSB is slow delivering answers,

so independent researchers are doing their thing.

They're looking at the data and they come to the conclusion

that maybe we're not looking broadly enough.

Maybe there are other ideas

that have not yet been considered.

- [Laurence] September 1996, it's just two months

since Flight 800 crashed,

but the two federal agencies investigating the disaster,

are at odds.

The FBI says it's likely a terrorist attack.

The Transportation Board doesn't agree

but insists it's too early to speculate.

Then, researchers from outside

the government propose their own theory.

- An NTSB official makes an offhanded comment in the media

about the remoteness of a missile strike being

about the same as a meteorite strike.

And so, that comment actually does send people off looking

at the possibility that it was a meteorite.

(dramatic music)

- News corporations are reporting on TWA 800.

This is a sensational story and as a result,

a lot of different theories are really starting

to circulate, in particular, there are astronomers

that contact the NTSB to raise the possibility that this was

in fact, a meteorite strike based on eyewitness accounts.

(dramatic music)

- The eyewitnesses report seeing a streak of light

and a fireball, well, guess what does both?

Meteors across Earth.

People report seeing fireballs all the time.

There's over two tons of meteoritic material falling

to Earth every day.

- [Laurence] And sometimes, those meteors make impact.

- In America specifically, we know of three cases

where cars were hit with meteors in the last century.

That could cause real damage.

Take for example, a recent fireball

over Chelyabinsk, Russia. (people faintly speaking)

It broke windows and injured people on the ground.

So, yeah, you could bring down an airplane from a meteor.

- [Laurence] Statisticians collect the data,

and crunch the numbers about meteorites

to calculate the odds, one could strike a plane.

- About 3,000 meteorites make it

through the Earth's atmosphere every year.

About 125 a day, and on any given day,

there might be 5,000 aircraft flying over the United States,

which sounds like a lot,

but the odds of a small meteorite hitting

an aircraft are still extremely small.

- [Laurence] In a 100-year span,

the chance of a meteor bringing down a plane is just 1%.

- A meteor, not large enough to be detected by NASA,

but yet not too small that it would completely burn

as it's going through the atmosphere.

The possibility of that small-enough meteor

to impact a plane that's traveling about half

the speed of sound is minute.

That said, it's still worth a pause.

- [Laurence] Searching for proof

that a meteor strike took down the plane,

theorists consider the wreckage of Flight 800.l

- Based on what we understand about meteorites entering

the atmosphere, the size of meteor needed to take down

an airplane is only about the size of a baseball

and if the meteor hits the fuel tank in the wing,

it could definitely trigger a big explosion

like the eyewitnesses saw.

- [Laurence] Some suggest the plane may have been hit

by fragments from a meteor.

- Some scientists' analysis of the wreckage did lend

to the theory of a bolide, which is a meteorite

that explodes in the air

and some of the wreckage did reveal puncture points.

If a meteorite happened to explode near the aircraft,

perhaps some of the meteorite shrapnel could have punctured

the 747. (intense music)

- [Laurence] But many witnesses say they saw a streak

of light coming up toward the plane not coming down

on it from above.

- Taken together, it's all a quirk of perspective

and how it enters the atmosphere.

Remember, the Earth's surface is curved,

so that adds another dimension to perceiving exactly

where things occurred in the night sky.

- [Laurence] Scientists raising the meteorite theory,

urged the NTSB to do further research, but they resist.

(intense music)

- They just found it highly unlikely.

And because these experts are

essentially inserting themselves

into a well-established investigation,

this is another case of non-experts

trying to dictate how an aviation

accident investigation will be carried out.

- Not only is there a very low-expected frequency

for this kind of occurrence, but also even if it did occur

that it would have caused the damage that we saw.

(intense music)

- If it wasn't a terrorist attack or a meteorite,

then what could have caused the explosion?

A few months into the investigation,

the Safety Board is convinced of one thing.

(intense music)

- So, they put forward a theory

that the airplane actually broke in half.

- When the explosion happens,

the front of the aircraft is severed

from the back of the airplane.

So, imagine the front of this Boeing 747

like a bullet shearing off and collapsing.

The back end of the aircraft starts heading upwards

because the engines are still spinning.

Inside, it's a nightmare.

They're looking at the sky and there is no front end.

- So, they come to the conclusion that maybe the streak

of light that eyewitnesses saw going upwards was

this second half of the airplane on fire

still moving upwards in the sky

and that's why the pilots did not have time to call in

to say there was a problem because this was a sudden event.

February 1997, while the FBI118

still believes terrorists brought down Flight 800,

Transportation Board investigators say no.

Could the answer lie hidden in the recovered wreckage

of the doomed 747?

- This reassembled airplane in that hangar in Calverton,

I've heard the term Frankenstein aircraft,

which looked like literally tiny pieces, big pieces,

whatever they could find, they put together just trying

to find answers about what happened that day.

- [Laurence] Two important factors may be the age

and condition of the airplane.

- The Boeing 747, that is TWA Flight 800,

it's a relatively old aircraft, it's 25 years old.

It's flown for over 93,000 hours,

which is the equivalent of flying continuously

for 10 and a half years.

- It's one of the earlier versions of the famous 747.

And if properly maintained, the plane could last

many, many, many years before it reaches an age

where you can no longer repair the parts

and you decommission it. (whoosh)

- Around the 1980s, airline mechanics started to notice

that there were cracks on old Boeing 747 airplanes

and this was really on the structural part of the aircraft

in the upper deck, the lower deck,

as well as the nose of the aircraft.

- On TWA 800, the NTSB find cracks that are an inch

to one-and-a-half inch.

Now, an old airplane like this 747

that was almost 25 years old, you get cracks,

but every airplane that has worked that long has cracks.

- It comes from the routine pressurization

and pressurizing of the airplane cabin.

So, if you shake up a soda, you do the same thing,

you pressurize the container, and what happens

if that container is punctured?

Boom. (intense music)

- Cracks are extremely dangerous.

Any sort of crack to the fuselage of the aircraft

when the airplane is experiencing any sort of stress,

that crack can just tear the airplane apart.

So, if they're not addressed,

cracks could really lead to catastrophic results.

- In 1986, the FAA required investigations

of older aircraft including TWA Flight 800.

- So, when you look at the NTSB report,

they went through the maintenance log books

for this aircraft and there were no major mechanical issues.

- This was an aircraft that had flown tens of thousands

of hours, and components do break down over time.

- [Laurence] In the Spring of 1997,

investigators learned of problems

with the doomed plane's maintenance.

- The inspectors who evaluated the wreckage,

found that the people who regularly inspected

the airplane actually missed some cracks.

It had gone through the normal safety checks,

but still, the plane wasn't fully sound.

- The NTSB found evidence of metal fatigue

of some stress cracks caused by pressurization

of the aircraft.

- They found some hairline cracks in what we call

shear ties that keep the skin attached to the airplane,

and they also found several hairline cracks

in the wing spar.

Spars are connected to the keel beam

that basically keeps the wings attached to the airplane.

- [Laurence] But were these cracks big enough and in areas

that could cause a plane to break apart?

(intense music)

- Part of the investigation led them to take a deep dive

of the fuselage and they found that there were cracks

in the shear ties that were on the wing,

but it wasn't anything that would've caused

an explosion of any kind.

- The investigators reported

that none of these cracks were serious enough

to have contributed to this tragedy.

Just like you can have a rock hit your windshield, at first,

it's just a little tiny star, looks like an asterisk,

but what makes it dangerous is when it travels.

Well, the same thing is true

with the cracks in the airplane.

They had not combined with each other to create a long crack

in the structure and therefore, could have not contributed

to the catastrophic breakup of the airplane while in flight.

- [Laurence] Analysis of the wreckage confirms for the NTSB

that structural defects didn't take down Flight 800.

So, they looked to the flight data recorder for clues.

- Along with all the wreckage that they found,

they found the airplane's black box

and the black box keeps a record of the data

that the airplane is producing as well as

all the conversations between the pilot,

co-piloting, and crew. (intense music)

- Initially, there was concern that

because the casing was cracked, they would never be able

to recover any of the conversations

that was going on in the cockpit.

But as soon as they got it back to DC and they put it

in a tape, they were able to play the full communication.

- I'm sure it was a very emotional moment,

but it was in their final words

that the crew was able to communicate what was going on

and that really helped investigators get closer

to what they believed caused the aircraft to explode.

- The 1996 Flight 800 disaster remains under investigation

for four long years as government officials clash

and families of victims grow increasingly frustrated.

Then, in August of 2000,

the National Transportation Safety Board announces it

finally has what it says are the answers

so many are waiting for.

Answers gleaned from the airplane's black box.

- There's a lot of routine chatter.

It's the type of things that you would expect to hear

on any civilian airline flight.

- Everything seemed routine with the exception

of just before they were ready to close the doors.

There was this hour delay because of this mismatch

of the bag and the passenger,

but the passenger was on board all the time.

- On the black box,

we can hear Captain Ralph Kevorkian joke like,

"All right, we won't tell 'em that," talking about telling

the passengers that they made an oops.

Flight Engineer Campbell responds, "If we do that,

we'd have a mutiny back there."

(intense music)

- At around 8:19 PM, they take off uneventfully,

and from the point of view of air traffic control,

everything is going fine with Flight 800.

- At some point, Captain Kevorkian made a comment,

"Boy, look at her, she's climbing like a homesick angel."

That's a term we use when the aircraft climbs very rapidly.

In other words, she's really climbing high towards the sky.

- After this was said, the second pilot in the flight deck,

Captain Snyder had said that the airspeed was bleeding off,

which means the aircraft is flying faster than usual

and it really wasn't anything to be worried about.

Cross-checking the transcript with the flight data,

it just confirms that nothing

out of the ordinary is really happening here.

So, at around 8:30, Boston Air Traffic Control advises TWA

to climb from one 3,000 to one 5,000.

And at this point, Captain Kevorkian says,

"Climb thrust." (aircraft humming)

Flight Engineer Campbell responds,

"The power's set."

"Power's set," were the last words that were heard

in the flight deck, and then 37 seconds later,

the airplane explodes. (intense music)

- [Laurence] But while most of this is all normal chatter

on a flight deck, there's one earlier exchange

that intrigues crash investigators.

- Just a few moments before the CVRS stops recording,

Captain Kevorkian comments,

"Check out that crazy indication on number four."

- What he's saying is sort of equivalent to driving

in your car and having your gas gauge malfunction.

(intense music)

- Because this is an old airplane,

and the 747 has so many fuel tanks that are interconnected

in each wing, those gauges were not that reliable.

So, you occasionally get some weird indications.

- [Laurence] But this time,

the Safety Board believes it's a sign of trouble inside one

of the fuel tanks. (aircraft whooshing)

- Just a few days after the accident,

one of the investigators sees

that the center-wing tank bowed out.

So, something happened to make the center tank explode

from the inside out. (intense music)

(plane wing booms)

Aircraft fuel tanks are considered explosive

environments and they have to be isolated from ignition sources

because you don't wanna have any chance

that something will ignite in those areas

because there's fuel there.

- [Laurence] Captain Kevorkian's statement

about the strange readings

from the fuel tank gives investigators a clue

as to the source of this fuel tank explosion.

- You have electrical components inside

the central fuel tank to tell you if they're running short

on fuel, but if a short circuit

somewhere causes a high amount of voltage

to arc between two pieces of metal inside an area filled

with fuel vapor, a catastrophic explosion is

likely to occur.

- [Laurence] The NTSB believes that's exactly what happened.

- So, the NTSB theory is that there was a electrical spark

that exploded that tank outward and blew the aircraft apart.

- The inescapable conclusion that the cause

of the in-flight breakup

of TWA Flight 800 was a fuel-air explosion

in the center-wing tank.

- [Laurence] Investigators hone in on the electrical system,

which connects the fuel gauges to the tank,

looking for what could have caused the explosion,

they find evidence of frayed wiring

and damaged installation in the maintenance reports.

- They see that there are anomalies

in the electrical system.

The wire, which has gone in 25 years earlier,

has been subjected to vibration and salt and chemicals

and pressurization and abrasion.

- The wires were the ones installed back in 1976 or so,

and hasn't been replaced.

Some of those wires would fray.

Some of the installations start to break,

and if they're short, now you have your ignition source.

- [Laurence] Not everybody is satisfied

with these conclusions.

- This explanation faces a couple of problems.

Number one, it's coming so late.

People have gotten used to the idea

that perhaps there was a terrorist involvement,

but secondly, it's only their best guess.

Like a multiple-choice test where you don't know

the right answer, but you can rule out most of the rest.

They think this is the right answer,

but they cannot point to absolutely conclusive evidence.

- We know that the center-fuel tank exploded,

we've known that for a long time.

We don't know what initiated that explosion.

- [Laurence] While evidence strongly points

to degraded wiring, the NTSB is never able to pinpoint

the exact cause of the explosion.

- It becomes very difficult in the aftermath

of TWA Flight 800's destruction to determine

how such a spark might have reached the fuel vapors inside

the central-wing fuel tank.

- By the time the investigation results are announced,

many people are dissatisfied and they wanted answers

and the Federal Government just wasn't able

to give them answers quickly enough.

- [Laurence] In its August 2000 official report

on the crash of Flight 800, investigators

at the National Transportation Safety Board said

a fuel tank inside the wing caught fire,

which triggered the plane's explosion.

Some believe it was a spark created by defective wiring,

but others seek clues in a different flight

that ended tragically.

- Two years after the tragedy of Flight 800,

there was a Swissair 111 that tragically crashed off

the East Coast of Canada, killing all 229 people on board.

Examining these two flights, Flight 800 and Swissair 111,

there are a lot of similarities that are a bit uncanny.

Both flights took off from the same airport, JFK,

at the same time, 8:19 PM, and the same day

of the week Wednesday.

And tragically, both planes went down very early

in their flights.

- [Laurence] Like TWA 800,

the Swissair plane ignites mid-flight

without a definitive cause.

- The entertainment electronics,

which were stored next to the cockpit is where

the fire started and then it spread to blankets,

and before you know it,

the entire plane is engulfed in flames.

Like Flight 800, the Canadian officials are unable

to figure out exactly what triggered

the fire in the first place.

- [Laurence] Investigators in both crashes,

speculate that defective wiring is to blame

but aren't able to pinpoint the exact source.

Given all the similarities between these two flights,

is there something else that could cause both planes

to go down? (intense music)

- As they were figuring out the factors that led

to both of these crashes and what they might have in common,

researchers noted that both pilots

on the planes briefly lost radio contact shortly

before things went haywire.

So, given these similarities, the question becomes

what could cause communications to go out?

And it's the same thing

that could create navigational problems

and other electronic problems on a flight.

(dramatic music)

- Electromagnetic interference, it's a real problem.

There's a reason that you have to put your cell phones

into airplane mode and we try to minimize other forms

of electromagnetic interference.

When it comes to aircraft, they're very sensitive.

They have a lot of instrumentation,

they have a lot of electrical components that are subject

to the possibility of interference.

- [Laurence] Some argue that there's only one source capable

of generating enough electromagnetic interference

to bring down a plane.

The US military. (whoosh)

- What these researchers found was that when we look

at Swissair 111, which, again, took off at the same time,

the same day of the week from the same airport,

they did find something interesting.

(intense music) - The fleet area control

and surveillance facility is a Navy organization

that monitors the air and sea space off the coast

of the United States.

Documents provided the first couple of weeks

of September 1998 did show military operations off

the Eastern Seaboard. (intense music)

- Specifically, the document reports that during that week,

there was a small-scale ECM notification

that stands for Electronic Countermeasure notification,

and that's a training exercise for electronic war games.

So, instead of using bombs and bullets,

what they used was electronic warfare.

They're sending out signals that could interfere

with the electronics of civilian flights.

And the records further showed that Navy jets were

actually, in very similar area to the Swiss 111 flight

at the time of this incident.

So, these independent researchers put forth the idea

that the electronic warfare jamming signals sent out

by these military jets somehow interfered

with the electronics of Swissair 111 leading

to the fire that ultimately brought down the plane.

- [Laurence] But even with the presence

of the military exercises in the area, debate remains

whether there was enough electromagnetic interference

to bring down these flights.

- The EMS spectrum can cause problems,

but we really haven't had a lot of incidents

where we pointed towards electromagnetic interference

as potentially downing an aircraft.

Even though the surface of the Earth is constantly bombarded

in the electromagnetic spectrum.

Times that it would be most at risk

of causing a problem would be in the descent

of the aircraft and not in midair.

- An NTSB report cited about 11 sources

of electromagnetic energy in the area.

The largest of them emitting about 800 Watts

with a peak of about 1,000 Watts.

This energy decays with distance and when you tally

all the sources at an altitude of 13,000 feet

at one airplane, I don't think you have enough energy

to trigger an explosion in the center wing tank.

- [Laurence] Even so, speculation about

the military's role in the crash continues.

- It is unfortunate that a small number

of people pursuing their own agendas have persisted

in making unfounded charges of a government coverup

in this investigation.

(whoosh)

- A lot of people will point to government coverups

and government conspiracies

because the government isn't always good

at dispelling the rumors.

Sometimes, the government doesn't come out

and dispel these conspiracy theories

because to do so would require revealing evidence

that shouldn't be in the public domain.

- [Laurence] It's been more than 20 years since the

National Transportation Safety Board released

its August 2000 report on Flight 800.

Some relatives of the victims continued

to dispute its findings.

With the help of researchers,

these families have discovered evidence allegedly withheld

from the NTSB of nearby live-fire military exercises,

showing an object headed toward the plane

just before it exploded.

- Some of the family of the victims of Flight 800 now think

that maybe there is a coverup going on,

and maybe this was a direct military attack.

- [Laurence] The idea that the US Military could

accidentally shoot down a passenger plane,

isn't wild speculation.

It actually happened just eight years prior

to the explosion of Flight 800.

- In 1988, the USS Vincennes had actually shot down

an Iranian airliner originating out of Tehran.

They thought that it was actually

an Iranian Air Force Fighter aircraft

and fired two surface-to-air missiles downing

the civilian airliner. That occurred in 1988.

It was still fairly fresh in the public's mind.

- Some of the family now say

that if the military is responsible for this,

then they too should be held accountable

for the tragedy of Flight 800.

- Families of the victims never gave up and they want

to bring their own investigators do their investigation.

- [Laurence] In June of 2022,

the families filed a lawsuit against the US Navy

and two government contractors to pursue this theory and,

hopefully, discover the truth.

- The lawsuit alleges that the government knows full well

what happened, but covered up that information

because, they allege, the Government caused the crash.

(intense music) (missile whooshing)

- [Laurence] According to this theory,

the Navy shot down the plane during war games,

then covered it up.

- The lawsuit says that this was a friendly fire.

There were two missiles fired from a Navy vessel,

but they went awry.

It was supposed to hit another target

but hit the bigger plane with more heat signature

that was TWA 800.

- According to their lawsuit, the Navy's radar caught

the actual debris from the airplane exploding

and measured the velocities of the particles

and say that they were moving at 4,000 miles per hour,

which is four times faster than the speed of sound.

- [Laurence] Their allegation states,

only a US military-grade missile could cause the debris

to move at that rate.

- They alleged that the radar data

from those tests was withheld from the NTSB but given

to the FBI within minutes of the crash.

- And so, with without analyzing the radar images,

the NTSB concluded there was no evidence of a missile.

- None of the participating bomb technicians,

nor myself, have seen any indication

of high-explosive effects on any of the wreckage recovered

from Flight 800.

(missile booms)

- [Laurence] This theory has its detractors.

(missile booms)

- They claim that only a missile could create

such high-velocity debris.

I'm not convinced of that. A meteor is gonna be moving faster

than a missile but the devil's in the details.

- The idea that fast-moving debris could

only have been caused by a missile strike is contradicted

by the facts of physics.

Fast-moving debris from the aircraft was

almost certainly created by the explosion of that aircraft

and not by an intersection with some form of missile.

- [Laurence] But what about the allegations

that the Navy war games shut down the plane?

- That scenario also has no merit

because a destroyer was alleged to have shot a missile,

but that destroyer was actually,

maybe a hundred miles plus south and none of the missiles

on it had the range to bring down the plane.

- No fragments from any surface-to-air missile have

ever been found in the wreckage

or near the wreckage of Flight 800.

Also, the missile theory does not explain

why the aircraft lost communication with the ground.

- [Laurence] The Transportation Board still insists

that the investigation is and should be closed.

- The recovered wreckage of TWA Flight 800 was kept

in a hangar outside Ashburn, Virginia for 25 years

and was used as a training aid for other NTSB investigators.

- Families had nothing.

Many of them did not have the remains of their loved ones.

Allowing them that opportunity to go into the hangar, seeing

the wreckage had to be a tremendous relief to them.

- You know, losing somebody is extremely hard,

especially if you don't get to say goodbye to them.

But this is also such a big moment

because the lease is done with this building

and they're gonna destroy all of the pieces.

So, it's kind of forcing a lot of these families

to really say goodbye.

You know, like the book is closed, the chapter's closed.

- [Laurence] Perhaps their lawsuit will at last bring

the families of the victims, the closure they seek.

But we may never definitively know why TWA 800 crashed.

- I think it continues to capture public imagination

because it was one of the first real sensational events

that happened at the dawn of the internet.

And so, people got online to share ideas and theories

and they wanted answers.

So, in that narrative void, people came up

with their own conjecture and their own answers.

- History is full of tragedies and in many cases,

we don't actually, ever find a conclusive answer.

- Just went down. - And when you have people

that are involved

because their family members died tragically,

people will still wonder about it.

What happened to Flight 800?

(dramatic music)

- While the latest theory gets tested in a court of law,

the cause of the crash of Flight 800 continues

to ignite debate.

I'm Laurence Fishburne.

Thank you for watching History's Greatest Mysteries.

(dramatic music)