With respect, by the time a patriot missile reaches a target like an airliner at altitude, the motor is long burnt out. No fire and no smoke (until the fuze detonates), just kinetic energy being bled for terminal guidance.

Sometimes the government and its contractors would do better to own their mistakes, take the financial hit, and move on. Yet here we are 25 years later still dealing with it and burning credibility.

How many exploding, breaking-up 747s, though?

It could be superman.

What appears to be new is the claim that they have FOIA documents describing radar tapes that show something hitting the plane.

> Exactly zero of whom have ever seen a missile before and would know what one looks like.

I think the two Air National Guard officers cited in the parent comment likely had seen missile launches before.

I'm very skeptical of these claims, but many, many people--including people on Long Island--have seen missiles.

I've seen many, and I've seen them get diverted out of the air by anti-missile systems, and I've seen them strike the ground near me. (This is all from spending at least 4 month/year in Israel over the past 59+ years.)

Missile videos like the one above are common. 1996 was soon after the gulf war, tons of missiles were broadcast in the news during that time.

EDIT :

Missiles are far faster, and crucially, are on fire from the ground up. They go much straighter and produce much more consistent light than a burning half-plane, which is not capable of ascending anywhere close to vertically. They also make drastically different sounds, as one is supersonic and the other very much is not.

They really do look and sound very different. I would expect someone who has seen and heard dozens of launches of that exact missile to be able to make it out quite easily. There are plenty of videos of that online and the difference is quite obvious. Especially someone who is used to this exact model of missile would be able to tell them apart.

Not necessarily. Based on my time in the US Army, the opportunities for most troops to see missile launches first hand are fairly low. Even for those of us who were in air defense. Live fire exercises were rare, and we never got to fire any in Afghanistan.

"It looked like a missile" may be entirely true. It may also be true that a burning, rapidly climbing half of a 747 looks a bit like a missile from afar.

Re: edit:

> Missiles are far faster

Speed is notoriously hard to measure visually. Watch a A380 come in for a landing and you'll swear it's barely moving.

> are on fire from the ground up

Most of the eyewitnesses were over the horizon from any potential launch site.

> They go much straighter and produce much more consistent light than a burning half-plane, which is not capable of ascending anywhere close to vertically

A tail-heavy half of a 747 could absolutely go vertical for a bit with the entire nose missing.

> They also make drastically different sounds, as one is supersonic and the other very much is not.

People largely reported hearing an explosion, not a sonic boom.

Yes, you will still see it ascend over the horizon. Not so for a level plane.

>A tail-heavy half of a 747 could absolutely go vertical for a bit with the entire nose missing.

No, it can't. In the unlikely event that it can keep from stalling, a positive feedback loop from being aerodynamically unstable would send it in a spin. It wouldn't be able to pitch up for more than a few seconds before spinning wildly or disintegrating from aerodynamic forces. Most likely it is already in a state of stall and basically in a fall.

> People largely reported hearing an explosion, not a sonic boom.

Sonic booms sound just like explosions. Here is what a high supersonic to hypersonic missile sounds like : https://youtube.com/shorts/QknqE1IIgHc?feature=share

You notice something out to sea. It's a lit object rising up into the air. There's then an explosion. This describes both "missile hits plane" and "burning plane flying upwards explodes".

> No, it can't.

I mean, tell that to the NTSB, who didn't have much objection to the CIA's theory. Or the world's community of aviation engineers, who a) weren't part of the conspiracy and b) didn't riot over something you're claiming is obviously impossible.

Essentially, it did this, but at a much higher starting speed: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7sUWC2jfjqI

> In the unlikely event that it can keep from stalling...

Yes, it would stall. If you want to stall a plane, one of the easiest ways ways is to pitch up sharply.

> It wouldn't be able to pitch up for more than a few seconds before spinning wildly or disintegrating from aerodynamic forces.

Yes, that's the ka-boom part of what was seen. There's an animation based on the reconstruction at https://imgur.com/a/zin7CRo that demonstrates this, exactly as you describe - pitch up, flip over, disintegrate.

> Sonic booms sound just like explosions.

Then we agree that "people said it sounded like a missile" is not meaningful.

> A tail-heavy half of a 747 could absolutely go vertical for a bit with the entire nose missing.

Is doing some very heavy assuming.

Here's what a tail-heavy 747 does: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7sUWC2jfjqI

You make a good point about TWA 800 being at cruise speed compared to the cargo flight, and let's assume you're right and it does manage to nose up and keep going for some time: in that case you'd see something go upwards after an explosion, not streak towards it - though eyewitness accounts in times like that have been known to be flakey, so i give up here.

Unless there's a subsequent explosion of the now-burning half a plane.

There's a good set of animations on https://imgur.com/a/zin7CRo that illustrate the theory of what happened.