Mr. Siben nodded and looked at the aircraft, then at the lime-colored tank and said to me, “First, you start with the nearly empty center fuel tank, which has only about fifty gallons of fuel left sloshing around the bottom that the scavenge pump can’t get to. Then you have these volatile vapors in that tank-”
“Excuse me. Why was the fuel tank empty?”
“Because the flight didn’t need the extra fuel. Wing tanks are filled first and the center tank only if needed. This flight to Paris had a light passenger and cargo load, and the forecast was for good weather and tailwinds.” He added, “Ironically, if the passenger and cargo load had been heavier, and/or there had been bad weather or headwinds, that tank would have been full of jet A fuel, which is actually difficult to ignite. Fuelvapors are volatile. So that fact alone fit the scenario of an electrical short circuit igniting the vapors and causing the kind of explosion that the forensic evidence strongly suggests.”
“What kind of short circuit? I mean, should I cancel my trip to Bermuda?”
Mr. Siben didn’t smile at my stupid joke. He said, “There are four plausible and actually proven scenarios. One, a short circuit in the electric wires or motor in the scavenge pump; two, there’s always static electricity; three, there’s the fuel quantity gauges, which are electronic; and four, there are the tank’s electrical conduits. In other words, that big tank over there has electricity in and around it. If the tank was full, a spark could not ignite the jet fuel. But vapors are a different matter.”
“So you keep saying.”
“And I’ll keep saying it. It’s the laws of physics, Mr. Corey, which can’t be repealed by theories.”
“Yeah, but we don’tknow — ”
“No, we don’tknow. But what webelieve happened was that a wire was frayed and that a short circuit developed somewhere, inside or outside the fuel tank, and that a surge of electric current caused an arcing-a spark-and what started out as a remote possibility-the short circuit and the resulting spark in the one place where it could cause catastrophic consequences-became reality. It’s happened twice before on Boeing aircraft-one time on the ground, so we could see exactly what happened. In this case”-he looked at the 747-“the fumes ignited in midair, and caused an explosion that may or may not have been catastrophic by itself, but that apparently traveled sideways with enough force and heat to actually ignite the fuel in the left wing tank, causing it to explode, which in turn made controlled flight impossible.”
I asked, “You deduced all this from”-I pointed to the 747-“from that?”
“Absolutely. All the evidence was there as soon as we determined that the initial explosion occurred in the empty center fuel tank.” He added, “This is borne out somewhat by the eyewitnesses, some of whom reported a small explosion, followed by a huge fireball. These explosive forces caused a shock wave that separated the forward section from the main fuselage. This was also observed by people on the ground.”
It was interesting, I thought, that the eyewitnesses who saw the separation of the aircraft in flight, which would have been difficult to comprehend, were cited as backup for Theory A, while many of these same witnesses who saw an unmistakable streak of light were discounted. But Mr. Siben was volunteering his time, so I didn’t want to point this out.
I looked at Kate and asked her, “Are you buying all of this?”
She hesitated, then replied, “Yes… up to a point. But as Sid can tell you, tests were done on an old 747 on the ground to try to reproduce this sequence of events in a fuel tank, and they couldn’t get an explosion.”
I looked at Sid and said, “How about that?”
Mr. Siben replied without a trace of hesitation, “You can’t reproduce conditions on the ground that took place at thirteen thousand feet in a moving aircraft. It was a stupid test.”
“If you’d gotten an explosion, you wouldn’t think it was stupid.”
“Yes, I would.”
The guy was unshakable. I wished I’d had witnesses like this on the stand when I was a cop. I thought of Captain Spruck and asked, “If a kinetic missile had penetrated the aircraft from below, and traveled through the air-conditioning units, and damaged live electrical wires in and around the fuel tank, would that cause the vapors in the center fuel tank to explode?”
He didn’t reply for a few seconds, then said, “It’s possible. But there’s no evidence of that happening.”
“Is there any evidence of a short circuit?”
“A short circuit would leave little evidence in the aftermath of a midair explosion over water. A missile strike would leave much more evidence that would be hard to miss.”
“I understand that. So basically, the only evidence of the official cause of the crash is the lack of evidence of anything else.”
“I suppose you could say that.”
“I did.”
“Look, Mr. Corey, to be very honest and blunt, I would like to have found evidence of a bomb or missile. And so would Boeing and TWA and the insurance companies. You know why? Because a mechanical failure suggests that people weren’t doing their job. That the Federal Aviation Administration wasn’t on top of this potential problem. That Boeing safety engineers should have anticipated this. That TWA should have performed more and better maintenance on this potential problem.” He stared into my eyes and said, “In the darkest parts of our hearts, we all really wanted it to be a missile, because no one could blame the airline industry for a missile.”
We kept eye contact for a few seconds, and finally, I nodded. I’d thought about this five years ago and recalled concluding the same thing. I could add that people who fly a lot would rather play the odds of a one-in-a-zillion chance of getting hit by a missile than worrying about an inherent safety problem with the aircraft. I, too, if I let myself be honest, wanted it to be a missile.
Mr. Siben said to me, “Aircraft don’t just fall out of the sky. There has to be a cause, and there are four possible causes for an aircraft accident-” He was into numbering his points and this time he counted on his fingers. “One, pilot error, which is not consistent with a midair explosion and for which there is no flight recorder or cockpit recorder data. Two, an act of God-lightning and weather, which was not a factor that night-or high-speed particle penetration, meaning a meteorite, which remains a long-shot possibility, as does space junk, meaning a piece of a satellite or a booster rocket. This is possible, but there was no physical evidence of anything hitting that aircraft. Three, an enemy attack-” He was up to his middle finger, and if I were sensitive, I’d think he was saying, “Fuck you and your missile.”
He continued, “Four, a mechanical failure.” He looked at me and said, “I have bet my professional reputation on mechanical failure, and that’s the winner. If you think it was a missile attack, I’d like to see the evidence.”
“Have you ever spoken to an eyewitness?”
“No.”
“You should.”
He ignored my suggestion and said to me, “I’ll tell you something else that is inconsistent with a missile attack. As long as we’re theorizing, why would a terrorist shoot down an aircraft so far from the airport? A simple-to-use and easy-to-obtain, shoulder-fired heat-seeking missile-what the military calls a fire-and-forget missile-could have brought down this aircraft anywhere within five miles of the airport. To shoot down this aircraft at thirteen thousand feet, eight miles off the coast, would take a very sophisticated, complicated-to-use, and almost impossible-to-obtain infrared or radar-guided surface-to-air or air-to-air missile. Correct?”
“Correct.”
“So there you have it.”
“I got it.”
Kate said to me, “I have a copy of the official Final Report on the case, which you can read.”