TWA 800 and a dream
After watching a story last week about the mysterious crash of Trans World Airlines Flight 800 27 years ago and recalling my brother’s strange and detailed dream about that disaster, I decided to share the unusual story with valued readers.
TWA 800 was a Boeing 747-100 that exploded and crashed into the Atlantic Ocean near East Moriches, N.Y., on July 17, 1996 at 8:31 p.m. Eastern time.
Many reading today likely recall that horrific tragedy.
The flight had only been in the air 12 minutes after leaving John F. Kennedy International Airport, bound for Rome with a stopover in Paris. All 230 passengers and crew aboard flight died, making it the third deadliest airline accident in the nation’s history.
Initial speculation as National Transportation Safety Board investigators traveled to the scene was that terrorists somehow caused the plane to explode. The FBI and New York Police Department’s Joint Terrorism Task Force initiated a parallel criminal investigation. Sixteen months later, the task force announced it had found no evidence of a criminal act and shut down its active investigation.
The NTSB’s four-year investigation concluded Aug. 23, 2000, with the probable cause of the accident attributed to the explosion of flammable fuel vapors in the plane’s center fuel tank, likely the result of a short circuit.
Problems with the aircraft’s wiring were found, including evidence of arcing in the fuel quantity indication system (FQIS) wiring that enters the tank; the captain had remarked about “crazy” readings from the system about three minutes before the aircraft exploded.
As a result of the investigation, new requirements were developed for aircraft to prevent future fuel-tank explosions.
The mystery of what brought TWA 800 down, while surmised, was never officially solved. Several members of the original inquiry and others who remained dissatisfied with the results tried unsuccessfully to get the investigation reopened.
On July 17, 2013, the 17th anniversary of the downing, premium TV channel Epix aired the documentary “TWA Flight 800,” which alleged the crash investigation had been a cover-up. The film highlighted eyewitness interviews, with many interviewees directly objecting to publicly described versions of their own descriptions of events, according to background from Wikipedia.
It also carried interviews with investigators involved in the original inquest, six of whom had filed a petition to reopen the probe. Their petition was based on eyewitness accounts of seeing a glowing streak in the sky in the vicinity of TWA 800, radar evidence indicating a possible missile was involved, and claims of evidence-tampering. Former NTSB investigator Henry Hughes has been quoted saying he believes a bomb or missile caused the crash.
The cable TV story last week about TWA 800 brought it back to mind, along with my younger brother’s extremely vivid and mysterious dream shortly after the tragedy. Grant was a physicist with a major defense contractor at the time.
He called from his home in Texas that evening to share every detail with an enthusiastic voice.
“I’d never had such an incredible dream,” he recalled for me again last week. “It was so real, like I was actually watching everything happening in front of me.
“I saw these young sailors who somehow had gotten their hands on a surface-to-air missile from inventory and gone out to have a watch party near the water about dusk.
“They had an ignition device and set it up to fire the missile into the evening air and watch what happened, not aiming at any intended target or realizing a passenger plane [TWA 800 at that point was an hour behind schedule] was closing overhead. When the missile whooshed away, my dream changed to a seat inside the plane.
“Suddenly I was a passenger seated along an aisle on the left side several rows back from the center of the plane. I remember the exact seat, in fact. Then in a split second this streak of fire sliced through the cabin’s center [alongside the fuel tank] directly in front of me. It didn’t explode, just a pillar of fire cutting through the center of the plane. That’s the moment the dream ended and I woke up.
“I felt oddly like, for some reason, that I was being shown what happened to that plane and how, although there was no identifying marking I could see inside the plane I was in. Then I wondered why me.”
Could it be that his cousin was at that time a member of the National Transportation Safety Board?
Whatever the reason, he remembers the once-in-a-lifetime dream today as vividly as he did nearly three decades ago, and I suspect he always will. My brother, the scientist, has never been one to exaggerate about anything.
Now go out into the world and treat everyone you meet exactly like you want them to treat you.