Included for educational purposes under "fair use".
Click here for wave file of the report on the explosion
Click here for wave file of attempts to call TWA 800 following the explosion.
Click here for wave file of Eastwind 507's report of the white light that preceded the actual explosion. This is the same white light reported by Sven Faret and other witnesses on the beach. This tape confirms that this bright light did precede the actual explosion of the plane, contrary to the claims put forward by the CIA and the FBI.
Here is the transcript for the relevant portion.
--8:37:20, Eastwind 507: ``Yes, sir. It just blew up in the air, and then we saw two fireballs go down to the water. ... There seemed to be a light. I, I thought it was a landing light, ... and it was coming right at us at, about, I don't know, about 15,000 feet or something like that, and I pushed my landing lights, ah, you know, so I saw him, and then it blew.'' --8:37:40, Boston: ``Roger that, sir, that was a 747 out there you had a visual on that. Anything else in the area when it happened?'' --8:37:47, Eastwind 507: ``I didn't see anything. He seemed to be (alone). I thought it had a landing light on, maybe it was a fire, I don't know.''
The pilot of Eastwind 507, David McLain, sees a bright light. He assumes that its landing lights, even though the source appears to be high up in the sky. He further assumes that the landing lights are "coming right at us" because landing lights are highly directional, focused out in front of the aircraft.
But given that other people on other bearings ALSO saw the light, then it could not be directional landing lights of another aircraft. The light had to be from another source.
This confirms the presence of a bright white light near the doomed 747 prior to the actual explosion.
CLICK HERE FOR THE TRANSCRIPT OF THE ENTIRE FAA TAPE.
Cited under "Fair Use".
The Press-Enterprise, Riverside, CA, October 20, 1997
Witnesses boost missile theory
TWA 800 investigators have had little interest in those who say they saw =
something hit the plane before it exploded
By David E. Hendrix^
The Press-Enterprise
A meteorologist.
A commercial fisherman.
A commuter airline pilot.
Three eyewitnesses to the fiery midair breakup of TWA 800 share one
clear recollection -- an ascending object struck the jumbo jet.
[snip]
David McClaine
Eastwind Airlines pilot David McClaine's aerial view of the Flight
800 fireball made him the person to transmit the first known message of
the tragedy to authorities.
McClaine, piloting a Boeing 737 jetliner, had just leveled off at
17,000 feet on the plane's commuter run from Boston to Trenton, N.J.
He had been watching a strange yellow light gradually ascend from
the direction of Kennedy Airport. The light was different, he said, not
the bright white that jetliners' landing lights give off.
McClaine said he had never seen a similar light in his 30 years as a
military and commercial pilot. He thought it might be flames but heard
no radio traffic, saw no smoke and decided it wasn't fire.
The object moved up past 10,000 feet, where pilots normally turn off
the lights they use as aerial warning beacons, but this one kept
burning. He fixed his gaze on it for more than a minute, he said, and
decided it was time to flick on his landing lights because his 737 would
pass to the object's left.
Before he could reach the switch, the yellowish light exploded into
a ball of flames.
"It blew up, just one big explosion," McClaine said. No more than a
second later, two streamers came out of the bottom, flames trailing
about 4,000 feet, he estimated. He did not actually see TWA 800's
fuselage; smoke and flames trailing the plane blotted out the aircraft's
debris as it fell 2 miles to the ocean.
The yellowish light remains a puzzle. Federal Aviation
Administration regulations require white landing lights and airliners
have two main lights, not one. TWA's Boeing 747 landing lights are "a
very bright, bright, white light," a company spokesman said.
