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The disappearance of Air France 447: those in peril in air and sea — 49 Comments

1. For some of us, that hymn will always recall JFK’s funeral. It is certainly fitting for the present tragedy, too.

2. Neo, for anyone who is interested in the technical meteorological aspects of the storm that AF 447 encountered, here is a link to a real pro’s web page (weather maps with overlay of flight path, data analysis, etc.)

   http://www.weathergraphics.com/tim/af447/

3. Neo, the “Navy hynm” has always had special significance. I first heard it during mandatory chapel in pre-flight school. Yep, they marched all of the Cadets to chapel each Sunday morning. Voluntary for officer students; although there was wide attendance of officers and families, because it was a special service. Correction, Jewish cadets were allowed to go into town for the scheduled services at a local synagogue, and I am not sure what they did on Sunday morning. As far as I know there were no Muslims, Hindus, or Buddhists in training. Atheists were out of luck.

   But, I digress. I believe the hymn is a very old one that was written for all seafarers. The aviation verse was added by the USN in more recent times. Thus the hymn does not belong to the Navy, although it has been pretty much adopted and widely accepted.

   I agree with your feelings. I will never hear it without an emotional response. It is played or sung at all Navy funerals or memorial services.

4. Shure this is a dreadfull occasion. But I see no reason to come up with hyms. Being a pilot I know sometimes one goes down. So? Writing an article like this is only playing with sentiments, meaning nothing at all. One could phrase poems daily about victims of road traffic, war, landmines, you name it.
   And it would make more sense than this, if any.

5. Robert Heinlein wrote a verse for those dying in space.
   Did a good job.

6. Heinlein was a Naval officer in his younger days. I think he had to leave the Navy for medical reasons. He served on the same ship my father later served on, but they weren’t on it at the same time.

7. I don’t suppose the black boxes are capable of floating, are they? If not, why not?

8. Vroems:

   Shure this is a dreadfull occasion. But I see no reason to come up with hyms. Being a pilot I know sometimes one goes down. So? Writing an article like this is only playing with sentiments, meaning nothing at all.

   I have never been a churchgoer, but have long been partial to vocal music. I appreciated being introduced to this hymn.

   Sentiments and emotions are part of life. You may find it uncomfortable to deal with them, but they are there.

   More to the point: tragedy is part of life. You may not like to acknowledge that, but it is so. Part of living is learning how to deal with tragedy. Not everyone deals with tragedy in the same manner. I appreciated exposure to the hymn and considered it an appropriate response to that tragedy; you did not. So it goes. Different strokes for different folks.

   A word to the wise follows. Spell-check is your friend. Three spelling errors in two sentences make me think of the old adage: Does sloppy writing indicate sloppy thinking?

9. such events dont make me think of the navy hymn

   they make me think of old tunes from before our modern culture where men worked cause working was dangerous. (this is still true, the percentage of men who die at work compared to women is incredibly slanted. and most of the women were killed by bad choice in relationships, not actually work).

   this one made me think of a modernized one from steel eye span. let her go down.

   Sometime in October
   We sailed from New England shore
   When we sailed into a raging storm
   Like I’ve never ever seen before
   And all of the crew they were brave men
   But the captain, he was braver
   He said “Never mind the ship, me boys
   There’s none of us here can save her”

   Chorus:
   Let her go down
   Swim for your lives
   Swim for your children
   Swim for your wives
   But let her go down
   Just let her go down

   Chorus

   Just in the open ocean
   There were some of the crew and me
   While the captain steered our wounded ship
   To the bottom of an angry sea
   And with his dying breath we all heard him say
   “Just the fortunes of a sailor”
   And he said “Never mind the ship, me boys
   There’s none of us here can save her”

   [for those who are curious the groups early work (i didnt know that they continued througout my life… so this was a nice reward for looking), was mostly modernizing the music behind old old tunes. otherwise they would die out. so many of the songs have a history that they included in their albums too. so for me it was “rock music for historians” 🙂

   its interesting to compare the music of then to now… while now plays on the same heart strings, since the 70s, its all be so fake in comparisson.

   when you go back and compare then you start to see it and feel it once you experience enough of it AND place it in time and history.

   in fact the idea of music nary changed till that future moment when it was no longer an expression of reality and coping with it, but became an inductive tool, and a economic tool, and those not interested in what it really was were controlling it. we will always wonder if reality would have been different if adorno didnt make his predictions since we will never know if they created that future by absense of any other thought in the way.

   now excuse me while i go see what albums and lyrics and such i have missed for 20 odd years as i forgot them]

10. I don’t suppose the black boxes are capable of floating, are they? If not, why not?

    no.. they dont float… and the reason is that the assumption is that its easier to find it in the wreckage of a huge plane than to find it moving around all on its own.

    if you think its hard finding a huge jet that is missing, imagine what something the size of a small bread box would be like. it might not be found for literally decades or more, if ever.

11. @Gringo.
    This hymn is ancient. When travelers were explorers, heroes. This accident has no relation to the hymn. The writer is only playing with emotions and adds nothing to my opinion. Apparently it works to attract readers. You have a different view, fine. But emotion is not strange to me.

    Errors should make you think of second or third lanuage. Don`t worry about my thinking.

12. Vroems, people blog about subjects that interest them, or that they care about or respond to intellectually or emotionally. Apparently this isn’t such a subject for you, but then again, you have no obligation to read posts here. If you have a blog of your own, why then, by all means, don’t write any posts there about airline crashes. But this is not your blog. You may think it made no sense to write about this, but what actually makes no sense is for you to waste your time commenting that Neo shouldn’t have written about the subject because YOU aren’t interested in it.

    Also, spell-check works even for people writing in second or third languages, and can help make their comments easier for readers to understand.

    Turning to my own response, I’m glad that Neo chose to spend a few minutes meditating so eloquently on the emotional cost of this plane crash, and that she connected the loss with the Navy Hymn. It’s moving to think about the way this old song has been revised and rewritten through the years to cover each generation’s new forms of travel and exploration. And, on a personal note, a member of my family will be doing quite a bit of traveling on planes and ships this summer, both privately and with the Navy, and I’m glad to be reminded of a hymn that I can hum to myself for a little comfort when his peregrinations make me nervous.

13. This tragic accident takes me back to another Air France crash back in 1962 during takeoff at Orly outside Paris which killed so many Atlanta art patrons. My uncle’s brother and wife were on that flight and killed instantly, leaving three children orphaned back home. The ripples to that community, and even in our family were astounding at the time. Today I am close to the oldest of the surviving children and we sometimes talk of those days….and also how quickly life and destinies can change, in the batting of an eye.

    My heart goes out to the families of these grieving people.

    http://www.ajc.com/metro/content/metro/stories/2009/06/02/orly_crash_1962.html

14. Webutante: You might want to take a look at a related post I wrote a while back.

    That is a terribly difficult thing that happened to your relatives. So sorry.

15. Vroems, where are you coming from? You sound like a new pilot, maybe a student. Just a little too macho here.

    I spent over 40 years as a professional aviator. I simply don’t know why it isn’t appropriate to recall a hymn dedicated to people who test the sea or the air. The composer recognized that the sea is merciless, and so is the air. Anyone who goes to sea or flies and hasn’t felt that, is staying pretty close to shore, or to the airport.

    This hymn is very special to a lot of people. Neo appropriately thought of it in this situation and shared her thoughts.

16. Thanks, Neo. After writing that first comment, I picked up the phone and called Linda, the oldest of the orphaned now very grown, and told her how happy I am that we’re such good friends. She appreciated it and reiterated that tomorrow is the anniversary of the Orly crash and deaths of her parents….

    Then I came back to read your comment and earlier post about the tornados and then the Lockerbie crash. Ohhhh, Neo. I have friends, an old colleague in conservation in D.C, whose daughter was killed in that fatal crash too. You are correct, the pain for them and all those familes will never completely go away….just lessens in intensity. Life does go on, yet it certainly can change and often does change in a milli-second.

17. Oldflyer,

    I appreciate your sense of awe about the ocean and the air. Wise man. This is a moving hymn, and it is appropriately selected by neo for both civilians who die at sea or in the air as it is for military men who meet their Maker while on mission.

    I was an Army guy. I don’t know a lot about the sea, except the awe it inspires in me whenever I see it and whenever I fly out to Hawai’i over the vast Pacific.

    I’ve been on flights where there were mechanical problems. Engines – twice. Our last trip out to Hawai’i, on the return trip on the dog from LAX to St. Louis (continuing on to Boston) when we landed in St. Louis they found that there was a significant fuel leak in one of the engines on the side of the jet near where I was sitting. On our first trip out to Hawai’i, back in August of ’93, on the return trip we were a half hour out of Honolulu when the pilot had to dump fuel and return. Engine issues. He didn’t want to take a chance. It was going to be a loooooonnnng way to Dallas, with most of it over the vast ocean. If something catastrophic happens out there, you are well and truly f***ed.

18. Webutante,

    My wife went to the University of New Hampshire with a gal who died on that flight that ended in Lockerbie, Scotland.

19. That hymn chokes me up every time I hear or sing it. I’ve known it by heart for years; my dad was Air Force, flew rescue for much of his career, and that last verse had very special meaning.

    And then there was:

    “O, I have slipped the surly bonds of Earth
    And danced the skies on laughter-silvered wings;
    Sunward I’ve climbed, and joined the tumbling mirth
    Of sun-split clouds, and done a thousand things
    You have not dreamed of – reached and soared and spun
    High in the sunlit silence! Hov’ring there,
    I’ve chased the shouting wind along, and flung
    My eager craft through footless halls of air.
    Up, up the long, delirious, burning blue
    I’ve danced the windswept heights with easy grace
    Where never lark, or even eagle flew,
    And, while with silent, lifting mind, I’ve trod
    The high, untrespassed boundaries of space,
    Reached out my hand, and touched the face of God.”

    Sigh.

20. And it is particularly discomforting as I have scheduled travel this weekend – Transatlantic too.

21. I find it odd that nowhere in my reading has the possibility of a bomb or other intentional cause been mentioned. This was a damn new plane with all sorts of protective redundancies and designed survivability of lightning strikes.

    I can’t fathom the meterologic arcana of the weathergraphics link above ( But Thanks!); the bottom line seems to be AF447 didn’t skirt the bad weather, was in it perhaps 12 minutes, and it was a strong but not terrible storm.

22. Whoops- just checked Drudge. Maybe ’twas a bomb.

23. A bomb cannot be ruled out. That’s one of the reasons it’s so important to find the black box and get more information.

    On the whole though, there’s no particular evidence favoring a bomb, and it’s true that there was a storm. But a bomb was one of the first possibilities I considered because I seemed to remember (can’t find a link to this information right now, however) that the Lockerbie bomb was actually timed to go off shortly after the plane would be over deep water in the Atlantic. The only reason we got so much information about that crash (and the only reason it killed so many people on the ground as well) was that the takeoff was delayed, and so the bomb went off while the aircraft was still over land.

    It occurred to me when I heard about the Air France crash that it occurred not too long after the plane entered the deep water area of the Atlantic. The debris field seems to be about 600 miles off the Brazilian coast.

24. neo,

    The stunning thing about this was the fact that it happened exceedingly quickly. So quickly that the pilots could not even send any kind of message. I don’t think a bomb can be ruled out, but there will be no hard information without the black boxes.

    It happened beyond an island some few hundred miles northeast of the city of Natal. Because I had once traveled to Brazil back in ’82, spending time in both Sao Paulo and Rio de Janeiro, I have a curiosity about the country. It’s a breathtakingly beautiful country in so many ways in so many places. And I never got up to Amazonas. I love the Portuguese language. It’s softer than Spanish and sounds like a blend of French, Italian, and Spanish. I just did a little search on the city of Natal. The beaches are quite beautiful up there. Natal is quite a large city, but with the lowest crime rate of any of the cities in Brazil. Something to appreciate if you’ve ever been to Sao Paulo and Rio, where crime is quite pervasive.

    One thing everyone should keep in mind about South America: Hizb’allah is really well-ensconced in Southern Brazil and in Paraguay. So, yes, even though South America is very Catholic, there are plenty of Muzzies lurking who I am sure would not mind a ripe opportunity to kill a lot of kafirs.

    I just cannot imagine lightning doing this to that jet. Even strong storms. I remember flying from JFK overnight to Rio and flying over the equator in the Amazon region. Lots of lightning and turbulence at times.

25. Whatsit.
    Actually I am interested in the subject. That`s why I read the article and then concluded that it makes no sense to me. Worldwide 3000 people get killed in road traffic accidents every day. To put events in proportion.
    You may not agree with that but it seems to me it`s entirely appropriate to express my opinion here.
    That`s what the comment box is for.

26. Vroems, I’ve struggled with this point for years: why am I perfectly confident about driving my loud children hither and yon, on freeways and city streets alike, a cup of coffee in my hand and the radio on, but put me on a plane and I’m white-knuckling the whole time?

    The conclusion I’ve reached is that “proportion” is not a comfort. The unquestionable fact that I will die someday doesn’t actually help me face the prospect of imminent, unexpected, and not-at-all-in-my-control death. And the other part of it, for me, is that I’m much calmer on flights without my kids, not because I don’t want them to die (though of course I DON’T want them to die, ever, regardless of that same unquestionable reality’s application to them), but because to spend that last minute before death trying to comfort them as the plane goes down seems more than I could handle.

27. I was reading Webutante posts and thinking – “millisecond that changes everything” is why I can’t imaging myself driving a car, ever. And that Webutante, after the road emergencies stories she shared is, in my view, a brave woman, not less than the pilots in a steel box over the deep waters.

    And then I read Jamie’s post – how strange.
    May be the whole issue is about control – or what we perceive of “ability to control”. I’ve been in a couple of accidents (luckily, not too traumatic – both could be worse) on a road; as a passenger. Same feeling of helplessness, if anything happens.
    But I have no fear of planes, at all. Possibly because the “road conditions” are hidden from my eyes and I wouldn’t be able to notice that danger is coming?

28. Vroems there are a couple of reasons why tragedies such as this affect people strongly.

    First, would probably be the scale of the tragedy. In this case over two hundred lives snuffed in a matter of moments.

    As mentioned, another is the helplessness of the passengers to exert any control over their fate; which in this case would not be instantaneous (unless the airplane completely broke-up).

    Finally, despite the fact that commercial air travel is now ubiquitous, there is still a little mystique left. I have felt it sitting in the cabin on long oceanic flights (hoping the crew was awake).

    One additional thought. The area in which I live has a horrendous road kill of deer. Development has rapidly pushed into deer habitat; but there are still extensive strips of wooded land to support a very large deer population. Every time I see a deer carcass beside the road I feel a sense of real regret, simply because that is an unnatural death for a deer.

    If this were a bomb, I would not rule out the investigators making that determination if they can retrieve parts of the wreckage. Perhaps even with good pictures of wreckage on the surface. Airplanes do not break into multiple pieces in flight. I was puzzled by the initial reports of complete electrical failure, and how they would report that. I believe it has been clarified that the report was simply a routine maintenance alert. So, the big mystery is why there was no distress call. Short of a truly catastrophic airborne break-up, there would be plenty of time. It is possible since they were probably communicating in the HF band and were around thunderstorms, that any transmission would have been garbled and unreadable. We may learn more about that.

    I am sure that authorities are more suspicious of a bomb incident than they are revealing. I hope we know sometime.

29. Thank you, Neo, for giving us an opportunity to mourn.

30. I so love that hymn. I always associate with military losses, though.

    Still, I feel for the families and friends of those on that flight. How devastated and unsettled they must be feeling.

31. Gosh, I love that hymn – reminds me of JFK funeral – thanks for posting, Neo.

32. Currently, the info is that the plane broke up very rapidly. This was not a controlled descent to the water, the opposite of breaking up instantly. Only the briefest automated communications were sent (according to current info), which means a fast and complete destruction.
    I can’t think of any other example of such a catastrophic destruction which was not a bomb except for the 800 flight whose fuel tank blew up.
    It is conceivable, to this non-engineer, that some unspecified failure allowed the air flowing past the aircraft at some hundreds of miles an hour to get inside and tear the thing apart. What would happen, say, if the cockpit windows blew in? The aircraft is no longer streamlined and all that rushing air comes straight in.
    But, as I say, no example comes to mind which was not a bomb except the 800 flight.
    There was a charter flight out of Goose Bay or Gander with some Sinai peacekeepers aboard which crashed shortly after take off. Interestingly, the autopsies showed the troops had breathed combustion products, which does not comport with simply hitting the ground and dying instantly. The families’ copies of the autopsies were heavily redacted. You’d wonder why.
    It is said that LBJ actively hid evidence of NVA and VC atrocities in order to be able to meter US sentiment about the war and didn’t want a jihad by us based on the horror our enemies visited on civilians. Didn’t work.
    Obama is ignoring the shooting of two soldiers, presumably say some, to avoid annoying his hosts in his Muslim country tour. Or because he doesn’t care. Neither is acceptable.
    Point is, death, or the circumstances behind death, can be politically embarrassing, or useful. If the French thought it was useful to suppress evidence of sabotage, they would and it wouldn’t be the first time such a thing has–probably–been done. Why would they do that? To avoid annoying their yoots. Or to avoid making Muslims look dangerous when it’s time for Israel to make more unilateral concessions. Or to keep the terrorists guessing as to what the French know.

33. I suppose we’ve all read by now that Air France got a bomb scare call over an earlier flight to France (from Brazil) and I suppose found nothing.

    Pan Am Flight 103 (Lockerbie) was destroyed by a bomb that malfunctioned. It detonated way too soon, at way too low an altitude, and was supposed to explode when the plane was well out over open ocean.

34. Thanks for sharing the video of that wonderful hymn. I first heard it when I was teaching music and it was in a music book.

    But then again at JFK’s funeral. But I wasn’t aware of the third verse. It it’s ancient hymn for seafarers, I’m sure it pre-dates flying, so that verse had to be added later. The words are nice, but don’t quite fit the music as well a the first two.

    Nothing like a men’s chorus and the military has some of the best.

35. This article says that the plane disappeared 400 miles off the Brazilian coast.

    This would support the possibility of a bomb so well-timed that it was set to explode as the plane began to be over deep water, which would significantly hamper any attempt to find out what happened.

    The article also states that Brazil lacks any of the equipment that would allow it to search for the black boxes. France has some equipment, but it will take a week to reach the scene, losing valuable time (the boxes only ping for thirty days). What’s more, the terrain beneath the ocean there is not only deep, it’s mountainous.

    We may never know what happened to this airplane, which is especially troubling on top of the tragic loss of life.

36. Jamie, Oddflyer

    I understand the difference between emotional and rational approach. I choose for rational since the media are so good at hyping up such events without knowing what they are talking about.

    Modern airliners have relatively more thrust than the oldies. That makes it easier to cruise high level, closer to the coffin corner where margin between cruise speed versus stallspeed/Machbuffet is limited. A heavy airliner at FL 350 travelling through strong up- and downdrafts can easily be stalled. And everyone knows that a stalled or spinning swept wing is a real problem. That’s where I would look.

37. had to be some catastrophic event and each new story to cover things was worse than the one before. lightning. but no plane has gone down due to that since 67. then a storm so bad that they turned so hard the plane split in two. ah.. ok.. maybe if you imagine that a big plane is like a cesna and your looking out of the window and get spooked (by a ufo).

    had to be a bomb… nothing else would have been catostrophic enough to prevent them making any radio anything.

    until i heard the distance of the pieces, the only scenario i could think of that would do this was a failure of autopilot and or altimeter information. that is, they didnt radio cause they flew into the water.

    but, with debris in two areas apart, the plane broke up in the air. power faulure cant do that.

    a bomb is most likely.. the only other thing that i can think of is that the skin of the plane peeled off due to failures. such a thing could cause so much drag on the tail with the engines pulling that the plane can get torn into two pieces with the forward section flying forward till it starts to tumble. (man i would not want to even try to imagine the wipsaw physics on the people. lets just say its not hollywood)

    while skin failures have happened.. bombs happen more.

    another option that is possible is that someone shot it out of the sky. while possible, i dont think it likely unless we hear that there was something abort.

    on another note, anyone hear a confirmation as to the rocket under a plane in the US…

    right now we are under attack and the news is covering it. we have 4 guys in ny captured… we have another one who killed someone, and the facts are broadening that he is not your lone wacko of average american stripes (and may have been doing things for a while).

    withot news reporting and such it would be hard to see that incidents are happening and kind of faded into the back of the forward noise.

    http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/metropolitan/6453529.html

    the update has more detail and is here
    http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/headline/metro/6455016.html

    “The FAA then contacted the Liberty County department dispatcher and reported their pilot reported an object flying straight at his aircraft and passed 100 feet under it,” said Ken DeFoor, chief deputy for the Liberty County Sheriff’s Department.

    the pilot was ex military

    The flight was over the southern edge of Liberty County flying at 13,000 feet when the incident occurred, officials said. ExpressJet flies regional routes for Continental Airlines as Continental Express.

    “We haven’t found anything yet – either something on the ground where it launched or on the ground where it came down,” said Liberty County Sheriff’s Cpl. Hugh Bishop.

    ======

    In May 2008, a Continental Airlines pilot reported a similar incident.

    “It was the same situation, almost identical,” DeFoor said. “The FBI are pulling their records on that one. It was roughly in the same area almost a year ago.”
    

    there ARE rocket hobbiests who can shoot that high. (liquid fuel fanciers) but they have serious permits and things and not something you can do in your garage and just use.

    things will escalate till everyone knows its happening but refuses to acknowlege it openly.

38. Correction, the federal license isnt needed any more. you can have a liquid rocket engine on an explosives license.

    stinger missiles would be right about their ceiling. that is if one was fired too soon, having a 15,000 foot ceiling, it wouldnt be able to fly far enough to reach the plane or rise up to meet it when it got close.

    the closer a plane is to the ceiling of the missile the less play one would have in timing a shot compared to a plane 1 mile up (vs 2.41).

    i dont think we will hear much more about it though.

    the reason A Q did things in doubles was that when they did things in the US in a single event it never had any impact. like this, it just gets no traction and all kinds of other spins are tried first. a gas truck blows up, we assume a car accident, no one elaborates, they clean it up, and thats it. two things happening at the same time, and that kind of thing makes less sense.

    i am pretty sure that the 4 from ny and the one that killed the soldier are not the only ones doing things for their beliefs. the first were a good pr story, the second was something that couldnt be left to fade out. are there others?

39. One of the reasons a bomb is being discounted is that no terrorist group has claimed responibility. But, being an old guy, I remember that the first ever aircraft bomb was planted by a guy to kill his wife to collect on her life insurance.

40. I have to agree with Mitch – if it was a explosive device, there would have been some claim to responsibility – especially if it was TAQ. You can’t plan these things by on the fly (no pun intended), surely by now there would have been a video statement on Al Jazeera… And besides, why blow up a plane in the middle of nowhere – do it closer where media crews can get to it easier – greater visual impact…

    After all, a plane is still an mechanical device, and like many other mechanical devices – especially the more complicated ones – it can fail.

    If one was to deploy a Stinger, it would have been closer to the take off / approach, since its closer to the ground and at its slowest speeds. Not to mention, its a very costly proposal… its cheaper to get an explosive device on board and detonate…

    At any rate, time will tell. Hope they find the flight recorder…

    rd sends.

41. lack of a claiment is ROTTEN logic…

    maybe the claiment was killed by a predator drone at another time.

    the point is that lack of a claimant says NOTHING.

42. Artfldgr:

    and:

    “had to be a bomb… nothing else would have been catostrophic enough to prevent them making any radio anything”

    is not ROTTEN logic?

43. As soon as I heard there was a slick of aviation fuel quite extensive I knew it wasn’t a bomb. The aviation fuel would have ignited if a bomb had lit up the jet. So, we are talking about some other catastrophic failure.

44. FredHjr:

    I am hardly an expert on the matter, but in the Lockerbie crash (caused by a bomb), the plane’s fuel did not ignite until the plane hit the ground. The bomb tore a hole in the plane at a height of 31,000 feet, and then the plane broke into pieces which fell to the earth. The fireball only occurred when the section attached to the wings (containing the fuel) hit a residential area of Lockerbie (see this).

45. rubber ducky,
    there is more than one criteria to satisfy. yes by itself alone its rotten logic. but as part of a list of items that all have to be satisfied, its not.

    lack of a claiment has no bearing on that list either way… all results are the same… if they claim it, they can be truthful, or lying. if they dont, they can be truthful, or lying. its irrelevent.

    but
    no radio contact made
    AND broke up in the air high enough that debris was spread out for more than a few hundred kilometers.
    france being islam protest and such central
    bomb threat the day before

    sorry rubber ducky, no kewpie doll here.

46. The aviation fuel would have ignited if a bomb had lit up the jet. So, we are talking about some other catastrophic failure.
    

    not true… it would depend on the explosive used. certain explosives do not flame…

    such stuff is commonly used in hypebaric bombs, and thermobaric weapons. feul air bombs.

    so no… lack of flame as in hollywierd is not indicative of anyhitng.

    a bomb could have opened the skin, air could have torn it apart… no flame…

47. sorry neo..
    i was going down the line and had not read yoru post.

48. seems like they are back at square one. no debris, no flight data recorder.

49. My analysis of the recovered AF447 tailfin suggests it was ripped off in flight by a force from the right side of the plane due to the presence of exposed, unpainted tail surface at the break point. M hypothesis would be the left wing stalled and the rudder was (over-deflected) to the right causing structural failure.

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