29 July 1996 start log.
Causes of crashes of TWA Flight 800, Pan Am 103, UAL Flight 811: Running subjective personal log. Click on contents to go to objective accident reports.

An analogy is that of the several victims, one came back (UAL flight 811) and was able to show what happened. The other victims were Pan Am 103, TWA 800, and maybe Air India and South African Airways.
Comparing 103, 800, and 811 will reveal remarkable similarties in time of destruction, place of initial damage, recorder sounds, engine fodding patterns, radar anomalies just before destruction, and sequence of fuselage destruction; all in Boeing 747-121 aircraft. Too much coincidence for homemade bombs placed randomly in cargo compartments. Perfectly understandable for reproducible mechanical problems with system that has history of inadvertent malfunctionings such as forward cargo door.

30 July 1996. They found the cargo door today and stated it was closest to New York than almost all the other pieces which indicates it came off first. It came off first because it became unlatched and then pulled off at 400 Kts. The ensuing tear in the skin weakened the structure so that the entire nose came off. What caused the door to come off other than something that has caused it to happens many times before such as improper latching, poor design, wear and tear, or combination of all? A bomb? So very unlikely that different bombers from different decades using different bombs could place a bomb in the exact place in the same cargo hold of the same model early 747 and have the bomb detonate at the same mode of flight, after takeoff climb giving similar recorder sounds of destruction and same destruction pattern and sequence. Only a large common reproducible mechanical failure could do that, such as cargo door inadvertently opening. A cargo door from Boeing 747 121 series with many flight hours loaded with fuel and climbing into decreased outside air pressure.
Flight 811 was the victim who came back and reported the culprit, the cargo door. It was a similar aircraft type, similar recorder sounds, similar fod pattern, and similar first impressions that a bomb had gone off. But that plane landed in Honolulu and the real cause was soon determined, open cargo door. The door was brought up off the ocean and the latches were unlatched.
The dominoes will fall. That is, first TWA 800 is cargo door, then UAL already is cargo door, then Pan Am 103 will be cargo door. Then to look at two other earlier 747's that disappeared from radar and bombs were blamed but both had similar clues to Flight 811. The two were the Air India crash of 1985 and the South African crash. But for now, definitely cargo door openings for Flight 800, 811, and 103.
The first connection to cargo door and Pan Am 103 was made by me in spring of 1990 in a monthly newsletter for the Experimental Aircraft Association Chapter 204. I had written that maybe when another 747 falls from the sky the investigation will be reopened.
Then again in 1992 it was published nationally in a comment in Flying magazine. I had written to the editor of Flying who in his monthly column stated that I had said there was such a similarity to Flight 811 and Flight 103 that the cargo door theory must be ruled out. It wasn't.
In 1995, I had correspondence with the insurance company, who has to pay several billion dollars in claims to victim's families, explaining the cargo door theory but the official was adament about it being a bomb. And now several hundred more people die by a problem that can be fixed and should have been fixed.
There is no conspiracy. No one is covering up. All errors of judgment are innocent and explained by self interest of the party. No one wants to say it was my fault the door came open and tore the plane apart and killed people. They will think and say it was a crazy group of foreign bad guys who want to kill us. Well, not true, it's a simple mechanical problem which can be fixed.
1 August 1996. It was reported today that no bomb residue was found on the cargo door. Of course not. The latch condtion was omitted. Too bad.
5 Aug 96. Historic day. The major revision to the crash web site was done in one day of concentrated work. An entire argument by one person with documents, links, comments, pictures, and text was created by scanners, printers, monitors, modems, computers, and telephone lines. It could have been about medicine or war but today it was about airplane accidents caused by opening cargo doors. The revelations about the cargo door could not have happened without the internet, the www, the newsgroups, email and ftp. All were used.
It is very frustrating to watch the news conferences with the NTSB and the FBI and hear them as they stumble around the truth. Or avoid it. People say have you contacted the authorities? I have tried and tried from the President, to FBI, to NTSB, to news magazines, to friends, to insurance companies, to Boeing..who else. It is one thing to have a freaky conspiracy theory and be ignoredd but it is another thing to have a perfectly rational explanation for events and be brushed off in favor of mad foreign terrorists. The world has changed in thirty years. Before it was conspiracies were in the fringe group when a man got a rifle and assassinated someone. Now the conspiracies are the mainstream and the rational explanations are in the fringe. The population is unjustly terrified and the elected leaders are riding the fear to power.
There is no conspiracy. There is no coverup. Pan Am 103 was an honest mistake of good people describing reality from their self interest point of view. They thought it was best to blame bombers and not the airplane. They were wrong and more people died for the error.
For the explosive residue found in Pan Am 103 I offer the explanation suggested in the Pan Am 103 report page 19 and 20, "...the metal in the immediate locality was ragged, heavily distorted, and the inner surfaces were pitted and sooted-rather as if a very large shotgun had been fired at the inner surface of the fuselage at close range." I suggest a rather large shotgun in the baggage container fired at the inner surface of the fuselage at close range when the cargo door blew off resulting in severe concussive forces into the baggage compartment.
The proof of no cover up is that the cargo door explanation for the crash of 103 is in the report. The green diamond of the cargo door radar return, the destruction pattern starting from the cargo door, engine fodding pattern etc are all in the report. A cargo door coverup would have obliterated those details. There was no conspiracy to hide the truth of the cargo door cause. Everyone who said it was a bomb really believed it. They were not lying. They made a mistake.
I feel as if my frustration of six years is coming to an end. Six years of knowing something to be true and seeing the world believe the other way. Lockerbie has not been out of the news for more than a week or two before it pops up. I take some responsibility for the deaths of the TWA 800 passengers. If I had been more persuasive or perservering I might have revealed the danger of early 747 cargo door opening in flight and they would have been fixed. But then again, as I type this there are early 747s flying now with cargo doors that may open under certain circumstances, tear off pulling skin with it and leaving large gaping hole in fuselage which takes the air pressure and blows nose of plane...
I wrote six years ago maybe the investigation will be reopened into Pan Am 103 when another 747 falls to the sky in pieces. It happened but the investigation has not yet been reopened.
The consequences and implications are immense. Billions will change hands, politics on the world stage will be affected, emotions will run amok with guilt, shame, and anger all involved.
Well, truth will out. That's another theory yet to be proved.

8 Aug another frustrating day, I don't know how long I can hold out, rational thought running thin, reasonable explanations rejected, the planes of truth fly overhead but do not see. Today it was fuel tanks in center with fuel leak. The NTSB is all around from wings, to center tanks to cockpit, it's as if they avoiding the cargo door. Is it so unreasonable to assume that a door opens once in a while when it shouldn't? Happens to all of us with car doors, or trunks. And then to think, hmmm, big hole in side of nose at 300 knots, that's not good. Maybe tear nose off. Better check out cargo door. Like checking to see if latches on found door of 800 are open position which means lock sectors locked but cams open, there's the problem. Looks locked but isn't. Doors on this model 747 have opened so often they wrote an Airworthiness Directive, a serious thing. If ADs are not complied with completely the plane is grounded. Cargo door is obvious culprit not freak occurrence. All 747-100 series aircraft must be grounded and cargo doors welded shut until further notice. If it happens again, as it did just two months after PA103, a charge of negligence can be leveled at government authorities. It's not like they don't know. They have been emailed by me often and their own accident reports have similar events. It is very humbling to be ignored when presenting important great truth to responsible officials. Did an hour radio show with Robert Knight of WBAI last night. At least the frustration and anger are ameliorated by doing something, like talking about it to interested parties. He told me about 8 year old girl that died in crash of 800. Great. Now I see spinning girl waving arms falling two miles to ocean, maybe not screaming. I've got a call in to my former pilot from Vietnam seeking advice. Plus I'm fighting a cold. Plus my web site is incoherent and unpersuasive. If I told a mathematician two and two is four, he would say, hmmm, I don't know, let me get back to you on that. I sent an email to NTSB repeating the word cargo door fifty times, maybe insult will get their attention. Responsive government agency to an informed citizenry, hah.
OK, enough self pity. Things that need to be done by NTSB: 1. check found door latch cams for open or closed position. 2. Compare recorder tape endings to Flight 103, 811, Air India two crashes and SAA crash for similar thump/sound/bang for acoustical similarities.3. Check radar tapes for similarity for radar blips leaving 103, 811, and 800 just prior to event. 4. Check EPR tapes for telltale blip of baggage fodding number three engine. 5. Interview baggage service persons who closed door on 800 which was running late to see if they followed procedure. 6. Confirm missing persons of 800 sat over cargo door and are missing just like 811 and 103. 7. Match wreckage trails to 103. 8. Check CAS of 800 to see if it matches CAS of 300 knots for event of 103 and 811. 9. Check angle of sun at 835PM on July 17th to see if metal spinning object the size of a car would be seen on ground as streak. 10. Check latch cams on cargo door of Pan Am 103. 11. Ground all 747 100 series aircraft and weld cargo door shut until further notice.
11 August 1996. Well, I did it. I sent off a warning to the President, FBI, NTSB, Air Force, News, and friends. Here is it: There is an immediate, although slight, danger to the life of the President of the United States caused by the inadvertent opening of the lower forward cargo door in the Boeing 747-200 aircraft in which he flies. The door may open in flight exposing a large hole in the nose of Air Force One leading to the sudden destruction of the aircraft and death to all aboard, including the President. My name is John Barry Smith, Major, US Army, Retired, address and SSN on request, phone number 408 659 3552, back up phone number 408 659 7564, email barry@corazon.com internet web site at http://www.corazon.com/barryhome.html
Forward cargo doors are coming off Boeing 747s inflight. The doors must be locked shut until further notice. This alert notice is being sent to the White House, NTSB, FBI, US Air Force, FAA, news television, the local newspaper, and interested friends. John Barry Smith
It was sent 10 AM 11 August 1996. Attached to each email was a photo of the Flight 811 nose with the gaping hole showing. I did it because I recently received information that it is not only Boeing 747-100 series aircraft that are coming apart because of inadvertent door cargo door openings but also 747-200 series. An astute reporter from The Mail On Sunday in London faxed me clippings from the Air India crash of 1985. The circumstances of that crash of a Boeing 747-237B are so similar to the cargo door crashes of 103, 811, and 800 (Boeing 747-100 series) that the possibility that a opening cargo door caused the Air India crash to change to probable.
The President of the United States flies in a Boeing 747-200. An alert was warranted in good conscience.
One email reported that the fuselage of Pan Am 103 was to be melted down while the rest of the plane wreckage could be disposed of otherwise. Another email said that the Airworthiness Directives on TWA 800 were not complied with. There is information coming in that I am skeptical of. But, a good accident investigator keeps an open mind and checks out all leads if possible. I could be wrong is the central theme of investigation work along with, I could be right.
I hold firm in my belief there is no cover up of the door defect, there is no conspiracy to hide the potential fatal fault from the innocent passengers and crews, there is no lying as to evidence discovered, and no conscious effort at deception. The errors of judgment in assessing cause of crash to bomb and not cargo door are honest mistakes made by well meaning people. They described reality from their self interest point of view. They believed a bomb was a better explanation. They were wrong. A cargo door opening inflight inadvertently is a better explanation. And the evidence supports that conclusion.
12 August 1996.
Paranoia, conspiracy, plots, lying, oh man, I do not want to enter that jungle. I believe the errors of judgment were made by honest people making honest mistakes describing reality through their own self interest point of view. They believed a bomb explanation was in their best interests. They were wrong. It was not a bomb in Air India 182, nor Pan Am 103, nor TWA 800. It was cargo doors. Such a simple truth with such grave implications and consequences. Such a serious thing. Therefore I state I can be bought off. Yes, for the right amount of money I will say, "It was all a dream; I don't know what I was thinking about. Sorry for the inconvenience." The minimum bid for my silence on the cargo door theory of 747 crashes is at least $225.00 which includes the cost of premium inkjet paper, (not the glossy), and the amortized use of my scanner, monitor, and computer. Hey, bribery works, you got an offer? Also threats of physical violence work. Spitting in my face and I'm outta here. "It was all a dream; I don't know what I was thinking about. Sorry for the inconvenience." Yeah, screw all those people who go spinning to their death miles below. Better that I have some extra cash or avoid some pain and they die. So yeah, this whole cargo door thing, it's been fun, but hey, it's not my whole life, you get my drift? I just hope it's not you sitting there watching the movie when another cargo door lets go, and boom, the door tears up and away on its hinges pulling large pieces of fuselage skin with it (that will painstakingly be pieced together on a hangar floor) allowing large amounts of high speed air to enter fuselage and tear off nose, (which creates its own wreckage trail) severing all electrical power in the nerve center of the plane behind the nose wheel leaving the recorders with just a half second of loud sound for investigators to mull over. I hope it's not you that gets sucked into number three engine and only the baggage from the now open cargo hold that the engine eats. That engine will separate and fall down alone. The rest of the headless plane with passengers will descend and disintegrate into vaporized jet fuel and running engines and possibly explode. I hope it's you that happens to have a parachute on and is able to avoid getting sucked or blown out of the hole in the nose, scramble past screaming passengers, open an escape hatch and jumps before plane explodes. It could happen. It's not my fault.
Questions? Why in the search for a mechanical fault is the cargo door ignored? There are two ADs against the door. It has been identified in other accidents, one with fatalities (that's dead people). The door is at the scene of destruction, the forward cargo hold. This is a prime suspect and needs to be ruled out, if possilbe. For that culprit to be passed by is suspect. I'm assuming it is honest oversight.
Why are emails to government officials being ignored? Not even polite brushoffs, just ignored. I assume I am so inconsequential that in the clutter of input, that an informed, experienced citizen with documentation is still insignificant and does not rate a reply.
People aren't that stupid. It may be that the officals do know but do not want to believe or even consider the cargo door hypothesis because of it's implications.
Here they are from my point of view: All front cargo doors of Boeing 747s get sealed until further notice. Fix is engineered. Doors fixed. Passengers don't die, planes don't crash. Life goes on.
Here's some other side effects. Boeing has a multi-billion dollar product liability suit on its hands from literally thousands of victim's families. Pan Am and TWA insurers have lawsuits against them for faulty maintenance. The governments of India, Canada, France, UK, and the USA are embarrassed and angry at being misled by accident investigators and then misleading its citizens as to a danger to their lives. Libya gets apology for being accused of crime and being punished by sanctions for crime it did not commit. Economy of Northwestern USA suffers when buyers of jet aircraft buy from someone else other than Boeing. Victims of families lose millions in compensation because door may be misconduct but not wilfull misconduct thus limiting their claims to just $75,000. Reputations of accident investigations suffers when conclusions are revealed to be bunk. Investigators embarrassed at previous statements made now shown to be fantasy. Confidence of citizens in its governments to protect them and for airlines to not kill them falls to low.
And then life goes on.
The United States is the country that shows its rocket launches live and when they blow up, the problem gets fixed and life goes on. We face the fear of failure to attain greatness and when the failure happens, we identify it, fix it, and life goes on.
12 August, late afternoon.
I had an experience this morning that left me holding my head in my hands staring at the computer screen. I couldn't believe it. It's still incredible. Here's the story.
I have a computer. It's hooked to the internet. I have a web site with pages I create. The home page has links to other pages. Several of the links are to my transportation systems, a car, a motorcycle, and a plane. It's a play on number of wheels and number of seats. So I put the three pages on the site about four months ago by downloading pictures of similar type motorcycle, Kawasaki Concours, and car, Ford Crown Victoria. For the airplane I took a six year old photograph, one among hundreds, of my Mooney, now sold four years ago, and scanned it on the scanner and pasted it into the page and put the page on the web. And left everything alone until this morning when I decided just to see what others were seeing if they went to the page and clicked on four seats, three wheels.
Up popped the Mooney, ah, my Mooney N79807. I know the aircraft intimately, as well as a P2V-5FS, and the RA-5C. This picture was taken on the ramp of the airport after I had spent several hours a day for several days cleaning the grime off and waxing the entire airplane to include under the wings and inside the wheel wells. I was proud. I put the prop in a vertical position cleared away cleaning materials, looked through the viewfinder and took the picture. Six years later I scanned the picture and put it on the web. Today I looked closely and saw, and saw...the baggage door was open! Oh man. The seam around the door is black and the door lever is white, reflecting in the sun. It is inadvertent because I wanted the airplane to look sleek and would have closed the door had I known or noticed it was open. I had my own years ago inadvertent cargo door opening just as I am in the midst of the 747 cargo door opening.
Looking back, the cargo door on the Mooney was as poorly designed as most cargo doors, the hinge is on top instead of on forward side. The only passenger door, (no pilot door,) is hinged on front. If the cargo door on Mooney's opens in flight, according to seasoned pilots, it flaps around, disrupts airflow over tail surfaces giving buffet, but allows the pilot to slow down and land. The door is also dangerous by pinching and cutting off anything in its way at the hinge if it drops suddenly with a loud whooop! as it did several times with me when blown by the wind on the ground. It also can not be opened from the inside so the only way out of a Mooney is through the passenger side door with one door handle. I always kept an ax nearby to hack through door or fuselage if needed after a crash landing. I never needed the ax, nor the extra radios I carried either. This aircraft was certified by the FAA to carry passengers for money under a Part 135 single pilot single aircraft charter operation. It successfully completed that task for a year before the expenses became too much and I returned the charter back to the FAA. Part 135 charter is like a mini-airline.
I have never cast the first stone at baggage service personnel who improperly latch the 747 doors. The warning labels are in English, a language they may not understand, it may be dark working with flashlights, cold and wet and noisy, there may be pressure to hurry as there always is with paying customers, and the door is a complicated mechanical system requiring training to operate. It's no surprise that the door is not closed properly and pops open in flight.
I can now say I had a car that had a door that was open when it was supposed to be closed, a motorcycle whose saddlebag was open when it was supposed to be closed, a house whose front door was open when it was supposed to be closed, and now an airplane whose cargo door was open when it was supposed to be closed.
I love all my machines, vehicles, computers, and tv/radio/stereo but I always remember they are not human and can be replaced. Better to bruise the machine than the human is my motto.
Yes, and I noticed I avoided the explanation of just why that door was left open...Well, as I remember it, I had replaced the rubber seals to the cargo door and the passenger door, an expensive, time consuming and difficult job. With new seals the doors are difficult to close until they wear in and the rubber gets compressed a bit. So the cargo door was hard to close and required a lot of effort to press down and then latch. So when I was done waxing, I opened cargo door, put it in its up locked position, cleaned everything up, put all materials in the cargo compartment, lowered cargo door and did not latch it because I was just going to open it back up again later. I left it ajar and forgot about it. Decided to take pictures and did. Went back to door, opened it up, put camera inside and then latched door and forgot all about it. Until six years later. Incredible. Guilty of inadvertent opened cargo door.
I made a trivial error and got away with it. In aviation and the sea that is seldom the case. Run out of gas on highway, oh hell, run out of gas in the air, die.
I was the first aircraft on the disaster scene when the USS Thresher, a US nuclear sub, dove and never came back up. We arrived to last known position and orbited. The P2V-5FS, later SP-2E, had a crew of three officers, pilot, co-pilot, and navigator, and and enlisted crew of seven. I was the radar operator and sonobuoy listener. So I directed the pilot to fly around the crash site I had on the radar and dropped sonobuoys every 45 degrees and then listened for human cries for help. And all this at 19 years old. There were no cries for help, just fish and noise. Soon other planes arrived and relieved us and we went back to NAS Brunswick Maine to our squadron, VP-10.
After months of investigation the conclusion was not sabotage but a valve installed backwards. They cut a hole in the pressurized hull and allowed water in which sunk the ship killing everyone. It was not a cargo door but the principle was the same. Pressurized hulls must not be breached.
Trivial errors on sea and in the air have severe, fast, and tragic consequences. And that's why aviators and submariners are volunteers and get extra hazardous duty pay, because it is extra hazardous.
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barry@corazon.com