Initially there was a protocol both for the recovery and the examination. The recovery priority was set by the needs of the families to recover those lost in this tragedy. This of course seemed to be in conflict with the needs of the greater society to learn what had happened and to prevent its repeat before yet another plane was bombed out of the sky causing even more death. The apparent conflicts were not mutually exclusive and because many bodies were easily seen they were recovered first. Later it became more difficult to see the missing bodies and huge chunks of the aircraft were brought to the surface including the engines. This clearing away of big chunks of debris did result in more bodies being found.

    For the most part, with the exception of the engines, the recovered debris was brought directly to the main hangar at Calverton which was under government ownership but unused at the time. The debris then passed through a special station manned by the FBI where a quick visual examination was conducted as well as a more detailed swabbing of areas for evidence of an explosive device. Questionable debris was then carted off to the back rooms of the hangar private only to the FBI folks. Eventually after the debris had been cleared it magically appeared some morning in the main wreckage area in the hangar where the other investigators could now examine it.

    I learned, the next morning after a recovery, to scan the roped off incoming area for parts that were of interest to myself so I would at least know what had been recovered and might be available. I also learned not to touch these parts at this time as there were FBI and ATF folks all over the place taking notes.

    And yes there were conflicts but for the most part easily worked out and probably nothing more than too many people stumbling over themselves. Some things of amusement to illustrate such conflicts were the extraordinary effort of the NTSB cabin reconstruction teams that reconstructed the cabin floor and all the seats. The primary reason was to confirm fire, explosion and sequence of breakup in the various sections of the wreckage in the air. Unfortunately for this group, the FBI late night shift workers were also interested, for obvious reasons, and would mess with the other groups work causing some interesting swears words to be uttered between groups. Of course all this got worked out before gunfire erupted.

    There was a couple of incidents with the engines which had been delivered to an outlying hangar for examination by their experts. One of the tasks was to perform enough of a partial disassembly to confirm that no major causal failures in the accident chain might have occurred. This was not very time consuming since the engines had been partially broken open by the impact with the water. For the most part the detailed examination fell into looking for things out of place and/or foreign material within the engine. This was almost an exact duplicate of what had been performed in the case of PA 103 or Lockerbie crash looking for bomb devices having been blown out from the fuselage into the engines.  In addition it was learned that the previous bombing of an UTA DC10 in Africa had also involved bomb blast debris into those engines as well.

    Also for comparison purposes was the checking for unique damages to the fan rubstrips for these engines. Some may remember that the sister ship to TWA 800 had crashed some years before during an approach to landing in an electrical storm. The investigation of that incident did show some rather unique damage to the engine fan rubstrips that was believed to be associated with the rapid breakup to the wing while the engines were running. While in the case of PA 103 the unique damage to the engine fan rubstrips was felt to be associated with the extremely rapid breakup of the front and rear section of the aircraft. There was no evidence that either of these damage mechanisms occurred in the case of TWA 800 and that the engines actually were capable of running until they were slung off the aircraft as it spiraled towards the sea. Of some help in comparing the relative damage to the engines in these other events, was the availability in the Calverton hangar the detailed notes that I had constructed from the investigations of the engines for these B747 prior accidents. Thus it was relatively easy to summarize important comparative findings for TWA 800.

    During one of the initial examinations the first night that the engines were brought into the hangar, one could partially see and feel through a large opening in the side of the engine an unusual foreign piece of metal deep inside the engine where it could not have gotten from being ingested through the fan blades. I reached in and carefully extracted this piece and it looked like a small cylindrical metal object about 3 inches in diameter and roughly 6-8 inches in length but heavily corroded on one side. At this point I muttered what the hell?? Then I showed it to a couple of other investigators and as we examined it even more closely we could just barely make out part of a word that seemed to spell Budweiser. It dawned on us that this engine had split open when it hit the surface of the water and as it reached the bottom a cloud of sand and normal bottom debris had floated up inside the hole in the engine carrying a discarded beer can.

    In the examination of the inlet areas of the engines we began to look for possible debris from an outward explosion coming from the fuselage, as I had mentioned earlier both the UTA DC10 as well as PA103 had such foreign debris present in the inlets and  fan stages of their engines.  Similar to these earlier investigations I was able to extract about an ounce of foreign material from one of the TWA800 engines and carefully bagged it up, labeled it and handed it to one of the many FBI/ATF guys standing around guarding and recording our every move in case any criminal evidence turned up.

    Well in the nightly briefing among investigators that little detail was revealed and as you might have guessed it got leaked to the press before James Kalstrom the chief FBI guy got to hear about it. He was not very happy about this and came looking for me the next day. We had a polite discussion, having heard from me a days earlier  hat we didn’t appear to have any similarity with the UTA or PA103 or the earlier Iran Airforce sistership crash in Madrid in 1976. However he was interested to know who I had given the samples to. I told him that I had given them to one of his people and he asked me to point him out. I blurted out that I didn’t know since they all dressed and looked alike to me (entrance level clean looking clothes etc.). He then took me to the main hangar and dragged over some of his top level staff and introduced me and asked them what they knew. They all claimed to know nothing about it which caused his face to grow slightly red in color. We then went to the incoming FBI screening area where they seemed to remember something coming over to their area from the engine FBI/ATA and then disappearing into the back private rooms. Kalstrom then dragged me along into these rooms searching for this little plastic bag among thousands of investigations going on in these rooms.

    It was at this point that I began to realize the depth of investigation that the FBI was conducting in the back rooms. There were big pieces, small pieces, aircraft parts, engine parts, blankets, pillows, personal effects etc. I will say one thing for them they are thorough. Oh yes we did finally find the little ounce bag of bits that I had collected. We took them to the chief metallurgists for the FBI and the NTSB and when we examined them under a microscope they turned out to bits that were too small in size and with too much drag to have been blasted out from the fuselage far enough to get into the engines. In other words more flotsam and jetsam no doubt associated with the water impact.

    Then there were the momentary disruptions to the normal plodding of an investigation. One day the FBI called us over to see hat they had done with the main wing spar during a night shift of work while the rest of us were asleep in our hotels. It seems that they had been trying to assess a possible missile strike to the wing and they had collected and identified out of tons of debris all the bits of the wing spar that holds that wing together. They had it laid out on an exact full scale drawing that they had printed up from the Boeing CAD drawings. We all agreed that what we saw was water impact breakup damage.

    Then there was the mystery about a nose gear door and latches etc. Once again we all banded together in a full expert review of the recovered parts and once again we concluded that it was due to water impact and hydraulic induced loads rather than some sort of bomb blast. Then one day a whole new evidence trail was laying on the hangar floor a trail of random parts moved from their reconstructed locations to one central roped off area.  Of course I was curious about whom and why was this special examination going on, and I found out that the FBI had done it. I began to look at the pieces in this area and quickly realized that they had one thing in common, they all had puncture holes in them! Ah ha, I thought, they are trying to resolve missile/bomb damage from crash/impact caused holes. I began to ask around who was doing this and found out that the FBI had hired outside ballistic experts to examine these holes. At this point I told the FBI that I had spent a half hour myself and could conclude without a doubt that they were produced at very low penetration velocities. I went on to explain that metals have a very unique behavior if penetrated at velocities above 300-400 fps and that I had created a computer model that could deduce the velocity of the penetrating object if they ever needed this in the future. Ultimately I supplied this model to them for future use free of charge.

    Well, a lot of the casual remarks previously were basically unimportant or peripheral to the real investigation. However very early in the investigation recovery effort some of the more critical parts turned up from the various recovery areas, the most interesting being the earliest to fall to the sea. About this time we learned that two critical scavenge pumps were missing or not found associated with the rear bulkhead of the center fuel tank. These pumps could easily be mistaken for engine parts so we began to thoroughly examine the many crates of supposed engine parts to try to find these critical parts.  A couple of us walked miles through the various hangars poking in boxes of unfathomable debris from the seabed looking for this proverbial needle in the haystack. We never did find these parts but we were able to see how clean the surface was where they had been mounted on the fuel tank without any evidence of fire or sooting. 

    More importantly in one of the backrooms (open to the investigators) two of us discovered the fuel vent lines as well as the air conditioning packs that were mounted underneath the center fuel tank. We were astonished at the time at the evidence of flash sooting and an overpressure in this area without any evidence of a shrapnel like explosion. We pointed this out to the NTSB system chief and he smiled and responded back yes he had also noted that as well. Well at that point some of us were convinced that there has been a low grade explosion in this area, but why? This was all at the time that the news was crying bomb or missile.

    The next night we walked out among the hangar floor wreckage and found the mating main structure parts that surround this area of high pressure and could see the extensive deformation of the very thick top and bottom plates of the center wing tank. Once again the distortion in these areas was a clear indication of a low grade overpressure from within the tank itself, but why? At this point in time we all decided that we needed an effort and equipment that could reconstruct this rather large room like structure. As more investigating disciplines were consulted, the reconstruction grew in enormity and I’m convinced we might have had a flying model of the aircraft itself in some of our minds until we sorted out the only resources that were available. What we had going for us, was the large ceiling space and huge overhead cranes to move large pieces around. Next a staging to hang these pieces on was needed and some quick trips to the local large hardware stores started to provide this, only to find that with all the junk we were trying to hang on it, that it was a construction hazard akin to those bamboo scaffoldings that you often see in 3^rd world countries.

    Meanwhile, the team working the cabin areas had been buying up a lumberyard of wood to make their own kind of construction to allow the interior seats to be reconstructed  as needed and then to be identified as to row and neatly laid out in a cabin seat map. Such interior accessories as TV screens, washrooms and galleys were added as they were recovered and identified. This kind of painstaking reconstruction was vital to confirming the breakup sequence vs. fire/explosion occurrences if present. One evening some of us came back to work and while taking a break wandered into the reconstruction area of the cabin seats. It was astounding to see the effort and detail that this group was putting into what at first seemed like a grisly task. After wandering up and down the aisles, little things began to cross my mind. Having flown the actual TWA 800 flights to Paris in the year before I would recognize the specific seats that I had occupied. At first you noticed horribly mangled and burned seats. But what really struck me was the appearance of seemingly unblemished seats and almost intact lavatories and TV screens. But then of course the science of cabin safety in the investigators field was brought home by the realization that the human body was not made to survive air accidents that produced seemingly localized areas in which the hardware might survive after being torn loose from its mountings but the G loads would kill a human.

    Finally, the fuselage mockup began to take shape on its frame. It was at this point that we realized the importance and magnitude of the task that was being performed in this regard. I did openly comment that the public and certainly the surviving family members would be extremely impressed  with the efforts that were being expended by the investigators in their behalf and that it would be a shame to throw away all of this monumental work someday rather than preserving it as a memorial. Of course I had similar thoughts about the battleship Arizona before and the World Trade Center afterwards.

    With the fuselage reconstruction the metallurgists were able to trace out the fracture line progressions and together with the structures group map out which fractures in the fuselage occurred first and what was in flight damage vs. obvious crash impact damage. The origin of damage at the front of the tank was a key element for the rest of the investigation and of course the key witness line inside the tank caused by a bulkhead distortion was key to the confirmation that indeed the overpressure that started all this was in the center wing tank. Now the whys was the all encompassing question. It was about this time that the news began their stories about errant missiles striking the tank. Well the tank top and bottom walls are quite thick and either protected by the cabin above or the air conditioning packs below, So it was pretty straight forward to check for a path of destruction through these areas leading to the tank and finding only outward blast destruction from the tank itself. However the sides of the tank are thinner with very little robustness to deflect a missile.

    Giving the large room size of the tank we could actually walk inside the tank and observe minutely the inside walls. There was no evidence of pitting, gouging, blast patterns to be seen anywhere. Some of us have extensive experience with such damage from either actual missile damage or uncontained engine shrapnel damage. There was absolutely no evidence to suggest that any thing along those lines had occurred and I am convinced that we had sufficient expertise examining these areas that it would not have been missed.

Thus I must conclude that the final NTSB report is sound and correct.

    Now the real mystery is which one of the rare but possible ignition sources combined together with the equally possible but rare combination of exploding vapor properties of the fuel So while we had a pretty good idea of which layers of Swiss cheese defense barriers were breeched we never did agree on where to concentrate the limited industry wide resources on either minimizing further the combinations of cheese layers or adding an additional but invalidated barrier.

    The above narrative description is only the recollections of a single investigator and may not be entirely accepted fact among all investigators. Its purpose is only to illustrate the technical depths and expertise that was brought to bear in the investigation of TWA 800. This material may not be republished without permission.