Honor TWA Flight 800 victims with the truth

The explosion 30 years ago of TWA Flight 800 over the waters of Long Island’s South Shore remains one of the most searing events in American aviation history.

It is more than likely there are no new facts to uncover. What endures in our living memory is the silence over the quiet Atlantic waters that night, broken by a sudden fireball.

Thousands of Long Islanders witnessed it. Commercial and recreational boaters raced to the scene off East Moriches ready to rescue survivors, only to find floating body parts. Local emergency services spent weeks trying to account for the 212 passengers and 18 crew members who perished. Recovering pieces of the Boeing 747 and reconstructing it at a hangar in Calverton took several years.

The flight bound for Paris left Kennedy Airport on the evening of July 17, 1996, but 12 minutes after takeoff, it fell from the sky. Eight years earlier, a bomb placed by Libyan agents had torn apart Pan Am Flight 103 over Lockerbie, Scotland. Five years later, two hijacked jets slammed into the World Trade Center towers on Sept. 11. In that arc, it was inevitable that people would assume TWA Flight 800 was sabotaged.

Suspected terrorism increased security at the Olympic Games, which opened in Atlanta two days later. On Long Island, the FBI was focused on reports from eyewitnesses. More than 700 people came forward — a good many saying they saw a streak or flare near the aircraft.

Was it a shoulder-launched missile from a terrorist hidden on LI’s shoreline? Or could it have been a terrible mistake, an errant missile from one of the Navy ships performing training exercises in the Atlantic?

The federal investigation later determined that flash of light was burning jet fuel but the missile theory still percolates. Even before social media, TWA Flight 800 was a study of how grief, fear and distrust can turn an accident into a web of conspiracy theories, despite an exhaustive investigation.

The National Transportation Safety Board, working with the FBI, began one of the most extensive accident inquiries in its history. More than 95% of the 747’s wreckage was reassembled in Suffolk County to help determine what happened. Four years later, the NTSB concluded an explosion was most likely triggered by a short circuit in aging wiring that ignited vapors in a fuel tank.

A lawsuit by the families of some victims is still winding through the federal courts. It argues that a military missile destroyed the aircraft, metal fragments that could be evidence were tampered with and that those who know the truth were forced into silence. Such theories are kept alive despite any real evidence to support claims of a cover-up by the military.

There is a simple but comforting TWA Flight 800 memorial at Smith Point County Park that is maintained by community volunteers. It honors the memory of the 230 people who were lost and stands as a reminder that grief deserves truth, not endless speculation.