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Posted Saturday, January 19, 2008
The loudspeakers announced that we would stand there for five or ten minutes in darkness while the aircraft computer which controlled everything 'rebooted'. Not very encouraging for a passenger to hear.
January 18, 2008 (Thursday)
Windsor (England)
YESTERDAY'S diary item about the Heathrow "incident"has attracted some interesting emails. Here are some of them:
Mike R. points out: "Frying the wiring of an airliner with an electro-magnetic pulse would be quite difficult if it originated outside the airframe. The metal skin acts as a perfect shield to any stray electro static field. That does not mean that the radios could not be easily be destroyed since the pulse energy could be picked up by the navigation/communication antennas. The wiring used for aircraft controls would not be compromised. Also all fly-by-wire systems are designed with a minimum of triple redundancy. Aircraft have been struck by lightning on many occasions sending kilo-amperes through the airframe with no disastrous consequences.
"Destroying the wiring with a device located on the inside would be considerably easier since no shielding is present to attenuate the pulse energy. However sneaking such a pulse generator onboard would still require getting it through security checks."
I reply at 7:34 p.m. "I think I mentioned the possibility of a suicide passenger with a device. In fact a professor at the Massachusetts Institute of technology has made a detailed study of EMP as the cause of death of three US airliners including TWA 800 all brought down off Long Island -- each took off within two minutes of the same time of the same day of the week! I agree that the Faraday-cage effect would seem to militate against it. The professor, far brainier than I, disagrees."

"I read your page with interest almost every day," writes Sylvain L. "Your commentary regarding the 777 and the sudden and unexplained loss of electrical systems while 'on final' to Heathrow as well as your reference to the Qantas ship reminded me of a very curious incident which ocurred in Western Canada recently:
An Air Canada Boeing 767-300 sustained an electronic systems failure over the Rockies while bound from Victoria (not Vancouver), and effected an emergency landing in Calgary. The ship suddenly was thrown violently over to port, then yawed to starboard. The Wikipedia entry page for Air Canada states that the aircraft sustained an on-board computer failure which resulted in the disengagement of the auto-pilot. The story has been explained away as an form of rare 'invisible' high altitude turbulence. Then the 'story' was changed to indicate that the 767 was flying too close behind and below an Northwest Boeing 747 ship, also eastbound. And flew into 'wake turbulence.'
These incidents seem very similar; and I agree that someone or some government (China?), is 'aggressively' testing some very high altitude/low earth orbit pulse technology. Reference was also made to the crash of the [American Airlines] aircraft [AA587] in New York, in January 2002, while climbing out of LaGuardia/JFK, outbound to South America or the Caribbean, which appears to have been blown up; or critically disabled by the sudden violent bisection of the vertical stabilizer from the tail of the aircraft. This was also explained away as 'wake turbulence.' The reference to the NorthWest aircraft is also very interesting; I believe that it was this aircraft that was the intended target. And the technology - or those testing it, mistook the radar signature of the Air Canada aircraft for the NW ship flying the same airspace.
Someone is lying. As usual.
10:08 p.m: I reply, "I remember about five years ago being on a flight in San Francisco; we were about to take off, already on the runway, when the plane's onboard computer suddenly failed and the voice over the loudspeakers announced that we would stand there for five or ten minutes in darkness while the computer which controlled everything 'rebooted'. Not very encouraging for a passenger to hear, I might add."
Hear David Irving speak in British cities. Register interest
Next cities Lancashire Jan 25, and Halifax: buffet and talk 7-10 pm

January 19, 2008 (Saturday)
Windsor (England)
MORE book orders. More letters about the plane crash, and several congratulatory messages.
Donald E. Pauly, a commercial airplane and helicopter pilot in from Las Vegas, points out: "Since the aircraft did not burn, my guess was that it was out of fuel and pilot error was the cause. Aviation Week says not so, which probably settles the issue. It is hard to believe in engine failure as the flight controls for both engines are triply redundant. Perhaps they were running Windows which would explain everything."
I send him this reply at once:
The point about the wreckage not burning caught my attention immediately. One undercarriage strut punches clean through the wing (and fuel-tanks?) and nothing comes out? Nothing? A few commentators have hinted disbelievingly at the out-of-fuel possibility, and the massive publicity hype given by British Airways to the bravery and professionalism of its cabin crew and pilots might suggest damage-control. I would not go with pilot error even in this case, however -- more likely would be a system-fault in the fuel-level readings.
The Heathrow investigators have yesterday rather coyly revealed only that the 777's two engines "did not respond" to calls for more power. My rental Ford Transit had the same problem once on the way back from Liverpool -- my very sharp-tongued girl assistant was driving, I was sleeping after a three-week tour of UK bookstores, and had proffered the diffident suggestion that she refill the almost empty tank before we passed Birmingham. She did not and, after a while on the highway home, the van's engine did not respond to her calls for more power either.
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Another theory on the TWA 800 crash
An excerpt from the David Irving memoirs: selling books the hard way (driving round every bookstore worth visiting in the UK)
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