Unlike hydrogen gasoline will ignite over a relatively narrow
range of mixtures. 10:1 to about 18:1. The tank environment is
always too rich to ignite the mixture.

Paul Lamar

Brings to mind the TWA 747 loss a number of years ago where
government investigators concluded shorting wires in empty tank
ignited jet fuel vapors causing explosion. I was skeptical from the
start. Seems to me all 747 aircraft that vintage would have been
grounded immediately for    inspection.

Al K

My wife Robin worked for TWA in those days as a mechanic. All 747's
    were
inspected
for loose or bare wires. Robin, due to her small size, spent many hours
crawling
around in fuel tanks. A nasty job. Nothing was found. It was common
practice to take
off with empty center tank if you did not need it. This reduced the
stress on
the wing spar. That meant thousands of successful
747 take offs were made with empty center tanks. They also did their
damnedest to
ignite the mostly empty center tank on an old 747 with out success.

IMHO it was shot down in error by the Navy and covered up by the
    Clinton
administration.
Think of the political fall out if they admitted shooting it down in
    error.

Heck cars would be blowing up all over the place. Fuel flows through
the pump past the armature and past the brushes.

What they do with a fuel air bomb is first blow up the tank to
    distribute
the fuel in the air to roughly the proper mixture and then ignite the

mixture
with a flare. Then you get the really big bang. Forget the movies of
cars and
gasoline tank trucks blowing up.

A can of gas will put out a match but don't ask me to demonstrate :)
Do it with a robot.

    Paul Lamar

NOT a Match, but a cigarette, Virg

    I've seen it done without igniting the fumes (cigarette).
    Harold Lunt

  If i remember correctly several days before the 747 was shot down the
  Palestinians said if we did not stop backing Israel they would
give us  something to think about.  Steve Hudson

  The aircraft destroyed as TWA Flight 800 was reconstructed and is
at the NTSB training facility in  Virginia (I don't recall the exact
location, and I have not seen it since shortly after the
 reconstruction was accomplished).  Although I often (in fact,
usually) have differences with NTSB  findings, they appear correct
on this one.  I certainly love conspiracy theories as well as the
next  guy, but they don't fit in this instance. The physical
evidence reveals an explosion from inside the  center tank.

  ~ Nick Jilek

  Where you involved in the investigation or are you restating what
you read?  Using the word "conspiracy" does not apply in this case.
It is an attempt  to discredit the people that might disagree with
the official findings.

  All the TWA mechanics that inspected all 747's after the 1996
crash disagree with  you. No "shorts" were found.Thousands of 747
flights had occurred with empty  or near empty center tanks and none
"exploded" except that one. Flying with  an empty center tank was SOP.

  It reduced the stress on the wing. No modifications or AD's were
mandated having  anything to do with the center tank fuel system. My
wife was a TWA mechanic at the time.  IMHO the accidental shoot down
 was covered up by the Clinton administration
  (1993 to 2001).  IMHO the truth will come out sooner or later.

  I doubt a terrorist shot it down as it was obviously hit by a
radar guided  missile and not infra red guided missile. If infra red
it would have hit  an engine.

  In 1988 a guided missile cruiser (Similar to the one in the
Atlantic at the time  of the TWA shoot down.) shot down an airliner
in the Persian Gulf by mistake.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iran_Air_Flight_655

  Paul Lamar

  Paul, I beg to differ on the Persian gulf incident being a
"mistake". The Aircraft was intentionally  targeted by the guided
missile cruiser because it appeared to be on an attack vector to the
cruiser,  which was at the time, engaged in multiple surface
actions. The aircraft did not respond to attempts  at radio
communication, was not squaking transponder code.  CMDR Will C.
Rogers acted in the defense of his crew and vessel. The Iranians
intentionally sent the  aircraft, filled with martyrs for the
Islamic revolution, into the hot zone to provoke an  international incident.
  Will C Rogers was my CO aboard the USS Cushing, DD985, previously,
and I never met a more  professional naval officer in my short
career with the military.
  C. Smith

  I can believe that.

  Paul Lamar

The launch and target intercept results of a radar-guided missile
from a USN ship off the coast of the US would be known to literally
hundreds of people (those aboard the vessel, those monitoring the
airspace, those monitoring the exercise, etc).  All these people
would need to be be silent, despite media inquiries, etc,  in the
wake of the well-publicized loss of hundreds of lives.  Very unlikely.

It's hard for anyone who has worked in a large organization and who
has seen how secrets are(n't) kept to believe a plan/coverup of any
kind that involves more than 3-4 well motivated  people would remain
unpublicized.

Mark W.

I have heard that scenario before.                        
When I was in the military  dealing with secret projects we were threatened
with treason if we revealed anything to anybody including our own
family. The guided missile cruisers can shoot down an aircraft out
of sight miles away with the Aegis Combat System. SM-1ER/SM-2ER, an
extended range surface-to-air missile.

As I understand it target drones were launched
about the same time from land for a military exercise off the Jersey
coast. The personal aboard ship may not know what they shot down.

Have you read all of this yet? http://twa800.com/documents.htm

My wife was a TWA mechanic and she worked at LAX with 200 others.
Some are close friends of ours. They had to inspect several 747 fuel
tanks. I am taking what they say above at face value.

I suggest you run a test where a small amount of diesel fuel is in a
sealed atmospheric pressure small tin can and try to ignite it with
a spark. DO NOT pressurizes the can as that could be ignited by
getting the mass air fuel ratio in the correct 10:1 to 20:1 air:fuel
dangerous proportions. In general fuel in a tank is difficult to
explode due to an overly rich fuel air ratio as mentioned above.
However do it in a safe place.

Paul Lamar

With regard to the 3-4 motivated people;
About 20 years ago, somebody tunneled into a Bank of Montreal in North
Vancouver on Friday night of a long weekend. This  was before motion sensors
were installed in the vaults. North Vancouver has a lot of old family businesses.
Who ever these people were they knew what they were doing. Tuesday was a
payday so the bank had $2M in used bills which are untraceable. They also had
lots of time to get into the safety deposit boxes. The businessmen would
likely have negotiable securities that they were hiding money from the revenue
dept. As such they only declared an amount they could explain. So authorities
do not know how much they really got away with. And to this day not a word. No
bragging in a bar.
And thieves stealing from thieves. The bankers have been ripping the little
guys off and the businessmen ripping off the feds, who have been ripping us off.
Can not quite condone crime, but this is kind of sweet justice!

Dale Davies