Fri Dec 09, 2016 1:51 pm
777 Jet and I agree on something! US recognition of Taiwan! UK should recognise Taiwan too. We haven't forgotten the outrageous attack on HMS Amethyst.
I think I have the point on the control tower glass 777 - you were employing sarcasm. Sadly this is the lowest form of wit, with respect! In this case it's still not clear whether you were making the thickness up to make a point, or not! I am quite prepared to accept that the glass may have been changed as part of the control tower's refurbishment - what I don't accept is that the tower would then be totally sound-proofed. I have cited in support of my arguments a line DC-10 pilot and distinguished former President of the IFALPA, who actually visited the tower, twice. I'm entitled to do so, and to form my own opinion, with which you are entitled to disagree.
In fact what you are objecting to is not my inability to cite facts, because we are often working from the same set of facts, but the inferences I draw from those facts. Reaching conclusions is often a matter of drawing inferences. It's a bit like working out what's wrong with a plane - sometimes you have to work it out for yourself, from inadequate information. In intelligence analysis you are trying to get at a truth others are often anxious to conceal.
I do indeed write for VT, but the debate above appears to relate to a posted comment by somebody else. They do attract some anti-semitic trolls, but that is true of most alternative websites. They have good law enforcement, military and intelligence links, as may be sen by the resumes of the contributors. I am a strong supporter of the State of Israel and always have been. It is an open secret that I have worked with their excellent Mossad, indeed Gordon Thomas's history of the Mossad refers to some of my material featuring on the syllabus of Mossad's training school. Being out in the open allows me to defend the agencies I have worked with, and attack their enemies, non-kinetically, in a way they cannot. I can also get stuff out there that for political reasons they cannot. Since I'm a white hat, and only work with white hat agencies like Mossad, at the end of the day I can defend what I have done.
I function out in the open, partly for professional reasons, partly for sound intelligence reasons (I have acted as a conduit for intelligence, e.g.) and partly because the modern level of communications monitoring is such that working behind the scenes simply wouldn't be possible. Since I get attacked, usually maliciously, I have fought against my natural instinct to hide my lights under a bushel (!) and can occasionally be drawn into saying something about some of my intelligence successes, invariably in collaboration with others. In the case of BA Flight 38 I worked with a computer scientist/IT specialist named Neil Jones, who knew a great deal more about self-deleting lines of software code than I did. We cracked Flight 38.
It's a simple statement of fact re Captain Burkill. He was treated shabbily by BA, was in no way responsible for the constructive loss of his aircraft, and through his outstanding airmanship saved many lives, in the air and on the ground. I did intervene, I'm glad I did so, and we had a bit of a result. Had Neil and I been listened to (in practice the task of distributing our conclusions, which was not without its hazards, rested with me) we would not have had the Schiphol Air Disaster. Everybody in officialdom, however, was nervous of upsetting China. That was a disgrace.
Turning to the Eastern TriStar tragedy, my analysis is that a member of the crew (not the captain) was suborned. There was a DVD campaign against both the plane, and Rolls-Royce, who made the engines. The TriStar's automatic pilot had a safety feature, designed to permit rapid takeover by the pilots, which worked against it, as there was no aural or visual warning of autopilot disengagement. The Germans were desperate to bankrupt both Lockheed and Rolls. As part of the strategy Lockheed's design for the plane was leaked, via the CIA, to McDonnell Douglas, who were thereby able to accelerate the design of the DC-10, wholly unaware that it in turn was the subject of a long-term sabotage campaign.
Only the 747 was immune, I suspect because the DVD's Sabotage Section were hoping for an uncontained in-flight failure of a JT9D. When that didn't happen, as we have seen, they arranged a collision between two of them, coupled with a media whispering campaign about the supposed dangers of having so many passengers in one hull. In fact the safety record of the 74 has been good, far better than that of the narrow-bodied jets it replaced, with the graceful exception of the dear old VC-10, which had useful reserves of power, clean wings and was very safe.
The unfortunate BAe 146 crash in Colombia was clearly nothing to do with fuel contamination - there was simply no fuel! It was a tragic combination of bad fuel management (no kidding!) and shoddy ATC work, resulting in an unsuccessful landing on a mountain. With respect to the late pilots and air traffic controllers involved, I think that the runway in use would have been a better choice.