Trevor Collins

Maybe because they didn't have enough information.

Maybe because it would be a terrifying bad look.

Who knows?

But this theory made it, as I kind of hinted at the beginning, to the front page news of the New York Times just two days later after the crash on July 19th, 1996.

The front of New York Times is talking about this explosion that rocked the plane.

I'll go ahead and quote what the New York Times says on the front page that day.

It says, quote, investigators suspect explosive device as likeliest cause for crash of Flight 800.

And so immediately you can see how this in the days after it was already well known because it was a very public incident.

Oh, yeah.

I mean, civilians can see it from the coast.

Exactly.

And now you've got them saying, well, an explosive device was the most likely answer.

That's terrifying.

You don't want planes falling out of the sky, but you also don't want bombs on planes.

This is where, again, the NTSB was a little reluctant to label it as such.

And the NTSB was unable to determine exactly where the explosive residue would have come from.

And so in order to test some of these theories, the NTSB subjected various pieces of aircraft debris to explosive materials.

And in some cases, they actually exploded them.

And then they took those debris pieces, not from this plane, but from very similar plane parts,

put them into ocean water, and from this they learned that any explosive residue that would have been present on any pieces of debris likely would have dissolved in the ocean water within two days.