ugh, these balls are moist. or is that the damp weight of self-awareness you now hold in your hand? yeah-h-h. (laugh) keep your downstairs dry with gold bond body powder. it s a funny thing about broadcasting. no matter how big the network is, we are all still making it up as we go along. every day brings the unpredictable, including 25 years ago today. on this date in 1996, twa flight 800 crashed off the coast of long island, new york, en route to paris. investigators would eventually determine that an electrical failure caused an explosion in the center wing fuel tank. twa 800 crashed just two days after this network went on the air. brian williams was among the anchors who covered it, but because we were so new, the graphics systems to make maps were not quite ready, so we used a map book for the back of
suspected as causes of the crash, so investigators began unprecedented reconstruction of parts pulled from the ocean floor. peter was the managing director of the national transportation safety board. when you talk about airplane breakup, when you talk about, well, was it a bomb? was it a missile? well, you can see the evidence. reporter: the massive reconstruction remains hidden from public view in a secluded ntsb hanger in virginia. used for years as an agency teaching aid, we were granted a last look at the nearly 100-foot section of wreckage. the ntsb is moving out of this building, meaning all 6,000 pieces will be disassembled forever. we followed the facts. reporter: frank was on the original team of flight 080 investigators, who used this reconstruction to determine a rogue electrical short near the center wing fuel tank brought the plane down. it s been very useful, but i think we ve got on the the point that it s time to move on from that but in a different way. rep
unlike gasoline, jet fuel isn t highly flammable. but as this faa test shows, when it s heated, the vapors that are produced can be explosive. as twa flight 800 prepares to take off from new york s jfk airport, the center wing fuel tank, about the size of a two-car garage, is nearly empty. all that was in that fuel tank was basically just residual fuel, just a small amount of fuel sloshing around the bottom of the tank. given the short duration of this particular flight, the operators don t usually use or put fuel into the center fuel tank because they don t need it. the wings hold a sufficient amount of fuel. you can save some money and get better performance by leaving the fuel out of it. with passengers waiting on board flight 800, a delay with baggage is keeping the plane at the gate. it was a hot day in new york, and they ve had the air conditioning packs running to keep the aircraft cool. the air conditioning packs are mounted in close proximity to the center fuel tan
actually generating heat underneath the center wing fuel tank. so the fuel tank was actually getting very warm. so when the airplane takes off, you have this warm fuel vapor. if there was a full load of fuel in that tank, it could absorb that heat with no problem. it was generally believed that fuel tank were not really flammable. they couldn t really even be ignited because the temperature wasn t great enough. and so we took a 747 tested them in very similar conditions, and we were all surprised how hot it got and also it didn t take a lot of energy to ignite these vapors. it s less than you feel if you rub your feet across a carpet
around the wing center fuel tank. so it started becoming apparent that whatever happened happened inside the wing center fuel tank. unlike gasoline, jet fuel isn t highly flammable. but as this faa test shows, when it s heated, the vapors that are produced can be explosive. as twa flight 800 prepares to take off from new york s jfk airport, the center wing fuel tank, about the size of a two-car garage, is nearly empty. all that was in that fuel tank was basically just residual fuel, just a small amount of fuel sloshing around the bottom of the tank. given the short duration of this particular flight, the operators don t usually use or put fuel into the center fuel tank because they don t need it. the wings hold a sufficient amount of fuel. you can save some money and get better performance by leaving the fuel out of it.