DSB final report doubts: missing wreckage of cockpit roof
There are quite a few of doubts on the DSB final report. In a series of blog post I will discuss them and try to find answers.
Previous posts discussing doubts on the DSB report are:
To be able to fully understand the location of the explosion all damage of shrapnel needs to be studied. DSB was able to recover the cockpit including a part of the righthand side cockpit roof.
However many other parts of the cockpit roof were not available for the reconstruction. A large part was not found anymore at the crash site when DSB started the recovery in November 2015. So someone took a crucial part away.
This post provides an overview of the missing parts of the cockpit roof!
Questions that needs to be answered by JIT:
- When was that missing part of the cockpit roof taken away from the crash site and under which conditions? Each day many satellites pass over the area. It should be easy to determine when the piece was removed, Maybe even cars, people etc could be seen. Or eyewitness can be interviewed.
- Who would benefit from taking away a large piece of the cockpit roof
- Were other pieces of the cockpit also removed or just this one?
- Why did it take so long to bring the cockpit roof pieces found by Russia Today to Gilze Rijen?
- Are those RT pieces used in the reconstruction?
- Would the location of the explosion be different when all missing roof parts are examined?
by
Does anyone know where is this large piece is located on the plane?
https://www.flickr.com/photos/jeroenakkermans/16246094163/in/photostream/
(check other pictures of the piece a couple of places around)
It contains some nice grazing scratch marks and holes. To me looks like it should have been on the roof, but I fail to see it on the mock-up. The characteristic feature is that it was severed along a structure rib.
I think that large piece is located somewhere between the roof and the left side, like shown here http://savepic.ru/10161072.png
This is the area of high interest.
If I am right it’s not hard to guess why the DSB did not bring the piece home or did not put it on the mock-up.
That’s part of the top RHS of the cockpit.
Here it from a different position:
https://www.flickr.com/photos/podpolkovnikvvs/15357334658/in/album-72157648375424938/
and turned upwards during the recovery operation:
http://s1.ibtimes.com/sites/www.ibtimes.com/files/2015/07/16/flightmh17crashsitenov2014.jpg
It also appears in the reconstruction.
Makes sense. Thanks.
Hi Eugene,
Looking at the image pointed to by you I realized another point.
Comparing the images of the AA IL 86 live test and the images of the MH17 deco-reconstruction another feature of the area affected by fragment spray can be noted:
The borders of the area affected by fragment spray can be defined by two different conditions:
a) The border can reflect the spacial limits of the fragment spray cone. The skin parts not affected simply were laying outside the fragment spray cone.
b) The border can be defined by the fact, that areas beyond the border couldn’t be reached in a straight line by the fragments due to the convex geometry of the hull’s shape.
a) will dominate if the spot of warhead detonation isn’t very close to the aircraft hull and most of the impacts close to the border will not be tangential.
b) will dominate if the spot of warhead detonation is close to the aircraft hull and most of the impacts close to the border will be tangential, i.e. grazing shots.
Looking at the images of the MH17 reconstruction and the IL 86 there can’t be much doubt that MH17 is in category b) while the IL 86 is in category a).
http://i.imgur.com/35VJjvY.jpg
For MH17 almost all of the impacts close to the border of the damaged area are grazing shots for the IL 76 they aren’t. Another clear indicator the spot of detonation from the DSB report is plain wrong.
Hi Ole,
Interesting idea. On Mh17 the type a) boundary of damage area (=on shrapnel cone limit) seem to be only on the right cheek. On the left cheek and roof of Mh17 the boundary is indeed looking tangential. In contrast, on Il-86 the boundary of the damage area on the left side – before the door – does indeed look to be not tangential but cone limited. So, I agree with your observation.
But to base the distance to explosion estimation on this information, we must assume that the shrapnel cones in the two case have the same opening angle. But this does not seem to be the case. Mh-17 was killed by a smaller warhead with a different and unknown shrapnel cone opening angle, which to me looks to be wider than that of Buk.
The following can be said about the tangential (grazing) marks on the surface of the 777:
(1) They all point to approximately the same location.
(2) They form a boundary between the damaged and undamaged areas.
(3) That boundary (2) is also, almost exactly, the boundary of the area that is within line of sight of the location (1).
I wonder, does that tell us anything about the detonation location? Well, the DSB didn’t seem to wonder about it. Instead, they created a more complex model with a fragment spray cone of unknown origin, which placed the detonation about three metres from the cockpit.
> I wonder, does that tell us anything about the detonation location?
This tell us the detonation location. Me and meovoto (independently) tried to estimate to detonation location with this method too – you’ll get the same point as the stringing method. This is a way of showing that their excuse that “lines are not straight” is just lame.
> They created a more complex model with a fragment spray cone of unknown origin, which placed the detonation about three metres from the cockpit.
I recently described in more detail why they got the detonation point that far – because their matching method worked under the assumption of Buk. Here it is, if you missed it: https://whathappenedtoflightmh17.com/does-density-of-shrapnel-holes-tell-something-about-weapon/#comment-18554
> Me and meovoto (independently) tried to estimate to detonation location with this method too – you’ll get the same point as the stringing method
To refine. The x coordinate (forward) of the detonation point cannot be clamped by tangential surfaces, and some augmenting by a stringing method is still required, but the tangential surfaces method at least verifies the y and z coordinates of the point.
For example, the tangential plane at the center-line of the roof, allows to confirm the z (vertical) coordinate of the point obtained with the stringing method, like shown here https://whathappenedtoflightmh17.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/10/damage-roof.png
Likewise for the y-coordinate.