From what I recall of the reading I did while looking into the Flight 800 crash, the only instances of fuel tank explosions on modern jetliners were confined to two events involving 737's on the ground.

Subsequent reading introduced the possibility that both 737 events were due to sabotage, with involvement of our old pal Ramzi Yousef considered likely.

I don't have this material in front of me, but I seem to recall that one 737 burst into flames on the ground at Manila, and the other in Bangkok after flying from Manila, where Yousef was active at the time. In one other case, he (Yousef) put a small bomb in a seat cushion which reportedly exploded and decapitated a Japanese passanger who took the seat after Yousef deplaned.

There are other factors in the two 737 events which led this particular analyst to suspect that the explosions were not caused by mechanical failures but were due to sabotage, but without relocating and reviewing this material, I cannot recall exactly what the researcher pinpointed which lead him to this possibility.

In any event, by design modern aviation fuel is difficult to ignite and even more difficult to make explode. Despite spending millions of dollars trying, the NTSB/FAA/FBI investigations were unable to find any likely cause of ignition for the Flight 800 fuel tank explosion.

The airline maintenance workers union, by contast, released a statement saying in effect that an external explosion could have unzipped fuel tanks and provided a high energy source for ignition of the resulting fuel-air vapor.

Other studies show that witness descriptions of the events leading up to the midair explosion of the TWA jet closely match demonstration videos of a MANPADs launch, flight and warhead detonation.

According to the late Cmdr. Donaldson, coroner's reports for passengers on Flight 800 show wounds inflicted by high speed projectiles (my language), and there are other reports that evidence was removed and/or altered.

The bottom line is that modern airliners do not just disassemble themselves in midair.They are the products of some of the best engineering human beings have done and are extremely reliable under a wide range of conditions, as the record clearly shows.

When a modern airliner falls apart in midair with no obvious or logical reason in sight, something extraordinary has occured.

In times like these, such occurances warrant public discussion.

sp