The Malaysian Insider
All 298 passengers of the ill-fated Malaysia Airlines flight MH17 were probably either unconscious or died instantly due to both the blast force from the missile which slammed into the Boeing 777 aircraft, as well as from the plane's deceleration.
Business and financial news site Bloomberg reported that this was trauma surgeon Dr James Vosswinkel's best guess over Thursday's incident where the commercial airliner was shot down near Donetsk in eastern Ukraine.
Dr Vosswinkel who had led a definitive study of TWA Flight 800 that exploded and crashed off New York’s Long Island in 1996, killing all 230 on board, said his research found that trauma in a mid-air explosion occured from three sources: the force of the blast, the massive deceleration when a plane going 800km/h stops in mid-air, and the impact of the fall.
Bloomberg said the loss of cabin pressure can cause hypoxia within seconds at 33,000 feet, which leads to loss of consciousness.
"You have such horrific forces that it’s essentially unsurvivable," the news site quoted Dr Vosswinkel as saying via a telephone interview.
"No one was conscious or experienced that fall," said the chief of trauma and surgical critical care at the State University of New York at Stony Brook.
Bloomberg said the missile that hit MH17 would have been travelling at 5000km/h before impact.
Dr Vosswinkel's study also found that where one was seated had no bearing when the mid-air accident or explosion happened.
"It’s essentially an unsurvivable event for all," he was quoted as saying.
Kuala Lumpur-bound flight MH17 which left Amsterdam went down in the middle of a conflict zone between Ukrainian forces and Russian-backed separatists after being shot by surface-to-air missile.
Those responsible for downing the jet have yet to be identified, with Russian and Ukrainian authorities blaming each other and pro-Russian separatists for the disaster.
University of Chicago expert in international security affairs Robert Pape noted that it looked like the separatists had shot down the jetliner with a sophisticated surface-to-air missile.
In a telephone interview, Pape told Bloomberg that US intelligence systems had focused on eastern Ukraine for months as the conflict raged on.
This, he said, allowed analysts to spot the plume of the missile after it was launched and the SA-11 used is one of the most modern surface-to-air missiles produced in Russia as each can travel close to 5,000km/h.
"They are designed to shoot down fighter jets that are going twice the speed of sound," he was quoted as saying.
"To shoot down a commercial airliner lumbering at 1,000km an hour is a piece of cake."
Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University safety science professor Bill Waldock was quoted as saying that such surface-to-air missile could have pierced the aircraft with shrapnel after exploding close to it.
From public reports, he noted the plane could have been struck towards its tail and this would have blown most of its structure off.
"That thing uses a proximity fuse which goes off when it gets close. The warhead is like a giant shotgun shell sending multiple shards of metal through the plane. It’s doubtful it hit the plane, but once you lose the tail you can’t fly the plane," he was quoted as saying via a telephone interview.
Bloomberg further quoted Waldock as saying, following impact and descent, as the fuselage peeled open, the passengers would have been rendered unconscious.
He said hypoxia would have caused those who survived the initial blast to be unconscious within 30 seconds.
"It’s literally an explosive decompression and would have caused a lot of G-force pushing people back in their seats." he was quoted as saying. – July 20, 2014.
Source: https://my.news.yahoo.com
No comments:
Post a Comment