"Experts" admit looking in the wrong place for MH370

Looks like this second-last week of 2016 is going to be the biggest newsweek -- not to be confused with the useless magazine of the same name -- of the year. It's only Tuesday and so far we've got four Islamic terrorist attacks, the election of Donald Trump by the Electoral College [not really news. Ed.] and now... wait for it... confirmation of what Walt has been saying for well over a year: The "experts" conducting the search for Malaysian Airlines MH370 have been looking in the wrong place!

That's right, folks. You read it here as early as 18 December 2014 ("Just fancy that!"), and even before! (Click here to see all of Walt's posts on MH370.) For two years, in spite of questions raised by my goodself and numerous other sceptics, the Australian-led search team have been looking for debris from the missing B-777 in a remote patch of the Indian Ocean west of Australia. Today, at last, the sleuths made what was surely a painful admission: they've probably been looking in the wrong place. Probably? Hah! Definitely is the correct word. And I have no hesitation in saying: I told you so!

The latest analysis by a team of international investigators concluded the vanished aircraft is "highly unlikely" to be in the current search zone and may instead be in a region farther north. Since the plane disappeared in March 2014, the "experts" have analyzed a series of exchanges between the aircraft and a satellite to estimate a probable crash site somewhere in a vast arc of ocean in the southeastern part of the Indian Ocean. A deep-sea search of a tens of thousands of square miles of water along the arc came up empty.

To make matters worse, as Walt told you last May ("MH370: 5 pieces now, all in 'the wrong place'"), pieces of debris kept turning up on shores at the western end of the Indian Ocean, in such places as Madagascar, Réunion, Mozambique and South Africa. To elucidate the fuzzification, the "experts" went back over the satellite data and did a drift analysis of the (by now) more than 20 items of debris likely to have come from the plane. The analysis, based on where the items washed up and when, suggested the debris originated somewhere "farther north".

The report identifies a 25,000 square kilometre area to the north of the current search zone as the most likely place where MH370 hit the water, the report said. The investigators concluded with "a high degree of confidence" that the plane is not in the current search area, and that the new area needs to be searched.

So will they extend the search to that area, beyond the planned completion date of 31 December? Errr, no. Australia’s transport minister, Darren Chester, who has to wear this one, suggested the analysis wasn't specific enough to justify continuing the hunt. In other words: show us where it is, and we'll have a look. Besides, there's no more money. So that's it, then. MH370 and over 200 pax and crew can rest undisturbed in their watery grave. Let's move on to other things that are less likely to prove embarrassing for all concerned.

Yet another piece of MH370 found. Guess where?

Is nobody interested any more in what happened to Malaysian Airlines flight MH370? The Boeing 777 vanished on 8 March 2014, on a flight from Koala Lumpur, Malaysia to Beijing, with 239 pax and crew. Ed. tracks the number of "hits" for the stories we post. He tells me that so far this week the stories about Hellery's health (or lack thereof) are running well ahead of "Investigators not interested in picking up more MH370 debris".

Today we have news of the finding of yet another piece of debris -- a wing flap that washed ashore Pemba Island, just off the coast of Tanzania, at the western edge of the Indian Ocean. The Australian Transport Safety Bureau confirmed today that an analysis had confirmed the part was indeed from the missing aircraft.

The finding of more wreckage from the doomed airliner, 1000s of miles from where the "authorities" say it was supposed to be lends further credence to my theory (and that of many others) that the plane came down somewhere in the north central part of the Indian Ocean, in the vicinity of the US base at Diego Garcia. Of course that doesn't mean the Americans know anything about it. And if you believe that, I have some land in Wyoming that's ripe for development....

Further reading: "Current thinking on MH370", WWW 31/7/15. Includes a map of the Indian Ocean on which I've drawn on prevailing currents. Pemba Island is just to the left of the first "A" in "Aquinas"!

Investigators not interested in picking up more MH370 debris

Things other than the decline and fall of Hellery Clinton are transpiring elsewhere in the world. On the southeastern coast of Madagascar, for instance, where Blaine Gibson, the debris hunter who found parts of the Boeing 777 which flew as Malaysian Airlines flight MH370 has found five (5) new pieces.

Two fragments appear to show burn marks, which, if confirmed as such, would be the first time such marks have been found. The presence of burn marks would suggest that a disastrous fire would be the proximate cause of the plane's fall into the Indian Ocean. Another small piece was found in the same area. Two more turned up on the northeastern beaches of Antsiraka and Riake, where debris had already been found. Pictures of all five fragments have the "honeycomb" material found in other MH370 debris.

Time for another look at Walt's diagram of the currents prevalent in the Indian Ocean, previous posted on 31/7/15 in "Current thinking on MH370".

I'm putting this up again to underscore my theory that the Australian and other "experts" who have allegedly been searching for the remains of the ill-fated flight have been looking in the wrong place. You'll see Madagascar sandwiched in between the Aquinas and Moçambique currents, at the western edge of the Indian Ocean. The "authorities" have insisted that the plane went down in the search area off the western coast of Australia, 1000s of miles away.

Why would they do that? Let me suggest (again) that it's deliberate misdirection, to keep us from asking questions about the involvement of the US millitary, which maintains a huge base on the British island of Diego Garcia, For more, see "MH370: 5 pieces now, all in 'the wrong place'", WWW 12/5/16.

If they really wanted to get at the truth, you'd think the Australians and/or Malaysians would hie themselves off to Réunion, Madagascar, Moçambique and South Africa, where bits and pieces of the missing aircraft have been located. But noooo. Mr Gibson -- a lawyer from Seattle -- is the only one searching there.

The Australian Transport Safety Bureau (ATSB), which is supposed to be leading the investigation, couldn't be bothered to come and get the pieces, so Mr Gibson has sent them to Australia at his own expense. What does the ATSB think of the latest discoveries? Will they be undertaking a new search after they finish up the current one [Watch it! Ed.] in December? Answer comes there none.

What happened to MH370: a Chinese theory

A year and five days ago Walt reported that the search for the Malaysian Airlines B777 operating as flight MH370 was being quietly scaled down. Now comes news that the search in the southeast quadrant of the Indian Ocean will come to an end in July, according to Martin Dolan, the chief commissioner of the Australian Transport Safety Bureau. (Christine Negroni, who writes about aviation and travel for Forbes, points out that Mr Dolan will retire on the very same day. What a coincidence.

In "Search Ending For MH370 But Mysteries Grow", Ms Negroni expresses consternation at the selection of the Australians to lead the underwater search for the airplane. Who knows, she asks, what political manoeuvering was going on behind the scenes? And why did the Australians give the contract for the operation to a Dutch company, Fugro World Wide, which had no real record in the search and salvage industry, and no equipment at the time? And how did Fugro get away with not producing any publicly available data for two years?

The answer to those questions may well be, as Walt has suggested more than once, that the Powers That Be didn't want the wreckage of MH370 to be found. If that were so, it would make sense to let innocents and incompetents do the looking. It would make even more sense to point them in the wrong direction, towards a deep part of the Indian Ocean off the west coast of Australia. I'll say it again. They've been looking in the wrong place! If proof is wanted, consider the finding of five (count 'em, 5) pieces of debris, all on the shores of southern Africa and adjacent islands.

So what really happened? What is it that the "authorities" and "experts" don't want the world to know? Agent 78 has walked me through a blog by Chen Guangwen, a Chinese writer, who reckons that both the Americans and the Chinese know the truth of it, but won't tell for reasons which will be apparent momentarily. This is going to take awhile, so stay with me....

It all started (Mr Chen writes) when the Americans pulled out of Afghanistan, leaving behind some highly sophisticated drone software which would enable the user to take over any plane's avionics and fly it by remote control, turning it into a guided missile. That software fell into the hands of the Taliban, who didn't know what to do with it, but did know that it would have enormous value to any country seeking military superiority for whatever reason. So who could they sell it to? The Americans already had the technology. The Russians were enemies. So how about... wait for it... the Chinese?

Mr Chen says that the Taliban, through the agency of its branch in Pakistan (possibly with the connivance of the Pakistani government) sold the lot to the Chinese. But there remained the question of how to get the "black boxes" to China. The solution? Send them via Pakistan to Malaysia -- both countries being sympathetic to Islamic militants -- thence onward to Beijing by... Malaysian Airlines.

Of course! The "black boxes" -- engines of digital sabotage -- were in the cargo hold of MH370! This theory would account as well for the presence on the passenger manifest of several Chinese computer and electronics experts.

Trouble was, it's hard to keep something like this a secret. There are spies everywhere. Chinese spies, Russian spies, British spies, not to mention American spies -- the CIA. Chen Guangwen theorizes that the CIA got wind of the deal and made it a priority to keep the Chinese from getting their hands on the devices. The problem was how to interdict the shipment without admitting that they (the Americans) had not only developed the technology but carelessly let it fall into the hands of a bunch of crazy Muslim extremists?

The answer? Give the invention a trial run, using MH370 as the test vehicle and its passengers as human guinea pigs! It was the American military, then, using an AWACS (Airborne Warning and Control System -- my emphasis) plane operating from the American base on Diego Garcia, who caused MH370 to deviate from its flight path and turn to the west-northwest, towards the Maldives, the Andaman Islands (Indian territory) and ultimately Diego Garcia.

If all this sounds vaguely familiar, it's because I wrote something along those lines not a month after MH370 disappeared from the radar screens. See "MH370: Suppose it was a test..." WWW 5/4/14

What happened next (back to Mr Chen now) is that, under the control of the Americans, MH370 landed in the Maldives to refuel and (possibly) some of the pax. (There were a couple of Americans and Israelis on board.) Walt doubts that the plane actually landed, but remembers a report in Paris Match by French author Marc Dugain -- a former CEO of Proteus Airlines -- whose investigation took him to the Maldives, where residents told local media on March 9th (the day the plane disappeared) that they had seen an airliner fly in the direction of Diego Garcia.

"I saw a huge plane fly over us at low altitude," a fisherman on Kudahuvadhoo island told M Dugain. "I saw red and blue stripes on a white background" –- the colours of Malaysia Airlines. Other witnesses confirmed the sighting, but their claims were promptly dismissed by "the authorities". See "MH370 - Just fancy that!"

Mr Chen also thinks that the B777 eventually reached Diegp Garcia, where, he says, the Americans refuelled it, and then flew it -- still by remote control -- to the south, somewhere over the south-western part of the Indian Ocean, where they caused it to plunge into a very deep watery grave. That would account for the five pieces of debris which have washed up on the shores of Réunion, Madagascar and South Africa. What happened to the pax and crew? They, or at least their bodies, were probably still on board when MH370 was sunk.

So there you have it. Except for the part about landing in the Maldives, I find Chen Guangwen's narrative entirely plausible. Will the Chinese and/or the Americans confirm or deny it? Errr, probably not. (Lifetime pct .981.)