The coroner said Thursday he doubts that TWA Flight 800 passengers experienced the horror of a free fall and thinks most suffered an almost instantaneous death.
"I don't think anybody was conscious as they fell from 13,000 feet to the water. When the explosion occurred, some may have had a sudden panic attack for maybe one or two seconds. But I believe they were all totally unconscious or dead by the time they hit the water," said Dr. Charles Wetli, the Suffolk County medical examiner in charge of autopsies conducted on 196 crash victims."The majority lost consciousness instantly when the blast went off," he said.
In an interview at his office, Wetli said passengers displayed two kinds of injuries: those consistent with an explosion or those caused by a massive change in speed, cabin pressure and altitude.
The blast occurred when the plane was traveling at 400 mph at about 13,700 feet the evening of July 17. The Boeing 747 broke apart, dropped to about 9,000 feet when it erupted into flames and fell into the Atlantic about 10 miles off Long Island. All 230 people aboard were killed and 196 of the bodies have been recovered and examined by Wetli's office, including one announced Thursday.
"The plane was going at 400 mph, it suddenly changes direction, the fuselage is open so all this air and pressure is going into the cabin, and there's a sudden decompression," Wetli said. "All of this combined would render almost everyone instantly unconscious."
He likened it to a car smashing into a brick wall at 400 mph. "It's an extremely violent whiplash, a separation of the skull from the spinal cord, an instant loss of consciousness."
Technically, some victims deaths were attributed to drowning, but Wetli said they would have been unconscious when they entered the water.
Wetli said investigators were analyzing injuries suffered by passengers in different areas of the plane to see if anything could be learned from them.
On Wednesday, a mammoth, fire-damaged section of airplane wing was raised from the ocean floor, raising as well the hopes of investigators trying to crack the mystery of Flight 800's demise.
Early this morning, a barge - its precious contents from the crash site hidden beneath a tarpaulin - arrived at the Coast Guard command center for truck transport to a hangar.
It was unclear whether it was a piece of the wing: Investigators said the 75-foot section would have to be cut in two before it could be moved.
"That wing is an enormous and important piece of wreckage," said Robert Francis, vice chairman of the National Transportation Safety Board.