08-09-08

            To Halifax today to meet with Larry FOGG.  He is in town for a airplane investigator’s seminar, and contacted me last week to come in for lunch.  Had a nice meeting with him and had a chance to go over some things about Swissair.  He was very surprised to learn of the treatment that I had received from the Force during and since the investigation.  It seems that Boeing thought we were seriously looking into the magnesium question, and he was quite surprised to learn that we had dropped it totally.  I asked him if we had been wrong in pursuing the magnesium matter, and he answered, ‘definitely not’.  He considered an incendiary device to be a viable possibility as to the cause of the fire.  I asked him if he felt that the TSB had found a creditable source of the fire when they located the wire event and burn area that is now publically claimed to be the cause of the fire.  He simply stated that the event was the earliest occurrence that they could locate, but that it was ‘mere speculation’ that this first event had caused the fire, and that certainly something else could have been the actual cause of the fire.  Since they do not do criminal, an incendiary device could never be considered by them to be an initiator.  He laughed when I told him that both the RCMP and the TSB had stated in their final reports that the other agency was the official source to verify that there had been no criminal activity in the downing of the plane.  We discussed the Metallized Mylar, and it seems that he had been fighting with Boeing for years before this accident to get rid of the MPET material, and they knew that it readily burned.  However, the engineers cited the fact that it had passed the FAA tests.  He stated that the tests were flawed, but were standard tests at the time, and that there had been nothing underhanded in the setup.  The Metallized Mylar simply shrank away from the flame on being heated and failed to burn simply because it was no longer in the flame area.  Because it didn’t make sufficient flame contact and burn, it passed the test.  But the Boeing engineers were fully aware of its flammability properties.  We had a good talk about other things in general, such as trips, etc.  When I mentioned that LATHEM had been upset with me over the notes and had wanted me to remove material, his comment was that he hoped that I had not, and he simply shook his head when I explained what he had wanted removed.  As I suspected, he had recorded everything that he came across, and sent it on to Boeing.  He laughed over GORMAN’s concern that everything was top secret, saying that he did little if anything around the hanger except express concern over secrecy.  Neither did he have much good to say about LATHEM.

            Larry says that he has lost contact with most of the TSB members.  He tried to retire several years ago but continued to get phone calls from lawyers.  So now he consults on aircraft materials, and when not busy, he travels the world.