Yes, it's pretty much 99.9999999% impossible that every last enlisted rate and jr. officer aboard such a vessel would keep their mouth shut forever once they realized that the missile launch, test, accident, or whatever had happened right at the time of the TWA 800 disappearance/crash.
Average human eye separation for our stereoscopic vision means the highest resolution/smallest thing we can resolve is generally one arc-minute of our field of view.
What any eye witnesses think they saw, well they're just full of it.
I agree that if TWA 800 had been brought down by a U.S. military missile launch of ANY sort, it's virtually certain that military personnel could NOT have been silenced; a shipboard missile launch is a
big deal, and kind of hard to overlook. Shutting up 100 or more sailors once they
know a U.S. commercial aircraft was downed? Nope - "We shot it down ourselves" is an explanation I just don't buy into.
In terms of human eye resolution,
seeing something isn't the same as
resolving it. For example at night you can see stars and planets in a clear sky - no detail, but you know they're there - and the size is under 1 MOA. Same thing with planes and missiles - you may not be able to see what kind of missile is out there, but your eye will pick up on the exhaust plume. In regard to TWA 800, there were too many people who saw
something headed towards the aircraft to discount out of hand - as .gov seemed stubbornly determined to do.
This doesn't prove there was a missile - but .gov wasn't interested in hearing anything
other than "accident." And their ever-changing explanations undermined their credibility.
I'm interested in hearing what these retired investigators have to say, now that there's nobody holding job termination over their heads.
