saabcaptain said:
Typhoon when did you realize what you were seeing was the shuttle... did you report it on the freq?
Didn't realize what it was until we got to DFW and somebody told me.
Here's what I submitted to NASA:
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On Saturday, February 1, 2003, I was the pilot-in-command of Atlantic Southeast Airlines flight 479, operating as Delta Air Lines flight 4479. Our aircraft was a Canadair CRJ-200 Regional Jet registered as N854AS. My copilot was First Officer Timothy Mangan, and my flight attendant was Ms. Sabrina Mitchell. We departed Charleston, South Carolina, at 12:06 GMT and were on our way to the Dallas–Fort Worth Airport, our home base.
At approximately 14:00 GMT, we were flying west-southwest approximately fifteen miles southeast of Longview, Texas, at an altitude of 28,000 feet and a true airspeed of 441 knots (0.79 mach). The ceiling and visibility were unlimited.
I observed what appeared to be the condensation trail of another aircraft directly in front of us and slightly above, traveling east-southeast. As it drew closer, I began to see two or three thin, barely-visible condensation trails behind the main trail and moving parallel to it, although at a slightly slower speed.
The entire formation looked like a large aerial refueling tanker at high altitude with a group of small aircraft decelerating away from it.
As the object moved through my eleven o’clock position, a cascade of “sparks” showered from each side of the object. There were between fifteen and twenty of these objects, each of them leaving a similar trail of condensation or, perhaps, smoke. The larger sparks burned a brilliant white-orange. Smaller ones appeared green in color. Among the sparks was a diffuse cloud of extremely thin filaments that appeared to be a silvery-green color. The sparks were visible for about ten seconds, then began to dissipate.
The behavior of the objects reminded me of pictures of large military aircraft dispensing flares and chaff for the purpose of evading surface-to-air and air-to-air missiles. I came to the conclusion that what I was seeing was probably a B-1 Lancer bomber whose crew had inadvertently activated one of its defensive systems.
At this point, the object at the head of the original condensation or smoke trail was burning bright white-orange, much brighter than any of the sparks it had emitted. It also appeared to be descending at a small but increasing angle.
As the “cascade of sparks” began, an unidentified voice on the Fort Worth Air Route Traffic Control Center (ARTCC) VHF frequency said, “look up!” Upon the ARTCC controller’s request, the pilot of another aircraft described the object. The controller then announced that a Space Shuttle was scheduled to pass over the area on its way back to the Kennedy Space Center. Having no reason to assume anything unusual had happened, I accepted the idea that what I had seen was a normal re-entry, and I immediately directed my passengers’ attention to the orbiter, which was now passing through my ten o’clock position.
Almost immediately, I observed the object appear to “twist” to one side, then separate into four pieces which continued to glow very brightly. Two of these objects were smaller than the others and faded from view fairly quickly. Just before the objects moved out of view behind our left wing, the condensation or smoke trails they were leaving assumed a shallow “corkscrew” shape, as if the objects generating the trails were tumbling as they descended.
No longer convinced that what I had observed was an orbiter, I asked the ARTCC controller to verify that an orbiter was scheduled to pass over our area. He did. I informed the controller that the object I had observed was in three or four pieces, and that I doubted it was the orbiter in question. He replied that he hoped it wasn’t.
Upon arriving in Dallas–Fort Worth at 14:38 GMT, I was informed by another pilot that Columbia was missing and presumed destroyed. I immediately came to the horrible realization that the object I had observed was indeed Columbia. At approximately 19:30 GMT, after completing another scheduled round-trip, I returned to my home and contacted an operator at the Johnson Space Center to reported my observation.
I must stress that I cannot characterize any of the events I observed as an “explosion.” The events I observed looked like nothing more than the destruction of a large object by aerodynamic forces. In fact, at one point, I wondered if what I was seeing was the final plunge of an unusually large meteorite or some sort of manmade “space debris.”
Opinion: it is my understanding that there has been speculation that Columbia’s loss may have been caused by some sort of structural failure of the left wing. This theory would appear to be consistent with the observations I made. The “cascade of sparks” could have marked the moment the left wing failed, which would have caused the orbiter to tumble and be torn apart by excessive aerodynamic loads.
