A Possible Solution to the "Mystery" of Malaysia Airlines Flight MH 370

Before I begin, I would like to emphasise that what I am about to say is only a hypothesis. I am not saying that this is what happened. I am not even suggesting that this is the most likely thing to have happened. I am merely putting it forward as one of the possible solutions, one that I have not as yet come across being discussed on the net.

Just like plenty of other people, I have been interested in the “mystery” of the missing Malaysian Airlines Flight MH 370. If you’re reading this at all, you’ll be aware of the basics, so I won’t go into them in detail for you. If you aren’t familiar with the details – such as they are – you might want to read this first.

I haven’t written about it earlier, and only tangentially referred to it on my comic strip. For the record, I have from the outset, as I still do now, discounted all the outré hypotheses – which I do not dignify with the term “theory”. I do not, accordingly, believe that the plane is hidden in a cave in Kazakhstan after being hijacked by Chinese Taliban. I do not believe it’s in Tel Aviv being readied for a suicide attack on the US to be blamed on Iran and provoke an invasion a la Baghdad. I do not believe little green monsters from the Andromeda galaxy came along and abducted everyone.

Of course, there must be a solution to the “mystery”. Even if the plane is missing, it must be somewhere, mustn’t it? It can’t just have dematerialised? So why, despite all the searching, haven't they found it yet?

Simple answer: they aren't looking in the right place.

If the plane exists, after all, and they were looking in the right place, they'd at least have found something by now.

And it does exist, or at least its component parts do exist. As to where these component parts are, I believe they are under the Pacific Ocean, somewhere off the southern coast of Vietnam. And I believe the Malaysian authorities, and perhaps those of other nations as well, have known this from the start. They know where the plane is, and they do not want it to be found.

Why would they not want the plane found? What possible reason can there be?

There is only one explanation: there is something about that wreckage which would prove at least deeply embarrassing, and perhaps dangerous, if it were to be retrieved and examined.

Obviously, if the plane had simply crashed – at about the time it vanished from the radar screens or afterwards – there would be no reason to fear the wreckage being retrieved and examined.

Nor, if the plane had been destroyed by a terrorist bomb, say, would there have been any reason not to retrieve and examine the wreckage.

There is only one set of circumstances under which the authorities would not want the aeroplane to be found: if their defence forces had deliberately shot it down.

I understand that this might be a somewhat startling statement, so let me sketch a scenario.

The plane, MH 370, is flying at night over the southern reaches of the South China Sea. To those who don’t know, the South China Sea is of some interest geopolitically these days, since islands in it are claimed by the Philippines, China, Malaysia, Thailand and Vietnam – some of them by all of them. And with the Empire’s “pivot to Asia,” United States Navy ships are present on it as well. In other words, it isn’t a flight over a silent sea. Tensions are high, that's what I mean.

Then, at some point, after breaking off contact with Malaysian air control and before contacting Ho Chi Minh City control in Vietnam, something goes wrong on the plane. Perhaps it’s an electric fire, as suggested here. Perhaps it’s something else, something that makes the plane deviate from its course. And this deviation isn’t noticed by civilian radar, but it brings the airliner into airspace where someone else detects it on a radar screen; someone who decides to shoot first and ask questions later.

It’s night, there’s no time for such fancy things as a visual confirmation. Perhaps an attempt or two is made to contact the plane without result. Perhaps the mishap on the plane has knocked out some of the radio equipment or perhaps the messages are simply not sent on the correct frequency. And maybe the somebody I mentioned isn’t particularly concerned about making contact anyway.

So there’s a flash of a missile in the darkness, an explosion in the air, and a spiralling mass of flame tumbling into the ocean. Disaster.

Could it have happened? Recent history tells us that not only could it have happened, it has happened several times. Yes, several times, quite genuine and unmistakable civilian airliners have been shot down by military forces; and probably the worst single incident of them all was the destruction of Iran Air Flight 655 by the American guided missile Aegis cruiser USS Vincennes over the Persian Gulf in 1988.

I won’t waste space on a discussion of the destruction of Iran Air Flight 655; you can read all about it at the link.  But the salient points are as follows: on 3^rd July 1988, the aeroplane was flying over the Persian Gulf on a flight from Bandar Abbas in Iran to Dubai. It was following its correct flight path and was still well inside Iranian airspace when the Vincennes, an American cruiser which had knowingly and illegally entered Iranian territorial waters, shot it down with two surface to air missiles, killing all 290 on board.

The Vincennes claimed that it had mistaken the large, commercial Airbus A300, which was on a scheduled flight and was climbing to cruising altitude, for an F 14 strike aircraft diving to attack. This was despite the fact that two other American ships in the vicinity correctly identified the aeroplane for what it was. The Vincennes claimed that it had attempted to contact the “intruder” on military radio frequencies, which the commercial Airbus would naturally not be monitoring. And then it went ahead and shot down the aeroplane.

Iranian Air Force F 14. Really, exactly like the Airbus A 300 above, isn't it?

Remember that this was in broad daylight, in one of the busiest parts of the world in terms of air and sea traffic – and it still happened.

For anyone else but the Empire, the fallout would have been horrifying. For the Empire, it was nothing like that. George HW Bush declared, as I remember, “I will never apologise for the United States. I don’t care what the facts are.” But even so, the Empire hid the facts as long as possible and only years later reluctantly admitted that not only was the Iranian aeroplane within its own territorial limits, the Vincennes had been intruding into them as well.

But this is not 1988 and Malaysia is not the Empire. And even the Empire wouldn’t want to alienate potentially vital allies in its Asian Pivot by shooting one of their planes out of the sky.

Now I’m not saying this happened. But just suppose the MH 370 was shot down and the government, in order to limit the fallout, decided to try and cover it up. What might it do?

Well, how about not just pretending ignorance, but deliberately misleading the searchers and pointing them in the wrong direction? How about, say, obfuscating, dissembling, and fiddling with the transcripts of the radio conversations with the crew to throw suspicion on them, however temporarily? How about claiming the plane had flown in a direction that would have taken it far away from where it went down...even to another ocean? How about a highly publicised hunt, in a place where the plane was guaranteed not to be? 

Isn't all this familiar when you consider the Malaysian government's behaviour? In fact, can any other hypothesis explain the Malaysian government's behaviour?

The government can claim to be doing all it can. The media can be kept busy covering the mystery of a disappearance which is no mystery. It’s embarrassing, sure, and raises a fair amount of ill will, but nothing to that which would have happened if it became known that one’s own army or the navy of one’s ally destroyed the aircraft by carelessness or psychopathy.

And meanwhile, the wreckage settles into the sea bed, and one only has to wait for the power supply to the transponders and the black boxes to run out. One is buying precious time, and there are only a few more days to go. The power supply lasts just thirty days, after all.

Later, after the hunt is over and the world has moved on, the wreckage might quietly be retrieved and disposed of, if possible and safely doable. Later.

Perhaps – even likely – I am wrong. Perhaps the wreckage will be discovered in the southern Indian Ocean tomorrow, or the plane will turn up in Diego Garcia. Perhaps a UFO will materialise above Beijing and disgorge the aircraft, passengers and all.

Or perhaps I’m right, and if so, we shall not only likely never know what happened on this occasion, but things like this may happen more frequently in future.

After all, if you’ve got away with it once, why couldn’t you get away with it again...and again...and again?

I hope I’m wrong...but the more I think about it, the less likely it is that I am.

Peace and blessings, for what they are worth.