The Supposed Other Other Kennedy Assassination
August 6th, 2010
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When someone says “Kennedy Assassination” you probably think of US President John F. Kennedy. If someone says “The Other Kennedy Assassination”, you might think of his brother Robert F. Kennedy. But what about the other other Kennedy Assassination?
Well, if you’re nutty enough, you might think there is one, his son John F. Kennedy Junior, the playboy and publisher of a failing magazine apparently was important enough to murder. At least that’s what some think.
So what really happened to JFK Junior? A very simple and tragically well known phenomena – pilot disorientation. JFK Junior was not very experienced in flying in the dark, entirely by instruments, a task which a person really needs to train themselves to do, because it’s against human nature. We navigate our world visually when walking and driving a car. When flying an airplane this works pretty well as long as it’s clear outside and there are good points of reference. However, flying over water at night removes most of the visual cues.
It’s only natural to fall back onto your own sense of orientation and balance. Unfortunately, this sense does not work very well at judging the motion of an airplane. Acceleration and gravity feel the same, so pitching up or accelerating can be mistaken. A surprisingly steep dive might not feel so steep and altitude is very easy to lose track of. Rocking and banking can also confuse the human sense of direction and balance that is primarily governed by the inner ear.
Simply put, these intuitions that we all are so used to relying on can easily fool a pilot. That is why pilots should not go flying an unfamiliar route, over nondescript terrain or water at night and without a full IFR rating. The training involved is as much disciplining oneself to keep watch on the critical flight instruments and keep the plane safely flying as it is knowledge.
To make matters worse, Kennedy may well have been under psycological stress from his personal life and a recent injury. He left the airport late and made several errors before the fatal crash, including venturing too close to a descending American Airlines jet and setting his radio to the wrong frequency. He was rushed and likely tired.
JFK Junior didn’t have an IFR and had little experience flying by instruments alone in such conditions. He flew the plane right into the water without hesitation. He probably was completely confident that he was doing just fine until the last instant.
There’s no need to invoke a massive conspiracy. He just flew his plane into the water. The logic of this claim is about as good as the videomakers production abilities.
This entry was posted on Friday, August 6th, 2010 at 11:39 pm and is filed under Bad Science, Conspiracy Theories, History, Just LAME, Not Even Wrong, Politics. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
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August 7th, 2010 at 5:01 am
The puerile fascination many have with this family is pathetic.
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August 7th, 2010 at 8:51 am
DV82XL said:
As is it the tendency that they have to attribute everything to a conspiracy by a massive group of superpowerful elite. The video sounds like a bad James Bond movie.
One thing about the death of JFK Junior is that it is a useful analogy for skepticism to show what can happen if you put too much trust in your own gut feeling and not rely on objective science. A pilot can fly right into the ground (or water) because their own senses or intuition failed them so convincingly.
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August 7th, 2010 at 9:11 am
It seems that pretty much any untimely death of someone famous or powerful is going to be turned into a conspiracy.
Prime minister went swimming and didn’t come back? It’s a conspiracy
Princess dies in a car accident? Must be a conspiracy!
Son of president gets into plane crash? Obviously a conspiracy!
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August 7th, 2010 at 7:30 pm
I hear he was flying to texas ot talk with NASA about the fake moon landing.
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August 8th, 2010 at 11:18 pm
A small plane is a great place to kill someone and make it look like an accident. Why exactly the NWO wanted him dead is anyones guess bc they sure had plenty of reasons. I knew the minute I heard he had gone missing that it was planned. Pretty obvious, if you ask me.
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August 8th, 2010 at 11:23 pm
You forgot the other other other Kennedy assassination! what about Ted Kennedy? Died of cancer? Pssh! Doesn’t it just seem too suspicious? How do we know he wasn’t injected with cancer cells???
http://sadbastards.wordpress.com/2008/05/18/was-ted-kennedy-poisoned-because-of-his-support-of-obama/
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August 8th, 2010 at 11:29 pm
I just realized I should probably make this point, in light of the previous comment: I was being totally sarcastic!
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August 8th, 2010 at 11:38 pm
Bob R. said:
Are you kidding me? Inexperienced pilot. He bit off more than he was ready for and it was a pretty straightforward accident. Is that so hard to believe? It’s a hell of a lot simpler than thinking some elaborate conspiracy was involved.
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August 9th, 2010 at 2:01 am
Conspiracy theorists of all stripes are living proof that Occam’s Razor should be taught in school from Kindergarten up to graduation.
I never realized just how important the Razor is, I always thought of it as a moment in the history of reason that had long since become an element of common sense. I see now that it is is not.
If I could pick one idea that could be inculcated into the public mind, that would go a very long way to bring back some modicum of reason into the fabric of current Western thought, it would be this.
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