2024-06-27 – At Sea on the Route to New York – Day 056

Thursday June 27, 2024 – At sea on Route to New York City, USA 

Today was the standard 4 lectures, meals, show and Masquerade Gala, so formal dress. However the show was the Cunard Singers and Dancers doing Broadway Rocks, which we have seen many times, and is very good, but we shipped it.

The first lecture was Jeff Rozelaar acting in period dress, telling the history of Benjamin Disraeli in first person. His unconventional lecture style, getting on stage and lounging in an armchair, while off the cuff performing a scripted version of the character, at first is a bit strange, as we found with his first lecture on Churchill, which unfortunately we couldn’t hear, and his slides were so light that they couldn’t be clearly read, so skipped part 2.  For this talk we sat up at the front of the lecture hall and had a much better experience. He followed the story of Jews being banished from England, then on his return, he was teased at school for being different (a Jew) so he was home schooled. His life was made as he became part of the upper class society living in Britain, through a series of interesting events. He married and eventually got into Politics, although was defeated in his first two campaigns, he eventually became a back-bencher MP and settled in an estate in Buckinghamshire, before becoming a front bencher as Chancellor of the Exchequer (Finance Minister). The second part will be tomorrow.

Next was a lecture in the Illuminations theatre by the chap who runs the Clarendon Art gallery on the ship (usually done in smaller venues, and perhaps should have stuck to that as there were only a handful of people in attendance, speaking, very well and entertainingly about L.S. Lowry. He was a famous British painter known for his portrayal of smoking chimneys, The Industrial North and Matchstick Men. His work is now selling for millions of dollars in the world markets.

Next Matthew Towler spoke about the Espionage Ring of Russian spies operating in the USA (Northeast) called Operation Ghost Stories. There were 10 “sleeper Agents” living in the USA, some as couples with US born children. Who were apprehended on June 27th, 2010 (exactly 14 years ago today) and all pleaded guilty to long term espionage. They were swapped in July 2010 for 4 Russians who spied for the West (UK/US) caught in Russia and all serving prison / labor camp sentences – Igor Sutyagin (granted UK residence), Alexander Zaporozhsky, Sergei Skripal (poisoned with his daughter in Salisbury, England in 2018) and Gennady Vasilenko (fingered by the notorious FBI Russian mole – Robert Hanssen). An 11th man Christopher R. Mezzos (aka Pável Kapustin, the apparent money man leader) was arrested in the Cyprus airport about to fly to Budapest. He was released after posting  27,000 euro bail in cash and escaped and has never been seen since. Richard & Cynthia Murphy (aka Vladimir Guryev and Lidia Guryeva) resided in Hoboken, NJ then Montclair NJ and had 2 daughters. Vicky Peláez (no alias, Peruvian / US citizen) and Juan Lazaro (Actually – Mikhail Vasenkov) were in Yonkers, NY. Anna Chapman (Anna Vasil’evna Kuschenko) had worked and lived in London and got a UK Passport, where she was recruited. Donald Howard Heathfield (actually Andrew Bezrukov) and Tracy Lee Ann Foley (actually Yelena Vavilova) lived in Cambridge MA had 2 sons. Michael Zottoli (aka Mikhail Kutsik) and Patricia Mills (aka Natalia Pereverzeva) were initially in Seattle then Arlington, Virginia who had two children. The final one was Mikhail Semenko, operating under his own name, in Arlington, Virginia.

We missed the musicologist lecture but attended all four of the very interesting talks of the Concorde Captain – Rick Reynolds. On this occasion it was his least favorite of the talks, the story of the fateful crash of the Air France Concorde in Paris at 16:42 hrs on July 25th, 2000 (AF 4590) that was labeled as being caused by a piece of metal that was left on the runway from a Continental Airways ‘plane. It had been chartered by a German group (Peter Deilmann Cruises) to fly to New York to board a ship (MS Deutschland) for an exclusive 16 day cruise to Manta, Ecuador, holiday. All 100 passengers (96 German, 2 Danish, 1 Austrian and 1 USA citizens) and 9 crew (8 French, 1 German) on-board were killed as well as 4 people in the nearby hotel (Hôtelissimo Les Relais Bleus) into which it crashed., for a total of 113 dead. The only crash of the Concorde in its 27 year history. The “official findings” of the French Investigation stated that the Continental Flight DC10 bound for Newark, NJ had replaced a strip of the engine cowl 17.1 inches long by 1.1 to 1.3 inches wide and 0.055 inches thick, with a titanium piece as opposed to an Aluminium piece (as permitted by the manufacturer) which fell off during take-off. This did not affect Continental’s flight. However the findings were that the Concorde’s tire was broken in pieces, one piece hit a fuel tank, which burst open causing a fire and close down of engine 3, thus not enough thrust to get it airborne. Thus, under French (Napoleonic Code) law (Guilty until proven innocent), the French had to find the Guilty Party and that was the Crew and Management of Continental Airlines. As I write this we already heard tomorrow, that at the trial, they were found guilty, with the crew receiving probation and the Captain additionally receiving 6 months prison time. From the French standpoint, case Closed. Continental eventually appealed and all charges dropped. However, I jump ahead to the “end of the book” so you can come back to the beginning which will play out over today and tomorrow’s lectures. The reality of the situation was actually quite different. When the Concorde plan was developed as a dual French / English plan, various agreements were made by the two governments, regarding all the aspects of how it was going to work and what would happen in case of issues. One of the clauses was that if there was an incident or crash, it would be investigated jointly by both parties. However, the French did not allow the British to be part of the investigation, and much of the key paperwork was “lost or destroyed”!! What is known, is that the Flight Engineer was the person who had the final say as to how much fuel could be carried. The pilots always wanted a full tank, but depending on the weight and other factors, this was calculated and the final say was the Engineer’s. The reason, as previously stated, was that the aircraft had highly specific tolerances, and fuel had to be moved around from one tank to another to maintain the Lift / Weight balance. In this case, knowing that the passengers were off on an exclusive holiday and thus the weight of their suitcases was more than the usual customer – The Buisness Traveler, the Engineer agreed to have the full fuel tanks, thus the ‘plane was significantly overweight. Also 19 extra suitcases were loaded at the last minute but not recorded in the manifest. Secondly, when the ‘plane was at the end of the runway, the tower indicated that there was an 8 knot (9 MPH) tailwind. One always takes off into the wind to gain lift. However, the Captain, knowing the exact tolerances, decided not to go to the other end of the runway, burning off fuel, and taking time off their schedule. Had he done so, he would have been airborne before the location of the Continental debris piece. He knew he had to get to NYC in time to get the regular commercial flight scheduled return. So the decision was made to take off with the tail wind. A knowledgeable observer (un-named, but there is apparently video) indicated that the tire was already wobbly and on fire, before it went over the piece of metal on the runway. During the previous maintenance work of the aircraft, a washer had not been placed on the tires, causing there to be a wobble in the tires. A few flights (about 5-6) had already taken place before this crash, and it had been pointed out by marks from both undercarriages on the runway, but the French did nothing to correct this. One more thing, the instructions indicate that no changes could be made to the take off protocol until the aircraft was at least 400 meters above the ground. However, in this case, the tower told the pilot that there was fire coming out from the bottom of the ‘plane so he immediately shut off engine 2. Engine 1 had lost power, but was re-started, so on take off, where the 4 engines are needed, 3 can be done with difficulty, and with only 2, it is almost impossible unless all other factors are ok. He described other factors, but these are the key ones I remember. Thus it can safely be concluded, that the error actually rested mainly in the decision making of the flight crew in the cockpit, but they were all acquitted as it was easier to blame Continental! All very interesting.