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Alleged Satellite Photo Says Ukraine Shootdown of MH17

Posted by timothy on from the if-the-glove-won't-fit dept.

theshowmecanuck (703852) writes A group calling itself the Russian Union of Engineers has published a photograph, picked up by many news organizations (just picked one, Google it yourself to find more), claiming to show that MH17 was shot down by a Ukrainian fighter plane. The interesting thing is the very quick ad hoc crowd sourced debunking of the photograph using tools from Google maps, online photos/data, to their own domain knowledge backed up with the previous information. It would be interesting to understand who the "Russian Union of Engineers" are and why they in particular were chosen to release this information.

6 of 340 comments (clear)

  1. uh, no? by X0563511 · · Score: 5, Interesting

    If this is real, that has got to be the worst pilot I've ever seen.

    You don't fire at such a square angle. You want to be behind or in front. You also don't fire missiles when you're so damn close.

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    1. Re:uh, no? by Luckyo · · Score: 5, Interesting

      I've watched the Russian original, and it's very weird. Their claim is that pilot first strafed the cockpit with guns which resulted in cockpit detaching from the aircraft, which they claim Dutch investigators have confirmed. The goal was apparently to silence the crew and prevent calls for help. Then the aircraft fired a heat seeker into the engines causing aircraft to spin out of control and crash.

      Their other point on the other hand sounded much more reasonable. They note that BUK missile makes a very brightly visible plume and persistent smoke trail as it goes through its trajectory, and there were apparently no confirmed instances of footage of this in relation to the plane. Considering just how obviously exceptional it would look in the sky and how many photos there are of pretty much anything weird happening in the warring region, it does sound odd that no one got any footage of the missile. It should be visible for tens of kilometers in all directions.

      Overall, the case is getting stranger with every relevation.

    2. Re:uh, no? by Maury+Markowitz · · Score: 5, Informative

      > that the airplane was hit by a continuous rod warhead

      It absolutely was not. The images of the fragments *clearly* show shrapnel, and there isn't any evidence of anything hitting the plane that's longer than maybe an inch.

    3. Re:uh, no? by citizenr · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Their other point on the other hand sounded much more reasonable. They note that BUK missile makes a very brightly visible plume and persistent smoke trail as it goes through its trajectory, and there were apparently no confirmed instances of footage of this in relation to the plane. Considering just how obviously exceptional it would look in the sky and how many photos there are of pretty much anything weird happening in the warring region, it does sound odd that no one got any footage of the missile. It should be visible for tens of kilometers in all directions.

      Overall, the case is getting stranger with every relevation.

      Pro russian/rusian forces used BUKs to shot down three other Ukrainian planes days before the MH17, got any pictures from those? No? see, not so weird.

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    4. Re:uh, no? by schnell · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Overall, the case is getting stranger with every relevation.

      No, no it is not. This is a pretty blatant forgery - for a step-by-step walkthrough of what's obviously faked about it (including screenshots of the months-old Google Maps images and others that were used) please visit here.

      Giving this any credence by saying the case "gets stranger" is like reading some 9/11 truther's article and saying that it makes the truth behind the attacks "more puzzling." It doesn't. It just shows that some people are either disconnected from the truth or (in this case) willing to actively fabricate things to obscure it.

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  2. Re:Yet Another Fake Picture by Maury+Markowitz · · Score: 5, Insightful

    > What we do know is that the plane was downed with multiple, small, high velocity projectiles

    Yes, it's called "shrapnel".

    > even entertain the possibility that this was cannon fire

    Because cannon fire has a minimum size of the puncture it can make, the size of the shell. The resulting marks on the aircraft will be a circle of that size, given a nice face-on strike, or elongations if the angle was more glancing. It can get much larger if the metal tears.

    Now look at the image. There are many, many holes in the aircraft that are much smaller than a cannon shell. In fact, there are quite a few that are exactly the size of a piece of shrapnel.

    So that's why "west no one seems to want to even entertain" the idea, it's clearly false.