by Br. Alexis Bugnolo

Rumors are flying, after what appears to be a jet fighter is caught on camera passing the explosion zone seconds after explosion. Flying a very low altitude it appears to be on a trajectory which could have been used to launch a missile to cause the explosion. Israel is being blamed.

FromRome.Info merely republishes the video testimony and the still frames of the plan as it passes at high velocity going in a direction tangential to the explosion.

I have rotated the frames to give you a ground’s up view, and I present them here in chronological order.

Video

The difficulty in interpreting this video, is seen in the video itself, here below:

https://youtu.be/DGPHssx2vak

As you can see, the video appears to be that taken by a bystander who was blown over by the blast, and whose cellphone tosses in the air while the explosion passes. As the camera is blown, its point of view changes slightly.

The object which appears to be a jet fighter is thus seen from slightly different angles. But as a video camera takes frames at a speed of 24, 30 or 60 frames per second, the jet fighter, which if it is a jet, should change its position slightly in that 1/24th or 1/30th or 1/60th of a second.

If the plane was Israeli, it might have been their Lockheed Martin F-35 (here). It is considered to have stealth capabilities, and has a maximum speed of 1.6 mach, or 554 meters a second at 15 degrees celsius. It was certainly hotter than that at Beirut. But the difference would  not be that great.

Therefore, assuming the cellphone was taking video at the slowest speed of 1/24th of a second per frame, the plane should have moved 23 meters from frame to frame. The plane is clearly several hundred meters away, so 23 meters is not much. And since the camera’s angel of view is being changed by the tossing in the blast, it is difficult to interpret.

The shape which appears to be a fighter is also not so clear.

I will leave it to readers to analyze the frames.

Just because a plane was present, does not mean it launched a missile causing the explosion. Also it does not mean it was not on a mission to ascertain the extent of the fire.