I’ve never given the matter much thought, but maybe that’s just because the vast government conspiracy that covers these things up did its job well. :eek:
Anyone seen this flash video yet?
I don’t know about the whole “the FBI confiscated this and that” stuff toward the end, but the fact that there didn’t seem to be much airplane wreckage to drag out of there is interesting. Any thoughts?
(sorry if this is in the complete wrong forum)
Yawn
Nothing new here. All of the claims and arguments in that animation are debunked elsewhere on the web, if you bother to look.
There wasn’t much wreckage left when Concorde crashed, also a high-speed impact with a full fuel load. Nobody’s claiming a coverup there.
any links?
I need the Dope on this, too… in fact, I’m considering Asking Cecil.
unanswered questions:
if the plane hit the ground first, as Snopes claims, why wasn’t the ground scorched, bruised, damaged in any way?
how could the hole in the building be smaller than the plane itself?
why was debris carried away under tarps?
why were all security tapes but the one everyone’s seen confiscated (namely the one from the gas station, and the one that would have shown the plane flying over I-395) and never made available for public viewing?
I’m not yet claiming one side or the other… but I’m leaning a bit, and I don’t want to take up any position fully without consulting my fellow Dopers.
In reverse order…
I’d guess (and stand to be corrected) that in any major air accident, all available CCTV footage for the investigation. When this also involves a major criminal investigation (like mass murder), there’s extra reason for it. (Would you deny a robbery took place at a local petrol station, because the police took the tape from CCTV cameras the other side of the road?)
Debris under tarps? No investigation (criminal or air-accident) had had so much TV time devoted to it, ever. Allowing further speculation by a few zoom images of chunks of fuselage would have been irresponsible. Have you ever desperatley wanted to see the removal of wreckage from any other plane crash, or other bombing, just to believe that it happened?
The fuel tanks in airliner are in the wings. A explosion, such as that caused by a full-speed crash into a building, would cause the wings to explode, and therefore disintegrate, before being able to demolish the walls. A 747 didn’t make a 747-width hole in an apartment block in Amsterdam in 1992: http://www.planecrashinfo.com/w921004.htm
As for striking the ground - there’s a picture towards the bottom of the Snopes article which shows a huge black patch in front of the building.
…available CCTV footage ***would be turned over to * the investigation.
Gorillaman, if the tapes were taken, why weren’t they returned or made available to the public?
Why would it have been irresponsible to show images of the results of the crash? Were such measures taken at the WTC site?
If the wings exploded, shouldn’t the lawn have been showered by fragments, easily recognizable and identifiable?
As for the lawn, I’m looking at that snopes article, and to my untrained eye, I sure as heck can’t see a burned and scorched trail as a plane traveling with all that inertia would make…
In addition, if an engine punched through the third wall, had enough mass and volume to leave a hole, where did it go?
There are other problems I have with Snopes’ story…
Except for very specific circumstances, such tapes shouldn’t be made public. Black Box recording aren’t. (transcripts are.) You’re basically asking to be able to watch the deaths of many people.
By ‘results’ of the crash, you mean the immediate aftermath? Wasn’t downtown Manhatten a closed zone for some time after 9/11?
What, you want an outline of a wing in cute little chunks of metal? That’s not how explosions happen. They blast things anywhere. There’ll have been small slivers of metal all over the place.
The final image that is in the centre of the screen…there’s a huge burn mark well in front of the building…there’s also further marks to the front of what appears to be a helipad.
A plane hitting the ground at that speed would bounce. It wouldnt’ carve a groove into the ground.
Well, maybe it burned to pieces, and was carried out under one of the tarps?
Do tell
I was living outside Manhattan at the time, and from what I remember a local cordon was in effect, yes.
But, IIRC, there were no tarps or any attempt to shield the site from scrutiny.
No no…
I want those small slivers of metal that would be ‘all over the place.’
Surely the lawn would have been littered with them?
Yes, I’m looking at that image, and honestly I don’t see the same thing that you do. It doesn’t look like a path of destruction a crashing plane would make. Admittedly, this is my layman’s hunch.
Further, since there was an explosion at the point of impact, wouldn’t that scorch the grass?
Now I’m not physicist, but a plane traveling 350 miles an hour with tons worth of inertia would bounce?
I’m sorry… until I have that proven to me, I simply won’t believe it.
Fair enough, but I can’jt understand how an engine, already seperated from the main wreckage, and away from the blast site, would burn up. Or why you’d even need the tarp.
I’ll be happy to in a bit, I’m responding to a few Dope threads now as well as debating this issue on another message board. When I can organize my thoughts cogently I promise I will respond.
I’d like to hear (and see you prove) your alternate explanation. At the very least, you have to explain what happened to these people.
I am confused… I was unaware that I’ve advanced any alternate theories.
I simply see holes in the official theory, I have no idea what else might be the ‘real’ occurrence.
I also may very well be wrong, and the official story may be Gospel.
If that is the case, I welcome anybody who will dispel my ignorance, preferably with a sound basis in avionics/physics/etc…
As for the people, I honestly don’t know about that either. But it strikes me that just because people died, does not mean they died then and there.
Again, I don’t know anything about this, and I’m merely expressing my doubt.
I welcome anybody who’ll clear up my ignorance.
No media were present. What better sheild from scrutiny could be offered?!
Carried out under the tarp?
Spot on. Neither of us know. Other people do. Who has the more reliable hunches?
A chemist can correct me, but I’d presume a kerosene explosion would be rising too fast to have a major heat effect on the ground below?
Prove it to you, like have the photos of when it actually happened in front of you? Or do you want a private hijack demonstration? I’ve seen carrots break metal. Seriously. There’s weird things that happen when you get to high speeds.
An engine would be full of fuel and very hot. And have many fast-moving parts. It would simply fall to pieces. The tarp was to deal with the sensibilities of the media - they didn’t think “oh wait, a tarp might possibly look suspicious, let’s carry everything out in full live CNN feed view”. The worst thing the investigators could do was provide ammuntion for the endless speculation of the media. Carrying out chunks of god-knows-what would have done just that. So they hid it.
So what possible explanation is there for their deaths? If you can’t provide one, doesn’t that suggest there’s a huge gaping hole in your theory?
A huge gaping hole in my theory would suggest that I have a theory at all.
I have no idea what happened, and merely a gut reaction that something is fishy.
Anybody with technical knoweldge can prove me wrong, if I am, and I will happily have my confusion cleared up.
All the evidence is out there, and all the evidence contradicts your gut reaction. And much of it can be found easily from links here or from the Snopes page.
Unfortunatly, our guts sometimes get it wrong 
I’ve read the snopes page, several times in fact, and several times before I saw this thread.
I’ve already pointed out what my issues are and why I find their evidence unconvincing.
I would like a Doper who is in the know about such things as chemistry, physics, avionics, etc… to give me the Straight Dope on this one.
And I’m sorry, but I’m not feeling very good right now, I’ll resume this discussion some time tomorrow. Sorry to dish out my position and run.
ok so the 757 plane that is supposed to have hit the pentagon is where exactly if it did not hit the pentagon? I guess the govt. hid the actual crash site in a mass conspiracy because a missile launched by the armed forces accidentally hit the pentagon?
Or maybe the crash site in PA actually has two planes?
Airplanes are made from the lightest material that they can put together and still carry a load. They get their mass and overall weight from their sheer size. Still, a wing that is designed to provide nearly all of its strength in lifting a fuselage is no match for a building that is built of reinforced concrete (and had recently been internally strengthened to defeat bombs). I doubt that there was much of an explosion as the wings struck the building; they probably were simply folded up alongside the fuselage and sucked into the building where the fuel could explode at its liesure.
There is no reason to believe that the wings would have made any serious impression on the walls where they struck.
As to the physics of bouncing: in WWII, the USAAF made a habit, in the Pacific, of bouncing bombs off of water into the sides of ships. Regardless of the differences in size and mass, the same principles apply. The pilot was attempting to strike the Pentagon directly and only glanced off the yard because he was not skilled enough to judge his altitude, so his trajectory was nearly flat, to begin with. Have you ever seen the video of the DC-10 crash at Sioux City? It was able to bounce quite nicely, several times, even after leaving the runway.
I was in Shanksville a couple of weeks ago; there’s a very moving folk shrine there now. And I talked to a man who saw the plane crash.
There was one plane. Its nose is still buried there.
By your own admission, your “ignorance” is simply your own gut feeling that something is wrong. Do you expect us to give well-reasoned arguments against your gut? The Snopes page is a very well-reasoned piece of work. If you won’t accept it becuase your gut tell you not to, why would your gut allow you to accept anything said in this thread?
I suspect your gut would accept an explanation that confirms a conspiracy involving the U.S. government, and nothing less.