Debunk this 9/11 conspiracy theory

Factual Questions
1

This might end up in GD, but anyway…

I’m sure it’s been done to death, but I just saw the show this week, and I didn’t get any relevant hits from a search. It’s sort of a hard thing to compose good keywords for.

I was watching a sleazy 9/11 conspiracy show on t.v. the other day - I guess for the same reason people watch auto accidents - morbid curiosity. I don’t believe these people, but I find them strangely fascinating. Among other things, they claimed that both of the planes that crashed into the twin towers fired some sort of missile into the building a split second before impact, in order to ignite the fuel as it spilled out . The evidence they based this on was, one, an object visible on the underside of the second plane (which only looked like a dark blur due to the grainyness of the video), and two, a flash of light that could be seen a split-second before each of the 2 planes hit. The flash of light could clearly be seen in the one existing video of the first crash, and in several different existing shots of the second crash, although I found it hard to tell if it occured before or right at the moment of impact. But it certainly occurred before the cockpit section had fully passed through the wall of the building in both cases, and clearly before the fuel tanks had reached the point of impact.

My question: Has this particular conspiracy theory been widely circulated, and if so, has it been debunked? They actually offered pretty good reasoning as to why it couldn’t be a reflection; since the second crash was recorded from different angles, a reflection of the sun or whatever wouldn’t show up from every angle, yet the flash is there from different angles. So what would cause a flash of light? My first thought is that they got it wrong, and that it didn’t occur before impact, but right after impact, as the result of something in the cockpit exploding. Is there anything in the cockpit of a plane that would cause a small explosion on impact? Any other ideas?

I suppose I shouldn’t discount the possibility that they simply retouched the video, but I just have a hard time believing this guy would do something that could so easily be checked against another source. My gut feeling is that there’s simply a more benign explanation for the flashes.

2

Yep, it’s been thoroughly debunked, on these boards and elsewhere.

The mistake made by all the amateur conspiracists looking at grainy snaps of the undersides of those planes is assuming that the profile is as smooth & curved as the top of the plane is. In fact, there’s big bulges etc., where fuel tanks and suchlike are present. A low sun (ie 9am on a September morning) and a very low camera angle mean that there’s all sorts of shadows and reflections cast from these bulges, emphasised further by American’s shiny livery.

Of course, the very simple way to call ‘bullshit’ is to ask why the hell they’d need an external ignition source, given their impact speed of 600mph?

3

Oh, and on the ‘flash of light’ matter - it’s not one I’d heard before, but Googling turned up similar references to TWA 800, and numerous other smaller crashes. It appears to be typical of a fuel-tank explosion (which I suspect would be perfeclty possible even in the very early stages of impact, because all it would need would be an unusual electrical power surge or a single spark from breaking metal).

4

Many conspiracy theories have at least a grain of factual evidence to start the rampant specultion. This one doesn’t.

Consider what would be needed for a commercial jet to be fitted with missiles. You would have to redsign the wing to accept hardpoint mountings for a missile. The wing would then have to be replaced. You would then have to instsall a firing mechanism into the wing. You would then need to buy an air launced missile and mount it on the plane. You would have to all this on a commercial airplane that is in service, without anyone else noticing.

Plus, the whole “why would you need it anyway?” Gorillaman noted.

A good page on this stuff here.

5

You don’t have to get too fancy to debunk this kind of stuff. In this case just think about the sequence of events. AMR flight 11 and UAL flight 175 departed Logan at 7:59 and 8:14, respectively, and crashed into the World Trade Center 47 minutes and 32 minutes later. Prior to departure, they sat at a gate where they were fueled by regular airport employees, loaded with baggage by airline personnel and, doubtless, stared at out the window by regular passengers. The pilots would have done a walk-around of the exterior of the aircraft. Each aircraft was pulled away from the gate by the ground crew and then taxied, passing any number of pilots, passengers, gate managers, etc.

In order to believe a theory about a missle, one would have to believe one of three things. Either:

All those people, including the pilots who died and had responsibility for the aircraft, failed to notice that there was a missile attached to the aircraft somewhere on the exterior. Or perhaps they’re in on it too! Yes, all of them. The bored guy looking out the window of another aircraft on the taxiway. The $12/hour guy who pulled the plane back. The pilot who ignored a big honkin’ missile hanging off his aircraft.

Or.

There is a super-secret missile tube on standard-issue Boeing transcontinental aircraft which allowed parties unknown to load a missle, large enough to do whatever task the conspiracy theorists have in mind but small enough to sneak into a civilain airport and load onto a plane undetected by the baggage handlers or anyone else who might have been in the interior of the aircraft that morning.

Or.

In the half-hour to 45 minutes between leaving the gate at Logan and hitting the World Trade Center, each aircraft landed at a secret airport somewhere along the way in the most densely-populated part of the country, got fitted with a missile, took back off and then headed for the Trade Center. They did this without the knowledge of the passengers, who communicated with their families by cellphone right up to the impact of each aircraft and mentioned the hijackers but no landings.

Frankly, a moonshot hoax would have been easier to carry off.

6

For the South tower impact, there is famous frame taken from a video, which shows the plane apparently still several yards from striking the building, but a flash of light already happening at the building. The problem with this photo is that the plane actually extends out to where the flash is, but that part of the plane is in the shadow from the building, and therefore is just about the same color as the side of the building that it’s about to hit. The line on the plane where the sun is shining looks like it should be the plane’s nose, but you can tell it’s not because it’s too close to the wings. This is one of those photos that at first blush looks one way, then when you look at it knowing that the front of the plane is in the building’s shadow, it’s pretty clear what happened.

Aha - I just found the image I am talking about, unfortunately annotated in German:
http://aktenzeichen911.alien.de/suedturmanalyse02.htm

Oh, and the flash is due to the fact that you have metal hitting metal at very high speed.

7

Does this mean that in all plane crashes, that missiles have been shot ahead in order to ignite the fuel? In that case, such missiles must be standard equipment. :rolleyes:

8

Why is it always missiles? :confused: Conspiracy theorists seem to have an unhealthy obsession with missiles. (TWA 800, etc…)

9

It goes back to the Kennedy assassination and the ‘Magic Missle’ theory, which as we all know, couldn’t miss…

10

Good so far, but there’s a couple things I think we still need to make the debunking complete. First of all, I should add a couple more details of this particular conspiracy theory. One, they contended that the planes weren’t actually the commercial flights we were told they were, and were probably military aircraft. They offered testimony from eyewitnesses who said they didn’t look like commercial airlines; one person said the plane he saw had no windows. So to be fair to the conspiracy nuts advancing the theory, they weren’t suggesting that a missile was somehow strapped to a commerical flight, but that the planes that struck the towers were entirely different planes altogether.

Of course, none of that is particularly convincing, because eyewitnesses frequently just plain rememer details wrong. You can hear all kinds of different stories from people who witnessed the same event. And of course it raises the question of what did happen to those commercial flights, if they didn’t crash into the towers, because it seems pretty clear that those flights did take off, and didn’t return.

But the thing that does, on first blush, seem fairly convincing, is that flash of light. CurtC, those pictures you linked to look like what they were talking about. The video quality is just too poor, IMO - you really can’t tell if the plane has struck the building yet when the flash happens, so my instinct would be to assume it had already struck the building. But the quesion now is, does “metal hitting metal at high speed” cause a flash like that? It’s a pretty sizable flash; I would almost call it an explosion. I can see how metal hitting metal would make a lot of sparks, but would it make a big fireball like that? What is fairly clear is that the fuel tank hadn’t hit yet.

GorillaMan and others, I’m curious if you still think it was a fuel-tank explosion after looking at the pictures? The fuel tank isn’t located that far forward in the fuselage, is it? I do remember that in other plane crashes, witnesses have mistaken a fuel explosion for a missile strike, but I’m thinking that isn’t the case here. I also wonder if those of you who said the fuel wouldn’t need to be ignited, can clarify that. It’s obviously considered to be possible for the fuel to instantly explode at that speed, since that’s supposedly the official explanation. But is it a given that it would happen? Let’s just say, for the sake of argument, that you wanted to engineer such an event. Would you be guaranteed that the plane would explode and cause a massive fire in the building merely from the impact, or is there a possibility that the plane might just pass through without all the fuel igniting, therefore requiring an ignition source just to be sure? What I’m thinking about here is how, in movies, cars always explode when they crash, while in real life, that rarely happens. Of course cars aren’t going 600 mph or whatever the speed of the plane was. I’m no physics expert, so I honestly don’t know the answer to that question.

Basically what I’m looking for is a real iron-clad debunking of this theory. I’m not really interested in rolleyes or “that’s so stupid” type comments; that goes without saying. I would be very interested in hearing from anyone who has heard a good debunking, or has the technical knowledge to evaluate what would cause flashes of light like that.

11

That orange-ish light is what they say is the missle strike? Doesn’t that look like the nose-light to anyone else?

12

Agreed, that fuel tank explosion seems unlikely, now I see the pictures. But my limited knowledge (hey, it’s the same as most conspiracists :wink: ) suggests that it doesn’t look anything like a missile explosion, either.

And yes, I think we’re safe in saying that a 600mph impact is enough to ensure explosion of fuel. And if not, so what? Just having the planes crash would still have made it the biggest terrorist act ever committed on US soil.

13

A missile being launched would create a larger flash than that little blob of orange pixels on the plane’s nose.

14

Just how did the hijackers manage to mount a missel on the undrside of one let alone two planes?

Conspiricy theories are poorly thought through, and hence are full of big holes.

15

No one on the ground was paying much attention when the first plane hit, and there was much initial confusion about what had happened. Planes have accidentally flown into skyscrapers before, even in NYC, and until the subsequent crashes there was in fact very little to suggest that that wasn’t what happened with the first plane.

So any claim of eyewitnesses to the first plane crash is highly suspect. And any claims by eyewitnesses to seeing a missile launch from the first plane are moreso.

16

That’s the problem with outlandishly stupid conspiracy theories, the best debunking is how stupid they are. Those that believe them will not believe in any sort of logic so there never will be an iron-clad debunking. The explainations I have read here are enough to convince me. If it isn’t enough for you I have no idea what could do it.

17

Why are they advancing this ridiculous plot ?

There isn’t any need to a missile to be fired, and even if a missile were actually fitted and fired, it would not have caused any more damage than was done.

What would the purpose of the missile be ?

18

But I can’t find it.

It wasn’t about firing a missle, it was about the planes being modified on the outside.

The theory was it wasn’t really an airliner.

19

It does look like the nose light, but just to address the “metal on metal” thing:

It’s not just metal crashing through metal. It’s metal crashing through a metal wall which no doubt had all the elements necessary to a standard building: electrical wiring, plumbing, gas lines, etc. Rupturing a gas or electrical line would certainly cause a mini explosion.

Just a thought.

20

Not at all. The best debunking is to show a logical and technically accurate alternate explanation for the phenomenon that is claimed in the conspiracy theory. So if the conspiracy theory claims that a flash of light is caused by a missile, the best debunking would be to explain what actually caused the flash of light, and why. Just saying “that’s stupid”, is the worst way to debunk a theory. For example, I saw a program where people had claimed to see a ufo out the window of an airliner as they were flying. The debunkers were actually able to show that it was a reflection of the plane’s engine, and reproduce the event. That’s a much better way to debunk than saying, “Gee, believing in UFOs is stupid.”

I think you missed the whole point here. I don’t believe it - I’m just interested in hearing if anyone can debunk it. I think I was abundantly clear about that; I’m not sure why you didn’t get it.