Is there any credible evidence that flight 93 was shot down? Some claim it is a government cover up, but after the first three crashes that undoubtably would have been the right thing to do, so why would the government have to cover it up?
A relative of mine in Seattle said that he saw or read an interview with a Boeing person (executive? expert?). This person apparently stated that one of the calls from a passenger on Flight 93 said that there were puffs of smoke coming from an engine. The Boeing person stated that a likely cause of this type of puff of smoke was someone firing on the plane.
PLEASE NOTE: I have not had any time to research this, so until I or somebody comes up with a cite, it is all hearsay…
I read an unequivocal denial by a top government official in this morning’s news. I don’t remember who it was. But they said, “no way, it never happened.”
If you believe in conspiracies, then you will think the government is covering up. But they would have a very hard time doing it. If an F-16 shot down the airliner, it couldn’t be hushed up. Only perhaps for 24-48 hrs.
I’m very suspicious of this “Boeing person”. There are dozens of other more likely causes of white smoke from the engines, even assuming it was smoke.
There isn’t any evidence to support the claims of the conspiracy nuts that this flight as shot down. NO amount of contrary evidence will change the minds of these people. However, there is real evidence that the plane crashed as a result of a struggle between the passengers and hijackers.
News reports seem to indicate that the wreckage is contained in a relatively small area. Eyewitness reports of the crash itself seem to indicate that the plane was intact as it took a nose-dive into the ground at about a 45 degree angle. This is supported by photographs that show the wreckage contained in a crater in the ground.
If the airplane had been shot down, the resulting explosion would have broken up the aircraft while it was in mid air. Wreckage would have been scattered over a much larger area.
Thanks…
Alright, you just knew they would come out with something else. Could someone debunk the snot out of this site please?
For one thing, the passenger revolt certainly did occur.
However, if the plane was shot down and its shooting down just happened to coincidentally occur when the passengers began to revolt, I can see the government suppressing the shoot-down in favor of preserving the myth of Flight 93 heroes.
FWIW, I don’t believe there is an air-to-air missile around that would destory a 757 (or was it a 767?) outright. A heat-seeking missile would home in on one of the engines, which theoretically should only partially cripple the airliner in the hands of an experienced pilot. The terrorist pilots certainly weren’t experienced.
I think a shootdown is a real possibility, and this “conspiracy theory” won’t go away until they release the data & voice recorders to the public. The FBI surely know exactly what happened, and it is frustrating that they keep pushing the story that somehow revealing what happened would “hamper” the investigation. What’s to investigate about the plane crash itself?
I’m sure the conspiracy theories would be even more rampant if a Gore administration Justice Department was doing exactly the same thing…
Geez, ten minutes after I post I read this…
Michael Moore, who sometimes dresses differently and calls himself “Rush Limbaugh,” said that it was a proven fact that Flight 93 was shot down.
Hmm… could he have been wrong?
Eh, Reeder, that’s the link that Dale the Bold wants the snot debunked out of. (out of which he wants the snot debunked? Whatever.)
Dale, my “freshly manufactured e-mail spam” alarm is screamin’ fit to beat the band. Here, IMO, is all you need to know. First, there’s this.
Uh huh. :rolleyes:
Then there’s the way the website is composed of a whole lot of important-sounding facts and questions thrown at you very fast, which, if taken slowly and one at a time, could almost certainly be shown to be irrelevant, or slanted, or both. However, when they come at you in an unending, accusatory barrage (What caused an entire engine and human remains to be found a considerable distance from the main crash site? How easy is it to grab the controls and override the autopilot? How easy is it to grab the controls, and overstress a 757 to the point its engine and bags of debris falls from the sky? Would that debris look like confetti raining down? What was the explosion and white smoke that the first cell phone caller reported? If a bomb went off on board, would the first cell phone caller sealed in the lavatory be able to report it? What was the mysterious white jet trailing Flight 93 before the crash, and witnessed by so many just after the crash? etc.), it serves to confuse the issue, and leaves you with an impression of “important questions not being answered by the government”.
And finally there’s the fact that, the heavy “first person singular” slant of the website notwithstanding, there’s no actual person’s name attached to it–even the “e-mail me here” hotmail address is just “flight93crash@hotmail”. Taken altogether, this website says–no–screams to me that it’s all just a gigantic “let’s jerk the chains of the hoipolloi and watch 'em twitch” amusement for somebody with too much time on his hands.
Feel free to ignore it, in other words.
Only partially cripple? You underestimate the power of an anti-aircraft missile. It would take the wing off.
Duck Duck Goose, it is your brand of eloquence that I was seeking. Thank you.
From the conspiracy site in question:
This guy is guessing, and guessing wrong. The hijackers did not need to “break in” because, until after Setember 11, there was no requirement to keep the cockpit door locked, or even closed. Even if it was closed and locked, the pre-Sept 11 cockpit door was of the same style as the lavatory doors. I’m on the small side, and female, but I am absolutely sure that one or two good, solid kicks would get me through that door. Big Bad Hijackers, known to workout on a regular basis and probably full of adrenalin would have no problem doing this quickly.
The other thing - the CVR is not infinite in length. If I recall, the standard loop is 1/2 hour. If the Big Bad Hijackers took over 40 minutes before the end of the flight the first 10 minutes of their takeover would not be on the tape. Mind you, I don’t know for sure it was a 30 minute length in this case, but the point is that there are very simple and unconspiracy reasons we may not have something on tape.
From the conspiracy site in question:
I don’t think this guy appreciates just how tight a cockpit is, even on a big plane. Yes, the hijackers would fight back - but seated, possibly strapped down (or maybe not), with a yoke in your lap and a central pedestal between them full of controls will give them far less room to manuver than whoever is coming in the door. The hero would be fighting forward, the hijacker in either seat would be warding off a attack from behind, twisting awkwardly in his seat.
Flailing around, fighting someone off, it would be quite possible to kick a rudder pedal or knock the yoke, inducing an unintended extreme manuver.
From the conspiracy site in question:
Why assume a push? Why not a pull? Also, it’s not just brute force but also asking for a manuver beyond a certain parameter – I know on some models a greater than 30 degree bank disengages the autopilot. This would be noticeable to passengers in the interior, but not be an extreme manuver.
From the conspiracy site in question:
Well, that’s a hell of a push to induce that. Sure, you can go weightless in a plane, and I’ve even done so. But things not strapped down do not necessarily “go flying”. “Floating” is a better description.
Most likely, finding themselves floating, the heros would grab at something, not “go flying away”. Even if they did, there’s not a heck of a lot of room to “fly” inside a cockpit. A hero would have slammed up against the wall, and from that point may have been able to resume an attack. Remember, these are desparate people here.
From the conspiracy site in question:
It was reported to have been flown into the ground, not “fall violently from the sky”. The reports I’ve read reported a 45 degree impact, not an “80 to 90 degrees”. Yes, a low altitude stall can be fatal but even that will not produce as “80 to 90 degree” angle and even student pilots know how to recover from a stall properly - the technique is pretty much the same on the big planes as the little ones. A spin can give the “fall out of the sky” effect, but even those typically do not exceed 70 degrees (although from inside it certainly looks straight down) and while a 757 may be different than that, I have no reason to believe that is so. Also, a 757 in a spin would have an enormous descent rate and eyewitnesses would see a definite rotation. Eyewitness accounts I’ve seen describe a plane with more-or-less level wings “flying into the ground” with running engines (which would not happen if one had been shot) and no visible smoke plumes. That may be a stall recovery that ran out of room to recover, but I think, give the sceanario, it’s more likely the plane was delibrately flown into the ground.
From the conspiracy site in question:
I don’t think this guy is pilot.
Anyhow, why pull back the throttle? Just pointing the nose at the ground is much simpler and does the job. Our conspiracy theorist is making the flying much more complicated than needful.
From the conspiracy site in question:
Why are the conspiracy sites the first I’ve heard of a “huge debris field”? Yeah, some parts bounced on impact, but the accident site appears very compact. Where are they getting this from?
From the conspiracy site in question:
Well, maybe this guy should ask a pilot. There’s a lot a pilot can do to cause havoc, and it’s pretty simple if you know what you’re doing.
He also doesn’t have much understanding of how planes are engineered and tested. Boeing actually does have a pretty good idea how much these planes can take. 2.5g’s is a minimum, and passenger jets are known to be able to able more than that - partly it’s designing in a large safety margin.
Here’s what I think happened: our heros storm the cockpit and in the ensuing struggle either a hijacker delibrately or accidently knocks the controls out of line. I’m leaning towards a delibrate nose-dive at full power into the ground. The heros did not defeat the hijackers before at least one hijacker killed everyone.
If the heros had won? There was at least one licensed pilot among the passengers. If they had won, he most likely would have attempted to fly the plane. They still might have crashed, but it would not have been a full-power dive into the ground.
Actually, no, he doesn’t. Firstly, it wouldn’t be an “anti-aircraft missile”, it would be an air-air missile. Secondly, in all likeliness, it would’ve been a AIM-9M (sidewinder) heat-seeking missile that would’ve been fired. The warhead is big enough to disable, but not destroy, small fighter aircraft. It’s definitely not going to make a 757 blow into little pieces.
One other reason to doubt.
The Pentagon has already conceded that they had scrambled fighters to intercept the plane. They also said they had ordered the pilots to shoot the plane down if necessary, but the fighters didn’t get there before the plane crashed.
Now if I wanted to deter terrorists, the last thing I would do would be to say that my defenses weren’t capable of reaching the plane. If I were going to lie about anything, I would lie to say that we ordered our own fighters to shoot down our own plane, which proves we will do anything necessary to stop the terrorists.
But now we’re into Great Debates.
My thoughts exactly. I think that one of the hijackers realized that the jig was up, and just pushed the plane over into its final dive.
Two other tidbits:
I’ve been hearing some to-do about the families of Flight 93 not being permitted to hear the cockpit voice tapes. Well, even the families of deceased pilots don’t normally get to hear those tapes. It is true that a couple of family members have asked to hear those tapes. They haven’t yet. The conspiracy nuts have been making much of this. Today, I heard an interview on the radio with the wife of one of the men thought to have fought the hijackers. She said (and this is from her) that, when government officials were making “anything we can do to help” offers she asked that, when the investigation was over if she could be allowed to hear the cockpit tape and anything else that might have her husband’s voice on it. She also asked when it was likely the investigation would progress to the point that the NTSB was done with the tapes, and told it would likely be next summer. She said she was fine with waiting that long and didn’t care to push it. Much to her surprise, she heard shortly after that, in the media, about her “campaign” to obtain access to the tapes. Yet another case of the media getting it wrong and blowing things out of porportion.
Another factoid the conspiracy nuts are making much of is a “mysterious white jet” seen in the vincity of Flight 93. Nothing mysterious about it. It was a small passenger jet (the sort used by a business or charter) that air traffic control asked to divert over the crash scene and report back. This is nothing unusual at an accident scene. Air traffic control can and does ask other aircraft for visual reports or even to lend aid to other aircraft. As a comparison - when the Payne Stewart accident happened at least one other aircraft was asked to fly by the jet and see if there were any signs of life on board, on the chance people were alive but unable to communicate over the radio. Virtually all of these jets can be described as “white”. It’s “mysterious” only because someone couldn’t be bothered to do real research, or ask a pilot or air controller, but would rather think up screwball theories.