# 9/11 wreckage **URL:** \ **Category:** Great Debates\ **Created:** [January 16, 2009, 5:42am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/9-11-wreckage/481567 "2009-01-16T05:42:08Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 19
**Author:** ![Broomstick](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/broomstick/32/246_2.png) [@Broomstick](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Broomstick)\ **Post date:** [January 19, 2009, 3:08am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/9-11-wreckage/481567/361 "2009-01-19T03:08:04Z")
> [@reef\_shark](#): > > Do you understand why the market would close? Larger point losses have been documented without the Dow closing. Then why haven’t the markets been closed for the last six months? I mean, that’s a LOT larger drop that needs hiding… 😛 ---
**Author:** ![Garfield226](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/9e8a1a/32.png) [@Garfield226](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Garfield226)\ **Post date:** [January 19, 2009, 3:08am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/9-11-wreckage/481567/362 "2009-01-19T03:08:36Z")
> [@reef\_shark](#): > > And how filled to max occupancy were the buildings to start with? I think you thought I was talking about the World Trade Center there. You were wrong. Again. ---
**Author:** ![Mr.Miskatonic](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/mr.miskatonic/32/310_2.png) [@Mr.Miskatonic](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mr.Miskatonic)\ **Post date:** [January 19, 2009, 3:09am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/9-11-wreckage/481567/363 "2009-01-19T03:09:11Z")
> [@reef\_shark](#): > > Well, there are a lot of possibilities which aren’t impossible. This site only shows whats unlikely, or extremely unlikely, as said by former pilots. The Pfffft group represent less than 1% of 1% of 1% of all the pilots in the world, and they are low on Jumbo Jet pilots/ > [@](#): > > the terrorist piloting the plane didnt need to land, but he had to stay off the ground perfectly enough for miles before hitting the pentagon square in the face of the wall, even hitting numerous objects beforehand. And notice how the lawn is in perfect shape also. Going 500 mph, it might as well have been a perfect landing. So it was perfect…except for hitting all the objects on the way, and staying off the ground…which planes are designed to do. Why should I care about the lawn? How can you even _see_ the lawn in detail to say it is ‘perfect’. ---
**Author:** ![reef\_shark](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/bbe5ce/32.png) [@reef\_shark](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/reef_shark)\ **Post date:** [January 19, 2009, 3:09am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/9-11-wreckage/481567/364 "2009-01-19T03:09:20Z")
> [@PaulParkhead](#): > > Without a working transponder, it would be very difficult to figure out that it was flight 77. And sure, ATC would investigate, but **their first thought wouldn’t be that a civil airliner (assuming they knew that’s what it was) represented a terrorist threat**. Chances are they would assume it was in distress and had suffered radio failure. > > So no, the USAF does not scramble to intercept every unidentified blip on primary radar, especially when the evidence suggested that it was something that had not, until that date, represented a military threat. Wow, lets regress a few pages. Remind us again what NORAD planes were doing that day? ---
**Author:** ![Skywatcher](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/skywatcher/32/254_2.png) [@Skywatcher](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Skywatcher)\ **Post date:** [January 19, 2009, 3:09am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/9-11-wreckage/481567/365 "2009-01-19T03:09:22Z")
> [@reef\_shark](#): > > notice how the lawn is in perfect shape also. I was a couple hundred feet from the Pentagon about an hour after it was hit. There was a huge black mark in the lawn. Of course, I can’t say for sure what caused it but I suspect it was caused by exhaust from the port engine. ---
**Author:** ![tomndebb](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/b9e5f3/32.png) [@tomndebb](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/tomndebb)\ **Post date:** [January 19, 2009, 3:09am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/9-11-wreckage/481567/366 "2009-01-19T03:09:56Z")
> [@reef\_shark](#): > > the terrorist piloting the plane didnt need to land, but he had to stay off the ground perfectly enough for miles before hitting the pentagon square in the face of the wall, even hitting numerous objects beforehand. And notice how the lawn is in perfect shape also. Going 500 mph, it might as well have been a perfect landing. Not even close. A landing requires that the plane be kept in a particular attitude while it descends at a slowing rate so that it can get its landing gear onto the runway at pretty much the same moment so that it does not wingloop or skid off the runway or overshoot and crash at the end of the runway. Deliberately hitting a target requires that one point the airplane at the target and not turn away. ---
**Author:** ![Skywatcher](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/skywatcher/32/254_2.png) [@Skywatcher](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Skywatcher)\ **Post date:** [January 19, 2009, 3:15am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/9-11-wreckage/481567/367 "2009-01-19T03:15:06Z")
> [@reef\_shark](#): > > Wow, lets regress a few pages. Remind us again what NORAD planes were doing that day? Two F-15s took off from Otis at 8:52 in an attempt to intercept 175. Bear in mind that the only successful intercept in the decade prior to 9/11 took over half an hour. ---
**Author:** ![Broomstick](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/broomstick/32/246_2.png) [@Broomstick](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Broomstick)\ **Post date:** [January 19, 2009, 3:15am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/9-11-wreckage/481567/368 "2009-01-19T03:15:22Z")
> [@reef\_shark](#): > > Planes are tangible, markets are not… Buildings and tourist sites should have been closed. But people can still make money on a business day regardless of where a plane might go. Yeah, but it requires to traders to, like, _stay in the building_. Given that a some of them were, literally, fleeing down the road _running for their lives_ on the 11th maybe a few of them needed a couple days to recover and cough up pulverized office building out of their lungs, hmm? The NYC branch of the company I worked for at the time was closed. Sure, their offices were destroyed (they had been in the WTC) but they should have been able to phone it in from home because, you know, insurance is only of those intangible business things. There was money to be made! Forget the three co-workers who didn’t make it out alive and the fact all your records were destroyed. I was one of the few to show up on the 12th in our CHICAGO office - 3/4 of the place _stayed home_. One one of the homebodies called and asked if I was afraid to be in the Loop among all the skyscrapers I said of course not - there were no airplanes in the sky other than armed military dudes who’d shot anyone else down. Felt very safe, thankyouverymuch. ---
**Author:** ![tomndebb](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/b9e5f3/32.png) [@tomndebb](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/tomndebb)\ **Post date:** [January 19, 2009, 3:17am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/9-11-wreckage/481567/369 "2009-01-19T03:17:32Z")
> [@reef\_shark](#): > > Wow, lets regress a few pages. Remind us again what NORAD planes were doing that day? Completing normal exercises in some cases, in other cases being alerted that they might need to take off to intercept an aircraft or two. Before the first tower was hit, there was no reason to think that any plane would need to be shot down. (In the previous forty years, every plane hijacked in the U.S., (and with the radio off, there was no reason to assume a hijacking as opposed to a mechanical failure), had been flown to an alternative destination and landed safely. We did not have a habit of shooting down hijacked planes. After the first WTC strike, there was more concern about possible suicide planes, but the second WTC attacker was too close to NYC to be intercepted. Once we realized that the hijacked planes were being used as weapons, all aircraft were ordered to land, but it still took time to get everyone down safely so that the rogue planes could be identified and the Washington and Pennsylvania crashes occurred before the planes could be identified. So what is your point? (And do you have the most remote understanding of what needed to happen vs what did happen? Or are you simply repeating the nonsense that you hve read on kook websites? ---
**Author:** ![Mr.Miskatonic](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/mr.miskatonic/32/310_2.png) [@Mr.Miskatonic](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mr.Miskatonic)\ **Post date:** [January 19, 2009, 3:19am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/9-11-wreckage/481567/370 "2009-01-19T03:19:23Z")
I just have to wonder… has reef shark even **seen** what Lower Manhattan looked like as the buildings fell or even hours afterwards? He seems to be under the impression that the stockbrokers should have shrugged their shoulders, dusted off a small area to work and gone back to trading. ---
**Author:** ![Skywatcher](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/skywatcher/32/254_2.png) [@Skywatcher](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Skywatcher)\ **Post date:** [January 19, 2009, 3:20am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/9-11-wreckage/481567/371 "2009-01-19T03:20:28Z")
> [@GIGObuster](#): > > I gave up on that site as soon as he complained that Popular Mechanics used an image that did not show the “pod” under the plane (seems it is supposed to be important to show the planes were not the passenger ones) ignoring that if there was a pod it would also have shown in other images. > > As I investigated before, what he has is just artifacts of computer images being used to mislead people into thinking that that was a “pod” under the plane. Not even Dylan Avery buys that “pod” thing anymore. ---
**Author:** ![Frank](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/3d9bf3/32.png) [@Frank](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Frank)\ **Post date:** [January 19, 2009, 3:20am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/9-11-wreckage/481567/372 "2009-01-19T03:20:50Z")
> [@tomndebb](#): > > Deliberately hitting a target requires that one point the airplane at the target and not turn away. Like the guy that hit the Hudson River, killing untold numbers of fish? Seriously, **tom** the OP has, in my opinion, worn out his welcome. He is not debating; his only posts on the board have been in this thread, and his posts in this thread have been by any measure pointless. I leave the remainder of my post as an exercise for those familiar with my work in the Pit. ---
**Author:** ![Fish](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/bc8723/32.png) [@Fish](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Fish)\ **Post date:** [January 19, 2009, 3:21am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/9-11-wreckage/481567/373 "2009-01-19T03:21:00Z")
**Reef shark** , please provide video proving that you didn’ t plan the 9/11 attacks. Obviously there must be videotape of you on 9/11. Where is your alibi? Why are you hiding the video tapes from us? That’s all we ask. If you showed us these videotapes of yourself from 9/11 it would prove that you had nothing to do with it. Suspicious, I’d call it. ---
**Author:** ![reef\_shark](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/bbe5ce/32.png) [@reef\_shark](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/reef_shark)\ **Post date:** [January 19, 2009, 3:22am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/9-11-wreckage/481567/374 "2009-01-19T03:22:07Z")
> [@Broomstick](#): > > There are not little dotted lines in the sky for the airplanes to fly along. A primary radar screen does NOT have “flight paths” painted on it. WHAT makes you think that you could at a screen with _dozens_ of moving, unlabeled blips on it and determine which is and is NOT following an official flight plan? > > Add to that - primary radar doesn’t just pick up airliners, it picks up EVERY airplane, including little Piper Cubs put-putting along. Are you even aware that MOST flights in the US _don’t require a flight plan?_ Are you even aware that, outside of major urban areas, _it is legal for some aircraft to fly WITHOUT transponders?_ > > Fine - an airliner’s transponder stops responding. You go to primary radar. EVERY label on those blips vanishes, AND you’ll have _even more_ blips from the airplanes ATC _wasn’t_ directing (that would be quite a few, given how nice a flying day 9/11 was, I almost played hookey from work to go flying myself) - NOW you have to figure out which one your Mystery Plane is. THEN you have to figure out if it is or isn’t following the flight plan but for Og’s sake _don’t_ look aware from the radar screen because you’ll lose it again. > Yes - **AFTER the fact they looked at the radar records and painstakiningly separated out Flight 77 from all others of the time. AFTER the fact. When they didn’t have to worry about doing it in real time. It was NOT such an easy exercise for the poor controllers who had to try to follow the thing in real time _while directing other airplanes_. Eventually they assigned ONE controller to follow ONE airplane and even then had some trouble**. > Yes, they did - they diverted military training flights to intercept two of the airplanes. However, even though military jets are fast they are not infinitely fast. By the time they could give those pilots directions there wasn’t enough time for them to intercept. You can’t change physics, sorry if that’s inconvenient. > > _ **NOW ANSWER MY QUESTION: Have YOU ever been in a working control tower?** _ A simple yes or no will suffice. Is this fact, that they only noticed the 40 minutes of deviation afterwards? So you’re sure Dick Cheney didn’t refuse any orders to intercept a plane 50 miles out? Then 30? and so on??? When “conspiracy debunkers” refuse to acknowledge what this guy in particular was doing that day it is really easy not to pay attention to them anymore. However, it seems that your knowledge of piloting is quite extensive. For that I thank you. ---
**Author:** ![Fish](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/bc8723/32.png) [@Fish](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Fish)\ **Post date:** [January 19, 2009, 3:24am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/9-11-wreckage/481567/375 "2009-01-19T03:24:53Z")
> [@reef\_shark](#): > > When “conspiracy debunkers” refuse to acknowledge what this guy in particular was doing that day it is really easy not to pay attention to them anymore. What proof do we have that _you_ didn’t issue the order? You’re one of them, aren’t you? We have an admission here, folks. **Reef shark** is clearly trying to deflect blame onto Dick Cheney. Why else would he be so keen to get to investigate him? That’s evidence enough for me. ---
**Author:** ![imthjckaz](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/imthjckaz/32/3223_2.png) [@imthjckaz](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/imthjckaz)\ **Post date:** [January 19, 2009, 3:25am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/9-11-wreckage/481567/376 "2009-01-19T03:25:56Z")
You know I thought I was dense. But after reading this thread I feel much better about myself. ---
**Author:** ![Garfield226](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/9e8a1a/32.png) [@Garfield226](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Garfield226)\ **Post date:** [January 19, 2009, 3:26am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/9-11-wreckage/481567/377 "2009-01-19T03:26:57Z")
> [@reef\_shark](#): > > So you’re sure Dick Cheney didn’t refuse any orders to intercept a plane 50 miles out? Then 30? and so on??? > > When “conspiracy debunkers” refuse to acknowledge what this guy in particular was doing that day it is really easy not to pay attention to them anymore. The irony. It burns. Who’s “refus[ing] to acknowledge” anything, other than you? You haven’t provided anything to acknowledge, let alone to refuse to acknowledge. On the other hand, you’ve refused to acknowledge quite a bit. ---
**Author:** ![Rolken](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/df788c/32.png) [@Rolken](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Rolken)\ **Post date:** [January 19, 2009, 3:28am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/9-11-wreckage/481567/378 "2009-01-19T03:28:16Z")
> [@Fish](#): > > What proof do we have that _you_ didn’t issue the order? You’re one of them, aren’t you? > > We have an admission here, folks. **Reef shark** is clearly trying to deflect blame onto Dick Cheney. Why else would he be so keen to get to investigate him? That’s evidence enough for me. Yeah, it’s pretty clear that Cheney had nothing to do with it. I mean, there’s no evidence that his body existed on 9/11 at all; it’s entirely possible that he had timewarped back to 1947 to control the Roswell situation. ---
**Author:** ![Frank](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/3d9bf3/32.png) [@Frank](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Frank)\ **Post date:** [January 19, 2009, 3:32am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/9-11-wreckage/481567/379 "2009-01-19T03:32:01Z")
> [@Rolken](#): > > Yeah, it’s pretty clear that Cheney had nothing to do with it. I mean, there’s no evidence that his body existed on 9/11 at all; it’s entirely possible that he had timewarped back to 1947 to control the Roswell situation. There were, in the corpses found in the UFO, unexplained 20 gauge wounds. ---
**Author:** ![Skywatcher](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/skywatcher/32/254_2.png) [@Skywatcher](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Skywatcher)\ **Post date:** [January 19, 2009, 3:32am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/9-11-wreckage/481567/380 "2009-01-19T03:32:40Z")
> [@reef\_shark](#): > > So you’re sure Dick Cheney didn’t refuse any orders to intercept a plane 50 miles out? Then 30? and so on??? No authorization to intercept–not from Cheney, Rumsfeld, or anybody–was needed during an extreme emergency. The memo that says intercept requests had to go through DoD made an exception for situations that called for an immediate response. 9/11 would have called for an immediate response, don’t you think? [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/9-11-wreckage/481567.md?page=18) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/9-11-wreckage/481567.md?page=20)