The section of your first image is over the “18 feet label” most likely hit by the tail of the pane. The images you linked to are misleading by not showing the real area of the damage, the hole in the Pentagon is big enough for all of the bulky parts of a 757.
Incidentally the site where I found the whole images is coming from a conspiracy theorist too, but it seems that he got tired of being identified with truters that still think there was no plane crashing into the pentagon.
There are others sites that I posted already, even a conspiracy one too (just because it had the whole pictures of the pentagon aftermath, that he is calling the people who are still proposing that it was not a 737 what crashed into the Pentagon fools is only gravy). And not once you have shown why Popular Mechanics was wrong.
Fallacy of the excluded middle, plus a completely false misinterpretation of the event.
The Pentagon is not a fort and was not reinforced to sustain heavy shelling or bombardment. However, it was in the midst of being internally reinforced to prevent massive damage if a sabotage bomb had been planted within it. So it falls between being a “fort” and being “just” an office building.
Then, your characterization of the impact is horribly flawed. The plane did not have a 125’ diameter. The fuselage was roughly twelve feet in diameter and it had an approximately 125’ wingspan. A wing that is built to support a heavy plane at high speeds may have the ability to clip off a light pole, (most of which have been designed to tear away when struck in order to minimize damage to vehicles when they might strike it), and still easily disintegrate when smashed into a reinforced granite faced wall. There were scars on the buidling, but they are not easily noticed in the photos taken at the time of the event, with smoke and emergency workers obscuring them. On the other hand, the fuselage was not merely twelve feet wide, but also just under 180 feet long and most of the 200,000+ lbs of aircraft weight were contained in that cylinder, making a very effective battering ram.
A twenty foot wide hole made by a twelve foot wide, 200,000 lb. battering ram makes a lot of sense. Pretending that because a building is not a “fort” that reinforced granite cannot withstand the impact of thin aluminum wings does not.
I found the Popular Mechanics piece quite good too, and this bothers the hell out of 9/11 conspiracy theorists. Hoffman’s critique of Popular Mechanics is what I found lacking and embarrassing, but I suspect that is what he’ll use in order to attempt to refute it.
Perhaps he has a better site in mind, but judging from his sources thus far, I kind of doubt it.
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.
What are you babbling about? The NYSE and many related markets were CLOSED. Lower Manhattan was a disaster area! The city was still dealing with ash cloud, many buildings were damaged by the collapses.
Reports from passengers on cellphones on the hijacked planes said that the hijackers had cut the throats of some of the flight crew. That’s more than just “pointing” a boxcutter at someone. That’s making it clear you’re will to use that boxcutter to kill people.
From an author who admits he (or she) “exaggerated” the size of Hani. If you are attempting to debunk something WHY are you using a deliberate falsehood? Is the truthful evidence not good enough to prove your case?
I agree, pilots would not be inclined to surrender to someone waving a knife around. Someone using a knife to cut your coworkers’ throats? Yeah, that’s a lot more plausible reason to surrender.
A setting of 29.92 is a standard setting used by ALL airliners above a certain altitude for consistency in altitude regardless of local conditions. That means after take-off pilots set the altimeter for a barometric pressure of 29.92 for cruise. A perfectly logical explanation is the standard setting change was made after take off but before the hijacking. After the hijacking the hijacking pilot simply never bothered to change it - why would he? He’s not typing a GPS coordinate into an autopilot, he’s flying it by hand and eye into the side of the Pentagon - you don’t have to pay attention to an altimeter to do that! You just look out the freakin’ window in front of you!
Without making any changes in the altimeter setting the altitude at landing (or crashing) in this case is meaningless unless you know the exact barometric pressure at the time and location stated.
Not to mention that since this is an animation and NOT the actual view at the time of crash there is no way to know if what is depicted is accurate or a transcription error. The graphic shown proves nothing either way.
There’s a big list of questions, many of which I’m not going to answer because I don’t have time to drag through the FDR information, but I will point out a few things that are obvious to me:
Or too bad for them the hijacker was distracted/not used to airliner procedures and forgot to change the setting?
I know I did that at least twice in MY first 600 hours of flight, and I never had the stress of flying an airliner I wasn’t trained on or being on a suicide mission to distract me!
Why do CT people never accept that maybe these images don’t exist because no camera captured them?
Because a right bank is consistent with damage to the Pentagon. Seek alternate explanation for the damage to the generator.
Because… maybe that’s how long it took?
Note backpedaling: “Oh, we don’t have the report! It doesn’t exist! It’s being suppressed! Conspiracy! Conspiracy!” then “Oh, they released it, ho-hum”
So… supposedly there was all this suppressed FDR data… but now it’s available? So initially they came to all these conclusions with inaccurate data… but the only thing they did since was add “update: blah blah”?
WHY are they assuming a standard rate turn? WHY?
There is NO REASON other than standard operating procedure to make standard rate turns. NONE! Why are they assuming a HIJACKER intent on MURDER is going to follow “standard procedure”?
They admit they don’t know bank angles or speed. ALL they know is a rate of descent, but time, bank, and other factors can make an enormous difference.
Remember - Hani did have some simulator time. Hell, he might have drilled this on MS Flight Simulator. He doesn’t have to be a trained 757 pilot drilled in standard procedures all he has to do is complete his mission. He can use whatever unorthodox method he cares to as long as he doesn’t crash the airplane before he reaches his target. What if he took FOUR minutes to make that turn? then he’s only descending 1250 fpm. What if he was really slow and pokely and took EIGHT minutes to make that turn? 625 fpm - only slightly faster than than typical 500 fpm descent, and well within eye-balling range. They don’t know how long that turn took - therefore they don’t know how fast he was descending. They are GUESSING.
The 430 knots is his FORWARD speed, not his VERTICAL speed.
Even if he entered a graveyard spiral a pilot with a commercial-license of training should be able to get out of it before impact. This is NOT rocket science! (the jet engines… sort of rocket science. Pulling out of a turn… not so much)
Which, really, is not that amazing because in ground effect the airplane can resist descending further. This is a phenomena encountered early in flight training - like, the very first landing - and it boggles my mind these “pilots” don’t consider it. This is PARTICULARLY noticeable when one is flying in ground effect at relatively high speed rather than the slower speeds of normal landing.
I’m sure we all wouldn’t. I know pilots who have, no joke, flown six inches off the ground the length of a runway upside down in an open cockpit - NOT a place where you want to screw up. What Hani did was unusual but not impossible. There was nothing superhuman about it, particularly if he had had some means of rehearsing it beforehand.
The thing is, if he was incompetent to landing a 172 you have to wonder who passed him for his private and commercial checkrides? The other thing to note is that it is NOT uncommon for pilots used to flying larger, heavier, faster airplanes to, indeed, have difficulty handling a 172 at the first few landings. If he had flown only low wing airplanes and this episode with the 172 was his first experience with high wing airplanes (a little unusual, but entirely plausible - there are pilots who have never flown Cessnas) he might also have trouble as there are handling differences between low and high wings. I once flew with a two-weeks retired 747 pilot sitting at my right who was struggling with landing small Cessnas - something about his habit of flaring at 50 feet being a little too firmly established for safety.
Sure - he wasn’t landing the airplane, he was holding it in level flight, right?
Sure - assuming you get everything set up properly you could use a bungee cord to hold the yoke and go get a cup of coffee while the airplane hit the Pentagon for you. I think Hani struggled a little to get pointed at the building, but once aimed he hit it just fine, didn’t he?
On what basis is this person determining that this “Bernard, the Chief CFI” of a Maryland flight school is “inexperienced”? Presumably he is a professional pilot holding at least a commercial license.
We have already determined this alleged descent rate was pulled out of the author’s as— er. thin air.
How can you freakin’ overshoot something the size of the Pentagon when you’re pointed directly at it? You can’t - that’s the point. This is a planned collision.
Ground effect would most likely make it harder for him to hit the lawn thank otherwise.
I don’t know - maybe he’d never been in a C172 or highwing before? I sure screwed up the flare my first couple attempts landing a lowwing after a 150 hours flying only high wings. The reverse also occurs. It’s easily correctable, IF you don’t cop an attitude. Maybe Hani did have a bad attitude - if he refused to take advice heck no they won’t rent him an airplane!
Or he rehearsed this plan for weeks on a PC flight simulator, rented some time in a full motion simulator, then carried out his plan?
Why not? Do they think they put it in a warehouse with the Ark of the Covenant out in Area 51?
I know a pilot who owns a twin-engine airplane that was confiscated by the DEA and used as evidence in a drug smuggling case. It was sold at auction, that’s how my acquaintance got it. Evidence doesn’t have to be retained infinitely - if it did, murder victims would never be buried, they’d be stacking up in morgues.
That page is full of half-truths and misrepresentations. Let’s start with Capt. Burlingame, he was an instructor for anti-terrorist tactics but had zero training in going face-to-face with an actual terrorist.
A “boxcutter” is a razor blade with one side embedded in a handle. You try not cooperating with some zealot who’s holding a razor to your throat and see how long you stay alive.
The flight data recorder seems a little off because there is data missing at the end. They acknowledge this but not the entire effect it has on the video recreation. Further, other pilots have said that a descent from the last position in the video into the Pentagon’s ground floor and hitting the lampposts on the way is not impossible.
Hani Hanjour didn’t have any interest in learning how to land–go figure–and his instructor has no problem believing that he hit the Pentagon.
The scars are definitely not easily identifiable. If the wall made of granite was reinforced, then how did a plane, made of the same metal all around, crash through 3 walls? Not to mention, the engines are located behind the wings. Not within the body of the plane.
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 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.
You keep asking rather odd questions with really straightforward answers when only a bit of research would demonstrate that your Conspiracy Kook sources are really lacking in reliability.
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.
AA 77 actually did hit the ground just before hitting the building. The port engine struck a ground level concrete ventilation structure.
…and went to a training camp that specialized in how to use boxcutters to hijack a plane. There were reports of the existence of such facilities prior to 9/11.
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.
