Does anyone have any idea which general direction the last plane was headed?
NYC or DC? If it went to NYC would it hit another financial tower or take out a bridge?
If it went to DC would it hit the Pentagon again or go for the White House? The Capitol building?
Any speculation?
Rumours I’ve heard have it headed for Camp David, the presidential retreat. No way to prove that, though.
Ditto on the Camp David rumor, but it seems kind of silly to me. Camp David is a bunch of wilderness with a few building compounds, a bit hard to take out with even a suicidal jetliner. I’d think the Capitol would be a superior point target and easier to locate and attack. But perhaps we’ll never know.
God have mercy on all of us.
The speculation is Camp David, but that direction is also a fairly direct heading for Washington, DC, from what I can tell from the news reports. Since it was widely available that the President was in Florida (it was in the news the day before) then a strike against Camp David would be purely symbolic. My guess is DC would have made a better strategic target, but unless they can get something from the cockpit voice recorder this will all be speculation.
Perhaps a message? Is this the anniversary of something important that happened at Camp David?
-LV
Oh. I thought I heard it was headed for Langley.
The anniversary of the Camp David Peace Accords
Probably DC. The place is ripe with American targets. Tons of Memorials (Jefferson, Washington, Lincoln), political buildings like the Capitol and the White House. Maybe an attack on the other side of the Pentagon. Or if you’re truly sick, Arlington National Cemetery. Prob. the Capitol, the White House or the Pentagon again. One news reporter was commenting on a Tom Clancy book in which a terrorist hijacks a plane and drives it into the Capitol, saying it would “effectively decapitate the government.” It is odd, even over my quaint little mountain town, not to hear an airplane.
Crap. There’s an astonishing number of websites that have the date wrong that I read today.
My speculation is that it was headed for the Pentagon.
Plane hits WTC.
All cameras turn to WTC.
All Americans watch news.
All Americans watch LIVE broadcast of second plane hitting WTC 20 mins later. This image will be burned on all viewers forever.
Plane hits Pentagon building.
Cameras begin to broadcast Pentagon live.
…
The incredble dramatic statement of “We can attack the symbol of economy in the most prosperous nation and the symbol of military power in the most powerful nation not once but TWICE and EVERYBODY WATCHED US DO IT!” was to be made.
More speculation. The pilot of the Pa. plane knew what he was going to die and nose-dived the plane. The pilot of flight 77 into the Pentagon did not know his compatriot was down.
This is bolstered by the fact that these planes did not take off and bee-line for their targets, but flew a pattern (burn time) and then made for the target. This allowed time coordination of strikes.
I agree that #4 was headed for D.C. If I were a terrorist I’d try to take out the Capitol building.
Assuming that the terrorists were flying by sight, Camp
David would be damn hard to pick out.
OK, am I missing something?
I would have assumed that the fourth plane was headed for something in the DC area, but how do you end up crashing in Western PA if you’re flying from Newark to DC?
It had nearly reached Cleveland before turning around and headed towards D.C.
It also could have been targeted for the White House. Even if Bush wasn’t there, the symbolism of bombing the WH is large.
They were flying to westward from Newark San Francisco. The hijacking apparently took place over Pennsylvania, where the crach occured.
The westbound flight got as far as over Ohio before turning around on a heading for DC.
By the time they were over Pittsburgh various passengers had got thru to the ground on their mobile phones to report the hijack and in turn found out what this was all about… The “unconfirmed report” mill says that once that info got to the passengers, there may have ensued an inflight riot (hey, if we’re all going to die in this plane anyway, we ain’t letting you get away with your other goals…)
Fourth plane was from Newark to San Francisco. They went went all the way to Cleveland before turning back and heading towards DC. Took a look at this map of routes at the Washington Post.
None of the four planes made direct flights from the airport where they took off to their targets. At some point during the flights the transponders were turned off. (These relay infor to ground tracking stations.) At this point, the only way to track the planes was by radar. Sifting through radar data, it was seen that the planes flew part of their designated leg before turning and heading back to their targets.
this suggests two things.
The “new” pilots had experience with navigation and handling commercial aircraft (along with knowing how to turn off the transponder), thus were trained. (This suggests a large financial backing and time commitment.)
There was a time factor involved. All of the hijacked planes had to be in the air at the same time lest all flights are cancelled before remaining to-be-hijacked flights take off. The time factor is also an issue in terms of when the planes hit their targets (within half hour of each other - see my above post.)
Remember that terrorists want attention and coverage. The best way to do that is with body count and prime target selection.
If the terrorist organization was trying to further their cause or win some “war” with the US, there were many more, tactical targets to better serve them, i.e., antenna arrays used to collect intelligence, military installations where information is processed, and the like. These were not targets.
To take this a step further, let’s pick the most probable suspect, OBL. His primary goal is to have a Muslim area w/o anyone else. No Jews in Palestine, etc. The US is very influential and powerful in negotiations to these effects. To intimidate the US would be “beneficial”. However, it would do little self service to kill those individuals who are involved in the negotiations. By the same token it is not advisable to kill, in a war, the only person among the enemy who has the authority to surrender.
Smashing into the Capitol or White House does not give them shock coverage or body count totals. I hardly see them as being the prime target for the Pa. airliner.
Thanks. I knew that its intended destination wa San Francisco, but I was under the impression that the hijacking had taken place much earlier, and they would have then just been heading south.