From the Flight 93 Memorial:
The first responders described the crater as about 15 feet deep and about 30 feet across. It was irregularly shaped. The wreckage around and inside the crater consisted of largely unrecognizable pieces of twisted metal, pieces of the landing gear of the plane, a tire, the frames of some of the seats, bits of charred paper, and remnants of luggage and clothing. Most of the pieces of wreckage were quite small, the size of a notebook or smaller. Many more pieces of wreckage, also quite small, were recovered during the investigation when the crater was excavated. Extensive searches through the wooded area south of the crash site, and even arborists in the tree tops found more debris from the crash. A pond about 900 feet southwest of the crater was partially drained to recover debris. Debris was collected from the yards of nearby homes, farmer’s fields, and from around a nearby residential lake. The largest and heaviest pieces recovered were parts of the plane’s two engines and a piece of fuselage with several window openings. This fuselage piece measured about six feet by seven feet and was found near the woods south of the crater. Lightweight paper items were found as far away as New Baltimore, eight miles away.
As far as digging until they got to the wreckage:
Both of the plane’s recorders, the so-called “black boxes” (which actually are orange), were found in the crash site crater. The flight data recorder was recovered on Thursday, September 13 at 4:20 pm at a depth of 15 feet. On September 14, at 8:30 pm, the cockpit voice recorder was found at a depth of 25 feet. Both were turned over to the National Transportation Safety Board for analysis.
This is from the FBI regarding the investigation. It includes scenes from the actual recovery effort where you can see people finding and removing debris.
The recovery effort eventually dug down 40 feet to recover objects. The airplane was estimated to be traveling around 600 mph when it hit the ground. Even the flight data recorder and cockpit voice recorder - normally considered indestructible - suffered significant damage and required special handling to recover the information.
You see, in a “normal” plane crash the people on board are trying not to crash - they try to slow the airplane’s momentum. On 9/11 people on board were deliberately crashing, increasing the speed. Force equals mass times velocity so more speed means more energy which means more damage. None of the crashes on 9/11 were “normal” crashes because the intent was to do as much damage as possible. The debris and human remains were more shredded than typical. Lots of wreckage was found in Pennsylvania, it’s just that it was in small pieces and some of it wound up underground due to the force of impact.
For fuck’s sake you could have done a simple search on a historical event to find out if there was any prior history on this site.
Let me help you: Here is a partial list of 9/11 related threads on the Straight Dope I compiled in 2011.
I’m inclined to agree, but at this point I’m really speaking more to any impressionable youngsters that might come across this thread to impress upon them the true facts of that day.
That’s also a possibility…
Um… yeah, actually we DO have that right here in the Pit.