9/11: Pentagon

[michaelharadon]

Any (non political) thoughts as to what hit the Pentagon?

[phil65]

A Boeing 757

[Steve Nelson]

A co-worker who's a former Army paratrooper says he knows four guys who were on their way to a meeting at the Pentagon that morning, and saw the plane hit the building.

Popular Mechanics had a great article that methodically debunked the various 9/11 conspiracy theories.


SN

[mennie]

I think aliens in a UFO crashed there, they had a meeting at the Pentagon and the brakes failed.

[Former Member]

Yeah....I really wish those wacky conspiracy nuts would lay off the "X-Files" re-runs.

John

[michaelharadon]

Phil, or anyone else, have you seen post crash photos with aircraft remnants that indicate a 757 hit the building? If so, I would love to see them myself. Thanks.

[Bill Greenwood]

If the hijacked airliner did not hit the Pentagon, where did it go? Where are the hijackers and the passengers?

[michaelharadon]

More good questions, Bill. I wonder about them, too, especially since I have yet to see photos of the crash scene that show outer wings, even wingtips, tail feathers, or the type of debris that scatters when an airliner crashes around the impact site. What happened to the engine turbines? Have you noticed that there has never been any discussion of dna identifying of remains of passengers or flight crew, anywhere? Was the heat of the conflagration so great that every last bone and soft tissue fragment was incinerated?

[Kyleb]

More good questions, Bill. I wonder about them, too, especially since I have yet to see photos of the crash scene that show outer wings, even wingtips, tail feathers, or the type of debris that scatters when an airliner crashes around the impact site. What happened to the engine turbines? Have you noticed that there has never been any discussion of dna identifying of remains of passengers or flight crew, anywhere? Was the heat of the conflagration so great that every last bone and soft tissue fragment was incinerated?

The B-757 which crashed into into the Pentagon hit the building low, made a hole into the building, started a fire, then the bulding collapsed on top of whatever was left of the airframe.

The fire burned for hours and smoldered for a day or two.

That makes the recovery of large, recognizable airframe parts pretty tough, 'cause there aren't any.

As far as a discussion of recovered human remains, there were plenty of news reports at the time. Unfortunately, various nutters have caused any relevant Google search to turn up a bunch of consipiracy sites and other bizzarre third, fourth, or fifth hand "information sources" instead of the actual information that was in all of the usual sources at the time. Drill down far enough and you'll get the real reports. Probably beginning at the millionth or so hit on Google.

Looking at it from another perspective (yours) let's say the government did fake this accident. If that's the case, do you think they would have gotten everything else right - disappearing airliners, missing people, a gaping hole and fire at the Pentagon, etc.. But they forgot to plant recognizable aircraft debris at the site or have a high quality, yet fake, film showing the crash?

Naah.

[michaelharadon]

I have no perspective to look at the crash with other than curiosity. And that curiosity stems in large part from wondering if that "gaping hole" was big enough to swallow darn near every last bit of a real big aircraft. When was the last time such a large aircraft met its demise on solid ground and left so little behind?

[bdk]

Ever see the video of the F4 that was crashed into a concrete wall to simulate an airplane crash into a nuclear reactor? Nothing recognizable was left of that either. There is a lot of energy, but consider the mass of the building to the mass of the airplane and the fact that the single largest fraction of the weight was probably fuel. Also to consider is that the part of the Pentagon hit had just been specially reinforced to protect the building from a bomb blast. Due to the retrofit that portion of the building was thankfully mostly unoccupied.

P.S. Large transport planes crashing at high speeds don't end up looking like 50 MPH crashed balsa model airplanes or WW1 aircraft as seen in the movies where the wings just snap off at the slightest impact.

[Kyleb]

I have no perspective to look at the crash with other than curiosity. And that curiosity stems in large part from wondering if that "gaping hole" was big enough to swallow darn near every last bit of a real big aircraft. When was the last time such a large aircraft met its demise on solid ground and left so little behind?

Presumably the last time an airliner was crashed into a reinforced concrete and steel building at 300 knots or more, then burned for a while before the building collapsed on top of the charred wreckage.

I'd say the Pentagon attack is the only event of its type in history. You can't even closely parallel that site with the other 9/11 sites.

Think about the Value Jet crash. There was very little recognizable from that crash and they hit water, didn't burn, and didn't have a building collapse into the crash site.

[phil65]

Not much left from Flight 93 either.

Phil

[Broken-Wrench]

When I was in high school I worked for a scrapper and We smelted a wrecked F-100 into blocks and when we were done it was just a little bigger than a steamer trunk. There less metal in a 757 than you think

[michaelharadon]

My brain is going to get fat from all the food for thought in these posts! A common theme of several is: the plane was consumed in the heat of the fire. End of story.

But I still ask, particularly to those of you with experience in crash investigation: Have you ever seen photographs of a crash site in which so large an aircraft was so totally consumed?

I ask because I haven't. It seems to me that in all the photos that I've seen, and all have been in the public domain, there is always SOMETHING that survives the heat. And quite often, if not always, that something is enough to identify the type of aircraft involved.

And yes, Phil 65, do any of these questions apply to flight 93? In which hangar were the pieces assembled, as best as possible, into somewhat of an aircraft shape by the NTSB to try to glean even the smallest shred of evidence as to what happened?