Did flight 77 really hit the Pentagon on 9-11?

[Baculus]

This one seems to have more malice involved. It may just be a more sensitive issue too.

Of course this is a senstive issue. I wouldn't suggest it otherwise. But, inspite of its sensitive issue, does that preclude any sort of investigation into the events?

And I am HOPING you aren't suggesting I wrote this post with malice. If you are, please show where I showed any malice, or tried to point the fingers in any direction. After all, I am a Libertarian, so I have little interst in trying to lay blame with any political party.

Please, don't think I do not realize how sensitive of an issue this is. But that does not mean that one cannot seek what may have happened during this event. If I have shown a lack of sensitivity, please let me know.

[afparent]

Originally posted by ross3909

Conspiracy, conspiracy!!! The government is out to get me! Somewhere in a room they are holding the real pasengers of flight 77 and not letting them go home to thier families. I work at the building in question. There are videos that I have seen that show the plane going into the gound sideways and rolling into the building. However, they are classified security tapes and not for the public. If you know the area, than you know there is a connector 110 that runs into 395 that runs directly by the crash site. This as well as 395 was packed with witneses. These people saw the plane and many were hit with parts of it from the explosion. The walls of the Pentagon are over 3 feet thick of poured concrete. It is built like a bunker. It does not surprise me that the hole was not as big as the one in the towers just after impact. Conspiracy theorys are fine but many people died that day and many people are still grieving lost loved ones. Maybe we should relax on this and watch another Roswell special.

Baccalus,

Just the people on this site alone kill your theory. The man above has seen film. Wrong metropolitan area to bring this up....too many witnesses!!!

[Baculus]

So you can take your theories and shove them up your ass....

Another expected reponse. Of course, Johnny 'Luscious' Punani, this isn't the first time I have seen a rude reply from you. At least you are consistent.

Thanks for offering any sort of rational response to what I have offered in my post.

[Destino]

Originally posted by Kilmer17

The obvious question still unanswered by those desperate for a conspiracy is WHERE ARE THE PASSENGERS?

If that plane didnt hit, then where is it and it's passengers now?

complete excrement.

soylent green is people!!!!

[jbooma]

my buddy lives near the pentagon and actually saw it hit, it was a plane

get a life

[Johnny Punani2]

Originally posted by Baculus

Another expected reponse. Of course, Johnny 'Luscious' Punani, this isn't the first time I have seen a rude reply from you. At least you are consistent.

Thanks for offering any sort of rational response to what I have offered in my post.

I just did. Too bad your too much of a fool to understand it...

[Johnny Punani2]

I guess eyewitness testimony isn't good enough for you Baculus.

Go get abducted by aliens...

[jbooma]

i believe there is a video and some pictures of it hitting the building

[SnyderShrugged]

Originally posted by Baculus

Of course this is a senstive issue. I wouldn't suggest it otherwise. But, inspite of its sensitive issue, does that preclude any sort of investigation into the events?

And I am HOPING you aren't suggesting I wrote this post with malice. If you are, please show where I showed any malice, or tried to point the fingers in any direction. After all, I am a Libertarian, so I have little interst in trying to lay blame with any political party.

Please, don't think I do not realize how sensitive of an issue this is. But that does not mean that one cannot seek what may have happened during this event. If I have shown a lack of sensitivity, please let me know.

No, I didnt mean that you had malice, only that the theory in general seemed to be.

I have heard you on a lot of libertarian views and actually concur with a great deal that I saw on Budnarick's web site.

However, I do think that the theory itself is a little insulting to those that were directly impacted by the crash. I wish there was more consideration to those people when tthoughts like these come out.

[ross3909]

I saw George Bush on a hill with a rocket launcher just before it happened. He waved to the High Jackers as they safely flew flight 77 to National before fireing on the Pentagon. Then little green men pulled up in a car and picked him up and I swear in the trunk, before they pulled away...I saw the only alternative fuel vehicle sticking out to forever be kept away from the citizens of the United States. Can we get back to reality now???

[Darth Tater]

I saw the plane just before impact and know full well what a 757 looks like. I was crossing the bridge just before impact and being quite familiar with air traffic around that airport, knew that it was too low to be landing or taking off. If I would have gotten to work on time, I'd be dead.

[section 130]

Answer the question, where are the passengers?

[Guest SkinsHokie Fan]

Honestly B, too many of us live near the Pentagon or drive by it everyday to believe this nonsense.

And too many people we know saw this damn plane hit the Pentagon. I can add in my cousin dropping her husband off to the Pentagon Metro bus stop that day. Luckily they were behind schedule.

Its about a 10 minute drive from my house. No way, no how, even after reading that piece of yours will you ever convince me that a plane did not hit the Pentagon

[The Evil Genius]

http://www.snopes.com/rumors/pentagon.htm

Point by point debunkment.

Claim: The damage to the Pentagon on September 11 was caused by something other than a hijacked Boeing 757's being crashed into its side.

Status: False.

Example: [Collected on the Internet, 2002]

As everyone knows, on 11 September, less than an hour after the attack on the World Trade Centre, an airplane collided with the Pentagon. The Associated Press first reported that a booby-trapped truck had caused the explosion. The Pentagon quickly denied this. The official US government version of events still holds. Here's a little game for you: Take a look at these photographs and try to find evidence to corroborate the official version. It's up to you to Hunt the Boeing!

Origins: The

notion that the Pentagon was not damaged by terrorists who hijacked American Airlines Flight 77 (a Boeing 757) and crashed it into the military office complex, but that the whole affair was staged by the U.S. government, has been promulgated by French author Thierry Meyssan in his book, The Frightening Fraud. Meyssan offers no real explanation for what did cause the extensive damage to the Pentagon, asserting only that Flight 77 did not exist, no plane crashed into the Pengaton, and that "the American government is lying."

Unfortunately, the appeal of conspiracy theories has resulted in widespread dissemination of Meyssan's "theory" in France and the USA, particularly in web sites that mirror his work. As Le Nouvel Observateur noted: "This theory suits everyone - there are no Islamic extremists and everyone is happy. It eliminates reality."

The text cited in the example above comes from a Hunt the Boeing! And test your perceptions! web site, one of the English-language mirrors of Meyssan's claims, where readers are invited to ponder a series of questions about why photographs of the damaged Pentagon seemingly show no evidence of a crashed airplane. The answers to the questions are:

1) Can you explain how a Boeing 757-200, weighing nearly 100 tons and travelling at a minimum speed of 250 miles an hour only damaged the outside of the Pentagon?

Despite the appearances of exterior photographs, the Boeing 757-200 did not "only damage the outside of the Pentagon." It caused damage to all five rings (not just the outermost one) after penetrating a reinforced, 24-inch-thick outer wall. As 60 Minutes II reported in their "Miracle of the Pentagon" episode on 28 November 2001, the section of the Pentagon into which the hijacked airliner was flown had just been reinforced during a renovation project:

"We made several modifications to the building as part of that renovation that we think helped save people's lives," says Lee Evey, who runs a billion-dollar project to renovate the Pentagon. They’ve been working on it since 1993. The first section was five days from being finished when the terrorists hit it with the plane.

The renovation project built strength into the 60-year-old limestone exterior with a web of steel beams and columns.

"You have these steel tubes and, again, they go from the first floor and go all the way to the fifth floor," says Evey. "We have everything bolted together in a strong steel matrix. It supports and encases the windows and provides tremendous additional strength to the wall."

When the plane hit at 350 miles an hour, the limestone layer shattered. But inside, those shards of stone were caught by a shield of cloth that lines the entire section of the building.

It is a special cloth that helps prevent masonry from fragmenting and turning into shrapnel. The cloth is also used to make bullet-resistant vests.

All of this, especially the steel, held up the third, fourth and fifth floors. They stayed up for 35 minutes. You can see them through the smoke, suspended over the hole gouged by the jet. Only after the evacuation did the heat melt the new steel away. Evey says that without the reconstruction, the floors might have collapsed immediately.

Exterior photographs are misleading because they show only the intact roof structures of the outer rings and don't reveal that the plane penetrated all the way to the ground floor of the third ring. As a U.S. Army press release noted back on 26 September 2001, one engine of the aircraft punched a 12-foot hole through the wall of the second ring:

On the inside wall of the second ring of the Pentagon, a nearly circular hole, about 12-feet wide, allows light to pour into the building from an internal service alley. An aircraft engine punched the hole out on its last flight after being broken loose from its moorings on the plane. The result became a huge vent for the subsequent explosion and fire. Signs of fire and black smoke now ring the outside of the jagged-edged hole.

Recall that when the first airliner was flown into a World Trade Center tower on September 11 — before it was known that the "accident" was really part of a deliberate terrorist attack — newscasters were speculating that a small plane had accidentally flown into the side of the tower, because the visible exterior damage didn't seem as extensive as what people thought a large airliner would cause. Even though the two airplanes flown into the World Trade Center towers were travelling faster at the time of impact than the Pentagon plane was (400 MPH vs. 350 MPH), hit aluminum-and-glass buildings rather than reinforced concrete walls, and didn't dissipate much of their energy striking the ground first (as the Pentagon plane did), they still barely penetrated all the way through the WTC towers.

Below is a recent (11 March 2002) photograph of the the rebuilding effort underway at the Pentagon, demonstrating that far more than just the "outside" of the building was damaged and needed to be repaired:

2) Can you explain how a Boeing 14.9 yards high, 51.7 yards long, with a wingspan of 41.6 yards and a ****pit 3.8 yards high, could crash into just the ground floor of this building?

As eyewitnesses described and photographs demonstrate, the hijacked airliner dived so low as it approached the Pentagon that it actually hit the ground first, thereby dissipating much of the energy that might otherwise have caused more extensive damage to the building; nonetheless, as described by The New York Times, the plane still hit not "just the ground floor" but between the first and second floors:

The Boeing 757 crashed into the outer edge of the building between the first and second floors, "at full power," Mr. Rumsfeld said. It penetrated three of the five concentric rings of the building.

Another account of the crash described:

The plane banked sharply and came in so low that it clipped light poles. It slammed into the side of the Pentagon at an estimated 350 miles per hour after first hitting the helipad. The plane penetrated the outer three rings of the building. The jet fuel exploded, which sent a fireball outward from the impact point. About 30 minutes after the crash, a cross-section of the building collapsed, but only after enough time had elapsed for rescue workers to evacuate all injured employees.

The fire was so hot that firefighters could not approach the impact point itself until approximately 1 P.M. The collapse and roof fires left the inner courtyard visible from outside through a gaping hole. The area hit by the plane was newly renovated and reinforced, while the areas surrounding the impact zone were closed in preparation for renovation, so the death toll could have been much higher if another area had been hit.

Next question:

3) You'll remember that the aircraft only hit the ground floor of the Pentagon's first ring. Can you find debris of a Boeing 757-200 in this photograph?

You'll recall from the discussions above that the hijacked airliner did not "only hit the ground floor of the Pentagon's first ring" — it struck the Pentagon between the first and second floors and blasted all the way through to the third ring. Because the plane disappeared into the building's interior after penetrating the outer ring, it was not visible in photographs taken from outside the Pentagon. Moreover, since the airliner was full of jet fuel and was flown into thick, reinforced concrete walls at high speed, exploding in a fireball, any pieces of wreckage large enough to be identifiable in after-the-fact photographs taken from a few hundred feet away burned up in the intense fire that followed the crash (just as the planes flown into the World Trade Center towers burned up, and the intensity of their jet-fuel fires caused both towers to collapse).

Small pieces of airplane debris were plainly visible on the Pentagon lawn in other photographs, however, such as the one below:

4) Can you explain why the Defence Secretary deemed it necessary to sand over the lawn, which was otherwise undamaged after the attack?

The claim that the "Defence Secretary" ordered the lawn to be sanded over is false. A base of sand and gravel was laid on the Pentagon lawn because the trucks and other heavy equipment used to haul away the debris (as shown in the photograph below) would have been slipping and sliding on the grass and become mired in the Pentagon lawn otherwise.

5) Can you explain what happened to the wings of the aircraft and why they caused no damage?

As the front of the Boeing 757 hit the Pentagon, the outer portions of the wings likely snapped during the initial impact, then were pushed inward towards the fuselage and carried into the building's interior; the inner portions of the wings probably penetrated the Pentagon walls with the rest of the plane. Any sizable portions of the wings were destroyed in the explosion or the subsequent fire. Nonetheless, damage to the building caused by the plane's wings is plainly visible in photographs, such as the one below (note the blackened sections on both sides of the impact site):

6) Can you explain why the County Fire Chief could not tell reporters where the aircraft was?

The exact quote offered here was:

When asked by a journalist: "Is there anything left of the aircraft at all?"

"First of all, the question about the aircraft, there are some small pieces of aircraft visible from the interior during this fire-fighting operation I'm talking about, but not large sections. In other words, there's no fuselage sections and that sort of thing." "You know, I'd rather not comment on that. We have a lot of eyewitnesses that can give you better information about what actually happened with the aircraft as it approached. So we don't know. I don't know."

The fire chief wasn't asked "where the aircraft was"; he was asked "Is there anything left of the aircraft at all?" He did indeed provide an answer to the question he was asked: There were no large sections of the plane left by the time he was asked (the day after the attack) because they had been smashed into smaller pieces by the impact and then burned up; all that remained were smaller pieces visible only from the interior of the Pentagon.

7) Can you find the aircraft's point of impact?

Immediately after Flight 77 smashed into the Pentagon, the impact was obscured by a huge fireball, explosions, fire, smoke, and water from firefighting efforts. Within a half hour, the upper stories of the building collapsed, thereby permanently obscuring the impact site. It simply wasn't possible for photographs to capture a clear view of the impact site during that brief interval between the crash and the collapse.

In photographs like the one provided (below left), the impact site is obscured by water from firefighters' hoses and smoke. A two-story high impact hole does exist right behind the fireman in the photograph, but it's covered over by water issuing from the fire truck.

By the time the smoke and water cleared, additional portions of the building had collapsed (below right), further obscuring the impact point.

[Baculus]

Just the people on this site alone kill your theory. The man above has seen film. Wrong metropolitan area to bring this up....too many witnesses!!!

I cannot dispute that something hit the Pentagon. Far from it. What I do submit that it wasn't the aircraft that was suggested, or at least that size of aircraft.

Again, can ANYONE tell me why the impact site, and the lack of aircraft damage, isn't present? Please - eyewitness accounts of SOMETHING hitting, or flying towards the Pentagon has been stated, but can anyone debunk the photos or show a credible counterpoint? Please.

I am not suggesting that the passengers are being held somewhere. I really don't want to go into conspiracies as suggested on some of these sites.

After all, I was just as affected as anyone here by 9-11.

[The Evil Genius]

God I love Snopes.

[Kilmer17]

SO WHERE ARE THE PASSENGERS?

[jbooma]

Originally posted by Baculus

Again, can ANYONE tell me why the impact site, and the lack of aircraft damage, isn't present? Please - eyewitness accounts of SOMETHING hitting, or flying towards the Pentagon has been stated, but can anyone debunk the photos or show a credible counterpoint? Please.

Yes it is called fire, the impact created a fire so high it obliterated the entire plane, they did find the black box I believe not sure. I had some friends working with the rescue crew so they saw it first hand, there was evidence of the plane.

I suggest you just stop this now, I knew some people in the pentagon when it hit, and they are not around now so close this tread.

You are a fool to even be bringing this up with a lot of the fans on this site living in the area.

[Art]

There are HUNDREDS of witnesses to the event. Non-government members. But, the key question is if that plane didn't hit the Pentagon, what did it hit and where is it now?

[jbooma]

Originally posted by Art

There are HUNDREDS of witnesses to the event. Non-government members. But, the key question is if that plane didn't hit the Pentagon, what did it hit and where is it now?

also where is the plane and the people aboard it :doh:

i don't even think a missle can do that type of damage because of the structre of the pentagon

[section 130]

Answer Kilmer... WHERE ARE THE PASSENGERS THEN?

You think that they are all stuck in a bunker in Area 51 having a beer with bigfoot and chatting about who really killed JFK?

[Henry]

This was addressed over two years ago here:

http://www.extremeskins.com/forums/showthread.php?s=&threadid=9813&highlight=pentagon

And here's what I said then:

Um, how many people here have actually seen planes flying into low buildings? Just because someone thinks it should look a certain way doesn't mean it will. Good heavens, the steel beams int he twin towers melted in about an hour due to the extreme heat caused by the burning jet fuel. You don't think it's possible for a plane full of fuel to incinerate completely upon impact into a lower building? It's not POSSIBLE? Sure pieces of the planes were found blocks away from the WTC as they flew through the towers, but how many seats or body parts or other plane parts were found at ground zero? Did the wings bounce off the planes there? I don't recall that myself. It looked to me as if the planes simply vanished into the buildings and some of it came out the other side. Well, at the pentagon there WAS no other side, was there? Just the ground.

See, I don't have to prove anything to believe what I believe. That onus lies on the shoulders of the consipracy theorists. They have to PROVE that plane didn't hit the pentagon. They have to PROVE some newfangled auto-guidance system was used to drive the planes into the WTC. They have to PROVE Barbara Olsen wasn't on that plane calling her husband. Saying it's possible such-and-such happened there are one or two photos that might be construed in a way that supports this or that doesn't PROVE anything. It's called stirring the pot, and it's not very convincing, especially in this case.

I see no reason to amend that answer now.

[Renegade7]

I think this one's over then, thanks to EG.

[manleyistheman]

The thing I don't understand the hostility towards Bacculus that some of you have. Why such anger towards someone that is simply willing to question? Whether he's right or wrong, there is no need for the name calling. I'm not saying his theories are correct, but show some respect for another's point of view. It's so sad.

[Baculus]

The Evil Genius, the links I posted actually discuss some of "debunking" information. The early photos that I also show is far too small for the entire aircraft to have continued into the infrastruture of the Pentagon. Also, wouldn't at least evidence of the aircraft been more evident from the exterior? What about the wings?

Also, the CNN footage has been analyzed, and there are various odd issues that revolve this footage. Never mind the fact that there are several cameras around the Pentagon, and this is the only footage that has been produced.

As an example, on that link you produced, there is a photo of piece of debris. In several of the thinks I offered, this paricular piece of debris has been analyzed. It is not the correct color for the aircraft - not only that, but the lettering is far to small for the size of the aircraft.

Further yet, would this plane actually penetrate all five rings of the Pentagon, even to the point that a 7-ft hole was left in the interior ring? Do 757 have the characteristics of bunker-buster missles, which the deep penetration is more akin to?

Again, the subjects on the "debunking" page have also been analyzed and dismissed as "bunk" explanations themselves.

Even the firechief admits there was barely any remains.

Heck, wouldn't at least the rear end of the plane still been present? Did the Pentagon suck in the entire plane via the smaller, initial entrance hole?

I have a feel this thread will go nowhere....My mistake to post it here, I feel, judging from previous posts of similiar nature I have seen on this board. Too many folks would rather rudely dismiss anyone that thinks differently from their own opinion.

It's sad that anyone that deviates from accepted answers, even in a question to find a truth of some sort, is immediately dismissed.