8:20 am : Flight 77 departs from Dulles Airport. Some
20 miles from the Pentagon.
8:50 :
Last radio communication with flight 77. Now some
260 miles from the Pentagon.
8:56 : Transponder contact is lost. Flight 77 is now some
300 miles from the Pentagon.
9:00 : Flight 77 turns and begins its return to the Pentagon, which is now over
300 miles away.
The hijackers finally make their move (and about time, after all, they are getting further and further away from where they started and, of course, further and further away from their target (are they crazy, or is the flight 77 story just fiction)).
To give the Air National Guard/USAF a fighting chance the intrepid hijackers wait till they are over 300 miles away from their target before turning back and returning to it. But even though the hijackers are more than sporting about the whole affair (after all, they have given the USAF an extra 30 or 40 minutes to get aircraft up to investigate, and if necessary, shoot them down) the totally incompetent, or corrupt, USAF isn't quite up to the job of intercepting a large slow moving civilian aircraft within such a long period of time.
9:38 : AA77 crashes into the southwest side of the Pentagon. Now, precisely 0
miles from the Pentagon.
The first question that you must ask yourself, is:
Why didn't the hijackers, hijack flight 77 immediately after takeoff, when only 30, or so, miles from the Pentagon?
Lets have look at the evidence from another angle.
Flight 77 leaves Dulles International Airport at 8:20 am.
Flight 77's transponder is turned off at 8:56 am.
The fact that flight 77's transponder was turned off, means only that the aircraft stopped transmitting its name and altitude, etc, but it was still very visible to both military and civilian radar.
Flight 77 disappears from all radar screens a couple of minutes later, somewhere near the Ohio/Kentucky border.
An aircraft appears on radar west of Washington DC, close to the city.
This aircraft eventually crashes into the Pentagon.
So, the aircraft that crashed into the Pentagon could not possibly have been flight 77. This is simple. If it had flown all the way from the Ohio border back to Washington DC, then it would have been visible to radar for the entire trip, and it was not. Given this, why do most people believe that flight 77 hit the Pentagon? Because the media told them so (this is the one and only reason that most believe flight 77 hit the Pentagon). But the evidence (without even examining the Pentagon scene itself) already says that this is impossible.
So, the next question that you must ask yourself, is:
How did flight 77 sneak all the way from the Ohio border to Washington DC without being spotted by any of the multitude of radar stations in the area? The Russians are keen to know.
The purported flight path of flight 77 is shown in the following graphic:
which was copied from here (the "bubble" in the planes route is a deliberate attempt by a group in the media to mislead).
WAS IT A BOEING 757?
The official line regarding flight 77 is that terrorists hijacked it, cruised about the countryside for 40 minutes (during which time, not one of the fighter jets from any of the numerous nearby US Air Force and Air National Guard bases was sent up to investigate) and then crashed it into the Pentagon.
There has been speculation that flight 77 existed only as a media fabrication and that the damage to the Pentagon had some other cause. The main statements supporting this idea are:
The hole created by the crash, is far too small.
The overall damage to the Pentagon was not as extensive as one would expect.
That there is no evidence of Boeing 757 debris having been recovered from the site.
We will investigate the accuracy of these statements. First though, we mention that the Bush administration has refused to release the black boxes, the voice recorders, or even pictures of wreckage. This has clearly not helped. Someone did, however, arrange to have a section of riveted aluminum, which they claimed was from flight 77, displayed on the lawn in front of the Pentagon. They made the ridiculous claim that it got there by bouncing of the Pentagon wall. This "evidence" was obviously planted by the conspirators. Long after the first writing of this article, the conspirators also arranged the release of photos (see below) of what appears to be further pieces of aircraft debris. Whether these were also planted, or even if they were from a Boeing 757, is still being debated.
So, lets investigate exactly how big the hole in the Pentagon was.
In March 2002, when this article was first written, it was quite difficult to estimate the size of the impact hole. This was due to the fact that impacted section of wall collapsed about 30 minutes after the impact. This in itself, should not have been a problem, as many photographers were at the site and many photos, and much video, was taken, and just one clear photograph from all those taken, would have been enough to settle the matter. However, at some point, it was decided that only obscured and confusing photos would be released to the public and a widespread disinformation campaign was begun.
Even though only confusing and obscured photos were released, it was still possible to determine the outline of the impact area by patching together what was visible in each of the photos. The original article implemented this process with the above graphic being the result (note that although the aircraft is pictured as hitting the wall straight on, it was scaled to take into account the fact that it hit at an angle). It turned out that the impact area determined this way was reasonably accurate. Since then, the original scene has been recreated by blending the visible portions of these photos in a montage. Here is one example:
In the second photo, the impact area has been roughly marked out in red. At its widest, the red section is only 120 feet wide. Now a Boeing 757 has a wingspan of 125 feet. Since we know that the aircraft hit the wall at about 50 degrees, simple trigonometry tells us that it would impact some 125/sin(50) = 164 feet of wall, as shown in the diagram below. The directly impacted area (the red section in the above photo) has also been marked on the diagram. It is between the two arrows labeled by its maximum width of 120 feet. This width includes about twenty feet of damage to the second floor and 100 feet of damage to the ground floor. The diagram shows damage to the ground floor columns. The Boeing 757 has been carefully drawn to scale.
The American Society of Civil Engineers Pentagon report (local copy) estimates that the aircraft actually hit the wall at an angle of 48 degrees. This changes the 164 feet of wall, to 125/sin(48) = 168 feet of wall, which only makes matters worse.
Consider the above graphic taken from the American Society of Civil Engineers Pentagon report. This graphic really says it all. The impact hole is in gray. Red dots have been added to emphasize the wingtips and the top of the tail. Note, that the two leftmost, second floor, windows in the damaged area are not actually part of the impact hole, so the impact hole appears larger than it should. Note also, that if the left engine was pictured, it would have been partially below ground level. The graphic is on page 35. Incidently, their explanation for the lack of facade damage is:
..., the evidence suggests that the tips of both wings did not make direct contact with the facade of the building and that portions of the wings MIGHT have been separated from the fuselage before the aircraft struck the building.
A particularly unconvincing explanation. And they don't even mention the tail. I guess ..., the evidence suggests that the tips of both wings, and the tail, did not make direct contact with the facade of the building and that portions of both the wings, and the tail, might have been separated from the fuselage before the aircraft struck the building, was getting just too hard for anyone to swallow. Another montage (created by xox) graphically illustrates the problem. He has also carefully scaled the Boeing 757 for accuracy. His work clearly shows the magnitude of the problem.
Summing up. The 125 feet wingspan of the Boeing 757 would have made a hole in the Pentagon wall about 168 feet wide. The measured width of the actual impact hole was 120 feet. So, I think it is safe to say that although the hole in the Pentagon wall appears to have been made by an aircraft, it is in fact, too small to have been made by a Boeing 757.
So what about the second statement. Is the overall damage to the Pentagon as extensive as one would expect from such a crash?
Well, the entry wound seems to have been made by an aircraft. How about the exit wound. One would expect both the fuselage and jet engines to penetrate quite a number of the inner walls.
Strangely, certain websites and sections of the media have been trying to convince the world that the major impact damage was restricted to the outer ring (the E-ring). Their claim is a joke. Nobody believes that a Boeing 757-200 weighing nearly 100 tons and traveling at over 300 miles an hour, only damaged the outer ring of the Pentagon. To make their case the media presented graphics like the following:
These graphics show the extent of the damage to the concrete columns. In these graphics the major structural damage is clearly shown to extend no deeper than the marked collapsed area (the area within the dotted lines). As we all know, only the outer E-ring actually collapsed. So the collapsed area in these graphics has been deliberately marked incorrectly (they show the collapsed area extending from the E-ring right through to C-ring). So these graphics are meant to mislead you into believing the stupidity that the aircraft only impacted the E-ring. Funny that many media articles should make the same "accidental" mistake of miss-marking the extent of the collapsed area. The following are two examples spinning such nonsense:
Although I initially thought that collapsed area was wrongly outlined by accident, it has become clear that this was a deliberate deception which, if necessary, could be explained away as a simple mistake. To further their case, they produced the following picture of the northern section of the alcove between the E and D-rings:
This photo appears to show no major structural damage in the alcove just behind the collapsed area. The collapsed area is to the left of the photo. The only portion of the collapsed area visible in the photo, is the V-shaped nick in the wall (on the left). So this photo apparently backs up the claim that the aircraft never penetrated beyond the E-ring. So, how do we reconcile the physically impossible media view, with reality.
The puzzle is easily solved by noticing that only three rows of windows are visible. Since the Pentagon has five floors, what appears to be ground level in the alcove, is not the ground at all, but the roof of two floors of offices which span the gap between the E and D-ring. Since the aircraft first hit the concrete slab that formed the ceiling of the ground floor, it would have smashed its way through the building at ground level until it came to a stop. Since all the damage would have been at ground level, well below the second floor roof, one would not expect major damage to be seen in the photo of the alcove.
One should also realize that the people who supplied the photo of the alcove could have also supplied you with any number of other photos which have made the whole situation clear, but they deliberately choose not to.
Above, is a picture of the hole punched by the aircraft fuselage exiting, or nearly exiting, C-ring. Its caption read: "A Military District Washington engineer firefighter stands in front of the exit hole where American Airlines Flight 77 finally stopped after penetrating the Pentagon." Another article, stated that the nose of the aircraft came to rest, just after punching this hole in the wall. Of course, for the aircraft to be exiting C-ring, it must have already exited both the D-ring and E-ring. So this in itself shows the "it only penetrated E-ring" theory to be wrong.
I emphasize again, that the people who supplied this photo of the exit hole could have also supplied you with any number of photos of the fuselage/nose as well, but they deliberately choose not to.
Perhaps, the rush to confuse the issue regarding what hit the Pentagon was part of an effort to distract attention from the demolition of the towers and WTC7, although, the most likely reason is simply that the wreckage is not that of a Boeing 757.
The following two photos show that the aircraft did in fact hit the Pentagon at about the reported 50 degree angle.
The above mentioned exit wound has been outlined in red in both photos.
Note that the alcove between the B and C-rings has five visible stories (a windowless ground floor, then four rows of windows) and that the alcove between the C and D-rings has only three visible stories (there are two stories hidden below these just like for the outermost alcove). Larger, higher resolution versions of these photos can be found here:
By the way, here is the official Pentagon view, which is (as far as it goes) quite accurate.
The outer Pentagon wall comprised a framework (grid) of 14 inch reinforced concrete members (beams and columns) with the intervening space filed with unreinforced brickwork. Over this was placed a decorative layer of limestone. So, the outer wall was at most 18 inches thick, and was quite weak (contrary to media reports). The following photos show this to be the case.
Look at the third photo. Notice that the floor slab of the second floor (the ceiling of the first floor) has been ripped apart. This is where the right wing tip hit the wall. This shows that the aircraft's right wing did not hit the ground before hitting the wall. However, as the aircraft was titled with the left wing lower than the right, it is probable that the left wing engine did hit the ground before hitting the Pentagon wall. Further evidence for this is that jet fuel spilled along the wall before the aircraft entered the building. See: The Penta-Lawn 2000 Hoax.
For more detail concerning the Pentagon wall and the "lucky" Pentagon retrofit (a 70 foot wide section of the wall where the aircraft struck had been retrofitted, but the wall either side of this section, had not) see the articles:
So, the Pentagon's walls were not particularly strong (media talk that the outer wall had recently been made blast-resistant, is correct, but irrelevant, as blast-resistant does not in any way imply hardened) and it was to be expected that the plane penetrated deep into the building. This explains why no debris (other than planted debris) was to be found on the Pentagon lawn. That the damage to the inner rings was extensive is also given credence by the fact that the first three rings of the Pentagon were demolished for reconstruction.
The media, through various websites, has repeatedly claimed that the (pre-collapse) impact hole was only 16 foot wide and has offered many specially selected photos to confirm their disinformation. From this they have developed the "missile hits the Pentagon" theory. This strange insistence by the media, that the damage is minimal, is puzzling, and one would have to guess that the media is just spreading disinformation to muddy the waters, so that the correct questions and answers get lost in the confusion.
Summing up: The damage to the Pentagon is about as extensive as one would expect from the crash of a mid-size aircraft, however, one that was a somewhat smaller and lighter than a Boeing 757.
So, what of the third statement : No Boeing 757 debris has been recovered from the site.
Well, what has been released to the public so far.
Yes, that's it. That is the evidence so far. Very far from satisfying. The second picture possibly shows part of the helicopter, that eye-witness, Lincoln Liebner, reported was struck by the aircraft before it hit the Pentagon. However, no other evidence for this helicopter has turned up, so it is much more likely to be planted material. If it is from the aircraft that hit the Pentagon, then it is impossible to explain how it got to be where it is without human intervention. It is simply impossible that an aircraft part traveling at 3-400 miles per hour in the direction of the Pentagon wall ended up on the lawn that far in front of the wall, without human intervention.
So, what of the reports that there are pictures of a huge stack of plane wreckage heaped just outside the Pentagon. Well, it turns out that they were just more media lies. There are two high resolution photos which we are told show this heap of plane wreckage. Smaller versions of these photos are presented below.
When we enlarge the area within the red box (lower left corner) we obtain :
This is certainly not aircraft debris. The second photo gives a complete view of the heap of debris.
When the boxed area is enlarged, we do not obtain such a clear picture. The area described by the first detailed photo of the debris heap (which was taken from a different angle) is that within the red outline in the photo below (both of the photos from which the enlargements were made were taken at about the same time).
Note the angular nature of the debris. This angular nature makes it unlikely that the rest of the debris heap contains any aircraft wreckage either.
So, the third statement is correct. The public has absolutely no evidence, that Boeing 757 debris has been recovered from the site.
We do not know if the FAA or military has any Boeing 757 wreckage stored away. If this is the case, then the Bush administration must allow independent investigators access to it. Until then, we must assume that no such Boeing 757 wreckage exists.
Since this article was first written, various other photos of aircraft debris have surfaced. None of them can be identified as being from a Boeing 757, so the above conclusion stands. They do however, raise a few more questions.
How is it possible that aircraft parts traveling at 3-400 miles per hour in the direction of the Pentagon wall, magically reverse direction and appear on the lawn in front of the Pentagon?
How is it possible that three of the pictured pieces of debris escaped the fiery inferno? How is it that the paint has not even been burnt off them?
The portion of wing presented in the last picture is nowhere near wide enough to have come from a Boeing 757. The Boeing 757 wing is 5 ft 8 in (1.73 m) wide at its tip and 26 ft 11 in (8.20 m) wide at its root. The portion of wing in the picture, must have been planted.
It is clear, that the Bush administration could have removed all speculation, by releasing the wreckage of flight 77 to independent investigators. The fact that it has not done so, is more evidence of a massive cover-up. Will the Bush administration ever release the wreckage of flight 77 to independent investigators? Of course not, because it is clear that the wreckage did not come from a Boeing 757.
Overall, there is considerable evidence that:
An aircraft caused the damage at the Pentagon.
That the aircraft was not a Boeing 757.
The evidence that an aircraft hit the Pentagon, includes among other things:
The considerable number of eye-witness reports.
The entry wound (which has the correct --O-- shape).
The exit wound (which has the correct O shape).
The damage done as the plane clipped lights while crossing the freeway.
The damage caused by the right wing tip as it hit the concrete floor slab between the first (ground) and second floors.
The evidence that this aircraft was not a Boeing 757, includes among other things:
The width of the impact wound is nowhere near wide enough.
The tail of the aircraft left absolutely no imprint on the Pentagon wall.
The Bush administration has refused to release the black boxes, the voice recorders or even pictures of any wreckage of flight 77.
The Bush administration has refused access, by independent investigators, to any wreckage it, or the FAA, may have.
The media is blitzing the public with disinformation, which suggests an extensive cover-up (which still continues).
Of course, one big question is:
If flight 77 did not hit the Pentagon, then where is it, and its passengers?
