Pentagon 911

[jm951]

That's probably one of the largest pieces. As an aviation mechanic put it to me-
"an airplane is a collection of rivets flying in formation until they hit something solid."

[red ufo]

How come the Pentagon don't have videos of this? This place is supposed to have cameras everywhere.

The real meat in the conspiracy theories is WTC 7 was taken down by internal explosives. The building owner confirmed they 'pulled' the building.

The jets had some bizarre explosives on them. Both of the jets that crashed into the towers shot out a missles or rammed into an area packed with explosives. You can see an explosive flash as the nose hits the tower in atleast 6 different videos.

6 of the hijackers are still alive. Many of them used fake ID to board the jets. We'll never know for sure who did it. I think the FBI just took the passenger list and called out most of the names sounding like muslims. But then again, they never released the passenger list with the hijackers names. Plus 3 of the lists have 4 additional names missing. Who are those people?

[mikester]

Originally posted by speeder
I'm as far from a conspiracy theory person as you will find, (I just don't believe in most of them), but it has always bothered me that nothing vaguely resembling a commercial jet was in those Pentagon pictures. Wouldn't the wings or tail have wound up on the ground outside?

Just asking.

Well...no - the wings wouldn't sheer off. Take for example the footage everyone has seen of the WTC buildings. Those columns on the outside are STEEL beams that support the structure. The way the building was designed was with like an exoskeleton instead of interior support. The wings didn't sheer off in those instances so why would they under similar circumstances with a structure that was likely less "hard" like a steel and concrete structure like the Pentagon. Concrete's pretty hard and all but not as hard as steel and in a concrete structure there tends to be less steel (not an engineer but have observed a lot of structural drawings for multi level structures).

So...no - it is not likely that the wings would have sheered clean off.

Fire does bad things to metal - it distorts it - it melts is, etc. From what I understand those flames were pretty darned intense with the jet fuel and all. I'm not sure I would expect a lot of intact metal from that.

[kach22i]

PBS ran a special on 9-11 last night, one of the people on the ground said the wings folded right up on impact.

Very odd though was the fact I have not found or seen the video they were showing on 9-12 morning of (shown twice). In that video you can see a plane flying two feet off the ground- it looked fake as all hell too. Perhaps it was a quickly touched up film to help sell/explain it all.

Why they won't show it again brings up more questions for me. It was from the same angle- from the parking lot video.

[MFAFF]

Mikester,

Coupe of little engineering points to clarify things.

The Twin Towers used a perimeter stuctural system combined with a central structural core.
Simply put the floor beams for each floor span from the centre (where all the lifts/stairs and service risers are located) to columns on the perimeter of the building. These are the stainless steel clad columns you see saw the outside.

When the planes hit the towers huge numbers of these perimeter columns were sheared and therefore the floors had no support. This applied to the floors directly affected by the impact as well as any now unsupported floors above. These were then going to fall onto floors below, which would have possibly caused strucutral collapse in and of itself. Add to that the fuel in the aircraft. This had action initially as a 'hydraulic hammer', adding hugely to the destructive effect of the airframe and then as fire spread thro the building structure, often in ways which were not necessarily envisaged or newly created by the impact. Just a note here...fire protection in office buildings has seldom envisaged a fire being spread via a liquid source of fuel and ingition. After all in a building which normally has no such fire source the aim is contain fire of building contents and to prevent its spread to the fabric. Unless the building contents are envisaged as liquids you would usually not consider this risk as high..that may well change.

The Pentagon is a simple load bearing reinforced concrete frame supporting facade panels, each floor and non structural walls. There are a few structural shear walls along both short and long axises of each side of the Pentagon. These help hold the whole thing vertical and perpendicular.
When the plane hit the Pentagon the re-inforced concrete walls would have done far more damage to the airframe than the perimeter columns of the Twin Towers.

In terms of 'hardness' the concrete frame is far harder, as in less yeilding on impact. It would however break once design loads plus safety factors were exeeded whilst the steel frame would bend and deform before breaking, often far in excess of the design loads plus safety factor. I digress.

The airframe which hit the Pentagon would have been 'taken apart' by the RC structure far more then the steel TT structure... What is more interesting is that this hardness would posiibly have prevented the lighter parts of the plane, the outer wing panels from penetrating very far at all, hence my earlier surprise that very little trace of any part has been recovered...

As for 'exposives' packed inot the aircraft the fuel, the engines which actively burn that fuel would be sufficient sources of exposive energy...NASA crashed and airliner full of fuel back in the '80s and the film showing the explosion is impressive, but what is more impressive is the it appeared to explode on impact....

Also recall that the development of fuel/air explosives, whereby simple kersone is released in a simple spray to create a cloud of gas droplets and then ignited is a very 'energetic' explosive....

[red ufo]

[ubiquity0]

[Moses]

Originally posted by ubiquity0

Yup.

[911pcars]

Much of this speculation arises from our governement/s policy of not being forthcoming with the American public (all in the name of "national security"). I also wonder why more video footage of the Pentagon attack hasn't been shown. This only adds to the rumor and conspiracy mills.

What happened to the video from the Holiday Inn and gas station? Were they confiscated by the FBI or are they making the same rounds as the JFK/Zapruder film who licensed it to Life magazine?

Sherwood

[rcecale]

red ufo, Sherwood, and the rest of you "conspiracy" guys...

Just because you're paranoid, doesn't mean they're NOT out to get you....

Randy

[911pcars]

I wouldn't characterize it as paranoid, just suspicious and curious. I'm not one to place my belief system in our government leaders. We have history to thank for that.

One can also accept the mantra, "what you don't know won't hurt you" and not worry about it.

Sherwood

[araine901]

this was discussed last week. Some good answers and info here.

And I don't quite know what to make of this, either...