Technical (aviation) question about 9/11
 

Firstly, I apologise if anyone is offended by my question. It's asked as a technical query and the last thing I would wish is it to upset anyone. If you lost anyone on Sept 11, perhaps this thread is best ignored.

If we could keep this thread free of PARF psychosis too, that would be nice.

My understanding is that the Fighters scrambled to pursue Flight 93 were armed only with canon. Assuming that the flight hadn't crashed and the Fighters were ordered to shoot it down, how is that done? I can see how crippling a commercial liner would be easy, but to bring it down quickly with minimum distress to the passengers?? Input from the aviation guys appreciated.

Again, this is not meant to aggravate, and certainly not as a troll post. I can appreciate the moral quandary such an order would have presented to the fighter pilots, I'm trying to understand the technical side.

Thanks guys. I'm sorry for any offence this post may cause, that was not my intent.

Flight 93 was a 757 so it had quadruple redundant hydraulics. The F-16's had 105 rounds each.

Kamikaze: F-16 pilots planned to ram Flight 93 - TODAY News - TODAY.com

Jackson

105 rounds in each engine would have done the trick. Hell, one engine disabled with 210 rounds would have made it impossible to fly given the very basic flying skills of the terrorist at the controls. I've seen fully qualified transport pilots struggle in the simulator when engine-out flying.

A couple of rounds would have torn open the fuselage and depressurized the cabin - lots of noise, "fog", etc. and loss of consciousness by all within seconds. TUC at altitude is under 15 seconds. Would have been scary for those seconds but after that, likely nobody remembers anything. Also unlikely the terrorists can don a mask properly in time and also fall asleep, plane continues on autopilot (if enabled, unlikely) or augers in a few moments later.

I too do not wish to offend but, unless you are in law enforcement/military, why would you ask such a question her?

what ifs? You don't have to be leo, or military to let your mind wander....

There seems to be a fair amount of technical aviation knowledge on this board, and (PARF aside) the general ethos seems to be genuine answers to genuine questions.
Perhaps more knowledge would be available on a specialist aviation board like PPRUNE, but this could be interprepted as a tactless question and asking it on a board where I have over a thousand posts struck me as more appropriate than somewhere with this sort of question being my first post. (At the end of the day, people can review my other posts here and decide whether I am the sort of guy they think deserves an answer.)

The question itself arose from a discussion I had around the 10th Anniversary about the horrific decision the fighter pilots were almost asked to make. The technical considerations arose from the discussion of the moral ones. I delayed posting too close to the Anniversary out of respect.

I know that the question may appear to ask for "suspicious" information, but really, it's like asking me how to re-open a chest in ICU. I may tell you the theory, but I know you'll never have the chance to do it.

If memory serves me right, they were flying low, depressurisation might not have been as eventfull as you think.


Either way, I doubt there is any kind of way that the shooting down of a 747 with passengers would not have caused at least several moments , or minutes of horror for some..
I doubt as quick as "seconds". Not even if the fighterjets had missiles on board...
No AA or SAM Missile is capable of making the entire 747 cabin explode in one go, not even the big AIM54 that the F-14 carried.

And even if there was massive depressurization , if the on board systems for emergency oxygen aren't taken out, some might survive the way down with the Oxygen mask that drops down..

Either way, if i were the pilot, trying to take down an 747 with limited rounds.
I think i'de aim for the wing root... Plenty of fuel there, and 105 rounds of 20mm explosive and incendiary rounds in that area would make short work of the wing and the explosion would do the rest.

That or the horizontal stab.

I'm just glad the pilots didn't have to make that decision and it was completely out of their hands.

The war against terror began on that flight and the people that fought back are heroes in the truest sense of the word.

As far as were they should aim. I'm guessing they would have rehearsed for such a scenario.
IMO... There would be a formal US military assessment of each commercial air craft and were they should aim to bring it down.
These are not hardened military planes. The fuel tanks seems the most logical place to me.

ONLY a 105 rounds of 20 MIKE MIKE at a lumbering airliner. Less than half that could bring that aircraft down. Couple of short brust passes too the cockpit would end the matter.

But how many migratory geese would it take? ...not trying to get PARFY knowing that those would be Canadian geese. :cool:

I do not recall where I read/saw this (so I can't confirm the source) but my understanding was that they were to shoot and then fly into the planes to take them down. One way ticket.

(again - don't recall the source).

angela

as an FYI, it was a 757.

follow his link.

We spent hundreds of billions of dollars a year on defense and nobody gave two thoughts about actually defending our country.

Nice job!

Pattsle, good point. The 911 was one of those paradigm moments where it was realized that all our defenses pointed outward, including all the radar systems that guard the coasts, etc. Air Force had really no system covering the US, except for the ATC system and the two were not compatible.
Also, remember that this country was at peace, the cold war was over, the Democratic Congress had early extracted the "peace dividend" out of the military to use for social purposes. This had diminished military readiness (reduced navy, air force, bases etc) and intelligence capacity by releasing most of the CIA type agents and using satellites, etc. to save even more money (yes, this is all in the record). We didn't have many arabic speakers in the CIA at the time. These decisions were of course based on the fact we were at peace and threats were managable. So under those facts. it is clear that fully armed aircraft in Washington DC, well withing the continental US, were not necessary. What was the threat? If the nuclear option was used against DC, which is what we always expected, what good is an F16 with missiles?
We went to war status literally overnight. It is certainly easy to criticise those directing the government back then from today's perspective. Seems pretty obvious now, right?

For some reason I think these guys had more than "very basic skills".

I read somewhere that they knew how to use VOR's :eek:

that's no big deal, even I know how to use VOR's.
I've known how that works since MS flightsimulator 2.0.
It ain't rocket science.


Look on map, pick a VOR Station in the general vincinity
set VOR 1 to that frequency
look on map, pick VOR station 2
set VOR 2 to that frequency

Check VOR 1 and 2 for the respective angle and draw a line on the map from station 1 & 2 where the 2 lines meet, that's where you are at that time.

http://www.aero-news.net/images/cont...ator-0203b.jpg

childs play really ( and i was still a child when FS2 was out)..
I think the hardest part would be finding the right map when you arrive on the plane, digging through the paperwork to find it. And the second hardest part would be finding where the VOR's are located on the airliner..Unless you had time in the sim to figure that out ...

Close, but not quite correct.

well it's been 20-25 or so years since i played FS2..
but i'm sure it's not hard to find the right method one on the internet

just saying, it ain't rocket science.

Yeah, the info is all over.

I wasn't picking on you. You just left out the most important step. :)

Tune, ID, Twist (center the needle). Just remember "TIT". Should be easy enough to remember, right?

This also was a modern commercial airliner - I'm sure it had more than just rudimentary steam gauge instrumentation (the kind of stuff I actually prefer). The new moving map stuff is far more complicated and if you're not familiar with that particular equipment or have been trained on it, it can be very difficult to figure out/use and navigate through. Most likely a lot of rhe displays were already showing the most useful sort of navigation information and didn't have to be fiddled with but who knows... There are some certain basic similarities from one type of "glass cockpit" MFD (multi function display) to the next, but one thing I always like about "old school" instrumentation is that it's standardized and stoopid simple. Basic instrumentation ("6-packs") and VOR/HSI displays havent changed in 50+ years. You can hop in any airplane with such a setup and figure it out instantly.

There's a lot of conspiracy theory stuff out there that says that flight WAS in fact shot down, but I've not seen anything which would convince me. Likely it went down according to the official report.

At low altitude they'd be burning a LOT of fuel - most jet engines are optimized for about 36,000' and they get very thirsty below 10,000. Don't know what altitude they were at, and since they'd deliberately hijacked long-haul flights (maximum fuel on board for maximum damage/fire potential) it may not have been a concern.

I strongly suspect a few bursts at the wing root or empennage would have taken out the a/c - even with redundant systems. A-A rounds are meant to do this kind of damage - they're not little .22s or even .50s - the rounds are huge, powerful, heavy and pack a mean whallop. I saw a static demonstration of an A10 cannon a few years ago and it was shockingly devastating - yes, different airplane and role (ground attack/anti-tank) but don't think just because something isn't a missile that it can't really ruin someone's day.

I sadly suspect that all of the pax on 93 were fully aware of what was going on, right up until the altimeter read terrain elevation.

OT: Thank god someone else agrees with me. The FBO that I trained at took delivery of a G1000 172 so they did this free intro to the G1000 class and after I decided to go up with an instructor for an hour. I was pretty pi$$ed that someone took my 6 pack, replaced it with a TV, and gave me half of it back on the bottom of the panel.

I will admit that the G1000 (and other "glass cockpits) is highly capable and does a good job consolidating everything into a setup that is easier to use if you are trained on it, but isn't that part of the fun of flying; all the knobs and switches and dials and radios, most of which could be consolidated.

Jackson

You haven't really lived until you've done single-VOR (#2 placarded "inop") intersection holding in IMC (rain pelting you, in the clag the whole time) in a clapped out Navajo with mismatched throttles and not a single thing in the aircraft newer than about 1975. And the windshield seal leaking a bit so the airstream-driven cold rain smacks you in the forehead a irregular intervals. ;)

Ahh, good times in the life of a freight dog. I miss those airplanes!

Sounds like fun to me!

LOL another Navajo driver, flew around the great lakes.... we used to carry axes with us in case the windshield iced over. I got into flying,when I was young, goin to the Wurtsmith AFB open houses. I just loved toggle switches. The old school analog cockpits just seem more real, more impressive, something. At the time freight doggy seem like a pain in the arse, but its some of my best memories

Yes, they had just a little more skill than "very basic skill" because yes, hand-flying a 757 or 767 at well over 300 knots can be a challenge to even an experienced transport pilot--again I speak from my own experience as a commercial transport pilot.

As for the dredging up of the story of the D.C. ANG F-16 pilots having to consider bringing down the UAL 757 headed for D.C. that morning, the news media loves to dredge up this kind of story years after the fact. Also, Heather Penney is (obviously) a female fighter pilot so that adds the sex-appeal to the story that media folks crave. Two macho male fighter pilots isn't as good a story as a pretty lady fighter pilot. Two men in F-16s isn't as good a story today, in our over-feminized culture, as a woman in an F-16 is. Not to detract from Heather Penney's achievements, of course--the media is just using her for the aforementioned reasons.

Or in a DC-3 or Beech 18. You could tell the DC pilots by the wet spot on their pants when it was wet out. Always leaked when in the WX...