The 9/11 Hijackers: Amateur Aviators Who Became Super-Pilots on September 11

A Cessna 172

"To hit something with an airplane is easy only if you have been flying for 20 years."
- Boeing 767 pilot quoted in the Boston Globe

"The conspiracy apparently did not include a surplus of skilled pilots."
- The Washington Post

In the days after 9/11, numerous pilots and aviation experts commented on the elaborate maneuvers performed by the aircraft in the terrorist attacks, and the advanced skills that would have been necessary to navigate those aircraft into their targets. The men flying the planes must have been "highly skilled pilots" and "extremely knowledgeable and capable aviators," who were "probably military trained," these experts said.

And yet the four alleged hijackers who were supposedly flying the aircraft were amateur pilots, who had learned to fly in small propeller planes, and were described by their instructors as having had only "average" or even "very poor" piloting skills. But on their first attempt at flying jet aircraft, on September 11, 2001, these men were supposedly able to fly Boeing 757s and 767s at altitudes of tens of thousands of feet, without any assistance from air traffic control. Three of them were apparently able to successfully navigate their planes all the way to the intended targets, which they hit with pinpoint accuracy.

For such poor pilots to carry out such skilled flying would surely have been extremely unlikely, perhaps impossible. And yet this is what is claimed in the official account of 9/11.

EXPERTS SAID HIJACKERS 'MUST HAVE BEEN EXPERIENCED PILOTS'
Numerous experts commented that the hijackers who flew the aircraft in the 9/11 attacks must have been highly trained and skillful pilots. Tony Ferrante, the head of the Federal Aviation Administration's investigations division, spent several days after 9/11 carefully piecing together the movements of the four aircraft targeted in the attacks. According to author Pamela Freni, Ferrante's "hair stood on end when he realized the precision with which all four airplanes had moved toward their targets." Ferrante said, "It was almost as though it was choreographed," and explained, "It's not as easy as it looks to do what [the hijackers] did at 500 miles an hour." [1]

Darryl Jenkins, the director of the Aviation Institute at George Washington University, told the New York Times that the men who carried out the attacks "knew what they were doing down to very small details." He said, "Every one of them was trained in flying big planes." The Times reported that a "number of aviation experts agreed" with Jenkins and had said that "the hijackers must have been experienced pilots." John Nance, an airline pilot, author, and aviation analyst, said that "the direct hits on the two towers and on the Pentagon suggested to him that the pilots were experienced fliers." Nance pointed to the "smooth banking of the second plane to strike the towers," and said that "precisely controlling a large jet near the ground, necessary for the Pentagon attack, also required advanced skill." Nance concluded, "There's no way an amateur could have, with any degree of reliability, done what was done" in the 9/11 attacks. [2]

A pilot who had been with a major carrier for more than 30 years told CNN that to "pull off the coordinated aerial attack on the World Trade Center and Pentagon ... the hijackers must have been extremely knowledgeable and capable aviators." The pilot added, "They know what they were doing." [3]

Robin Lloyd, a Boeing 737 captain with a British airline, told The Telegraph that "the hijackers had to be experienced pilots with more than just a rudimentary knowledge of navigation." Lloyd, who co-runs the Professional Pilots' Rumour Network website, which is "regarded worldwide as one of the prime sources of accurate information for the aviation industry," said the terrorists at the controls of the hijacked aircraft "had to be 100 percent switched on people, 100 percent experienced pilots, probably military trained." He said someone like Osama bin Laden "wouldn't have access to pilots of the caliber needed to pull it off." [4]

John Roden, the president of Aviation Advisory Service, an Oakland, California, consulting firm, said the piloting necessary to navigate the planes to their targets "was very skillful. This is practically fighter pilot technique." [5] And a U.S. Air Force officer who flew over 100 sorties during the Vietnam War concluded that the hijacked aircraft "either had a crack fighter pilot in the left seat or they were being maneuvered by remote control." [6]

'CONSIDERABLE TRAINING' AND 'IN-DEPTH KNOWLEDGE' NEEDED TO FLY 757 AND 767 AIRCRAFT
Two of the aircraft targeted in the 9/11 attacks were Boeing 757s and the other two were Boeing 767s. Experts have commented how difficult it would have been for amateur pilots, like the alleged hijackers, to fly such aircraft.

Aviation experts told the Chicago Tribune, "Unlike a small private plane where pilots generally fly visually, a commercial plane like those hijacked [on September 11] requires a vast command of navigation techniques as well as in-depth knowledge of their myriad systems, from hydraulics to the autopilot." [7] Michael Barr, the director of aviation safety programs at the University of Southern California, and several commercial airline pilots told the Boston Globe that "they assumed that the terrorists were skilled pilots who had to have received some training in flying transport jets, particularly the Boeing 757 and 767 aircraft." [8]

Steven Wallach, an aviation consultant and former airline captain, said that if the hijackers "took the controls at high altitude and a long distance from their targets"--as allegedly happened--"then they likely had considerable training in a 767 or 757." Wallach said the hijackers "would have had to descend and navigate to Washington and New York. They would have had to know how to operate the autopilot, as well as other intricate functions." Boeing 767s and 757s have highly sophisticated "glass cockpits" that include video screens and digital readouts, which require the pilots to have an advanced level of computer skills. "To navigate with that glass cockpit, it can be pretty tricky," Wallach said. [9]

HITTING THE WTC LIKE 'THREADING THE EYE OF A NEEDLE'
Some experts commented specifically on the flying skills that would have been necessary to crash planes into the Twin Towers of the World Trade Center.

Kieran Daly, the editor of the Internet publication Air Transport Intelligence, said, "Flying an aircraft into a building is not as simple as it appears." He said the hijackers "would have needed some experience to have been able to steer the planes into the World Trade Centre." [10] Robin Lloyd compared the targets of the WTC towers to "narrow runways tipped vertically." From "switching off the autopilot," the hijackers "would have to know how to control the aircraft and be able to find the target," he said. Lloyd said that "rag-trousered terrorists with no flying experience could not have hit" the Twin Towers. [11]

Michael Barr said the hijackers who flew the planes into the WTC "had to change course ... had to know how to navigate." [12] Barr, who is a former Air Force fighter-bomber pilot, said the hijacker pilots "almost had to hit the towers like they were threading the eye of a needle." He commented on the difficulty the pilots would have had in synchronizing their attacks so they hit the two WTC towers about 15 minutes apart, saying: "The routes they were flying were very different--one plane coming from the north and the other coming from the south. That adds greatly to the complexity and it requires a degree of skill to prevent the planes from banking too much or descending too fast while keeping on course." Barr added that the piloting skills apparently exhibited by the hijackers indicated that "months and months of planning and training were involved." He concluded, "Unfortunately, these guys were good." [13]

A 767 pilot told the Boston Globe: "The perpetrators were trained pilots and trained to operate the 757-767 family of aircraft. ... [I]t did not seem to bother them that the flying was very demanding." This pilot noted that video showed that the second aircraft to hit the WTC was banked, or turning, as it struck the tower, "making the maneuver more difficult." He added, "To hit something with an airplane is easy only if you have been flying for 20 years." [14]

Niki Lauda, the former Formula One world champion who is also a pilot and owned his own airline, said on German TV that whoever flew the aircraft into the WTC must have been "properly trained to fly a plane like that." He said: "You have to know exactly what the turning radius of a plane like that is, if I am trying to hit the World Trade Center. That means, these had to be fully trained 767 or 757 pilots. ... It certainly could not be the case that some half-trained pilot tries it somehow, because then he will not hit it." [15]

AIRCRAFT THAT HIT THE PENTAGON 'WAS FLOWN WITH EXTRAORDINARY SKILL'
A particularly high level of skill would have been needed to fly an aircraft into the west wall of the Pentagon. CBS News reported: "Radar shows Flight 77 did a downward spiral, turning almost a complete circle and dropping the last 7,000 feet in two and a half minutes. ... [T]he complex maneuver suggests the hijackers had better flying skills than many investigators first believed." [16] A "top aviation source" called the maneuver "a nice, coordinated turn," which, according to one law enforcement official, was the work of "a great talent ... virtually a textbook turn and landing." [17] Other "aviation sources" told the Washington Post that the aircraft that hit the Pentagon "was flown with extraordinary skill." [18]

According to the Chicago Tribune, authorities said the terrorist who flew American Airlines Flight 77 into the Pentagon displayed "proficiency in the aircraft's advanced navigation and automated flight systems. ... Such systems require pilots to program the desired course heading and altitude into an onboard computer, and the plane carries out the instructions." [19]

Dave Esser, the head of the aeronautical engineering department at Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University in Daytona Beach, Florida, told CNN that "the highest level of navigational ability would have been needed" with Flight 77. Roger Richie, a spokesman for Flight Safety Academy, a flight school in Vero Beach, Florida, added: "It's not that simple when you're heading over [Ohio], to come back and find the Pentagon. You need to know what you are doing." [20]

Ed Soliday, a highly qualified and experienced former airline captain, told the 9/11 Commission that he had been talking about piloting skills with a military officer at the Pentagon, and had remarked to the officer "how tough it would be for any pilot, including himself, to hit the Pentagon directly." Soliday said the "feel" to hit the Pentagon by flying a 757 manually would not have been easy, particularly because of the building's low profile, and would have required the pilot who undertook the task to have had significant "simulator time." Soliday told the Commission that "if he were going to do the Pentagon, he would try to do it all on the autopilot because of how difficult it was." [21] However, the autopilot on Flight 77 was disengaged at 9:29 a.m. and remained off for the final eight minutes the plane was in the air, according to a study of information from the plane's flight data recorder by the National Transportation Safety Board. [22]

The 767 pilot who talked to the Boston Globe similarly said hitting the Pentagon would have been "extremely difficult." He added, "One degree off and [the pilot] either overshoots it or undershoots it." [23] Gary Eitel, an experienced military pilot, said that "the maneuver performed by Flight 77, as described in official reports, was beyond the capabilities of 90 percent of even the best and most experienced pilots in the world." Eitel said that "he was amazed by the piloting skill used to steer Flight 175 into the second tower. Flight 77 boggled his mind." [24]

Niki Lauda said that "to fly downwards out of a curve and still hit the building in its core, I would have to be the best trained [pilot] of all." He speculated that "a normal airline pilot would have a hard time with that, because you are simply not prepared for things like that." Therefore, Lauda concluded, "They must have had some super-training to have been able to handle an airliner so precisely." [25]

While these experts indicated an extraordinary level of piloting skills would have been necessary to carry out the 9/11 attacks, the four men supposedly at the controls of the hijacked aircraft were in fact notable for their lack of such skills and for their limited flying experience.

FLIGHT 11 AND FLIGHT 175 PILOTS HAD 'AVERAGE' SKILLS
Mohamed Atta and Marwan Alshehhi, allegedly the terrorists who flew American Airlines Flight 11 and United Airlines Flight 175 into the World Trade Center, were at best mediocre pilots, according to several accounts. They learned to fly between July and December 2000 at a flight school in Venice, Florida. They were enrolled in the school's Accelerated Pilot Program and trained in a Cessna 172, a small single-engine propeller plane. In mid-December 2000, the two men passed their commercial pilot tests and received their licenses. [26] Rudi Dekkers, the owner of the flight school, said he had "heard from the instructors" that Atta and Alshehhi "were average students," and "the examiner told me the same." [27]

The closest Atta and Alshehhi came to flying a jet aircraft before September 11 was the two days they spent at the SimCenter flight school in Opa-Locka, Florida, in late- December 2000, where they had six hours of training in a Boeing 727 simulator. Henry George, the owner of the SimCenter who trained Atta and Alshehhi in the simulator, said the two men were provided with "a mini, mini introduction" to jet flight. George found their flying skills to be unremarkable. He later recalled: "Looking back, they were average pilots for their experience level. Nothing particularly bad about their flying, but nothing remarkable either." [28]

FLIGHT 77 PILOT WAS 'TOTALLY CLUELESS' AND 'COULD NOT FLY AT ALL'
Of the four men supposedly at the controls of the hijacked aircraft on September 11, Hani Hanjour stood out for his particularly weak flying skills. This 29-year-old from Saudi Arabia is alleged to have flown Flight 77 into the Pentagon. That, as we have seen, would have been a particularly difficult task, even for the best pilots. Hanjour, however, was a hopeless pilot.

An Arizona flight school Hanjour attended in 1996 found the young Saudi to be a "weak student" who "was wasting our resources," according to the school's owner. [29] An instructor at another Arizona flight school who taught Hanjour for four months in 1998 later stated: "As a pilot, Hani Hanjour was very poor. His knowledge of the academic side of training was weak, his flying skills were marginal, but most significantly his judgment was very poor." The instructor recalled that Hanjour "was not well educated nor was he very intelligent." Hanjour had "a poor understanding of the basic principles of aviation" and "poor technical skills." [30]

Instructors at a flight school that Hanjour attended early in 2001 "found his piloting skills so shoddy and his grasp of English so inadequate that they questioned whether his pilot's license was genuine," according to the New York Times. The staff at the school "feared that his skills were so weak that he could pose a safety hazard if he flew a commercial airliner." [31] An instructor at the school who trained Hanjour in a Boeing 737 simulator while he was there said Hanjour "proved to be such a bad pilot," and described Hanjour as "totally clueless." [32] One of the school's employees later said of Hanjour: "I'm still to this day amazed that he could have flown into the Pentagon. He could not fly at all." [33]

As the day of the attacks came closer, Hanjour's skills remained weak. An instructor at a Maryland flight school who provided flight lessons to Hanjour in mid-August 2001--less than a month before 9/11--found Hanjour to be "a poor student" who had "particular difficulty landing the aircraft." [34] After he was taken on three test flights at the school, Hanjour's request to rent a plane there was refused without more training. [35]

The Washington Post concluded that Hanjour's "limited flying abilities do afford an insight into one feature of the attacks: The conspiracy apparently did not include a surplus of skilled pilots." [36]

FLIGHT 93 PILOT'S SKILLS WERE 'A LITTLE BIT OUT THERE'
The terrorist allegedly at the controls of United Airlines Flight 93, which reportedly crashed in Pennsylvania after its passengers fought back against their plane's hijackers, was Ziad Jarrah, a 26-year-old from the Lebanon. While he was a better pilot than Hani Hanjour, Jarrah still appears to have had only mediocre flying skills.

Jarrah learned to fly during the latter half of 2000, spending about six months at a flight school in Florida where he trained in a Cessna 152, a small, two-seat propeller plane. [37] Jarrah became an "average" pilot, according to Arne Kruithof, the owner of the flight school. Kruithof said of Jarrah: "We had to do more to get him ready than others. His flight skills seemed to be a little bit out there." [38]

In June 2001, only three months before 9/11, Jarrah had two sessions of training at a flight school in Philadelphia, but his request to rent a plane from the school was denied due to his poor flying skills. Herbert Hortman, the owner of the flight school, told the 9/11 Commission he was surprised that Jarrah had qualified for his pilot's license, considering his limited flying ability. Hortman "speculated that a less than reputable flight school had issued the license." [39]

Despite his mediocre skills, Jarrah intended to crash Flight 93 into the White House or the U.S. Capitol building until he was stopped in his tracks by the plane's courageous passengers, according to the official account of 9/11. [40]

DID THE HIJACKERS JUST HAVE BEGINNER'S LUCK?
We can see that the four men who were allegedly at the controls of the aircraft targeted in the 9/11 attacks had poor or mediocre skills and limited flying experience. So how could these amateur pilots, who had trained in small propeller planes, suddenly exhibit extraordinary proficiency in their first attempts at flying large jet aircraft? Was this the greatest example of beginner's luck in all history? Or is the official explanation of the 9/11 attacks wrong? A new investigation of those attacks is urgently required to address this question and find out the truth of what happened on September 11, 2001.

NOTES
[1] Pamela Freni, Ground Stop: An Inside Look at the Federal Aviation Administration on September 11, 2001. Lincoln, NE: iUniverse, Inc., 2003, p. 76; "Memorandum for the Record: Interview With Tony Ferrante." 9/11 Commission, April 19, 2004.
[2] James Glanz, "Terrorists Were Well Trained, but not Necessarily in Flying." New York Times, September 13, 2001.
[3] "Hijackers 'Knew What They Were Doing.'" CNN, September 12, 2001.
[4] Nicole Martin and Andrew Hibberd, "Hijackers May Have Murdered the Pilots." The Telegraph, September 12, 2001.
[5] Henry K. Lee, "Experts Assess How Skilled Hijackers Were." San Francisco Chronicle, September 13, 2001.
[6] "September 11: U.S. Government Accused." Portugal News, August 3, 2002.
[7] Jon Hilkevitch, "Hijackers Flew Skillfully to Targets, Experts Say." Chicago Tribune, September 13, 2001.
[8] Matthew Brelis, "Pilots Say Crews Likely Overpowered, Slain." Boston Globe, September 12, 2001.
[9] Ken Kaye, "Questions Remain on Flight Training." South Florida Sun-Sentinel, September 22, 2001.
[10] Nicole Martin, "Pilots 'Must Have Been Murdered' Before Jets Were Aimed at Buildings." Irish Independent, September 12, 2001.
[11] Nicole Martin and Andrew Hibberd, "Hijackers May Have Murdered the Pilots."
[12] Matthew Brelis, "Pilots Say Crews Likely Overpowered, Slain."
[13] Jon Hilkevitch, "Hijackers Flew Skillfully to Targets, Experts Say."
[14] Matthew Brelis, "Pilots Say Crews Likely Overpowered, Slain."
[15] Webster Griffin Tarpley, 9/11 Synthetic Terror: Made in USA. Joshua Tree, CA: Progressive Press, 2005, p. 190.
[16] "Primary Target." CBS News, September 21, 2001.
[17] Amy Goldstein, "Hijackers Led by Core Group." Washington Post, September 30, 2001; Steve Fainaru and Alia Ibrahim, "Mysterious Trip to Flight 77 Cockpit." Washington Post, September 10, 2002.
[18] Marc Fisher and Don Phillips, "On Flight 77: 'Our Plane is Being Hijacked.'" Washington Post, September 12, 2001.
[19] Jon Hilkevitch, "Hijackers Flew Skillfully to Targets, Experts Say."
[20] "Experts Say Hijackers Needed Special Skills." CNN, September 14, 2001.
[21] "Memorandum for the Record: Interview With Captain Ed Soliday, Former Vice President of Safety, Security, and Quality Assurance for United Airlines." 9/11 Commission, November 21, 2003.
[22] John O'Callaghan and Daniel Bower, "Study of Autopilot, Navigation Equipment, and Fuel Consumption Activity Based on United Airlines Flight 93 and American Airlines Flight 77 Digital Flight Data Recorder Information." National Transportation Safety Board, February 13, 2002.
[23] Matthew Brelis, "Pilots Say Crews Likely Overpowered, Slain."
[24] Michael C. Ruppert, Crossing the Rubicon: The Decline of the American Empire at the End of the Age of Oil. Gabriola Island, BC: New Society Publishers, 2004, p. 350.
[25] Webster Griffin Tarpley, 9/11 Synthetic Terror, p. 191.
[26] House Committee on the Judiciary, INS's March 2002 Notification of Approval of Change of Status for Pilot Training for Terrorist Hijackers Mohammed Atta and Marwan Alshehhi. 107th Cong., 2nd Sess., March 19, 2002; 9/11 Commission, The 9/11 Commission Report: Final Report of the National Commission on Terrorist Attacks Upon the United States. New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 2004, pp. 224, 227.
[27] Rudi Dekkers, interview by Quentin McDermott, A Mission to Die For. Australian Broadcasting Corporation, October 21, 2001.
[28] David Firestone and Dana Canedy, "FBI Documents Detail the Movements of 19 Men Believed to be Hijackers." New York Times, September 15, 2001; David A. Lombardo, "Hijack Pilots Showed Average Skills, Say Their Instructors." Aviation International News, November 2001.
[29] Amy Goldstein, Lena H. Sun, and George Lardner Jr., "Hanjour a Study in Paradox." Washington Post, October 15, 2001.
[30] Statement of [Name Redacted]. Canfield, Shapiro, Baer, Heller & Johnston, LLP, May 1, 2002.
[31] Jim Yardley, "A Trainee Noted for Incompetence." New York Times, May 4, 2002.
[32] [Name Redacted], interview by the FBI. Federal Bureau of Investigation, September 17, 2001.
[33] Jim Yardley, "A Trainee Noted for Incompetence."
[34] "Memorandum for the Record: Interview of Benjamin L. Connor." 9/11 Commission, April 12, 2004.
[35] Justin Paprocki, "Airport Owners Panic Over Plummeting Profits." Capital News Service, September 19, 2001; Thomas Frank, "Tracing Trail of Hijackers." Newsday, September 23, 2001.
[36] Amy Goldstein, Lena H. Sun, and George Lardner Jr., "Hanjour a Study in Paradox."
[37] Der Spiegel Magazine, Inside 9/11: What Really Happened. New York: St. Martin's Press, 2002, p. 12; "Statement for the Record, FBI Director Robert S. Mueller III, Joint Intelligence Committee Inquiry." U.S. Congress, September 25, 2002.
[38] Jere Longman, Among the Heroes: United Flight 93 and the Passengers and Crew Who Fought Back. New York: HarperCollins, 2002, p. 91.
[39] "Profile: Ziad Samir Jarrah, DOB: May 11, 1975." Federal Bureau of Investigation, March 20, 2002; "Memorandum for the Record: Interview of Herbert Hortman, Owner of Hortman Aviation, Philadelphia, PA." 9/11 Commission, April 27, 2004.
[40] 9/11 Commission, The 9/11 Commission Report, p. 14.

Thanks for putting this

Thanks for putting this together shoestring - it's another well written and researched article on a very important subject. The amazing accuracy of otherwise poor pilots, in an open sky of endless horizon, finding 3 buildings in very specific areas, then hitting them on the first try is just amazing.

I like how you finished it too, very reasonable.

The flying skills problem is a smoking gun

Thanks for the good words, Nor Cal. I really think the issue of flying skills is a frequently overlooked smoking gun. The closer I looked at this, the more preposterous the official 9/11 story appeared!

I second that

Thanks for this write-up, Shoestring. It expresses exactly what my gut feeling is about how difficult it would be for novices to pull this off - a definite smoking gun.

My guess is that they had help from a very high place

and I don't mean Allah.

"Students do some stupid things, but this is quite stupid."

Hijackers Mohamed Atta and Marwan Alshehhi, while learning to fly in Florida, stall a small plane on a Miami International Airport runway. Unable to start the plane, they simply walk away. Flight controllers have to guide the waiting passenger airliners around the stalled aircraft until it is towed away 35 minutes later. They weren’t supposed to be using that airport in the first place. The FAA threatens to investigate the two students and the flight school they are attending. The flight school sends records to the FAA, but no more is heard of the investigation

“Students do stupid things during their flight course, but this is quite stupid,” says the owner of the flight school. Nothing was wrong with the plane.

http://www.historycommons.org/context.jsp?item=a122600stall#a122600stall

The FAA and Hanjour

Here are some more details relating to Hanjour, supplementing what's provided above:

http://911blogger.com/node/20573

'Early in 2001, Peggy Chevrette, the operation manager at Jet Tech, contacted the FAA repeatedly to convey her concerns about Hanjour. Eventually John Anthony, a federal inspector, showed up at the school and examined Hanjour’s credentials. But Anthony found them in order and took no further action. The inspector even suggested that Jet Tech provide Hanjour with an interpreter. This surprised Chevrette because it was a violation of FAA rules. “The thing that really concerned me,” she later told FOX News, “Was that John had a conversation in the hallway with Hani and realized what his skills were at that point and his ability to speak English.”[11] Evidently, the inspector also sat in on a class with Hanjour.'

This article also says more about Hanjour's attempts to take training flights at airports in Maryland a few weeks prior to 9/11:

'It turns out that just three days after Hani Hanjour failed a flight evaluation in a Cessna 172 at Freeway airport he showed up at Congressional Air Charter, located down the road at Gaithersburg airport, also in the Washington suburbs.'

And it was the pilot who flew with him on that occasion who--notwithstanding all the negative assesments he had received from so many others--would attest to Hanjour's piloting skills to the 9/11 Commission. The commission report identified this pilot as Eddie Shalev, but otherwise it did not have anything else to say about who he was or when and how he'd come to be at that airline. But then, early in 2009, some of the commission's files were released, and offered some more details about him:

' “Mr. Shalev served in the Israeli Defense Forces in a paratroop regiment. He was a jumpmaster on a Boeing C-130. Mr. Shalev moved to the Gaithersburg area in April 2001 and was sponsored for employment by Congressional Air Charters...[which] has subsequently gone out of business.”'

I have to wonder, was Congressional Air Charters ever a legit operation to begin with?\

P.S. I love how the passage quoted from the Washington Post above employs the term 'conspiracy' accurately for a change.

GPS Handhelds

it was never established, if they used GPS handhelds. Some media reports do suggest it, but I think it wasn't addressed in the 9/11 CR

According to the FBI, Atta bought himself such a device (GPS), costing about $500, by mail order. [ABC NEWS, 5/22/2002; CNN, 5/22/2002]
http://www.historycommons.org/context.jsp?item=a091001attavisitswtc#a091001attavisitswtc

9/11 Commission investigators will in fact later speculate that the hijackers may have purchased GPS devices, “so they could determine the latitude and longitude of their intended targets.” According to a summary of a Commission interview, “Any autopilot changes made by the terrorist pilots to assist them in navigating to predetermined coordinates would simply have been to enter a specific location such as Newark or Reagan National” Airport. However, airline personnel will tell the 9/11 Commission investigators that “Entering changes to the autopilot is something that terrorist pilots probably would not have been trained or able to do.” Even a United Airlines senior pilot, who instructs on how to do this, says “he always has to pause before he makes such corrections to make sure to remember how to enter the change.” [9/11 COMMISSION, 11/17/2003 ]
http://www.historycommons.org/context.jsp?item=a091201ferranteastonished#a091201ferranteastonished

Handheld GPS

Handheld GPS devices for Aviation are only used for VFR (Visual Flight Rules). See:

http://www.brighthub.com/electronics/gps/articles/43416.aspx

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Visual_flight_rules

In the case of the attacks of September 11, 2001, the hijackers were obliged to use, for Boeings 767 or 757, an “Instrument flight rules”:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Instrument_flight_rules

See “The Impossibility of Flying Heavy Aircraft Without Training by NILA SAGADEVAN:

http://www.mindfully.org/Reform/2006/911-Flying-Without-Training13jun06.htm

Quote:

“Take-offs "even landings, to a certain degree" are relatively "easy" because the pilot has visual reference cues that exist "outside" the cockpit.

But once you've rotated, climbed out, and reached cruising altitude in a simulator (or real airplane), and find yourself en route to some distant destination (using sophisticated electronic navigation techniques), the situation changes drastically: the pilot loses virtually all external visual reference cues. She / he is left entirely at the mercy of an array of complex flight and navigation instruments to provide situational cues (altitude, heading, speed, attitude, etc.)

In the case of a Boeing 757 or 767, the pilot would be faced with an EFIS (Electronic Flight Instrumentation System) panel comprised of six large multi-mode LCDs interspersed with clusters of assorted "hard" instruments. These displays process the raw aircraft system and flight data into an integrated picture of the aircraft situation, position and progress, not only in horizontal and vertical dimensions, but also with regard to time and speed as well. When flying "blind", i.e., with no ground reference cues, it takes a highly skilled pilot to interpret, and then apply, this data intelligently. If one cannot translate this information quickly, precisely and accurately (and it takes an instrument-rated pilot to do so), one would have ZERO SITUATIONAL AWARENESS. I.e., the pilot wouldn't have a clue where she / he was in relation to the earth. Flight under such conditions is referred to as "IFR", or Instrument Flight Rules.
And IFR Rule #1: Never take your eyes off your instruments, because that's all you have!

The corollary to Rule #1: If you can't read the instruments in a quick, smooth, disciplined, scan, you are as good as dead. Accident records from around the world are replete with reports of any number of good pilots "i.e., professional instrument-rated pilots " who ‘bought the farm' because they screwed up while flying in IFR conditions. »

Flight rules

Note:

Flight rules are determined by the visibility conditions outside of the aircraft. Essentially if you are flying in clouds, you are flying under IFR rules. You can also fly under IFR rules if you are not flying in the clouds but have filed an IFR flight plan.

Some low visibility weather conditions may also be IFR conditions.

VFR means essentially clear air, you are not flying in the clouds. On 9/11 the air on the east coast was clear, meaning no clouds all of the way from Boston to New York. This was not IFR but VFR conditions. To find their way from Boston to New York they used the Hudson River and used dead reckoning for navigation, and followed the river right to New York City. The al Qaeda hijackers who had taken over the airplanes they were hijacking had clear air all of the way to their destinations, and could easily see the Hudson River even from 30,000 feet or more in altitude. This would have made flying these aircraft not too difficult.

It is my belief that they would not have been able to fly these aircraft in IFR conditions. While Atta had an instrument rating the others may not have. But even Atta was not prepared to fly this big aircraft under instrument conditions in my opinion.

Show "In the case of the Pentagon" by tit2

Crash Helmet Hanjour

And as expected... Hanjour, if he piloted it, flew that 757 like a complete moron. We have been telling ourselves for years that the lap he presumably did in that 757 was some great flying... it wasn't.

To be fair though...

Our beloved former President was impressed.......

"As a former pilot, the President was struck by the apparent sophistication of the operation and some of the piloting, especially Hanjour's high-speed dive into the Pentagon." - page 334
http://www.9-11commission.gov/report/911Report.pdf

Maybe Bush could join PFT. If he hasn't already.

and being extra fair

the beloved former president apparently had not studied the FDR file, which shows wild wobbly behaviour. This information was always available - it did not depend on Warren Stutt's later decoding of the final frame.

Yeah

In case you forgot: before you & yours fully realized a plane hit the Pentagon, I said it, and before I said it, Jim said it. Thanks Frank & Warren for your research.

Yeah right u guys I am sure anyone of you could

have done it!

Yes

The approach would have been just as much of a disaster. You know what I think? I think the American instructors underestimated their student. He sucked, but not enough to fail. A spiraling dead-man's dive, clipping a VDOT pole, two trees, five lightpoles, a generator fence, a generator and the Pentagon foundation. Hanjour: ace pilot.

And o yeah, mr. super duper terrorist, if he really was the pilot, managed to hit the empty section. Good flying? No. He almost hit the VDOT tower as well.

Empty walls and bad timing.

Along with hitting the worst wall to hit at the Pentagon to inflict casualties:

The timing of the super-duper hate filled evil doers was very early in the morning in NY at the WTC.

Why not hit hit the WTC towers at 11:00am or 3:00pm to inflict mass damage and 'terror'?

Did they not surveil and notice when the observation deck and Windows to the World opened?

Their timing apparently was far worse then their piloting if that was the case.

In short: There are many things we don't know.

As Neo-Cons were calling for Pearl Harbors; they got one. And it yielded a similar amount of casualties as the original.

DOING A HUGE DISSERVICE

Every time we use the "H" word we reinforce and give credence to fantasy. The fantasy is that eight grade-school boys entered the college of piloting skill and graduated suma cum laude in record time.

There is absolutely no credible evidence that these patsies ever set foot on the four alleged flights, much less that they commandeered them without resistance, flew them without any normal outside assistance and quickly delivered them to their final destinations.

School children are being indoctrinated daily with this story and they regurgitate it for years because it is so pervasive. They are growing into adulthood with a pre-conceived notion that poisons rational thought processes.

It is time to bring this to a screeching halt.

Getting the facts clear

While it is important to realize that the ability of Hanjour to fly the Pentagon filght is contradicted by a mountain of evidence, it is also important to realize that a great deal of what we have been told is not supported by evidence. For example:

"A "top aviation source" called the maneuver "a nice, coordinated turn," which, according to one law enforcement official, was the work of "a great talent ... virtually a textbook turn and landing." [17] Other "aviation sources" told the Washington Post that the aircraft that hit the Pentagon "was flown with extraordinary skill." [18]"

If you look at the FDR data you will see that the plane's motion was not that of a skilled pilot. It was anything but a "nice coordinated turn". When the autopilot was switched off there were rapid fluctuations in altitude of thousands of feet. No skilled pilot does that. There were many other clues in the FDR data that the proper story has not been told yet.

Our best position is to restrict our assertions to what is soundly based on evidence. There is plenty we can be sure about.

You presume the FDR data is legit but how can that

be 100% verified at this stage. You claim to have no reason to believe it is not authentic, but what should not be questioned at this point?

legit?

No peaceful, I assume nothing. I stick to hard evidence. There is no hard evidence that the FDR is legit and there is no hard evidence that it is not. So I make no assertion. I merely point out that I can find no evidence that the FDR data is in any way flawed. The data is just one more thing to add to the incredibly long list of very suggestive evidence that the plane hit the building and on the way behaved in a very unskilled manner.

Yeah so if you admit that there is no hard evidence

then why do you stick to your story? You have promoted it many times as being the case, you have confronted me numerous times for not sharing your certainity of the matter. Why should I believe any data provided to us for 911? It really doesn't matter what hit the pentagon, if the hijackers were patsies, or exactly how the crash in PA happened, 911 was always an inside job, of that I am certain.

You still don't seem to know my story

Peaceful. My story is, as I have said repeatedly, that there is no hard evidence that the plane flew over the Pentagon. That is the certainty that I perceive. To assert that the plane flew over in the absence of hard evidenece is stupid. You don't do that, so why do you keep picking on me?

Well as I said you admit that the FDR data may not be

authentic, or at least you have no hard evidence that it is, then what does it really support? I don't think you should use words like stupid. To presume that anyone on this site knows what really happened entirely with respect to the pentagon may very well be stupid. To presume that the FDR data is reliable and describes the actual event has never been independently verified as of yet, has it? I think the odds that Hani flew the plane into the pentagon and didn't strike the lawn etc is a long shot. Not impossible, but still a long shot. That any pilot would independently pick that approach and spot to hit the building also seems unlikely IMO. That the government has failed to support the OCT with adequate video is very suspicious. No offense Frank I don't mean to give you a hard time. I think that the divisiveness of pentagon theories has not helped the movement contrary to what others on this site may think. I apoligize if I have been curt or offensive.

CIT's marketing slogan

"Independently verified" is a meaningless marketing slogan coined by CIT, a mythical and dishonest litmus test devised by CIT for CIT to exclude all evidence but their own collection of cherry picked NoC witnesses.

"Independently verified" means:

(A) that CIT are "independent" which is supposed to evoke other words such as "trusted" and "objective".

(B) that CIT have the sole means to "verify", meaning that all other sources can only be indeterminate and inconclusive.

This is clear indoctrination and closely tied to the CIT mantra "do not trust evidence coming from the suspect" which is amusingly circular and obviously inapplicable in a court of law. The "suspect" cannot exculpate himself. The demand itself is a loaded question: it attempts to inject into the brain domain of the audience the notion that the FDR is untrustworthy and disputable by default, and only CIT's magical investigation powers can remove the shadow automatically cast over any and all evidence which refutes their absurd flyover theory.

There is nothing wrong with the FDR as the Frank Legge/Warren Stutt paper shows. The FDR data has been examined and found to correspond with AA 77 crashing into the Pentagon as reported since day one. You have no grounds for demanding "independent verification", no basis for claiming the FDR is untrustworthy and no-one to blame but yourself for the divisiveness you speak of.

Oh, and before I forget: I find it highly suspicious that none of the missile theories, truck bomb theories, flyover theories, commuter jet theories or A 10 skywarrior theories have ever been bolstered with video evidence. Where is the video evidence?

Aircrafts flown by morons?

See: “ FAA Investigator Astonished at Precision of Four Hijacked Planes”:

http://www.historycommons.org/context.jsp?item=a091201ferranteastonished#a091201ferranteastonished

“After arriving at FAA headquarters on September 12, Tony Ferrante, the manager of FAA investigations, spends several days working out the movements of the four hijacked planes. He is astonished at the precision with which they were flown towards their targets, later saying: “[I]t was almost as though it was choreographed.… It’s not as easy as it looks to do what they did at 500 miles an hour.” He concludes that either the hijackers were better pilots than originally thought, or they were aided by additional equipment such as radios to communicate among the four planes or handheld Global Positioning System (GPS) equipment.

9/11 Commission investigators will in fact later speculate that the hijackers may have purchased GPS devices,

“so they could determine the latitude and longitude of their intended targets.” According to a summary of a Commission interview, “Any autopilot changes made by the terrorist pilots to assist them in navigating to predetermined coordinates would simply have been to enter a specific location such as Newark or Reagan National” Airport. However, airline personnel will tell the 9/11 Commission investigators that “Entering changes to the autopilot is something that terrorist pilots probably would not have been trained or able to do.” Even a United Airlines senior pilot, who instructs on how to do this, says “he always has to pause before he makes such corrections to make sure to remember how to enter the change.”

I agree with "Shoestring", not with some comments that I read on the forum.

I was speaking

specifically about Hani Hanjour. He flew like the incompetent pilot he was. Concerning Atta and Al-Shehhi's final approach, I am of a different opinion. Especially Shehhi's final turn and hit of the South Tower is astonishing. This has been well documented by Achimspok and others.

One other thing: we know more details about those flights then do many official investigators. I don't really need their judgment and I don't need your argument from authority.

You can continue to fog, conflate and deliberately confuse the issue if you want though.

ETA: For those who don't know about Achimspok, here are his videos about UA 175's impact. Please ignore his spelling errors, he's German and English is not his forte. The rest of it is brilliant though, and worth considering.

Hani Hanjour

Quote :

« I was speaking specifically about Hani Hanjour. He flew like the incompetent pilot he was »

I know a lot of opinion of professional pilots about the attack on the Pentagon and therefore I can not believe what you say. Some examples:

http://patriotsquestion911.com/pilots.html

Commander Ted Muga, BS CE, U.S. Navy (ret) – Retired Pan-Am commercial airline pilot.  Commercial aircraft flown: Boeing 707 and 727...

« The maneuver at the Pentagon was just a tight spiral coming down out of 7,000 feet.  And a commercial aircraft, while they can in fact structurally somewhat handle that maneuver, they are very, very, very difficult.  And it would take considerable training.  In other words, commercial aircraft are designed for a particular purpose and that is for comfort and for passengers and it's not for military maneuvers.  And while they are structurally capable of doing them, it takes some very, very talented pilots to do that. ...

When a commercial airplane gets that high, it gets very, very close to getting into what you refer to as a speed high-speed stall.  And a high-speed stall can be very, very violent on a commercial-type aircraft and you never want to get into that situation.  I just can't imagine an amateur even being able to come close to performing a maneuver of that nature. »

Video : « American 77 Final Maneuver »:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DzR-q0ijbV0
 
Commander Ralph Kolstad, U.S. Navy (ret) – Retired commercial airline captain with 27 years experience.  Aircraft flown: Boeing 727, 757 and 767...

« At the Pentagon, the pilot of the Boeing 757 did quite a feat of flying.  I have 6,000 hours of flight time in Boeing 757’s and 767’s and could not have flown it the way the flight path was described. »

Capt. Russ Wittenberg, U.S. Air Force – Retired commercial pilot.  Flew for Pan Am and United Airlines for 35 years.  Aircraft flown: Boeing 707, 720, 727, 737, 747, 757, 767...

Article 7/17/05:  "The government story they handed us about 9/11 is total B.S. plain and simple." … Wittenberg convincingly argued there was absolutely no possibility that Flight 77 could have "descended 7,000 feet in two minutes, all the while performing a steep 280 degree banked turn before crashing into the Pentagon's first floor wall without touching the lawn."… 

"For a guy to just jump into the cockpit and fly like an ace is impossible - there is not one chance in a thousand," said Wittenberg, recalling that when he made the jump from Boeing 727's to the highly sophisticated computerized characteristics of the 737's through 767's it took him considerable time to feel comfortable flying."

« Audio Interview 9/16/04: Regarding Flight 77, which allegedly hit the Pentagon.  "The airplane could not have flown at those speeds which they said it did without going into what they call a high speed stall.  The airplane won’t go that fast if you start pulling those high G maneuvers at those bank angles. … To expect this alleged airplane to run these maneuvers with a total amateur at the controls is simply ludicrous.. »

The Washington Post September 10, 2002

http://s3.amazonaws.com/911timeline/2002/wpost091002b.html

Quote: « After the attacks, for example, aviation experts concluded that the final maneuvers of American Airlines Flight 77 -- a tight turn followed by a steep, accurate descent into the Pentagon -- was the work of "a great talent »

Markus Kirschneck, from the pilots-association "Cockpit" « "The Pentagon-Maneuver was one of the most difficult maneuvers you could do with a passengers-jet at all."

http://s1.zetaboards.com/LooseChangeForums/topic/53603/1/

Ralph W. Omholt – Commercial airline pilot.  Aircraft flown: Boeing 727, 737, 747, 757, 767...

http://home.comcast.net/~skydrifter/exp.htm

Quote: « At the 9-11 Pentagon, we are supposed to believe that a 757, traveling at 300 Knots dove over a batch of construction equipment, immediately adjacent to the Pentagon wall, then leveled out; and did a totally perfect strike at the convenient “Least-Risk Point.” Thereafter, it morphed its way through three rings of the Pentagon, turning left and right through the linking hallways, leaving a handful of aircraft pieces which defy accountability.  All that, without damaging or burning the Pentagon lawn!  All that by a pilot known to be an idiot at the controls of a small plane. It's more than IMPOSSIBLE: it's absurd! »

« One pilot correctly claims that hitting the building, itself, would be easy.No doubt about it; it's a huge building. But no pilot with any degree of dignity will claim to be able to hit such a spot as the Pentagon base – under any conditions – in a 757 doing 300 Knots. As to the clearly alleged amateur pilots: IMPOSSIBLE! »

(Note: The speed of the final maneuver of flight 77 was supposedly 530 miles per hour, ie 460.55 Knots per hour)

« Add the aerodynamic issue of "Ground Effect." A high-speed wing would create a compression layer between the wing and the ground. The wing could NOT descend into that "Ground Effect" region, without the aircraft being in a pronounced dive - which is an impossibility - relative to the "official" story. Such a dive would have left a distinctive seismic impression (below); and a crater. »

See, 13 minutes after the start of this video, a simulated flight of a "Boeing 747" at sea level (in English) :

http://www.dailymotion.com/video/xasydx_11-septembre-12-questions-aux-defen_news

How often do we have to go over this?

Consider this:

"The maneuver at the Pentagon was just a tight spiral coming down out of 7,000 feet. And a commercial aircraft, while they can in fact structurally somewhat handle that maneuver, they are very, very, very difficult. And it would take considerable training. In other words, commercial aircraft are designed for a particular purpose and that is for comfort and for passengers and it's not for military maneuvers. And while they are structurally capable of doing them, it takes some very, very talented pilots to do that. ...

When a commercial airplane gets that high, it gets very, very close to getting into what you refer to as a speed high-speed stall. And a high-speed stall can be very, very violent on a commercial-type aircraft and you never want to get into that situation. I just can't imagine an amateur even being able to come close to performing a maneuver of that nature. »

What proof is there for these statements? If you study the FDR file you will see (1) that the turn was not tight, (2) there was no danger of a high speed stall as the g-force was never high.

Now you might say that the FDR file has been faked. Faked like the damage to the poles perhaps, faked like the damage to the front of the Pentagon, faked like the damage inside the Pentagon, faked like the smoke cloud that rose above the Pentagon, faked like the sound of impact, faked like the debris inside and outsie the Pentagon, faked like the corpses. What an amazingly complicated plan, and how likely to go wrong.

Isn't it simpler to just say that the plane hit the Pentagon, and you are not sure how? You are sure Hanjour couldn't do it but there is no proof he was on board.

Like I said

Arguments from authority are meaningless when we Pentagon researchers can easily show those 'authorities' to be either crackpots or uninformed. They cease to be authorities of any kind. Wittenberg, Omholt, Kolstad, I shudder to think these quacks ever flew passengers around and were thus responsible for their lives.

About that "simulated flight" of a 747 at sea level... you have to be joking me. I encourage everybody here to do exactly what tit2 says and watch that "simulation", if you want a good laugh. Your "747 simulation" implies a 747 would be impossible to crash, just as long as you fly fast enough. This is a revolution in aviation safety! The truth is, of course, that the simulation you proffer is an embarrassing, amateurish flop, if only for the cringe-inducing computerized voice-over.

Mark Roberts, although I loathe the guy, used to have a good video of various airplanes, including a 757, almost kissing the earth while doing flybys at high speeds. The video disappeared. You can do your own research. The ground effect argument against AA 77 crashing into the Pentagon is a ridiculous myth.

Low-Flyers

Caution: horrible music

http://www.military.com/video/aircraft/jet-fighters/extremely-low-flying-jets/664919847001/

Here are some low-flyers. Many of them are military style aircraft.

There is one shot of a large plane (transport) being flown quite low.

No telling on the speeds though.

The ground effect argument

About “Ground effect (aircraft)” See:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ground_effect_%28aircraft%29

In this video a Boeing 757 performs a high speed pass :

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6bFh2NeD32Y

The plane is moving fast but not probably at a speed of 530 miles per hour and it does not approach close enough the ground to hit a building like the Pentagon, at its first floor whose height was only 14 feet 1 inch according « The Pentagon building performance report ». This requires that the engines of the aircraft are just a few feet off the ground at the time of impact. According to the pilot, Ralph W. Omholt : “Look to the evidence provided by elementary geometry. From the bottom of the 757 engines to the mid-line of the wing spar is right at ten feet. Add eight feet for the fence / cable-spool height & you have a wing impact at 18 feet - absolute MINIMUM! That assumes a one-inch clearance of the fence and/or cable spools. Any such impact would be on the second floor - IF there had been a 757!”

According to « The Pentagon building performance report » :

http://fire.nist.gov/bfrlpubs/build03/PDF/b03017.pdf

“A Pentagon security camera located near the northwest corner of the building recorded the aircraft as it approached the building. Five photographs (figures 3.3 through 3.7), taken approximately one second apart, show the approaching aircraft and the ensuing fireball associated with the initial impact.The first photograph (figure 3.3) captured an image of the aircraft when it was approximately 320 ft (approximately 0.42 second) from impact with the west wall of the Pentagon.Two photographs (figures 3.3 and 3.7), when compared, seem to show that the top of the fuselage of the aircraft was no more than approximately 20 ft above the ground when the first photograph of this series was taken.”

It is this image:

http://killtown.911review.org/images/flight77/video/pbpr_fig3pt3.jpg

I am not saying that for a Boeing 757 it is impossible to travel just at a distance of only 20 feet from the ground and at a speed of 780 feet per second. But at such speed so near the ground, the ground effect on the aircraft is very important (The Wingspan of a Boeing 757-200 is 124 ft 10 in (38.05 m) :

http://www.boeing.com/commercial/757family/pf/pf_200tech.html

Despite this it still needs to lose altitude to hit the first floor of the pentagon. When the Commercial airline pilot, Ralph W. Omholt, says it's impossible “without the aircraft being in a pronounced dive - which is an impossibility - relative to the "official" story. Such a dive would have left a distinctive seismic impression (below); and a crater. », he did not wrong in my opinion. No crater at the crash site of the pentagon :

http://i906.photobucket.com/albums/ac269/amadan2/columns/pentfacadelookingout.jpg

Thanks

That 757 video was the one I'm looking for and it shows how a 757 is able to fly close to the ground at high speeds. (In Mark Roberts' compilation, you see many different commercial aircraft doing low altitude flybys, some even lower) Neither you nor I know the exact velocity of the 757 in the video, so please don't make any claims such as "it must be slower than ... it must be faster than..." It should be measured, if possible at all. As for the ground effect, I don't understand your argument. In fact, I don't even see an argument. This discussion isn't new either, this dead horse has been flogged over and over on 911blogger. Like I said multiple times now, I don't accept Omholt as an authority. Quoting him is meaningless, he is often in error and falls prey to "intuitive physics" just like any other.

This is an assumption -----> "Such a dive would have left a distinctive seismic impression (below); and a crater."

And a nonsensical assumption at that: although you and Omholt may think you know collision dynamics, you probably don't and 'intuitive physics' creates unrealistic expectations.

Also, you ought to read Frank Legge's FDR study: it doesn't show a ground effect capable of creating an "uncrashable" aircraft and it more accurately describes both the height and the pitch of the plane. I wouldn't describe that pitch as a "pronounced dive" at all. (Frank Legge describes it as "hard to distinguish from horizontal") The FDR wasn't incorporated in the PBPR for those final moments because the commercial FDR decoder couldn't decode the last frames due to overly strict error checking. Warren Stutt and Frank Legge were able to analyze those final moments. There is no need to speculate ... just read the paper.

1) I know that Frank Legge's

1) I know that Frank Legge's FDR study is contested by the association “pilotsfor911truth” that is not expressed on this forum and I can not speak for this association.

2) An example of a ground effect was given by the test of flight simulator of a Boeing 747 in this video (13 minutes after his beginning)

http://www.dailymotion.com/video/xasydx_11-septembre-12-questions-aux-defen_news

At a speed of 320 knots at sea level, the instruments in the cockpit direct the aircraft towards the ground, but the aircraft refuses to obey the instruments and takes altitude instead of losing it.

3) In this video, indeed, the Boeing 757 approaches the ground at high speed, but at a distance of several tens of feet above the ground.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6bFh2NeD32Y

Ye honorable pentagon plane crash skeptics

tit2 said..."1) I know that Frank Legge's FDR study is contested by the association “pilotsfor911truth” that is not expressed on this forum and I can not speak for this association."

"pilotsfortruth" suppress and censor the fly under that happened on 9-12. If they adopted the fly under that happened on 9-12 as opposed to the fly over that happened on 9-11 would you support the fly under theory? (which doesn't seem to be a theory, but scientifically proven fact through independent investigation, research, and evidence)

Smoking gun evidence destroying the "official story"......

http://media.nowpublic.net/images//c2/2/c2271f023c0983e7de27f01d0fdc1254.jpg

I applaud your efforts at trying to keep "9-11 truth" credible by refusing to admit that passenger planes crashed into buildings on 9-11 despite all the physical evidence (planted by the evil perps) and witnesses (who are "in on it") and common sense (which is over rated)

Jimd3100Stein CON

Enough

(1) Pilots for 9/11 Truth is an organization of crackpots, incompetent quacks and liars.
(2) Your "simulator" is a joke. I'm embarrassed to even have to point that out.
(3) Your ground effect theory is nonsense. Ground effect is not a magical wand that forces a minimum height limit on aircraft.

I'm not going over this again. Read Frank's paper.

Please read this

http://www.aerospaceweb.org/question/conspiracy/q0274.shtml

In order to bury this "ground effect" = no plane BS once and for all.

P.S. After you're done reading it, please ask yourself if the P4T associates you proudly cited were actually worthy of your trust, and the trust of others.

And more thing

I request that "Pentagon crash skeptics" start providing evidence for THEIR theory for a change. You have lost all entitlements to have us running around answering the same questions, all those weak "challenges" that are supposed to "prove" a plane couldn't have hit the Pentagon.

This silly cat and mouse game needs to stop. If you are stubbornly ignorant enough to believe a missile hit the Pentagon, or a truck bomb exploded, or a skywarrior hit the Pentagon, or that an plane crash was faked using an actual airplane as cover, skipping the Pentagon and subsequently hiding in the secret bat cave behind the Pentagon, then go ahead; but you and you alone carry the burden of proof. Let there be no misunderstanding about that. So start proving your case. I can't wait to see the quote mined, distorted witnesses and the complete lack of any direct physical evidence for either explosives or quixotic (effectively impossible) physical evidence fakery.

This whole clownish merry-go-round has done incalculable damage to this cause.

Regarding ground effect

For quite some time the ground effect "argument" made me doubt whether a large Boeing aircraft could fly low enough at high speed to have approached and struck the Pentagon at the height indicated by the damage observed and according to the official account provided.

Over the years I have talked to about twenty pilots (active and retired) who have flown Boeing "heavies" ( 747, 757 and some 767) and I always asked them about ground effect. They all told me that ground effect would be problematical and, due to my own confirmation bias, I understood that to mean that it would make it difficult to impossible to fly one of these "heavies" that low at high speed.

After about six months of having non-pilots tell me that the ground effect was not an issue, I decided to go back to some of these pilots (I have worked for several commercial pilots over the years and others I just run into fairly often) and ask them very specifically if ground effect would have made the low, high speed approach impossible. Every one of these pilots then patiently explained what they had originally meant (and what I guess I didn't really want to hear the first time, due to my own bias), they said that while ground effect presents certain challenges it certainly would not prevent a plane from flying that close to the ground at the speeds reported. This forced me to conclude that I could not use ground effect as a physical fact which would automatically preclude AA77 or a similar large Boeing ( 757, 767) from striking the Pentagon at the height reported. Thus, I revised my understanding of the events at the Pentagon.

That said, every one of these pilots still feels that "everything that went on in the air that day makes no sense". Many will not say anything more than that (most are former military and pretty conservative, some even fans of Bush...), but a few have noted many of the same things we discuss and wonder about (i.e. lack of NORAD response, manually flying into buildings at speed, taking over cockpits, no hijack codes being sent, etc.).

I wish I could be as certain about what happened at the Pentagon as some appear to be, but I can wait for a real investigation and have made peace with not knowing precisely what took place there (for now). I have to admit that I still have not read every bit that has been written about the Pentagon, nor every critique of everything that has been written. Oh, to have the luxury of having that much time!

For me, the fact that anything took place there at all is extremely telling. Thus, I have never felt the burning need to know exactly what happened, especially when most of the critical evidence is controlled by one of the primary suspects. I do want to know, and the American people deserve to know, but I can wait for a complete, thorough and transparent investigation before deciding that I know exactly what happened, as is the case for everything that took place that day (and everything that led up to that day, as well).

I know that 9/11 was a false flag operation, but exactly what kind of false flag, and exactly who did what when and why, still needs to be determined.

The truth shall set us free, and we all need to be very aware of how our own confirmation bias can skew our understanding of the truth.

Love is the only way forward, and love provides the patience and fortitude to find our way to the truth, whatever it may be.

A Real Investigation

LeftWright said..."I wish I could be as certain about what happened at the Pentagon as some appear to be, but I can wait for a real investigation and have made peace with not knowing precisely what took place there (for now). I have to admit that I still have not read every bit that has been written about the Pentagon, nor every critique of everything that has been written. Oh, to have the luxury of having that much time!"

I agree. Until we get a new investigation, with new victims, new witnesses, new rescue crews, and new physical evidence, it's irresponsible to say with certainty what, if anything, hit the pentagon on 9/11-9/12. Healthy speculation and an "open mind" is required until a new investigation reveals what really happened on 9-11-9/12. As pointed out - one needs to read every bit that has been written about the pentagon, along with every critique that has been written, and in a short span of 10 years, most just don't have the luxury time needed, reinforcing the need for a new investigation to find out what really hit the pentagon if anything.

Jimd3100Stein CON

Shoestring

Thanks for a good article, an interesting read.

I am not convinced Hanjour could not have flown AA 77 into the Pentagon; particularly because I think the maneuvering of AA 77 has often been inappropriately described as incredibly skilled. Rather, I would describe the 757's movements as hazardous and erratic. At this stage, I would await positive evidence of an alternative: e.g. direct evidence for remote control or control by a different pilot. I am still open to the possibility though, and I see this issue as distinct from the question of whether a plane hit.

An important point to consider

And don't jump down my throat for supporting one side or the other. Like Henry Fonda in "12 Angry Men", I am not yet ready to vote.

See several 757 low pass videos on Youtube, such as this one.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S2E6EExjyQ4&NR=1

This particular one is about 50 feet off the ground to the bottom of the engine.

These low pass videos are vastly different from AA77 because:

1. These planes, if traveling over 400MPH, are heavy military versions, not commercial passenger aircraft.
2. These planes are negotiating a landing strip. The terrain at the Pentagon is a bowl.
2. These planes are not diving over buildings, crossing roadways, trees, highway signs, avoiding a cell tower and recovering quickly to strike five, 35 foot tall light poles, a chain link fence and large trailer housing a generator.

Somebody find me a video of a commercial 757 striking just two light poles, one for each wing, then a generator on the right wing and keep going into the first floor of a building without touching the lawn.

Maybe I will be able to make up my mind.

Well

I could try to meet these "challenges" again, point at the flaws and distortions (that 757 is not military for starters, and Hani flew erratically and really hit a lot of stuff on the way in) but I won't this time. It's endless.

How about you show me a video of a missile hitting the Pentagon? Or a video of a plane flying over the Pentagon?

I might be convinced, who knows.

P.S.: http://911blogger.com/news/2011-01-16/david-chandler-talks-about-his-new-dvd-911-analysis-and-rationalizes-pentagon-debate...

^^^
Lots of evidence

P.P.S.: I have difficulty reconciling your stated position in an earlier comment with your stated position here, although I recognize that piloting skills are a different matter from the plane-hit-or-not question. (Which is crystal clear to me now and has been for a while, after some initial ignorance about the Pentagon crash which jimd3100 tried to correct but I was unwilling to accept in my position of agnosticism)

Quote: "I could try to meet

Quote: "I could try to meet these "challenges" again, point at the flaws and distortions (that 757 is not military for starters, and Hani flew erratically and really hit a lot of stuff on the way in) but I won't this time. It's endless."

We do agree on a very important point, namely that the Pentagon is in a bowl.

Thank you for the link to the David Chandler thread, where I found your statement:

http://911blogger.com/news/2011-01-16/david-chandler-talks-about-his-new-dvd-911-analysis-and-rationalizes-pentagon-debate...

"The Pentagon resides in the bottom of a 'bowl', landscape-wise."

I am simply trying to share my personal on-site observations of the physical conditions that a commercial aircraft must contend with if the AA77 story is going to be believable. For me, the bottom of the bowl issue is one very big obstacle to overcome.

The other one is the speed and air density problem. Commercial aircraft are not designed for low altitude, high speed maneuvering. The two are incompatible.

So far the tally is eleven to one, I realize. But I am willing to give my undivided attention to this extremely important decision. Just like 12 Angry Men.

The bottom-of-bowl distraction

Kawika,

The plane did not fly along the bottom of a bowl so the shape of the bottom is not relevant. There is a range of flight paths, all realistically achieveable, which could result in impact with the Pentagon at the position and angle observed. See them set out here:
http://www.journalof911studies.com/volume/2009/WhatHitPentagonDrLeggeAug.pdf

We now have the FDR file properly decoded, which shows where the plane actually flew.
http://www.journalof911studies.com/volume/2010/Calibration%20of%20altimeter_92.pdf

It did not fly the easiest course, but it did not have to as there was a substantial safety margin in the topography. As predicted in the first of the above papers, the plane descended more steeply in the region of the Navy Annex than a straight line from the VDOT tower to the first pole hit. It commenced its pull-up in good time to avoid excessive g-force.

Now you may say the file has been tampered with. As the path of the plane, virtually straight, as confirmed by the testimony of all witnesses, including those who thought the plane passed north of the Citgo service station, matches all the very many witnesses to impact, what is the evidence for tampering?

Regarding the very high speed, the Vg diagram would certainly say that the plane was flying outside the legal range at impact. But what is this legal range? It is the range for which the plane has been tested and found to handle normally. It is not the range beyond which the plane has been shown to fly abnormally or break up. As far as I have been able to determine, nobody has found proof that the plane would break up or be uncontrollable at the speed flown in those very few last seconds. Apparently it was controllable and did not break up, as so many witnesses confirm.

Perhaps you are not aware that all the witnesses either made no mention of angle of bank on approach or said it was slight. A slight bank is proof of an almost straight path. It was therefore impossible for the plane to deviate round the service station, as that would have required a bank of at least 77 degrees. This is proof that the witnesses to a north path must have been mistaken. If you accept the path was straight, or nearly so, all evidence falls into place. There is no need for the overfly hypothesis, no need for missiles or explosives. Why not accept the commonsense view that the plane hit the Pentagon? You should find it more comfortable if you think about it.

No deviation

I am confining my study to the terrain and the observable damages. I am not bringing the FDR data into this study. I am not discounting what the witnesses reported.

For the purposes of this study, I will agree that AA77 did not have to follow the profile of the bowl. I have to rely on your earlier study of the topography and the heights of the poles. I have not verified either of these.

What I find odd, is the lack of thoroughness when reporting the damages along the straight flight path. See this quote and link:

“There are now several theories about how the Pentagon was damaged. One is the official
description: hijacked AA flight 77 approached at a low angle and high speed, struck light
poles, then struck the Pentagon close to ground level.”

http://www.journalof911studies.com/volume/2009/WhatHitPentagonDrLeggeAug.pdf

See page PDF page 2

This is a simplification of a complex event. There were five light poles knocked down. There was a chain link construction fence with barbed wire extensions on the top and there was a multi-ton, trailer-mounted diesel generator that was impacted. These are critical to the understanding of the observed damages and the relative lack of debris outside the Pentagon wall.

The question in my mind remains: What can take out five poles, a fence and a generator and still maintain flight along an almost straight trajectory? Can a commercial airliner do all of this?

The fence and generator is mentioned only one time in 20 pages, on PDF page 11. Interestingly it’s in the [CIT] “Over-fly Theory” section, though these details are not theory but observable facts. Further, it should be noted that the fence extended all the way to the northern extremes of the wall damages so the fence comes into play for both wings, both engines and the fuselage, while the right wing and perhaps the right engine are responsible for the fence/generator damages.

If you study the photographic record, you'll see that the fence was laid down over the cars that were parked outside the fence, meaning the fence was blown away from the wall, when it should have been dragged inside the building.

The sequence of wing to object impact is as follows, right, left, right, left, left wings hit five poles. Then the right wing or engine hits a chain link fence, several fence poles and the trailer/generator. The plane continues on its straight path, into the fence with both engines, hits the recently “hardened” wall at an angle, then continues to bore another 310 feet in a straight line into the building.

Those are extraordinary, amazing feats for a commercial plane. Too many for me to comprehend. This is why I don’t think AA77 hit the Pentagon.

You are correct, there is no proof that AA77 didn’t hit it. But all the observed damages point to the likelihood that it could not.

And that is the best we can do, until some proof emerges. The arguments can go on forever under conditions of no proof. I’m working every day to dig that proof up.

100+ tons of aircraft, flying at 500 mph

is not going to deflect much as it passes through relatively minor obstacles.

Hope that helps.

"Study"

"I am confining my study to the terrain and the observable damages."

You have quite possibly deliberately withheld many aspects of the physical damage, to present a one-sided case.

"I am not bringing the FDR data into this study."

That's your problem, isn't it.

"I am not discounting what the witnesses reported."

Yes you are. They saw the plane hit. You are additionally ignoring the reports from first responders indicating plane wreckage and plane passengers inside the building. There is no charitable excuse for this.

"For the purposes of this study, I will agree that AA77 did not have to follow the profile of the bowl."

You will have to agree to that whether or not you consider the study. Anything else would be deception.

"I have not verified either of these."

Okay... Get going and publish your paper.

"What I find odd, is the lack of thoroughness when reporting the damages along the straight flight path."

The paper was about the FDR, and more specifically, the absurd claim that the FDR "proved" that the plane was too high to hit the building. The paper wasn't about an exhaustive study of the collision dynamics & resulting physical evidence. So what is odd here, is your misrepresentation of the paper.

"This is a simplification of a complex event.

It would only be a true simplification if Frank claimed this was all there was to it. He didn't. If you demand a full description every time, one would never be able to say: "a plane crashed into the Pentagon" without you protesting that it was simplification. One would have to go over every puny little detail constantly, to satisfy people looking for something to complain about. In fact, your subsequent "clarification" is a simplification too.

"There were five light poles knocked down. There was a chain link construction fence with barbed wire extensions on the top and there was a multi-ton, trailer-mounted diesel generator that was impacted."

Really? We never knew. You've skipped a few things too. But let's not get into that right now.

"These are critical to the understanding of the observed damages and the relative lack of debris outside the Pentagon wall."

No, what is critical is the severe deficiencies in human understanding. Who decides how much debris ought to be outside the Pentagon façade after a AA 77's impact? Where did you get the idea that there was a 'lack of debris' anyway? Pulverized debris, less visible in post-impact photographs, is debris too. Pick it up and throw it in a dumpster, it will weigh just as much if you collect it all. Study the witness testimony. People were stepping on pieces of plane all over.

"The question in my mind remains: What can take out five poles, a fence and a generator and still maintain flight along an almost straight trajectory? Can a commercial airliner do all of this?"

Yes. Do you understand the design of the light poles that were hit? If the answer is yes, then why are you omitting this information in your one-sided plea?

"The fence and generator is mentioned only one time in 20 pages, on PDF page 11."

Again, the paper was about the FDR, and more specifically, the absurd claim that the FDR "proved" that the plane was too high to hit the building. The paper wasn't about an exhaustive study of the collision dynamics & resulting physical evidence.

The paper has something unique to offer: extra information about AA 77's last moments previously unavailable due to rigid data frame error checking by decoder software.

"Interestingly it’s in the [CIT] “Over-fly Theory” section, though these details are not theory but observable facts."

Much ado about nothing. The generator harshly disproves CIT's flyover malarkey. I know, because I personally debunked one of their physical evidence fakery fantasies wrt the generator a while back.

"Further, it should be noted that the fence extended all the way to the northern extremes of the wall damages so the fence comes into play for both wings, both engines and the fuselage (...)"

Yes it appears so. So where is the part in the center? Did it evaporate?

"(...) while the right wing and perhaps the right engine are responsible for the fence/generator damages."

Perhaps doesn't even enter into the equation with the ridiculous amount of evidence confirming a plane crashing into the Pentagon.

"If you study the photographic record, you'll see that the fence was laid down over the cars that were parked outside the fence, meaning the fence was blown away from the wall, when it should have been dragged inside the building."

I'm pleased that you've studied the photographic record. In that same photographic record, you'll observe that the outer, northern portion of the fence is still standing. Selective blast? The windows behind the northern portion of the fence, behind the cars, are not all blown out, and notably only the curtain wall is damaged. Did the bomb blast walk outside first, then turn around, "echo" against the façade and back into the fence again? The right rear tire of the sports car, closest to the Pentagon, is relatively okay, compared to the front. Hmmmm hmmm. Strange "bomb". There appear to be pieces of metal on both pieces of northern fence that have fallen away from the Pentagon. Could it be that the plane, approaching in an angle of approximately 40-50 degrees to normal, after smacking into the façade, caused debris to be reflected against the façade with various angles, including the angle of reflection, equal to the angle of incidence? The right rear end of the firetruck got hit by such debris too, as was the heliport control tower. Oh and Sean Boger in that tower saw the plane hit and heard it crumpling through the building, While firefighter Alan Wallace saw the plane coming straight for him and ducked under one of those cars but had to crawl out and run away again immediately because of the heat, but let's ignore this for "convenience".

You know, there was a tree in front of column 14. Did the bomb suck it into the building? What pulled the generator towards the Pentagon? Caused the cut from the flap track on top? Pushed the fence around the generator towards the Pentagon? Actually, firefighters moved that fence around while trying to extinguish the fire in the generator, leading other assorted flyover geeks to think that these were "blown away" from the Pentagon as well. Wrong. More lies.

"The sequence of wing to object impact is as follows, right, left, right, left, left wings hit five poles. Then the right wing or engine hits a chain link fence, several fence poles and the trailer/generator. The plane continues on its straight path, into the fence with both engines, hits the recently “hardened” wall at an angle, then continues to bore another 310 feet in a straight line into the building."

Yup, about 300 feet. Mostly the fuselage, which is a long heavy cylinder, not all of the wings. Yes, some official reports may get that wrong.

"Those are extraordinary, amazing feats for a commercial plane. Too many for me to comprehend. This is why I don’t think AA77 hit the Pentagon."

I believe your judgment is poor, because you don't understand the first thing about collision dynamics. Your misconception of what happened at the Pentagon is caused by deep-seeded confirmation bias, selective blindness, willful ignorance and "intuitive physics". There is hardly any precedent for planes deliberately crashed into buildings. The physical outcome depends on many complex interrelated variables. So where are the tail section, the seats, the luggage at the WTC? Not even an FDR. No plane must have crashed there. Yes, there are hundreds of witnesses but let's talk about that another time. Uhm.. where was I?

"You are correct, there is no proof that AA77 didn’t hit it. But all the observed damages point to the likelihood that it could not."

There is no merit to your argument whatsoever. A plane hit the Pentagon.

"And that is the best we can do, until some proof emerges. The arguments can go on forever under conditions of no proof. I’m working every day to dig that proof up."

There is no nice way to say this: you're obstructing progress and the only thing you're digging up is old debunked no plane canards.

You've managed to ignore all these witnesses, simply because it doesn't jive with flyover, or missile theory, or truck bomb theory, or A-10 skywarrior theory, or whatever the theory-du-jour is. I suspect you may revert to a position of phoney "agnosticism", "only asking questions", but I don't buy that BS anymore, sorry.

It's been 10 years and a plane hit the Pentagon. The only ones who haven't figured it out yet are in the 9/11 "Truth" Movement.

Where's that video of a flyover? A missile? I'm highly suspicious there's no video proving these theories.

What is puzzling?

Kawika,

You seem puzzled by the fact that the plane hit many objects on the way to the Pentagon, yet managed to continue on course. The light poles were mere straws in the wind for this 100 ton craft. So was the fence. The first and only thing of substance hit was the generator, and even that was a glancing blow over the top.

The first light pole was hit only a little more than one second before impact with the Pentagon. How much deflection from course would you expect to occur, in this brief time, given the plane weighed 100 tons and was travelling at 560 mph? Then there was the generator, hit by the right wing. Perhaps 1/10th of a second remained after impact with the generator. Are you suggesting the plane should have been deflected, in this time, over the top of the Pentagon?

If so I could do some sums for you regarding the acceleration required.

Thanks, Frank

for reinforcing my point with a bit more substance.

Hopefully, that will help him understand what one should expect to see under those conditions.

This situation is very reminiscent of those that misread the plane impacts on the Twin Towers. 100 tons, flying at speed, can do some impressive, but predictable things, yes?

Thanks again for all your hard work, perseverance and patience.

Cheers!

A New Investigation

kawika said..."Somebody find me a video of a commercial 757 striking just two light poles, one for each wing, then a generator on the right wing and keep going into the first floor of a building without touching the lawn."

Only with a new REAL investigation can a video described as above possibly surface. Until then, we should call the witnesses mass murder liars and the physical evidence as all fake, in order to maintain our credibility as truth seekers. With the new investigation into what REALLY happened at the pentagon though, it is essential that the rescue crews who cleaned up the mess inside, and discovered the black boxes, must NOT be part of the new investigation because they support the official story of finding the bodies of passengers, the luggage, and plane parts, and so on, which only PROVES these people had to be "in on it". Finding new rescue crews and brand new witnesses will be essential to any new real investigation, or a new investigation would be pointless.

kawika said..."Maybe I will be able to make up my mind."

I agree. There is no point in "jumping to conclusions" as to what happened at the pentagon. It was only 10 years ago so it's wise not to "rush to judgement". I commend your insistence to get the facts straight. We should not believe any of the people involved including the victims families who got duped with fake phone calls. We need a new investigation with new witnesses, new victims, and new clean up crews, only then will I be able to make up my mind and only if they agree with my belief that no plane flew into the pentagon but rather under it. Until then, the evidence is much to contradictory to make any kind of decision on what happened at the pentagon on 9-12/9-11. However, it does seem that a carefully crafted military deception took place involving a skillfully maneuvered fly under, I am open to other possibilities as long as they don't involve a passenger jet hitting the pentagon, because that would be supporting the official story, and make me and my fly under look preposterously stupid.

Jimd3100Stein CON

10 years

Has this ...sigh... discussion gone on that long already? What a waste. I really put Pentagon "no plane crash" theories on the same level as WTC No Plane Theory. The same type of thinking conspires to achieve the exact same embarrassment.

Who ever bothered to collect witness testimony from the outset? Many saw the plane approach, and some of them actually witnessed the plane touch the façade. Then there was the horrific, traumatic cleanup, which also produced a fair amount of stomach-turning back story. We all went straight to documentaries, which distorted, omitted, skewed and misinformed, leading millions astray.

The Pentagon debate and the no plane/no plane crash advocacy had everybody running in the proverbial treadmill, distracted, confused, and disoriented. When the smoke clears and the boring reality of the real 9/11 debate, without far-fetched, juicy, titillating movie screen conspiracy plots emerges, will some lose interest and move on to UFOs, 2012 and crop circles? Because I'll tell you Jim, while I would like to say I could do without that crowd, I'd rather have them spend time on 9/11 as if they took it seriously, but I fear the real research just ain't entertaining enough for the popcorn truthers.

According to « The Pentagon

According to « The Pentagon building performance report » :

http://fire.nist.gov/bfrlpubs/build03/PDF/b03017.pdf

“A Pentagon security camera located near the northwest corner of the building recorded the aircraft as it approached the building. Five photographs (figures 3.3 through 3.7), taken approximately one second apart, show the approaching aircraft and the ensuing fireball associated with the initial impact.The first photograph (figure 3.3) captured an image of the aircraft when it was approximately 320 ft (approximately 0.42 second) from impact with the west wall of the Pentagon.Two photographs (figures 3.3 and 3.7), when compared, seem to show that the top of the fuselage of the aircraft was no more than approximately 20 ft above the ground when the first photograph of this series was taken.”

I perhaps made an error in the analysis of these words in a previous message. If it is really the « top » of the fuselage that is at a distance of 20-feet of the ground, the aircraft can not lose altitude because its engines must be almost at ground level. The dimensions of a Boeing 757 – 200 :

http://www.abovetopsecret.com/forum/thread79655/pg1

Nila Sagadevan said «  If a 757 were placed on the ground on its engine nacelles (I.e., gear retracted as in flight profile), its nose would be almost 20 above the ground! »

http://www.mindfully.org/Reform/2006/911-Flying-Without-Training13jun06.htm

This remark is made ​​also in the famous Pentagon Strike (The Boeing was flying at 530 MPH, 2 feet above the ground!)

http://www.dailymotion.com/video/x19ta5_pentagon-strike_shortfilms

In this case the plane would have been in a horizontal approach of the pentagon, not in an approach in diving, but it would be really amazing!

We have better information

from the FDR.

I strongly suggest (again) that you read the Frank Legge/Warren Stutt paper. The last recorded radio height is 4 feet. Add 6 feet offset correction (landing requires radio height to indicate 0, at which time the nose of the plane is pitched up by that amount) plus another 14 feet to account for the height from the (retracted) landing gear and wheels to the wing: 24 feet AGL. (It's unclear to me where exactly the plane is at this time, but according to Legge this matches the height at which the plane would clip pole 3, final pitch is recorded as -1.2 degrees, which is near horizontal, as I said earlier)

ETA:

Footnote 22:
[22]
Assumptions used in calculation: Elevation at the base of pole 1 is estimated to be 59 feet AMSL using the embankment height each side of Columbia Pike. The impact point on pole 1 appears to be about 31 feet above ground level. Ground level at pole 3 is 46 feet and at the Pentagon 34 feet We assume the impact with the generator simply rotates the plane about its C of G and has negligible vertical effect. The impact point on the wings would be about 39 ft from the centerline and 14 feet above ground when parked. The lowest part of the motors is 2 ft above ground when parked. While the sketch in the ASCE Pentagon Building Performance Report indicates the plane was banked left about 7 degrees, presumably based on wing tip damage, the FDR data file shows a bank of zero. It is therefore appropriate to find the sensitivity of the calculation to the bank at impact. Varying the assumed bank from 3 to 7 degrees alters the calculated impact point on pole 3 over the range 25.2 to 25.7 feet; not significantly different, given the uncertainty in various estimates. Assuming a left bank of 5 degrees and a ground clearance of 0.5ft, the fuselage would be centred about 15 feet above ground on impact with the Pentagon. The distance from pole 1 to pole 3 is 335 feet. From pole 3 to the Pentagon is 692 feet. These distances were obtained using Google Earth, care being taken to select the archived map from September 2001, which shows the impact damage. The elevations are from USGS.

Location of last height recording

SnowCrash,

The position of last height recorded in the FDR, four feet, was not worked out by considering the pole damage, but by noting the number of words of data between it and impact. See paper. It did match the damage at pole three, providing confirmation of the accuracy of the reading.

Frank

Thanks. Was this mentioned in the paper? Where? I guess I'll have to look over it again.

What I actually thought was that the distance to façade position for last height recording was worked out by dividing time until impact by the speed. Which is more or less what you are saying, considering the FDR data recording interval per word, correct?

Excellent evidence of Military deception

tit2 said....."This remark is made ​​also in the famous Pentagon Strike (The Boeing was flying at 530 MPH, 2 feet above the ground!)"

This is further proof of the Fly Under and reinforces the need for a new Investigation with new witnesses, new victims, and new clean up crews, only after the Fly Under has been proven in court can we say with certainty what happened at the pentagon on 9/12.

Jimd3100Stein CON