“Truth? You can't handle the truth!”

[I, Cosh]

Aircraft crashing into tall buildings is not unprecedented - even in New York: en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/B-25_Empire_State_Building_crash

I'm no engineer, but a 767 is at least three times the length and ten times the weight of a B25, while a plane on landing approach is both decelerating and carrying proportionately less fuel than one just starting a transcontinental flight. To expect the outcome of both events to be the same is a bit like being confused at why an out of control lorry crashing into your house would do more damage than a Renault Clio.

[TordelBack]

Mmmm. If you visit the Empire State the impressive thing about the wartime Mitchell crash is how small the scale of the impact was relative to the building - they were even able to fight the resulting fire, on the 80-somethingth floor, in 1945. The fuel-laden WTC 767 impacts, even on the larger towers, seemed far larger. I'd maintain the scale of the later impact on structures of that size and design was unprecedented. My point is that there is so much to understand about the astonishing physical event that we can actually see happening on the footage that adding 'hidden' factors is akin to saying 'a wizard did it'.

The solution to a tricky jigsaw puzzle isn't gabbing a scissors and some blank cardboard and drawing your own pieces.

But to reiterate, after the past decade I would put precisely no criminal act beyond the amoral arrogance of the US military-political-intelligence 'community'.I'd now be prepared to accept that they could have considered false flag attacks on their own people - I just don't think they'd have the ambition or competence to pull off something so complex so successfully.

[Frank]

This is a great demonstration of the thermal dynamics of tall structures, but I think the opening 20 seconds of voiceover are particularly relevant to the 9/11 industry. Fred Dibnah (1938-2004*)


* coincidence?

[The Legendary Shark]

Nor is the Empire State Building of the same construction or strength as the Twin Towers. I cited the other two incidents as a presidents, not  carbon-copy events. Sorry if I didn't make that clear.
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[ZenArcade]

Sorry Shark but I would argue that the Twin Towers were considered to be structurally light buildings in that the New York urban governance loosened their building laws for aa time in the early 1970's to facilitate the construction of super-tall buildings (including WTT 1 & 2). The Empire State Building constructed 40 years before is a more rugged steel cage construction. Z

[TordelBack]

I cited the other two incidents as a presidents...

Looks like even autocorrect is fighting the conspiracy!

My point about precedents is that I don't thing the ESB crash is a precedent, in terms of the scale of the energies and type of building structures involved. We're talking about the only such event on record, two fully-laend African Swallows, errr, 767s  crashing into adjacent lightweight-design tallest-buildings-in-the-world. And we're saying that the results don't match expectations - the results are the results, it's up to people to work out how A+B=C, not add in an invisible D so the answer matches our (obviously false) preonceptions.

[TordelBack]

Apologies for torrent of typos, I have a new cheapo keyboard, and my fingers aren't doing my bidding.

[ZenArcade]

A unique event indeed. There is a huge amount of what is in my opinion, rational analysis on a: what the components involved in the attack were and b: what the outcome was.
As Prof Cardigan says the motivations can seem amorphus but Occams razor as applied by me, sees an attack by a nascent organisation Al Queda funded by very wealthy backers in the Gulf States making a huge PR gambit and suceeding  in a gruesome manner. We see more recent low tech versions of this today in the areas of Syria and Iraq currently controlled by the Islamic State, i.e. beheadings of western or allied prisoners and indeed indigenous civilians as well.
The aim is two pronged: firstly to instill a sense of horror and hopelessness into the minds of western populations and regional administrations and secondly to act as a rallying call to like minded individuals throughout the region and more worringly (given recent events in Europe) further afield.
The aim of terror is unfortunately terror. Z

[JayzusB.Christ]

Me, I don't believe the 9/11 attacks were anything other than an Al Qaeda attack.

However, I do remember one little anomaly on the day - that plane that was headed for the White House.  I distinctly recall the news reporting a US fighter plane being sent to deal with it, but the next day we were told that the brave passengers overpowered the terrorists ('Let's roll').  A tad suspicious, I thought.

And moving on to the bit where I cite better-informed sources than a fantastist comics fan:  My friend Paddy, known to RTE News watchers as Western Correspondent Pat McGrath, agreed completely and put together a reel of soundbites from the two days in question; which really did seem to suggest that the fighter plane blipped out of media existence overnight.

Now, maybe the passengers did bring it down, but as I said, I have a fairly vivid memory of the US Air Force having a go first.

EDIT: And as the good Tord... er, Prof Cardigan points out, this is the US government we're talking about, and they are capable of some really, really nasty stuff.  Nixon, forr example, would have had an anti-Nixon journalist murdered if Watergate hadn't blown him out of the water.  http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2010/09/nixon-jack-anderson-mark-feldstein

[IndigoPrime]

According to a report last year, 'unarmed' F-16s were on the way. The passengers managed to deal with things before the planes could get there.

[ZenArcade]

Were there any internal recordings recovered from the plane in question? Z

[TordelBack]

This is a great demonstration of the thermal dynamics of tall structures, but I think the opening 20 seconds of voiceover are particularly relevant to the 9/11 industry. Fred Dibnah (1938-2004*)


* coincidence?

Thanks for that Sauchie.  Just watched that with my mid-morning cuppa.  How great a man was Fred Dibna, a true giant of his age.

[JayzusB.Christ]

Were there any internal recordings recovered from the plane in question? Z

I don't know.  I thought the 'Let's Roll' thing was recorded somewhere, but I could be wrong.  Also, why would they send an unarmed plane?  The end result of 'ramming' it would be the same as that of shooting it down.

[ZenArcade]

I seem to remember a huge sense of everyone being caught on the hop, as i suppose you do in an unprecedented attack. There was an amazing paucity of military aircraft available, simply because strategic planners discounted the possibility of a  conventional attack on the continental USA . Z

[The Legendary Shark]

The lack of aircraft/organisation was largely due to operation Vigilant Guardian (I think), a training exercise sending lots of fighters off to Canada and all over the place chasing phantoms. This exercise played the scenario of multiple-plane hi-jackings, which also caused great confusion.
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The alleged terrorists, none of whom had any experience as pilots in these types of aircraft, could not have picked a better day.
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The precedents (yes, my spilling socks sometimes) show that buildings are constructed to withstand aircraft impacts. The Twin Towers were designed to withstand impacts from the biggest civilian aircraft of the day - the Jumbo Jet. The outer structure was constructed to a honeycomb design specifically because such an arrangement is very good at load-bearing even with great holes punched in it.
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Take a look at the Shanksville crash-site, where the 'Wasington-bound' aircraft came down. It looks like no other crash site - no bodies, no large sections of fuselage (cockpit, tail section, etc.), not even any seats or luggage.
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