Monday, February 19, 2007

They're still in that hole

One of the more intriguing little oddities from 9/11 is the paucity of obvious wreckage and the rather modest impact crater left by Flight 93 when it hit the ground in Shanksville, Pennsylvania.

Photographs from the day show a smoking, 20ft wide hole in a field and a few people in day-glo safety suits standing around, scratching their nuts and not doing very much at all...




At the time I just assumed that the photographs weren't from the main impact site which had been presumably roped off from photographers for security reasons.

But, nope, that was the main impact site.

Boeing 757/767 airliners displayed a fascinating range of impact characteristics that day. Sometimes they caused enough damage to destroy some of the the largest buildings in the world. Sometimes they slipped into teeny weeny little holes never to be seen again.

Last night's BBC2's documentary on 9/11 made mention of Flight 93 and included a bizarre little chunk of testimony/opinion/comment from someone identified as Barry Lichty, the mayor of Indian Lake, located near to where Flight 93 crashed/ was shot down/ was teleported into another dimension...




Interviewer: Do you think it will go on being talked about and speculated over for years, decades to come?

Lichty: Oh I think that there are people that will never change their mind on it. Yes. Because there's no way to really truly prove it because 92 or 93 percent of the remains of the aircraft and the people are still in that hole


WTF? He's kidding right?

.

12 comments:

Wolfie said...

My take on the crash site is that it shows exactly what I would expect to see had a fuel-laden commercial airliner been flown directly downwards into the ground at full speed, possibly in excess of 500mph.

Its never been done before so I would expect it to be unusual.

Heavy solid material would be driven deep into the soft topsoil due to the momentum, highly kinetic aviation fuel would incinerate what was left mostly with light particles such as paper and fabrics being scattered over a modest area. The surrounding trees have been scorched in a circle surrounding the impact zone as expected.

What is very surprising is that the mayor is saying that the impact zone has never been thoroughly excavated.

After all its a crime scene.

Stef said...

well, quite

alternatively, he could, of course, be talking arse

whatever, it was an odd comment to include in the documentary

Stef said...

and BTW I wouldn't claim that aircraft can't bury themselves into the ground when they hit it. Enthusiasts are still digging out the carcasses of, admittedly smaller, WW2 era aircraft 60 years on.

Having said that I am curious to know where the wreckage of Flight 93 actually is now. You'd like think that a straightforward question like that would be relatively uncontentious

Wolfie said...

I would imagine a crate in a large warehouse somewhere, rather like the end of "Raiders of the Lost Ark".

Stef said...

Indeed, that's what I assumed - until Sunday night

ziz said...

So this aircraft is flying at 500 mph upside down having descended from 35,000 feet apparently under control and the "fuel laden" aircraft causes no fire and photgraphs cea;ry show dry (this is end of summer) scrub unburnt.

cf Ukrainian Tupolev that crashed last year in a swampy area, all bodies recovered in body bags, engines, tail plane etc lying on surface after exploding after crashing from 35,000 feet ?

Bollocks. Nothing has been recovered from this magic hole because there is nothing to recover...

For all the details, pics go here
http://tinyurl.com/ywqz7k

No doubt we will be in for more of the straw man school of conspiracy de-bunking bollocks again next week from the BBC special FX department and the Dame Pauline Jones Fan Club over Dr David Kelly.

Stef said...

You would have thought that someone carrying out a 'fair and impartial' investigation into the facts of 9/11 conspiracy theories would have thought what the Mayor had to say was a little bit strange and acted, or at least commented, on it

No chance

Tony said...

Nothing to see here, move along, move along.

No, actually, there is really nothing to see here. This could be the crash site of a Boeing, this could be something else. While I have to agree this kind of crash has never been done (and therefore we don't know what it would look like), there were enough instances of "controlled flight into terrain" (CFIT) and never have I seen photos of airplane "vanishing in a large hole in the ground". There were *always* large pieces of debries which could be identfied as a commercial airplane even by the average couch potato. So, I just don't know. This whole affair with that hole proves nothing as to pro or contra the offical story.

In related news of airplanes vanishing into buildings: There once was the case of a El Al Boeing 747 on route to Israel crashing on take-off into a concrete building in Amsterdam a couple of years ago. As far as I recall, there were *no* *large* pieces left of that airplane, nothing which could be easily identified by an everyman as a 747. (As a side note: That plane carried radioactive nuclear material)

Tony said...

And just when I thought that the Guardian was newspaper that was onto something:

9/11 fantasists pose a mortal danger to popular oppositional campaigns

Well, at least they feature Terry Jones in that same section.

Stef said...

Why do I bother with these morons? Because they are destroying the movements some of us have spent a long time trying to build. Those of us who believe that the crucial global issues - climate change, the Iraq war, nuclear proliferation, inequality - are insufficiently debated in parliament or congress, that corporate power stands too heavily on democracy, that war criminals, cheats and liars are not being held to account, have invested our efforts in movements outside the mainstream political process. These, we are now discovering, are peculiarly susceptible to this epidemic of gibberish.

The reason why so many people are hung up on 9/11 is because it is the cornerstone of a myth that is driving overseas wars and the erosion of civil liberties here in the UK and elsewhere.

If I had to think of one event that would fundamentally change our world for the good it would be for everyone to discover that 9/11 was, in some way, a lie.

9/11 aside...

The last time I looked -

- the Iraq War happened
- the rate of globalization has accelerated
- a lot of people have been suckered into believing climate change bullshit that will be used to beat us all over the head
- inequality, certainly in the UK, has increased

So much for all these precious movements we're supposed to worry about.

He really doesn't get it. Just another privileged fucker, given a national voice by other privileged fucker friends, throwing his toys out of his pram because not everyone wants to march to his tune.

After reading what he has to say and thinking through his points, it is my considered opinion that George Monbiot can go fuck himself

Stef said...

re. holes proving/ not proving anything

absolutely

there simply isn't enough information to be sure either way

which is my problem with the entire business

If the BBC show had acknowledged the lack of evidence in some areas I would be a lot less critical of it. But it didn't.

and when the BBC puts a guy on TV who says that a major crime scene has not been properly investigated I get a little, just a little, pissed off that the guys who made the show didn't seek a little more clarification on that point

Stef said...

PS

from Monbiot's bio in wikipedia...

Monbiot’s fifth book, The Age of Consent: A Manifesto for a New World Order, was published in 2003. The book is an attempt to set out a positive manifesto for change for the global justice movement. Monbiot critiques anarchism and Marxism, arguing that any possible solution to the world’s inequalities must be rooted in a democratic system. The four main changes to global governance which Monbiot argues for are a democratically elected world parliament which would pass resolutions on international issues; a democratised United Nations General Assembly to replace the unelected UN Security Council; an International Clearing Union which would automatically discharge trade deficits and prevent the accumulation of debt; and a Fair Trade Organisation which would regulate world trade in a way that protects the economies of poorer countries.

= c^nt QED