This is one reason I view the Pentagon attack as the self-injury to make the criminal look like a victim. I think we have three strikes in a "one strike and you're out" situation:
1: The alleged hijackers attempted the attack in this mode (with a high risk of mission failure if they hit the ground instead) instead of diving into the building (possibly at an angle, 30 degrees perhaps) -- the straightforward attack.
2: They succeeded, despite being poor pilots, without even touching the ground.
3: They hit the Pentagon from the horizontal, right where it would do by far the least damage -- a spot under construction, nearly empty.
One question they didn't consider is whether a real terrorist would attack this way.
John:
*deep breath*
Not a pilot, are you?
Read Here.
http://www.aerospaceweb.org/question/conspiracy/q0274.shtml
The map at the end of the article seems to be oriented roughly "north top south bottom."
(See this map.
http://maps.google.com/maps?oi=map&q=Washington,+DC The far left face of the Pentagon, the Western Face, is the one that got hit. Zoom in if you need to to match that map with the one below. On the Google map, NOrth is top of screen, South is bottoms of screen)
A note, regarding Hanjour: "Even so, those few who did make statements regarding pilot ability indicate that Hanjour flew in a somewhat erratic manner as one would expect"
For openers, your last misunderstanding first.
Four
Real Terrorist teams did just that, plan and attack (oops, one team was foiled in PA) buildings with airliners. What is the "would a real terrorist" line, Mister True Scotsman? A suicide attack with an airplane is sort of like a huge, flying car bomb, conceptually. Real terrorists use car bombs all the time. These guys thought big.
Point 1: Pentagon is a short squat building, unlike WTC which is a tall building. As you note, that makes it a tricky target. This "inexperienced-in-757's-pilot" needed to attack the building. He could only be sure to hit it by maintaining control of the aircraft. That means he'd want to fly at an airspeed he could control. Above a certain airspeed, you can start to lose control authority due to aerodynamic loading, not to mention that as airspeed approaches Mach 1 near sea level (DC is less than 1000' above sea level) in an airliner, the plane will likely start to crack up.
So, from the get to, the 60-90 degree vertical dive is a non starter. His odds of aiming it perfectly were very small in that profile, since he was going to fly by hand, and any correction in close woud be amplified by too much airspeed and lift on the wings . . . if the plane didn't crack up before impact.
I'd suggest he'd need a 10-20 degree nose down attitude (10-20 degree dive angle in other words) to ensure his ability to control (up to the last few seconds) the trajectory of the plane, to ensure he didn't over shoot, and ensure he didn't lose flight control effectiveness by exceeding design velocity.
Had he landed in the middle of the building, an empty space, he'd probably have done less damaage. He had to pick a target, so he targeted the West face of the building.
He performed a very
straightforward attack, I don't understand your assertion that he did not. If he had gone too fast, even at a low angle of approach, any last minute correction that was an over correction would have caused a ballooning effect, common in a flare maneuver, or in any abrupt raising of the nose with a lot of airspeed on, and thus an overshoot/miss of the Pentagon.
2. The reason he hit his target, in my professional opinion as a pilot, is that he didn't overload his lightweight pilot ass -- unlike what you are doing with your reasoning power in this conversation. He chose a profile that allowed him to control the aircraft
within his talent level right up to impact. He succeeded.
3. What makes you think they knew which wing was under construction? I'd have to look at a chart, but Rosslyn, near the Pentagon to the north (see the map) has a lot of high rises. Dumb idea to approach from that side and risk a miss. I'd suggest to you that they chose an approach path (well ahead of time) that allowed the pilot to have the least possible trouble with obstacles, and to approach from the West (where 77 was going to come from in the first place) which is the side of the Potomac River away from Washington DC. (Pentagon is in Virginia)
Summary: He was a greenhorn in the 757, so he built a plan that maximized his odds for mission accomplishment.
DR
