In this case, he hit the point of least damage, and he appear to aim for that and no other. (I may have been wrong about the nature of his circular dive. If he pulled out at 2000 feet above the ground, that's not nearly as bad.)
I am trying to arrive at how you chose what "the point of least damage" is, since any of the five faces of the Pentagon, had he hit them, would not have collapsed completely, and many of the people working in them would have not been killed. We already went over why you don't aim at the empty spaces between wings, or the center empty space. We agreed on why it would be a less than optimal attack mode, and I Showed you that, once again
MAXIMUM POTENTIAL DAMAGE FOR THE WEAPON, one 757 at X knots, is a direct hit on the target transferring 100% of the Kinetic Energy of the weapon to the Building. The attack made a direct hit, minus a fraction for one wingtip, apparently, and was thus a successful Max Damage Attack. QED
Your assertion that all of them in any other wing would have died? Without merit, see the fraction of E Ring actually damaged. The Army Colonel I mentioned some pages ago: he was in the E ring at the time of impact, about 50 meters from the hole. He got knocked off of his feet, his ears were ringing, the lights went out, but he and everyone else in the room got out alive.
Using the dimensions that Gumboot provided of the size of the Pentagon, compare in cross section the size and shape of the 757 used to attack it. Apply that cross section to any of the five faces of the E Ring. You end up with about the same sized hole, and the same amount of penetration. The other 4/5 fifths of the building take no damage at all. The Rings (A-E) of the sector attacked takes similar damage, but a great deal of each ring is still standing, just as a great deal of E Ring - A Ring of the attacked face were still standing . . . albeit in worse shape.
gumboot said:
No, just a majority of the victims there were construction workers.
John said:
You may have noticed that your numbers don't add up to over 100. Many more victims were killed. The most I will concede is that the construction was nearly complete and they began moving people in. Fewer than 1000 persons were there, as oppose to many thousands in the other wings.
Your "thousands" jab assumes an order of magnitude greater casualty count for an identical Kinetic Energy strike on a structurally sound, and similar piece of the building, one not under construction.
Around 200 died in the Pentagon. How does an identical weapon kill 10 times more? 5 times more in a strike on a buidling made of the same basic structure?
For greater effects on a robust building, you have to use more weapons. They had one weapon. Any other Face of the E Ring may have produced double casualties, or triple, with a few more people in the office, so we are around 400 - 600, but the building still absorbs the impact, and most people get out via the fire escape/evac routes. The weapon in question did not destroy the entire E Ring, it damaged part of it, and part of D (and C IIRC).
Thousands? Your strawman based on what valid casualty estimation model? Nothing besides your keyboard.
Have you seen any of the quotes about how poor a pilot he was? If he had one, he shouldn't have. In any case, the document I "linked" to above shows how awful a time he had keeping the aircraft level when it was off autopilot. I think we can rule out his flying horizontally 30 feet above the ground without hitting the ground.
You and gumboot are both off base here.
As I noted before, at 7nm per minute, from the diagram of the flight path, he has to descend about 2000 feet, at roughly 3000-4000 feet per minute at full power. That is a dive angle you can plot, certainly below the 20 degrees I suspected. The x coordinate is 4 nm = 8000 yards = 24,000 feet. The y coordinate is 2000 feet. What is the glide slope? (The slope of that line is about 4.8 degrees.)
To hit the middle of the face is a simple problem in relative motion for a pilot. You put your target on a spot in the windscreen and fly, keeping the target in the spot the whole time. If it moves at all, you correct for it with the control column, since the evidence showed he went to max power around the time he began the final straight in dive/glide.
Constant bearing decreasing range.
As you get closer, gumboot points out the problem of how being slightly off from farther out would require larger corrections closer in. The FDC showed HE WAS FLYING BY HAND, and thus making fine corrections all the way in to impact. The witnesses saw some wing movement, which makes sense for final corrections into his impact point.
Please, watch any film of Navy jets flying into an aircraft carrier, or any film of an aircraft landing in a cross wind. You will see small to medium adjustments in the wings as the pilot fine tunes his line up. He is solving a visual relative motion problem to arrive at a point.
The official story doesn't explain many of the facts.
Actually, it explains most of them pretty well, and this latest release from NTSB improves on the fidelity. Why it was classified for so long is, however, disturbing. I am guessing someone in the FAA was afraid of losing their job.
Did I say anywhere that that anyone in our government was knowingly dying for the conspiracy?
Since I am not sure which consipracy theory you are alluding to, I am guessing you feel the Al Q hijackers were hired by someone in government? Do I have that right?
In any case, does it really insult those in Iraq to point out that they are participating in aggressive war, a fantasy of conquest of our neocon elite who never had to go to war themselves? Does it insult those who fought and sacrificed their lives on the German side of WWII to suggest that they were part of aggressive war, invading and conquering other countries? The answer either has to be no or yes for both of them.
Well, having served in that war, I for one am insulted by a great deal of what the ignoramuses in the general public, in the media, and on the internet say about the war's causes, its effects, its conduct, its motivations, and its current state of play. Most of you have it wrong, and I wish this War as a Spectator Sport habit would be excised, but it won't be any time soon.
I am no fan of neocons like Paul Wolfowitz, Douglas Feith, Richard Perle, etc. The former left his post when the going got tough and got a golden parachute job with World Bank. The other two were architets of a war plan that ignored sound military advice, see General Shinseki's fate. (If you haven't read
Cobra II, please do.) See also General Zinni's original plan, when he was CENTCOM.
Like the typical Washington suit and tie operators, they left the men in uniform holding the bag of sh** they excreted into Iraq policy forumlation. At least Sec Def Rumsfeld is man enough to try to polish the turd, and not run away and leave some one else to clean up his mess. Agree with him or not, like his methods or not, like his style or not, he's still on the job trying to get it right.
That the policy makers took a high risk approach, and tried to solve a political problem by the sword and get away with changing a country without all the tools in place to do so is
not a new habit. Their reach exceeded their grasp, and the price they were willing to pay, and the price they were willing to ask the voters to pay, was set low enough to be swallowable at the outset. That price has increased one hundred fold since March of 2003. The original estimates on Iraq reconstruction to US Treasury was 3 billion dollars. Can you believe that? I didn't at the time, bu then, I didn't think Paul Bremmer would be an idiot and try to disenfranchise the Sunni of Central Iraq.
So, sure, I am displeased at how the military is being used to further political ends, even though that is why the military exists: as a political tool of blunt force. The question is, are those ends that of a party, a sub set of a party, or the ends of generally taking care of America's long term strategic health?
Another topic, that.
For the record, I was also pissed at Clinton's "do it on the cheap" nonsense in Somalia, where he asked 1/3 the forces (without armor that was requested) to do what 20,000+ Marines had done at the outset. I am disgusted with what was done to Serbia. I never considered the problems of Albania to be a major US security interest, yet on their behalf, Serbia was bombed by NATO for 71 days. All this while Europe was making all kinds of noise in about the EU being a rival to the US, an EU unable to put 18 European nations against Serbia without American help. ('Scuse me while I sneer.)
I personally do not consider setting up a Muslim client state, Bosnia, on the soil of Europe to be a strategically valid action, but NATO for some idiotic, collective political reason did so.
The Iraq War was not the only options available in dealing with Saddam. It was presented to the public as an "either or" dilemna, and VP Cheney's "if there is a one in a hundred chance he can do it, we can't sit by and wait" was IMO a significant mind set influencing that decision.
One of the talking points was "either we take out Saddam, or he will get WMD's into the hands of terrorists." That was a false dilemma, since other options, to include doing more work on sanctions, more inspections, more air or Tomahawk strikes on WMD sites (like Clinton did) or a whole lot of other multilateral action, were options.
None of them were simple, all required patience and hard work, and few of them included letting loose the world's most lethal military on anyone.
I wrote earlier: "1) Al Qaeda paralyzed our air security."
You obviously have not read the NEAD's paper. The "denial" phase, response to an unexpected occurrence, is CLEARLY in evidence to anyone with a clue about interagency communication, air traffic control, Command and Control, and decision making. So was the lag time between FAA contact to NEADS and the scramble decision.
The Fighters WERE NOT ON ALERT 5!
They were at best on alert 15 (I have a hunch that they were actually on Alert 30, but I have yet to find anyone who can or will confirm that) which means the launch standard is "in the air by 15 minutes from now" once the launch order is given. You will note from that article that the USAF Major on watch launched the fighters even without a perfect dose of Situational Awareness, which put the fighters a bit sooner than they might have been, given the confusion factor between ATC and the Military, and the apparent hesitancy in Air C2.
Quick question: What does the 9/11 Commission's Report say in Chapter 1 about the possibility of fighter jets from Andrews Air Force Base intercepting the approaching AA 77? (Not to mention any one of the bases near the path the plane flew.)
Andrews is not an ACC FIghter base. That would be Langley, in Hampton VA. GET YOUR HANDS ON SOME FACTS.
Have you forgotten all the complaints about the Bush Administration not producing documents, or stalling before producing them? When was the 9/11 Commission formed? How much money were they allocated? How do those answers compare with the Commissions investigating the two space shuttle disasters.
Yes, people afraid to look bad and have their shortcomings linked to 9-11. I saw similar ass covering in the Navy for most of my career. Governent officials use ass covering as a survival tool. Think Vince Foster.
Does anyone recall Dick Cheney threatening certain senators with treason accusation in calling for investigation of 9/11?
I don't, but if he did, he was not only wrong but politically obtuse. It also means he knew some stuff went wrong on his watch, and he, among others, would be holding the bag. Comes with the badge.
Thanks for conceding that the government's reluctance was unacceptable. But it was only understandable if 9/11 was an inside job. The Bush Administration was operating in coverup mode ever since 9/11 occured.
The 9-11 comission was, from its outset, a political animal. It was not a scientific forensic investigation, nor an accident investigation, nor a police investigation, nor an FBI investigation.
1) Evidence that the 9/11 Commission was formed at most a month after 9/11, and initially allocated at least one hundred million dollars.
I am trying to understand why it was important to apportion blame immediately. What was necessary immediately was to do roughly what was done:
Try to improve security, go after AQ and their host the Taliban.
That said, a lot of people were mad at how America had been caught flatfooted and successfully attacked, so a lot of folks wanted answers. (Oh Admiral Stark, how you must be watching this from the grave and shaking your head.) None of those answers would undo the damage done, however. Thirty years of pacifist hijacking policy, and unwillingness to fund an Air Marshall program, came home to roost.
2) Evidence that NORAD got fighter jets up near the hijacked planes within twenty minutes of the first sign of something going wrong for each plane.
Read the NEAD's report. Then let's revisit this. Oh, and as a former career service member, thanks so very much for your zero defects expectations from your military. Since you won't pay to fund zero defects (no one has that kind of money) I really appreciate your hypocrisy for what it is: the braying of an ass.
DR
