Flight 77 maneuver

[DGM]

Jango has been yanking chains for quite some time now and this might be another example.

I don't get the whole argument. Hanjour was a mediocre pilot, FDR and radar show this.

Nothing he did on 9/11 shows he was really anything but. There are thousands of Middle Eastern men and woman that flight train in the US. We have very good schools.

 

[jaydeehess]

Exactly. According to the F.B.I.'s detailed, yet strangely censored chronology of events, Hani began his training in the early 1990's. I don't recall the 9/11 Commission talking about or mentioning this aspect of Hani's background.



I don't anticipate an substantive reply to that conundrum.

What is the conundrum? That Hanjour might have begun flight training before the WTC bombing?

A lot of Arabs learned to fly in the USA. Is it not possible that he was recruited by AQ after having already spent time in flight training? Is it not possible that AQ had other scenarios in mind for a flight trained hijacker before Bojinka, before the WTC bombing?

Beware the Texas Sharpshooter logic fallacy of assuming that the final use that Hanjour was put to, was always the plan for him from day one. You've apples this fallacy once already by mentioning that Hanjour had skill to fly 20 feet off the ground. You'll note that a lot of aircraft that crash do fly 20 feet off the ground at least for a short duration. Its not a skill if its not intended and in Hanjours case it was momentary on the way to a deliberate crash. We don't know if he was even aiming for the bottom floor of the Pentagon or, as one might surmise, the middle floor. The mid height floor would allow a margin of error of about 35 feet, for someone who simply wanted to hit the building. Being off by even 50 feet in height however, would still have accomplished much. Too low and heavy debris still bouces into the Pentagon, too high but still descending would have him hit the opposite section of the Pentagon from the courtyard side. If the later had happened we'd be arguing about how spectacular the flying ewas to be able to hit the less fortified wall on the courtyard side.

 

[GlennB]

I don't get the whole argument. Hanjour was a mediocre pilot, FDR and radar show this.

Nothing he did on 9/11 shows he was really anything but. There are thousands of Middle Eastern men and woman that flight train in the US. We have very good schools.

Yes. Plug into this that aiming a plane at a building is not so very difficult and his training was perfectly adequate for what he did.

But mainly I was pointing out the fault in Jango's argument about when Hanjour started flying lessons.

 

[jaydeehess]

I don't get the whole argument. Hanjour was a mediocre pilot, FDR and radar show this.

Nothing he did on 9/11 shows he was really anything but. There are thousands of Middle Eastern men and woman that flight train in the US. We have very good schools.

Once recruited the planners were pretty much stuck with him though. Sending him away creates a person who is disgruntled with both the organization and with himself. That's a loose cannon.
Even the fact that his instructors told him he was bad at it plays into this. He wanted to be a pilot, but moreover he wanted to be a martyr. By Allah then he was going to keep at it.

When I graduated from my electronics diploma course there was one fellow student who did not do so. He had been in the course, full time, for already twice the time period it normally takes. He would pass, barely, a couple of courses every year and was going to have to do at least two more semesters and pass every course, before he could graduate. He just did not ' get it'. Giving up was not an option, he was fixated on graduating, had invested too much time and money to quit. Did not seem to dawn on him that his grades and failure rate would have qualified him to be a sales guy at Radio Shack, which he could have been straight out of high school.

IMHO, Hanjour and the other pilots were not unlike this guy. Even though none of them were particularly good at flying they kept at it because there was a job, a purpose for even the incompetent abilities they would and could squire.

 

[beachnut]

... I don't recall the 9/11 Commission talking about or mentioning this aspect of Hani's background.
... ?

Yep, the 911 Commission report only mentions Hani 129 times.

And, a lot of the stuff is about his background. oops


Then the nonsense of connecting Hani with...

...
But working under the assumption that Hani was a part of the Bojinka plot, why keep that information secret? What implications does that reality create?

It creates a fantasy of Hani being in plot which did not use pilots. Oh, wait, maybe he was going to rent a Cessna to hit CIA headquarters, in a small plane... How did you fit Hani into the Bojinka plot?

 

[DGM]

Yes. Plug into this that aiming a plane at a building is not so very difficult and his training was perfectly adequate for what he did.

His descending turn was the easiest way to achieve this. He had no chance of a straight in approach. He may have been a crappy pilot but, he did understand you just can't dive to a spot on the ground without some for-thought.

If he tried to hit the Pentagon from where he started his turn (in a dive), he likely would have missed. He was a crappy pilot but, atleast he figured out he over shot his target.

 

[beachnut]

... What the hell were they investigating and how did they not stumble upon the hijackers, some of whom that lived openly, trained on U.S. military bases ... Failure of imagination and incompetency are usually the shoe-in responses to that line of questioning. It has not and does not fit.

How do you find the retracted news stories.

There is no shortage of imagination and BS in the post. There were zero hijackers trained on U.S. Military Bases. Why repeat lies you googled.

 

[Animal]

His descending turn was the easiest way to achieve this. He had no chance of a straight in approach. He may have been a crappy pilot but, he did understand you just can't dive to a spot on the ground without some for-thought.

If he tried to hit the Pentagon from where he started his turn (in a dive), he likely would have missed. He was a crappy pilot but, atleast he figured out he over shot his target.

I never understand the troofer argument for "diving" the plane. You would only have one shot at it, and you would do far less damage diving into the building.
The ground is one heck of a momentum stopper, unlike walls and doors. If the approach was missed on the path they did take, they can just swing around for another attempt.

Troofers really are DUMB.

 

[DGM]

I never understand the troofer argument for "diving" the plane. You would only have one shot at it, and you would do far less damage diving into the building.

Not to mention it's far more difficult. As the angle of attack (down pitch) increases so does your air speed. Higher air speed creates more lift increasing your speed in relation to the ground (not air speed). In order to maintain target you would need to increase pitch, eventually getting to the point of vertical. Low angle of attack is the best way to hit a ground target, flight 101.

 

[erwinl]

Not to mention it's far more difficult. As the angle of attack (down pitch) increases so does your air speed. Higher air speed creates more lift increasing your speed in relation to the ground (not air speed). In order to maintain target you would need to increase pitch, eventually getting to the point of vertical. Low angle of attack is the best way to hit a ground target, flight 101.

Indeed.

That's the reason why so many kamikazes missed their targets by just passing over it and crashing in the sea on the other side of the ship.
There's a reason why divebombers were equiped with very good airbrakes.

 

[H'ethetheth]

Not to mention it's far more difficult. As the angle of attack (down pitch) increases so does your air speed. Higher air speed creates more lift increasing your speed in relation to the ground (not air speed). In order to maintain target you would need to increase pitch, eventually getting to the point of vertical. Low angle of attack is the best way to hit a ground target, flight 101.

This is sort of right, but I need to niggle a bit, because there's a lot of errors in it.

First of all, angle of attack is not the same as down pitch. The angle of attack is the angle between the chord line of the wing and the incoming airflow. The pitch angle is between the longitudinal axis of the plane and the horizontal. Increasing the angle of attack does increase your lift, but it means pulling back on the stick, and it does not increase your speed in relation to the ground.

What increasing speed does is indeed increase Lift for a given angle of attack, wich is why you need to decrease the angle of attack to maintain your flightpath angle while increasing speed, but that's not the main reason you need to push forward.
Longitudinally stable aircraft, which almost all civilian aircraft are, are designed so that the increased lift creates a pitching moment that wants to pitch up the aircraft and return it to a lower airspeed. So not only do you need to push forward to change your angle of attack, you need to keep pushing forward (or trim the aircraft) to keep flying straight at an increased airspeed. This also means that in an accelerating descent or dive, you need to push forward ever harder, which makes it difficult to do.

 

[jaydeehess]

This is sort of right, but I need to niggle a bit, because there's a lot of errors in it.

First of all, angle of attack is not the same as down pitch. The angle of attack is the angle between the chord line of the wing and the incoming airflow. The pitch angle is between the longitudinal axis of the plane and the horizontal. Increasing the angle of attack does increase your lift, but it means pulling back on the stick, and it does not increase your speed in relation to the ground.

What increasing speed does is indeed increase Lift for a given angle of attack, wich is why you need to decrease the angle of attack to maintain your flightpath angle while increasing speed, but that's not the main reason you need to push forward.
Longitudinally stable aircraft, which almost all civilian aircraft are, are designed so that the increased lift creates a pitching moment that wants to pitch up the aircraft and return it to a lower airspeed. So not only do you need to push forward to change your angle of attack, you need to keep pushing forward (or trim the aircraft) to keep flying straight at an increased airspeed. This also means that in an accelerating descent or dive, you need to push forward ever harder, which makes it difficult to do.

In the case of Hanjour's flight though, high speed is only achieved during the last few seconds.

 

[jaydeehess]

Indeed.

That's the reason why so many kamikazes missed their targets by just passing over it and crashing in the sea on the other side of the ship.
There's a reason why divebombers were equiped with very good airbrakes.

In this case it may well be that Hanjour overcompensated and pushed too far on the control. As I said the most obvious target would be mid height on the Pentagon wall, which he missed low by about 35 feet.

 

[H'ethetheth]

In the case of Hanjour's flight though, high speed is only achieved during the last few seconds.

I didn't want to make a point about the actual topic at hand. I just read that post and had to cringe a bit at the mangled half truths used to support his valid point.

 

[fess]

Why are we even discussing this topic again? More than ample proof has been given to prove who flew (poorly) the four aircraft used on 9/11.

Remote controlled 757/767's? That is a joke.

Jango, where in hell did you get the idea that any of the hijackers lived and trained on military bases? I haven't seen anything like that mentioned in any of the reports. Or, did that just come off the top of your head?

 

[Jango]

Why are we even discussing this topic again? More than ample proof has been given to prove who flew (poorly) the four aircraft used on 9/11.

Remote controlled 757/767's? That is a joke.

Jango, where in hell did you get the idea that any of the hijackers lived and trained on military bases? I haven't seen anything like that mentioned in any of the reports. Or, did that just come off the top of your head?

http://www.newsweek.com/alleged-hijackers-may-have-trained-us-bases-152495

 

[WilliamSeger]

http://www.newsweek.com/alleged-hijackers-may-have-trained-us-bases-152495

Here's an extensive investigation of those claims: http://www.911myths.com/index.php/Hijackers_trained_by_US_military?

 

[beachnut]

http://www.newsweek.com/alleged-hijackers-may-have-trained-us-bases-152495

Were you skeptical at all?

All your claims are based on bogus stories.? Did you suspect, were you skeptical they confused people with the same names? Skeptical? Looks like the victory dance against skeptics has backfired.

 

[JayUtah]

Someone please indulge my laziness in not hunting down the DFDR readouts. Did Hanjour increase power in his final approach? If he did, then do we need to factor in the natural pitch-up side effect of the Boeing airframes when power is increased sharply?

 

[jaydeehess]

Someone please indulge my laziness in not hunting down the DFDR readouts. Did Hanjour increase power in his final approach? If he did, then do we need to factor in the natural pitch-up side effect of the Boeing airframes when power is increased sharply?

Beachnut would know. However one has to factor in a possible LOSS of power to one engine when it ingested a street lamp while still a bit higher.
Just spit-balling but had that not occurred its possible that Hanjour would have impacted higher up or even overshot the outer wall with the sudden loss of power to one engine combating that pitch up. He was also slightly port wing low, suggesting he was compensating for asymmetric power (greater power on the port side tends to yaw right, he banks left to compensate)