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Was the Pentagon Struck by a
Boeing 757 on 9/11?

What We Learn from Examining
the Only Public Photographic Evidence

David L. Griscom

ImpactGlass research international
San Carlos, Sonora, Mexico

 

Version 3.0 --17 December 2009

Sorry, this is a file photograph, not
someone’s timely snapshot of the
attacking aircraft…

Here is what we are told
is the evidence that
it was a 757...

On 11 May 2006, Judicial Watch announced that, in response to their FOIA request, the Pentagon would re-release security camera photography of the 11 September 2001 attack on the Pentagon.

Note the wrong date and time.

These five “stills” were taken from the original release in March 2002

 

 

We will now deduce the location
of this security camera so we can
understand it’s field of view..

 

 

 

We shall now use trigonometry to try to infer

the type of aircraft that the security camera

captured along the blue-dashed line of sight.

“Official” scenario: The aircraft is a Boeing 757

arriving from the southwest at an angle of 52º

to the west face of the Pentagon (yellow

dashed line).

Present working hypothesis: The aircraft is an

F-16 jet fighter arriving by a circuitous route

(green dashed line).

Elev.

36’

Elev.

32’

Elev.

102’

Note: The terrain beneath the suggested F-16

route is less than 10 feet higher than the base

of the Pentagon where the impact occurred –

whereas the putative 757 would have had to

clear elevations about 120¢ higher at a range

of ¾ mile (8 seconds from impact at 350 mph

 

 

Official U.S. Govt. Released Security-Camera Frame of Unidentified Aircraft

About to Strike the West Face of the Pentagon on September 11, 2001

Official story: A 757

approaches from south

west at a 52º angle to

Pentagon. Thus it is

about 1.7 times farther

away than the other

silhouettes and makes

an angle of about 35º

with the line of sight.

Note plume of

white smoke of

uniform thickness

extending

toward the right!

Approx point of impact

Badge

Reader

A-3, length 75’

 

The size and orientation of the F-16 silhouette were adjusted to match its tail fin to the

one in the picture. The 757 and the height of the Pentagon (vertical red arrow) were

scaled according to their known dimensions, assuming all three lie in the same plane.

 

(The relevance of the A-3, here scaled in the same manner, will be discussed later.)

 

 

Official U.S. Govt. Released Security-Camera Frame of Unidentified Aircraft

About to Strike the West Face of the Pentagon on September 11, 2001

Approx point of impact

Here, the vertical white bar

represents the visual width

of the vertical stabilizer of

the F-16 silhouette which,

in turn, has been adjusted

to fit the fin appearing in

this security-camera frame.

19º

757

F-16

 

     
   

Official story: A 757

approaches from south

west at a 52º angle to

Pentagon. Thus, it is

about 1.7 times farther

away than the F-16

silhouette and makes

an angle of about 35º

with the line of sight.

 
   

If the 757’s

engines had been

smoking, the

contrails would

have vanished

rapidly astern.

 

The 757 is shown higher than the F-16 for ease of comparison. In the “official” story,

the only aircraft was a 757, and its fin is supposed to be the one that is seen in this

security camera frame.   Note, however, that the tail fin of the putative 757 seen from

this perspective is too tall, too narrow, and too vertical to match what the camera saw.

In this reconstruction, both aircraft have identical 8º nose down angles of attack

 
     

Now, about that smoke plume…

 

Note the almost seamless match between the unexplained white smoke in the

Pentagon 9/11 image and the exhaust plume of TV-guided Maverick air-toground

missile just launched by an F-16, scaled to match the fin in the picture.

The aircraft in this file photograph is clearly flying at a slight angle away from

the line of sight of the camera man. The F-16 silhouette with which it is

compared here was artificially foreshortened to correspond to an angle of

17º away from a perpendicular to the camera.

A 9/11 hypothesis:

An F-16 or other military

aircraft (others have argued

in favor of a twin-engined

A-3) flies at a constant

altitude of about 50 feet

– sufficient to clear

all obstacles…until

meeting the

second floor

of the

Pentagon.

 

 

 

Sometime between 1993 and Dec 2000,

I, David L. Griscom, was entering my office on

the top floor of Bldg. 216 of the Naval Research

Laboratory (blue circle), when I witnessed a

flight of 4 F-16 jet fighters flying northward at my

eye level (about 50 feet above the river) and

maybe no more than 100 yards distant. At the

time, I surmised that they were about to perform

a “fourth-man” fly-over of an aviator’s interment

at Arlington National Cemetery. But I had never

before, nor have I since, seen military jets flying

anywhere near so low in this airspace.

In light of 9/11, I can imagine the following

scenario: The “fourth man” was instructed to

break away from the formation and fly a path

similar to the one I diagrammed on the previous

slide, with an instrument pod filming the plane’s

ground track and synchronously recording its

GPS coordinates and vertical separation from

objects on the ground by means of a laser

altimeter. Such data could later have been

used to direct a drone aircraft with far-betterthan-

cruise-missile precision – since cruise

missiles are normally guided by digital virtualreality

maps based on remote sensing.

 

With the image of that flyby outside my office window burned into my “mind’s

eye” I’ve long searched for F-16 photos that might approximate this vision.

I’ve looked for side views, because that was the way I saw them, but all of

the many side views I found somehow didn’t look right.

Then I found this...

 

 

Of course, the planes I saw

weren’t coming at me, but this

picture reproduces well the intimacy

and my above wing-level vantage point.

For a split second I saw the pilot in the

cockpit as just clearly as you do here...

 

While I have modeled the impacting aircraft as an F-16,

others have argued that it may have been an A-3…

 

Apropos of These Video Frames…

By far the most common surveillance camera video standard still used in

the United States and Canada is that specified by the National Television

Systems Committee (NTSC). It is designed for recording on any VCR.

The NTSC video frame rate is 29.98 frames of video per second.

If the tail fin in the picture is assumed to be that of a 757 approaching at

500 mph from the southwest at an angle of 52º to the west wall, trigonometry

tells us that it still has about about 420’ to travel, and it is thus 0.57 seconds

from impact. At the NTSC rate, the 757 should thus be seen in 17 frames!

Are we to believe that Pentagon video technology is inferior to our VCRs?

Judicial Watch’s FOIA request was for “…all records pertaining to

September 11, 2001 camera recordings of the Pentagon attack,” but only two

Pentagon films were released (or re-released). Eighty-three other confiscated

films are still withheld because “they don’t show the impact.”

According to FBI Agent Maguire, the reason for not releasing rest of the

t a p e s is : “Out of the remaining thirteen (13) videotapes, which did show the

crash site, twelve (12) videotapes showed only the Pentagon after [emphasis

added] the impact of Flight 77. I determined that only one video tape showed

the impact of Flight 77 into the Pentagon on September 11, 2004.”

 

 

There Are Other Reasons to Doubt the “Official”

Explanation of the 9/11 Pentagon Attack

There were no Arabs on AA Flt 77 according to both the American Airlines

passenger list and the “official” Armed Forces Institute of Pathology autopsy

list obtained by FOIA request. Passenger photos showed no Arab-like traits.

If the Pentagon had been struck by a 757 as “officially” alleged, engineering

principles and prior crashes predict that the wings, and likely the tail, should

have been found outside.

The exterior damage to the Pentagon visible in myriad 9/11 photographs

is inconsistent with expectation for a 350-to-400-mph impact by a 757.

The jet engine parts found outside the Pentagon were too few and generally

too small add up to even one of the two huge Rolls Royce RB-211 engines that

propelled the aircraft “officially” supposed to have struck the P e n t a g o n on 9/11.

However, they were consistent with being wreckage from an F-16 …or an A-

3.

Eyewitnesses Reported Near Simultaneous Arrival of

Three Different Aircraft at the Pentagon

 

Several of eyewitnesses reported an American Airlines 757 flying toward

the Pentagon from vicinity of Springfield, Virginia.  Dozens more eye-witnesses reported this same 757 arriving at the Pentagon

 

At Least one witness saw a C-130 military transport following the 757 on

its way from Springfield. The C-130’s maximum s p e e d i s 3 5 0 m p h . Federal

authorities initially denied, but later admitted, its presence in this time frame.

Controller Danielle O’Brian noticed an unidentified plane southwest of Dulles

International Airport, moving at a very high rate of speed [500 mph]:

“The

speed, the maneuverability, the way that he turned, we all thought in the radar

room, all of us experienced air traffic controllers, that that was a military plane.”

 

Ken Ford was watching National Airport through binoculars from the 15th floor

of the State Department Annex just across the Potomac River from the Pentagon.

He saw what he took for a “two-engine turbo prop” flying upriver from National,

which circled back toward the Pentagon from the north and finally “hit the

building.”

 

 

USAToday.com Multimedia Editor, Joel Sucherman saw it close up: An

aircraft with American Airlines markings passed left to right across his field of

vision as he commuted to work. He described it as “… not a Lear jet, a

Gulfstream, [or] something like that. It was a bigger plane than that.”

According to All Eyewitnesses

Who Saw It Approach from the North,

It Was the Third (Commuter-Size) Aircraft

That Struck the Pentagon on 9/11

 

 

Steve Anderson, Director of Communications for USA Today, witnessed

the jet hit the Pentagon on September 11 from his office on the 19th floor of

the USA TODAY building in Arlington, VA, which commanded a view of

Arlington Cemetery, Crystal City, and the Pentagon from the north.

Anderson “heard jet engines pass [his] building.” Then moments later he

“watched in horror as the plane flew at treetop level, banked slightly to the left,

drug it's wing along the ground and slammed into the west wall of the Pentagon

exploding into a giant orange fireball.”

Steve Patterson, witnessed the same event looking northward from his

apartment in close-by Pentagon City, and it appeared to him that a “commuter

jet” swooped over Arlington National Cemetery and headed for the Pentagon "at

a frightening rate . . . just slicing into that building.“ He specifically mentioned

that the plane “appeared to hold about 8 to 12 people” and that it approached

the Pentagon “below treetop level.”

Given the foregoing credible witness descriptions, the attack aircraft was

clearly larger than an F-16 but matches well with the size of an A-3 Skywarrior.

 

IF It Was the Third Aircraft That Struck the Pentagon on

9/11, What Became of the American Airlines 757

Which Was Seen by So Many Witnesses?

Maybe the answer lies in Skarlet’s agonizing disconnect between what he

was supposed to have seen and what the thought he might have seen.

 

Skarlet, webmaster of punkprincess.com had these memories:

“As I came up along the Pentagon I saw helicopters. (...) I called my boss.”

"Something hit the Pentagon. It must have been a helicopter."

“A huge jet. Then it was gone.”

 

"Buildings don't eat planes. That plane, it just vanished. There should have

been parts on the ground. It should have rained parts on my car. The airplane

didn't crash. Where are the parts?"

“I want to know why there's this gap in my memory, this gap that makes

it seem as though the plane simply became invisible and banked up at

the very last minute…”

 

Possible solutions to Skarlet’s riddles:

• A high-wing aircraft like an A-3, seen directly from behind and flying parallel to

the ground might appear like a helicopter – at least for a split second...

• The DoD has been working for more than a decade on “cloaking” technologies

capable of making objects become nearly invisible at the flick of a switch.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9hussenzILM&feature=related  (History Channel  That's imposible: Invisibility Cloaks)

 

Existence of a Remotely-Controlled, Missile-Firing A-3

Is More Than a Hypothetical Possibility

“According to two civilian defense contractor employees working at commercial

corporate facilities at Fort Collins-Loveland Municipal Airport, in the months before

the September 11 attacks, U.S. Air Force defense contractors brought in A-3 Sky

Warrior aircraft under cover of darkness to be completely refitted and modified at

the small civilian airport in Colorado.” http://www.rumormillnews.com/cgi-bin/archive.cgi?noframes;read=73062

“The two witnesses say that separate military contractor teams – working

independently at different times – refitted Douglas A-3 Sky Warriors with updated

missiles, Raytheon's Global Hawk unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) remote control

systems, fire control systems, engines, transponders, and radio-radar-navigation

systems – a total makeover, seemingly for an operation more important than use

as a simple missile testing platform for defense contractor Hughes-Raytheon.”

“The witnesses were quite fearful about several recent ‘suicides, car wrecks –

mysterious deaths – directly related to the aviation experts’ working on the

systems that were installed on the A-3’s at Fort Collins-Loveland.”

“[Hughes-Raytheon’s] Hughes division manufactures the [air-to-ground

missiles]; and the Raytheon division maintains the last few A-3 Sky Warriors in

operation save 2-4 Air Force jets – while also manufacturing the Global Hawk

UAV remote control systems.

 

A Wild-Eyed “Conspiracy Theory”?

Well, first, it’s not really a theory. Things like the theory of general relativity

and quantum field theory only get to be called theories because they have been

so thoroughly proven that they can be reliably used to predict future phenomena.

What I have presented is a hypothesis. A hypothesis is a framework that

offers a tentative explanation for a set of facts without being contradicted by

a n y k n o w n f a c t s .

As new facts come to light, hypotheses may have to be discarded…or they may eventually solidify into theories.

In the present case, I’ve formulated a hypothesis based on (1) inspection of

all publicly released 9/11 photography of the Pentagon, (2) application of basic

trigonometry in fitting the silhouettes of various aircraft types to objects seen in

this photography, and (3) a selection of eyewitness reports by credible witnesses.

To be credible, a witness must describe what he/she saw in sufficient detail to be

useful …and demonstrate powers of observation, objectivity, and common sense.

The very best witnesses will occasionally distrust their own powers of observation.

 

Specifically, I hypothesize that the Pentagon was impacted on 9/11 solely by

a UAV-ized A-3 diving out of Arlington National Cemetery at treetop level.

It is undisputed that an American Airlines 757 (likely Flight 77) passed over the

Naval Annex at about 200 feet about 8 seconds before the impact, while a

C-130 at a few thousand feet was widely witnessed about 30 seconds later.

Who Would Have Been Likely Conspirators in this Hypothesis?

Big moneyed interests, especially those manipulating the financial markets

by depressing the price of gold. (Between $230M and $160B stored under WTC)

Big defense contractors!

Neo-cons in the administration who believed that “another Pearl Harbor” would

be necessary to get citizen support for their “Project for the New American

Century.”

Military officers and DoD civilians in sympathy with PNAC objectives.

Details and Corollaries

Damage to Pentagon must be limited and strictly controlled. 

757 too large!

Flight 77 must only seem to impact. It’s passengers must be co-conspirators.

Those who shut down NORAD for “exercises” on 9/11 must be co-conspirators.

FAA managers who destroyed tapes of air traffic controllers accounts of the

hijacked planes on 9/11 must be co-conspirators.

FBI agents who confiscated security camera tapes must be co-conspirators.

The crew of the C-130 – which could have synchronized the arrival times at

the Pentagon of Flight 77 and the A-3 UAV – must be co-conspirators

Epilogue:

If It Was a Conspiracy,

How Could It Have Been Pulled Off?

N.B. The preceding slides were developed before the release

of the NTSB reports on the jetliners allegedly hijacked on 9/11.

The author has subsequently developed an “all passengers survive”

hypothesis of the World Trade Center attacks by positing that the

actual Flights AA-11 and UA-175 landed at Air Force Bases

and were replaced by drone attackers

taking off from those bases.

D.L. Griscom

Addendum to Pentagon 9/11 PowerPoint v2.1

4/24/07

NTSB Ground Track of AA-77 on 9/11

 

Hypothesis No. 1:

On its return from Kentucky,

AA-77 is accompanied by a

piloted fighter plane hiding in its

radar shadow until Point F...

After Point F, AA-77 descends

to an altitude below Dulles

radars and proceeds on a

slightly different course, at a

slower speed.

 

 

The fighter, likely an F-16, sidles

closer to Dulles, where air controllers

pick it up and interpret it as a “military

plane” because of its speed and

maneuverability.  

Nevertheless,

the “official story” holds that AA-77

executed this virtually-impossible-for-a-

757 spiraling descent thanks to the

piloting skills of Hani Hanjour …who

couldn’t fly a Cessna.

 

 

The C-130 Heads for Shanksville, PA

 

 

 

 

 

One morning perhaps two

decades ago I witnessed

two planes in the

National landing

path looking

like this:

I was so shocked to see two aircraft with scarcely

compatible flight envelopes flying so close together

over residential areas, that I called a local TV

station to ask if an exercise had be announced

( i t h a d n ’t ) . But about 20 min later the same

“strange bed fellows” returned for a second pass!

I have often wondered about the purpose of this

e x e r c is e . F i n a l ly , I th i n k I k n o w . It was a test of

– or rehearsal for – a false-flag attack, where the

attacker hides in the radar shadow of a “friendly.”

Analogously, the officially admitted C-130 out of

Andrews AFB on the morning of 9/11 may have

hidden a second Boeing 757, also out of Andrews,

preparing to masquerade as the returning AA-77.

 

“The C-32 is a military version of the Boeing 757-200

extended range aircraft, selected …to replace the

aging fleet of C-137 aircraft.”

“Active-duty aircrews from the 1st Airlift Squadron, 89th
Airlift Wing at Andrews Air Force Base, Md., fly the aircraft.”

“The 89th Airlift Wing acquired the first of four aircraft in late June 1998.”