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Reheat : It should be noted that NO WITNESS mentioned the type of bank angles required to complete the required turns.
-snip-
The turns required to fly north of the Citgo Station are horrendous air show type turns with steep banks and very high G forces at very low altitude which NO ONE WITNESSED.
In order to maintain the most efficient or normal glide in a turn, more altitude must be sacrificed than in a straight glide since this is the only way speed can be maintained without power. Turning in a glide decreases the performance of the airplane to an even greater extent than a normal turn with power.
These flying characteristics of jet airplanes make a stabilized approach an absolute necessity.
Link-1 : (LT : At a steering-column / stick=neutral position, ) the vertical component of lift is less than the weight. Because of this inequality, the greater force imparted by the weight will pull the aircraft downward and it does not maintain the same altitude (LT : Flight-77 was reportedly descending, thus flying stick-neutral, in a slightly 25° to 30° banking turn around the NoC position ).
The pilot can (LT : in Flight 77, he didn't ) overcome this behavior by pulling the stick back to increase the lift of the plane and maintain the same altitude (LT : Which however indeed happened just before crossing Route 27 by Flight 77; stick-up to come out of that slight 8° dive). It is for this reason that we refer to the (Lt : Stick-up ) maneuver as a level turn, since the aircraft is banked into a turning motion but maintains the same altitude.
files.abovetopsecret.com...
(LT : The above shown 30° bank angle in these 2 bank-diagrams is very close to, or the 35° bank reported by those many NoC witnesses)
Link-3 : Turning Performance (Bank Angle) Calculator :
Formula:-
radius = speed2 / (gravity x tangent (bank angle))
time = 2 x PI x speed / (gravity x tangent (bank angle))
where: speed=feet per second (fps = mph x 1.47), mph to fps conversion is done for you on form below
gravity =32.2 fps
EXAMPLE : Speed (MPH) = 250 ; Bank angle = 35° ; Radius = 5994 feet = 1827 m.
Exponent : Chord length is 1176m (LT : his red line)
Sagitta length is 86m (LT : his blue line))
(Google Earth measurements)
radius = 1176²/8*86 + 86/2
radius = 43 + 1176²/688
radius = 2053m
Your radius is 1150m too large according to the diagram I can extrapolate from your low resolution image. If you'd like to pick more accurate spots I can recalculate.
This also increases the predicted bank angle (using the same, allegedly incorrect values) to 35.9°
Feel free to present your rebuttal, I look forward to it.
Reheat : In addition to your concocted definition of small versus large bank angles you find that the speed must be unreasonably slow. It's even contrary and slower than the speed you specified earlier in the thread. The bulk of your witnesses indicated the aircraft was haulin' ass, yet you choose two who indicated it may have been slower in order to fit with your fantasy.
Eye Witness Accounts Eye witness and participant recall accounts are important but only when validated and verified by primary sources and secondary information. Given the complete story of AA 77 and the Pentagon we can now add to the account an exceptional eye witness account, that of Penny Elgas. Her detailed, articulate, and reflective narrative is consistent in its detail and provides a vivid picture to complement the technical work of Legge and Stutt.
Penny Elgas : I entered the highway a little after 9am so that I could take the High Occupancy Vehicle (HOV) express lane. As usual, traffic was very heavy and after I exited I-95, I found myself stuck in late morning rush hour traffic -- almost in front of the Pentagon. -snip- Traffic was at a standstill. I heard a rumble, looked out my driver's side window and realized that I was looking at the nose of an airplane coming straight at us from over the road (Columbia Pike) that runs perpendicular to the road I was on. The plane just appeared there- very low in the air, to the side of (and not much above) the CITGO gas station that I never knew was there. -snip- In that split second, my brain flooded with adrenaline and I watched everything play out in ultra slow motion, I saw the plane coming in slow motion toward my car and then it banked in the slightest turn in front of me, toward the heliport. In the nano-second that the plane was directly over the cars in front of my car, the plane seemed to be not more than 80 feet off the ground and about 4-5 car lengths in front of me. It was far enough in front of me that I saw the end of the wing closest to me and the underside of the other wing as that other wing rocked slightly toward the ground. I remember recognizing it as an American Airlines plane -- I could see the windows and the color stripes
Christine Peterson :
I was at a complete stop on the road in front of the helipad at the Pentagon; what I had thought would be a shortcut was as slow as the other routes I had taken that morning. I looked idly out my window to the left -- and saw a plane flying so low I said, “holy cow, that plane is going to hit my car” (not my actual words). The car shook as the plane flew over. It was so close that I could read the numbers under the wing.
And then the plane crashed. My mind could not comprehend what had happened. Where did the plane go? For some reason I expected it to bounce off the Pentagon wall in pieces. But there was no plane visible, only huge billows of smoke and torrents of fire.
William Middleton Sr. :
William Middleton Sr., was running his street sweeper through the cemetery when he heard a harsh whistling sound overhead. Middleton looked up and spotted a commercial jet whose pilot seemed to be fighting with his own craft.
Middleton said the plane was no higher than the tops of telephone poles as it lurched toward the Pentagon. The jet accelerated in the final few hundred yards before it tore into the building.
James R. Cissell :
''Out of my peripheral vision,'' Cissell said, ''I saw this plane coming in and it was low - and getting lower.
''If you couldn't touch it from standing on the highway, you could by standing on your car.''
In the next seconds dozens of things flashed through his mind.
''I thought, 'This isn't really happening. That is a big plane.' Then I saw the faces of some of the passengers on board,'' Cissell said.
He remembers the helipad the plane flew over before smacking into the Pentagon was close enough to him that ''I could have thrown a baseball at it and hit it.''