Flight77.info - Pentagon video release imminent?

HELP: For some reason, my home PC wont login?! It just goes right back to the main screen and no matter what I do it wont allow me to login. I'm posting this from work and as it stands wont be able to follow up later with the tons of analysis images I'm working on at home.

Anyways, here's what appears to be a smoke trail:

HELP: For some reason, my home PC wont login?! It just goes right back to the main screen and no matter what I do it wont allow me to login. I'm posting this from work and as it stands wont be able to follow up later with the tons of analysis images I'm working on at home.

[edit on 19-5-2006 by IgnoranceIsntBlisss]

AgentSmith draws some very pretty pictures, but not convincing at all. Allow me to point out some issues that might poke a hole or two in his theory.

How does that jet manage to maintain enough lift to keep it airbourne while travelling so close to the ground at such a high rate of speed? It wouldn't. The plane would have splashed itself all over the lawn. Especially after taking out several light standards on the way. There must be enough space between the ground and the airframe to keep the vehicle aloft. Measuring the jet as if it is on a run way is not practical as there is NOT enough air in that particular scenario to keep the plane aloft.

To address the concept of the plane going in at a descending angle, if it did take a descending angle, which it would have to remained in the air, it should have left a crater from the downward momentum of the mass of the vehicle. There was no crater to speak of. Also, if the plane was coming in at a descending angle, it would not have "pulled" the light standards off their ground mounts. It would have cleared the light standards all together.

I personally don't know what hit the Pentagon, but based on the evidence to date I find it extremely difficult to believe that it was a 757. The airframe in question just couldn't do what it was reported to have done under the control of a pilot that was barely able to handle a single engine prop. What the plane purportedly did to hit the Pentagon would have been a 1 in a 1000 shot for the best pilots in the military. It just doesn't hold water, no matter how many nice picture people can super impose on top of each other. There's just too many things that aren't right about the story for it to hold water.

Originally posted by Leto
A simple and almost worthless associate's degree. What are your credentials?

My brain, I admit I have nothing as glamorous as your associate's degree, hopefully you will still find time to talk to me though.

I thought I'd made it pretty clear that my pictures were nothing more than an attempt to give people, who have not stood next to or been in a 757, an idea of it's size in comparison to other objects. In this case the Pentagon obviously.

I thought I'd made this clear in a couple of ways:

1) By writing 'For size comparison only' in BIG green letters on my images
2) By writing in my first post regarding these diagrams "This might help give you an idea of size (it is NOT meant to show how the damage was caused it is PURELY a size comparison.) "

Now we've established the fact that my images are for nothing more than what they say on the tin 'For size comparison', we can move onto the next point:

The windows are apparantly 7' tall according to NIST if I understand it correctly (please correct me if I'm wrong) and looking at the photo the bottom of the window is level with the top of the people's heads.
Going by a height of about 6' for the people, that would therefore make the height from the ground to the top of the window approximately 13 feet.

The 757's cabin has an exterior diameter of 12 feet and 4 inches, therefore if you lay the cylinder of it's cabin on the ground (forgetting engines/undercarriage/etc) then it would fall short of the top of the window by about 8 inches, mkay?
I'm sure, especially as you have your degree, you can understand the maths involved:

6' + 7' = 13'
13' - 12' 4" = 8"

That is all I was showing, I wasn't trying to marry it up to the hole, I wasn't doing anything other than giving people an idea of it's size in relation to the surrounding objects as a lot of people seem to think we're talking about the new Airbus A380 from their images and what they say.
Apologies if I sound tetchy, I just felt like you were trying to make some sort of personal dig, due to not everyone being in the degree club. I'm sure I was just being paranoid.

Take the 'joke' GIF for instance, the tail is about as tall, or taller than the Pentagon as it seems to be on the ground with it's wheels.

The Pentagon is 77' 3.5" high.
Even the tail height of the mighty Boeing 747-400 is only 63' 8" and wouldn't clear the roof of the building by over 13 feet with it's wheels down.
There is a plane which might match up with the joke GIF a bit better, it's called the new double decker Airbus A380 and has a tail height of 79 feet.

I'm not sure why some people are having problems coming to terms with the size of the aircraft? Is it because it's nowhere near as big as they imagined?

What do you guys think about the fact that this plane had to clear the highway yet the body smashed into the ground floor from the pictures i have seen without scaping the grass?

That really is tough to believe for me. Particularly because of the speed it was travelling.
Something just seems not right about this

[edit on 19-5-2006 by AdamJ]

Originally posted by AgentSmith

I'm not sure why some people are having problems coming to terms with the size of the aircraft? Is it because it's nowhere near as big as they imagined?

I would venture to guess that you've answered your own question there.

Originally posted by The Iconoclast
How does that jet manage to maintain enough lift to keep it airbourne while travelling so close to the ground at such a high rate of speed? It wouldn't. The plane would have splashed itself all over the lawn. Especially after taking out several light standards on the way. There must be enough space between the ground and the airframe to keep the vehicle aloft. Measuring the jet as if it is on a run way is not practical as there is NOT enough air in that particular scenario to keep the plane aloft.

It's called Ground Effect. Once you get to approximately the same altitude as your wing span, the air bouncing off the ground as the plane moves forward comes back up and hits the wings and fuselage. This causes the plane to not want to descend farther unless you shove the controls forward. At high rates of speed until you actually impact the ground the plane will try to bounce back up until you're back above the altitude of your wingspan. You can either control it by hand, or set the trim so that the plane will keep the same altitude or descend.

Obviously at the last moment he will more than likely have pitched forward hard to ensure hitting the target. It would probably have resulted in him hitting in full horizontal motion with the nose down I imagine.

I haven't seen this site mentioned before, but apologise in advance if links have already been posted. I was reading it last night (I urge you to visit and do the same) and I think it is very relevant to this thread

The released video shows an object literally skimming the ground and hitting the Pentagon. If the following text is correct, this sounds impossible for a commercial jetliner to do:

I shan’t get into the aerodynamic impossibility of flying a large commercial jetliner 20 feet above the ground at over 400 MPH. A discussion on ground effect energy, vortex compression, downwash reaction, wake turbulence, and jetblast effects are beyond the scope of this article (the 100,000-lb jetblast alone would have blown whole semi-trucks off the roads. The DVD, “Loose Change – 1st Edition” contains an excellent clip of trucks being blown off the end of a runway when a jetliner powers up for take-off—and that was from the jetblast alone, not the combined effect of wake turbulence and jetblast, as in the case of an aircraft flying on the deck at 400 MPH.)

Let it suffice to say that it is physically impossible to fly a 200,000-lb airliner 20 feet above the ground at 400 MPH.

The author, a pilot and aeronautical engineer, challenges any pilot in the world to do so in any large high-speed aircraft that has a relatively low wing-loading (such as a commercial jet). I.e., to fly the craft at 400 MPH, 20 feet above ground in a flat trajectory over a distance of one mile.

Why the stipulation of 20 feet and a mile? There were several street light poles located up to a mile away from the Pentagon that were snapped-off by the incoming aircraft; this suggests a low, flat trajectory during the final pre-impact approach phase. Further, it is known that the craft impacted the Pentagon’s ground floor.

For purposes of reference: If a 757 were placed on the ground on its engine nacelles (I.e., gear retracted as in flight profile), its nose would be about fifteen feet above the ground! Ergo, for the aircraft to impact the ground floor of the Pentagon, Hanjour would have needed to have flown in with the engines buried in the Pentagon lawn. Some pilot.

At any rate, why is such ultra-low-level flight aerodynamically impossible? Because the reactive force of the hugely powerful downwash sheet, coupled with the compressibility effects of the tip vortices, simply will not allow the aircraft to get any lower to the ground than approximately one half the distance of its wingspan—until speed is drastically reduced, which, of course, is what happens during normal landings.

In other words, if this were a Boeing 757 as reported, the plane could not have been flown below about 60 feet above ground at 400 MPH. (Such a maneuver is entirely within the performance envelope of aircraft with high wing-loadings, such as ground-attack fighters, the B1-B bomber, and Cruise missiles—and the Global Hawk.)

...In reality, a clueless non-pilot would encounter almost insurmountable difficulties in attempting to navigate and fly a 200,000-lb airliner into a building located on the ground, 7 miles below and hundreds of miles away and out of sight, and in an unknown direction, while flying at over 500 MPH - and all this under extremely stressful circumstances.

source - physics911.net

Ever seen a B-52 doing a low level? They fly below the mountains at insanely low altitudes. They literally hide in valleys as they fly at 500+ mph, usually by hand, without autopilot. They do have the ability to use a radar to keep them low but many pilots don't trust it. They're 265,000 pounds loaded, with a max takeoff weight of 488,000. They were never designed to fly low level, but they do all the time. It's certainly NOT impossible to fly a heavy plane as low as Flight 77 was. Difficutly yes, impossible no.

As far as the jetwash, the pics and video of those cars that were blown off the road behind planes at the airport were all slab sided vehicles that had a lot of space for the jetwash to affect, and the plane was sitting parked at the gate. When a plane is flying the effects of the jetwash will be lessened somewhat, and a car won't be affected NEARLY as much as a stepvan, or something you would see at an airport that has big flat sides.

They dont fly as low as 60 feet though, it would be several hundred feet at which point the ground effect wouldnt exist.

Flying through valleys are spectacular sights but it always makes the plane seem lower than it actually is from the ground.

I've talked to a few pilots that at times were below 100 feet as they went through those valleys. Even if you throw away those examples, what about the C-130s and C-17s. They fly at 40 feet or less doing low level vehicle drops. It IS possible to do low level in a heavy plane. It's not EASY, but it's entirely possible. Aerodynamics don't change just because you're in a heavier plane. You're going to get a wickedly hard ride that low because of the ground effect, but you're going to be able to fly that low.

Originally posted by eudaimonia

"Clearly a MISSILE"?!
Who you trying to play or kid here with that whitish blur, eudaimonia?

:shk:




seekerof

[edit on 19-5-2006 by Seekerof]

Originally posted by ANOK
Problem is Smith your perspective is wrong in that pic.

Is the perspective about as far off as the perspective presented by the "No-757" crowd and commentaries within this topic thread, ANOK?

The has been no correct illustration of perspective, per se', because the angle to which people are trying to fit an image of a 757 has been continually off. The 757 hit the Pentagon at a near 50 degree angle, as illustrated here:







Sources:
Pentagon: Why the No-757 Crowd is Making an Ass out of Itself

The No Plane Promoters Are Lost in Foam







seekerof

Originally posted by Zaphod58
It's called Ground Effect. Once you get to approximately the same altitude as your wing span, the air bouncing off the ground as the plane moves forward comes back up and hits the wings and fuselage. This causes the plane to not want to descend farther unless you shove the controls forward. At high rates of speed until you actually impact the ground the plane will try to bounce back up until you're back above the altitude of your wingspan. You can either control it by hand, or set the trim so that the plane will keep the same altitude or descend.

You make this effect sound like its no problem and would have prevented problems, not created more of them. Ground effect causes the plane to become extremely unstable for a novice pilot. This effect would have caused the plane to lift and stall. Only an experienced pilot would know how to handle a plane in this manner. Considering the plane in question was a multi-engine jet, supposedly travelling at top speed, this would be an impossibility. Again, it goes back to my original point, there are only a few ilots in the world who could have pulled this off, and those accused of hijacking flight 77 were no where near that level of ability. You can not will away the difficulty of the maneuvers, the skill level of the pilot, and the pin point precision of the strike. Those three things just don't add up.

Originally posted by Zaphod58
I've talked to a few pilots that at times were below 100 feet as they went through those valleys. Even if you throw away those examples, what about the C-130s and C-17s. They fly at 40 feet or less doing low level vehicle drops. It IS possible to do low level in a heavy plane. It's not EASY, but it's entirely possible. Aerodynamics don't change just because you're in a heavier plane. You're going to get a wickedly hard ride that low because of the ground effect, but you're going to be able to fly that low.

Now you're grasping at straws. Vehicle drops are NOT does at 400+ knots.

It would have been difficult to overcome. Unless you had a simulator of some sort that would replicate the effects, which they apparently did. Even MS Flight sim would let you get some practice with it. Sure it wouldn't have nearly the same feel as in a real plane, but it would let them practice on how to control it, and how to keep the plane from hitting the ground. They even had a pretty sophisticated simulator in one of the houses they were in.

Originally posted by Seekerof

Originally posted by ANOK
Problem is Smith your perspective is wrong in that pic.

Is the perspective about as far off as the perspective presented by the "No-757" crowd and commentaries within this topic thread, ANOK?

The angle isn't the problem with AS's graphic it's the fwd-back distance.
The angle should not effect the aparent hight of the object only the length.

He's measuring the building in the wrong place for where his 757 is positioned.

If you were to look straight down where his 757 is it's way infront of where he's measuring, making his plane too small to have it compare with what's in the video.
That was my point, I wasn't comparing it with ANY other graphic which are probably out of scale too.

Having said that the Agents graphic actualy proves that the white object in the vid is too small to be a 757 **IMO**...

[edit on 19/5/2006 by ANOK]

Originally posted by Seekerof


seekerof

If those are true then I dont think its the wing tip that we see in the video, if it is then the fish eye lens must have caught the plane very far away, if thats true then some frames are missing showing the plane in clear site.

Either way, it makes no sense to me as it doesnt seem like a 757 nose, if its a wing tip then frames have been cut from public viewing.

[edit on 19-5-2006 by Flyer]

[edit on 19-5-2006 by Flyer]

If it was a 1fps camera that was used at the parking entrance, then there is no way that it would have been able to catch more than it did. The plane was moving at 500+ mph, which means that it would have crossed the distance between where it appeared and hit the building WELL before the next pic was taken.