Planes can break up without being hit by missiles

There seems a fair amount of people who feel that the finding of engine debris away from the main impact site of UA93 to be proof of a shootdown. This is not necessarily true, as aircraft engines have broken off mid flight before. It is something that can easily happen with abnormal loads or due to fatigue cracks, or badly performed maintenance.

For example, American Airlines Flight 191, a DC-10 on takeoff lost one of it's engines and crashed shortly afterward, killing all on board.

El Al Flight 1862 Lost two of it's engines after takeoff, and then crashed into an apartment building.

Also, China Airlines Flight 358, crashed in similar circumstances as the El Al plane.

In this image, the main hydraulic lines which control the plane go near the Forward wing Pylon attach point, and in the cases above, were most likely severed.

A lack of main controls, some or all of them, easily can cause a crash, even with the best pilots, so if a terrorist is flying it, a crash is likely inevitable. This also causes a shift in the centre of gravity of the plane, also causing control problems.

So I feel this is a suitable alternate hypothesis to shootdown, if an engine was indeed a considerable distance from the main crash site.

This is what kinda did it for me. But yeah...maybe a engine fell off...

Originally posted by Pfeil
This is what kinda did it for me. But yeah...maybe a engine fell off...

Not really absolute proof though is it? One man's misquote, used as proof of a shootdown.

Now allow me to quantify, I think there was some sort of conspiracy in 9/11, maybe it was shot down, but most of the time, I only see the one theory, that of shoot down, being discussed. And how can you get a reasonable proof if you don't consider how something can happen through a different mechanism?

Well look at it this way.

1) You have a plane that, yes has a history of engines falling off. One of these planes on a specific day and time just happens to get hijacked. This hijacked plane is enroute to a target when another highly unlikely event happens...a engine falls off and saves the day. What are the chances of a plane getting hijacked and losing a engine on the same day and at the same time?


OR...


2)There is a hijacked plane probably heading to D.C. The passengers fought the hijackers and were about to take back control of the plane. If the passengers were about to save the day that would be bad for the government's plans for attacking another target and the military shoots it down. Now the government can tell the story of how the hijackers in response to the attempted retaking of the plane just flew it into the ground. YAY! The government now has heroes from the 9/11 tragedy. That can be used for more propaganda...remember the flight 93 movie?

But, ...oops..one of the people behind it all opens his mouth before thinking and spills the truth.


To me...considering all the other suspicious things that happened that day...that is one hell of a slipup.

Granted that this isnt evidence that the plane was shot down...to me it falls in line with bush saying he saw the first tower getting hit while he sat on his ass reading a childrens book not giving a fly (*&^. Maybe we should take this kind of stuff a little more seriously. Just my opinion.

[edit on 25/6/07 by Pfeil]

@ Pfeil...


or

3] The hijackers put the plane through maneuvers that forced the plane through more G's than is normal, since they do not care about the safety of the plane, or passengers. During these maneuvers, engine mounts are weakened, eventually causing one or more engines to fall off.

There is somewhere here a post by Zaphod58 where he says.....

Originally posted by Zaphod58
Wild side to side maneuvering puts strain on the engine mounts they're not designed to take. Engine mounts handle vertical stress very well (up to over 5Gs on a 747 I heard about) but they don't handle lateral stress well at all. Dutch rolls were enough to take off two engines on a KC-135, and cause serious damage to the other two engine mounts. We know flight 93 was doing some wild maneuvering to try to throw the passengers off their feet, and it went over to an inverted position at some point before crashing.

from this thread....
www.abovetopsecret.com...

I would think that if that were indeed true, then the plane obviously did some maneuvers that could conceivably generate high G forces upon the wings, and therefore anything attached to the wings i.e., engines, etc...


And I do believe that Zaphod58 knows quite a bit about what he is talking about.

edit to add quote, and link to related thread.


2 cents.

[edit on 6/25/2007 by Mechanic 32]

[edit on 6/25/2007 by Mechanic 32]

What are the chances of a plane getting hijacked and losing a engine on the same day and at the same time?

Pfeil, I'm a pilot. Any aircraft big or small can break up from aerodynamic forces if the pilots lose control. Given the pilots in this instance were one hit wonders it's nothing surprising.

I nearly ripped the tail off of an aircraft I was flying once. I was doing spins which require a pilot to stall one wing. I failed to realise that the aircraft was not in a spin but rather a spiral dive. The recovery techniques are entirely different and a recovery technique for a spin can rip a tail off in a spiral dive.

On a 757, the engine pylons have great strength in tension but no strength in torsion.

What that means if you put a sideways bending force on the engine mounts the engines are actually designed by the manufacturer to snap off to prevent the wing breaking.

People who aren't aviation engineers or pilots don't understand this aspect of aviation.

Not really absolute proof though is it? One man's misquote, used as proof of a shootdown.

Apex is quite right. there was a lot of uninformed speculation on 9/11 about what happened by people who didn't understand aviation. Being a journalist does not make a person qualified to speculate.

Pfeil, I'm a pilot. Any aircraft big or small can break up from aerodynamic forces if the pilots lose control. Given the pilots in this instance were one hit wonders it's nothing surprising.

Considering that if I remember correctly, some components in aircraft are only manufactured to withstand 1.5x their normal or maximum designed load. With a hijacker trying to move the plane in such a way as to stop the passengers gaining control such a failure somewhere is probably quite likely.

There is somewhere here a post by Zaphod58 where he says.....

That was the sort of reason I made this thread, it's a bit off topic where that is, so I made a thread specifically for it.

From my memory to be certified all aircraft have to be stressed and proved to 1.5 negative G (up force) and 3 positive G (down force), but that is different from engine mounts for jet engines.

(incidentally some aircraft are stressed for much higher G ratings like topdressers and military aircraft)

In the case of engine pylons the problem is that if a jet engine were to suddenly seize perhaps from ingesting a large bird or other objects, the torque would be so massive that it could snap a wing if the pylon didn't let go.

For that reason the mounts have thrust bearings with fuseable pins. These are designed to snap when an unnatural sideways force is exerted on the engine. This has nothing to do with the G rating on the airframes.

The simple point is if 757 were to tumble or skid relative to the direction of travel that would be enough to detach an engine.

The American Airlines Airbus A-300 Flight 587 which crashed near New York in November 2001 lost it's engines after the co-pilot skidded the plane sideways. That was the aircraft where the co-pilot so overloaded the airframe that it's tailfin snapped off too.

Yes a plane can break up , but to leave 2 distinct debris fields is a little strange.

Originally posted by ULTIMA1
Yes a plane can break up , but to leave 2 distinct debris fields is a little strange.

What was specifically in each one though? If TWA 800 had broken more cleanly, the debris fields would have been fairly distinct.

For the engine(s) to be away from the main airframe impact spot merely implies that the aircraft was gyrating and that centrifical force flung the engines away.

If one engine was flung in one direction and another in the opposite then that simply suggests the engines either separated at different moments or else that they were flicked off outwards whilst the aircraft was spinning.

I am unfamiliar with the plot of debris. I have seen newsreel footage of the airframe crater and then what seems a burning engine in trees beyond.

That doesn't strike me as inexplicable. When you understand the physics and aircraft engineering behind this it all works.

The Valuejet Everglades crash is an example of an aircraft burying itself and leaving no recognisable parts, or human remains.

I just think there is no conspiracy here.