The North Tower Impact Pictures

Originally posted by ULTIMA1
2. Photos of holes in a 767 aluminum airframe casued by small birds hitting the aircraft.

I could crush a bird with one hand, but I can't punch a hole in the side of an airplane no matter how hard I try. That says a lot about kenetic energy doesn't it?

This is a good report from a UK based building performance study of the towers that explains a lot about the actual damage the planes would of caused.

So we may know the mass of the missile (say an engine or a fuselage) but to quantify the
force imparted by the missile we must how the missile and target interact as this affects
the deceleration of the missile. Unlike a bullet which may be designed to imbed itself in a
target giving all its momentum to the target, a turbofan engine contains hundreds of fan
blades moving at high speed and on impact the blades would be released radially due to
centrifugal force and some of the concentrated mass would be lost. Thus on impact a
turbofan engine would impart its linear momentum to the target and at the same time
produce many lethal fan blade missiles travelling radially outwards. The fuselage on
impact would crumple from front to back and could be regarded as a large area, soft body
impact.

www.cookeonfire.com...

Also, maybe someone else could link to it, I couldnt find a picture or diagram off hand showing that the wings of large commercial aircraft have large beams that extend across the front tip of the wings to provide stability and rigidity. I saw somewhere before where it was said that these exerted a slicing type of action as the wings hit the facade of the towers. it should also be noted that not all of the perimeter columns were broken by the wings/plane as it penetrated the towers.

Originally posted by dbates

Originally posted by ULTIMA1
2. Photos of holes in a 767 aluminum airframe casued by small birds hitting the aircraft.

I could crush a bird with one hand, but I can't punch a hole in the side of an airplane no matter how hard I try. That says a lot about kenetic energy doesn't it?

I just means you can't punch the plane hard enough.If the bird can pass through the skin of the aircraft then so could your hand if travelling fast enough.

Originally posted by ULTIMA1
300 or 400 is still a lot different then 900 mph. Also figure the size of the planes and the impact areas. Water jets use a very small impact area.

Water is water, yet we can make water punch through hard materials. Throw a cup of water at steel it won't penetrate. Use a high tech equipment that can propel water at 900 mph and it succeeds. Propel a plane going 300+ mph with its aluminum alloy structure which by the way is the same at the M113 apc that the U.S. military uses, and factor the shape of the plane which is like a bullet. All that and you got yourself a possible penetration.

Originally posted by dbates
I could crush a bird with one hand, but I can't punch a hole in the side of an airplane no matter how hard I try.

It also shows how the thin aliminum of the airframe is easily punctured.

Those birds hit the plane at a pretty slow takeoff speed. If the plane was going 500 mph the birds would have probably ripped the plane into pieces.

Originally posted by deltaboy and factor the shape of the plane which is like a bullet. All that and you got yourself a possible penetration.

How is an hollow aluminum airframe (with wings) like a bullet?







[edit on 15-11-2007 by ULTIMA1]

How long do you think it took for the metal to pancake into a blob of steel moving at nearly 500 MPH? What do you think would happen if you ran a 200,000 lb. block of aluminum into a building at 400+ MPH? It would take a sizeable chunk of the building out don't you think?

The shape and alignment of the metal is almost pointless to bicker about. A 200,000 lb object, made of any material you can imagine, moving at 500 mph, will penetrate the wall of any skyscraper in the world. It doesn't matter if you throw 200,000 lbs. of toilet paper at the building. It's a kenetic energy kill.



[edit on 15-11-2007 by dbates]

Originally posted by ULTIMA1

How is an hollow aluminum airframe (with wings) like a bullet?

And how are the Towers plane resistant? Did the designers said that it was designed to prevent planes from crashing into the Towers, or just that it can take the hit and still survive?

Originally posted by deltaboy
And how are the Towers plane resistant? Did the designers said that it was designed to prevent planes from crashing into the Towers, or just that it can take the hit and still survive?

Well the designers did state it could take a hit from a plane. Also NIST has stated that the buildings did withstand the planes impacts and would have kept standing.

Originally posted by dbates
The shape and alignment of the metal is almost pointless to bicker about. A 200,000 lb object, made of any material you can imagine, moving at 500 mph, will penetrate the wall of any skyscraper in the world.

Well yes it does matter the size and shape do to impact area. If the impact area is spread out enough then the object would not do as much damage if the impact area was small.



[edit on 15-11-2007 by ULTIMA1]

reply to post by dbates


Surface area and PSI comes into effect. I would really encourage you to research before making erroneous assumptions (kinda makes you look bad).

At the time of impact, the wings were full of fuel therefore they can be considered solid.

Compared to the structure of the tower, the wing is like a sharp blade. The area of the leading edge if the wing is very small indeed. Therefore the force needed to be exerted on the building by the plane to penetrate the steel structure is very small. Since the plane was travelling at around 400 mph, it is very likely that the wings (full of fuel) could slice through the steel which they did.

Remember,
Pressure = force / area.

A grain of sand could penetrate steel if it was accelerated quickly enough.

It is far fetched to think that the steel columns were weakened before the plane hit it. I dont know how somebody could come to that conclusion just by looking at photographs.

Anyway the answers lie in the numbers.

Originally posted by minij
At the time of impact, the wings were full of fuel therefore they can be considered solid.

Problem is at most accident scenes when the wings hit any object they get sheared off. The wings are not designed to take impact, they are designed to take lateral (up and down movement) but not impact with an object.

reply to post by ULTIMA1


I understand why you seem confused about this, I had to think about it for a while before I could get my head around it.

I suggest you read up about momentum, pressure and newtons laws. Then it will become clearer.

As I mentioned the area of the leading edge of the wing is very small, therefore the building would give very little resistance to them. If the leading edge of the wing was 5,000 square meters then the steel frame of the building would 'push' back because

Pressure = force/area.

If the area is increased, the overall pressure exerted to the building will be decreased, therefore tearing the wings off.

I agree that the wings are designed to shear off, but when you look at the time the planes took to to go in to the towers (.05 seconds approx), there was no time for the wings to shear off.

An example of wings shearing off would be if the plane had to crash land in the ocean. When the place hits the water, if the wings shear, they would absorb lots of energy, therefore making it more likely that the fuselage of the place will be intact.

Another example is when you get a flu shot. The area of the tip of the syringe is very small therefore the pressure needed to penetrate the skin is very small. If the area was the size of a ball point pen, the injection would be very painful given the force needed to be exerted to break the skin.

Let me know if you need further explanation, and I will break out the old calculator and apply numbers to my explanation.

Originally posted by minij
An example of wings shearing off would be if the plane had to crash land in the ocean. When the place hits the water, if the wings shear, they would absorb lots of energy, therefore making it more likely that the fuselage of the place will be intact.

What about the Pentagons reinforced concrete wall? Why is their no sign of the wings shearing off there, or the PA. crash site?

Oh and do not forget about the tail sections.





[edit on 15-11-2007 by ULTIMA1]

Originally posted by ULTIMA1
What about the Pentagons reinforced concrete wall? Why is their no sign of the wings shearing off there?

Oh and do not forget about the tail sections.

It seems that at the Pentagon, there was not much debris of the plane inside and outside of the structure therefore there is no evidence that the wings sheared off upon entry to the structure or whether they stayed intact. I cant comment about that at all since there is little evidence of what really happened there.

Please dont pull at straws, do the research and think about the physics behind the event before you reply back. Once I did some reading and thinking about it, it became quite clear. I am not a mathematician or a physicist, I didnt go to university or college for that matter. I just applied basic physics to it and it explained itself. It is not difficult to understand.

Again if you or anybody else need further clarification I will apply numbers to my explanation.

Originally posted by minij
Please dont pull at straws, do the research and think about the physics behind the event before you reply back. Once I did some reading and thinking about it, it became quite clear.

I have done research, i also have a background in aviation.

reply to post by ULTIMA1


I am glad you mentioned that you have a background aviation, the concepts should come a little easier to you then. I am not saying that there isnt more to what happened that day, and I dont think that we will ever know what really went on, and I do think that the towers were helped down.

On the other hand I am not being unreasonable when I say that it is 100% possible that the plane wings cut the wing holes in the WTC.

The fact of the matter is that 2 planes were flown into the twin towers.

While the skin of an aircraft is made of aluminium alloy several hundreds
of inch thick underneath is composed of very heavy structures made of
high strength alloys. Think of it like your body - your skin is very thin
probably thinner than the skin of an airplane. Right under the skin lies
muscle and bone which are quite dense and strong - so much so that
can punch a hole in thick wooden board. Under the skin of an airplane
are wing ribs and spars to support the wings and fuel tanks, jet engines
which weigh several tons and are made of high strength alloys including
titanium. The landing gear is made from massive struts to support the
plane and resist the forces when landing, reinforced floors to support
the passenger cabin and baggage/cargo compartments. At a speed of
500 mph (speed of pistol bullet) has sufficent momentum to smash
through outer skin of WTC buildings. The exterior panels were steel
lattice about 1/4" thick - once the exterior was punctured there was open
space until encounter central core with stairway/elevators and main
support columns.

Can one of the tin foilers explain how a lead pistol bullet can penetrate
an automobile? Same forces at work - high velocity applied to small
frontal area can punch right through.

Good thread

Apparantly, a few inches more and this bird would have taken the plane down, due to overstress on the wing leading edge.




I find the contrast between the wreckages that day intriguing.

reply to post by metro

Meh! Compared to the people that believe a 200,000 lb 757 moving at 500 mph wouldn't knock down steel beams, I'm a freaking genius.

Originally posted by dbates
Meh! Compared to the people that believe a 200,000 lb 757 moving at 500 mph wouldn't knock down steel beams, I'm a freaking genius.

They might cut or knock down a few steel beams but they are not going to cause that much damage. NIST has stated the the buildings withstood the planes impacts and would have kept standing.

Please do some research.