Why no marks in grass from Pentagon light poles?

naw....it's a cover-up...i'm a pilot.....a 757-b would have left the wall at the building beat to pieces...

naw....it's a cover-up...i'm a pilot.....a 757-b would have left the wall at the building beat to pieces...

reply to post by ATH911


Hello ATH911-

I think the first thing you really have to do when looking at the Pentagon strike, is know your facts. Because there really is a lot of innuendo, assumption making, and just flat out not knowing the complete facts.

First, (I believe) the poles themselves were 240lbs, and they were made to absorb energy and break apart.

Second the 757, as you mentioned, was traveling extremely fast, a almost unbelievable 530mph at the moment of impact.

When you factor this in with the damage that was inflicted by the 757, you see that the point where the wing impacts the poles is pinched on both sides(the hollow pole is pinched shut and then broken at this same point) then the pole is usually bent slightly. This bending in the poles is the force that was imparted to "throw the poles" from their bases. It was not much force though, hence they were not thrown that far. Still the 240lb poles were in (I believe) every case thrown a good 10 or 15 feet from their bases. They were all essentially "chopped" in half and tossed slightly ahead.

Therefore, I think the reason we can't see any damage to the lawn in the photos shown is simply because of the resolution. I think the damage would only occur with the bottom heavier pieces and only if one of the tips happened to hit first.

Even so, this would be very little damage created, I think the poles basically had the bottoms knocked out from under them and the forward momentum imparted by the jet was not great. So if those before mentioned things took place, I think there would be slight damage occurring to the lawn. It would be easily visible to someone standing right there looking for it. But due to the low resolution pictures, long shots, and lack of further photographic evidence, we just can't see the damage that may be there.

Also, to touch on another posters comment, I think the simple reason why the wings weren't sheared off in the process of chopping the light poles in half, was that the jet was simply flying much too fast.

The video shown to try and prove this point has wooden poles buried in the dirt, like trees. And they are solid 12in and 13in diameter wooden(who knows what kind) telephone poles. Furthermore, the jet was traveling much slower than 530mph, I would guess at most 200mph, but more likely around whatever that jets landing speed was.

Whereas, f77 was flying at 530mph, hitting hollow poles, that were designed to completely break apart(especially at the base).