Originally posted by Rewey
I'll tell you what. Give me a no b/s answer to this...
Given your understanding of how crash scenes can demonstrate kinetic energy direction, and therefore crash direction (so adequately demonstrated in
Part One), what direction do YOU think the plane in the OP of this thread was moving in when it hit the ground?
If you were standing on the ground at the time of impact:
1 - at the bottom of the page: it looks like it would have been coming at a downward angle of ~40-50 degrees from the left. The wings would have been
~ level from that perspective
2 - at the left of the page: down at 70 degrees from horizontal from the right. Nearly straight down.
The blue line shows the best trace of the gouge. If the fuselage made it, there wouldn't be any deflection. Rather, the wings look upswept, like a
few early jets had. And judging from the grainy pic, I'd say it wasn't too recent, maybe 50's/early 60's.
Inside the pink area, the soil looks piled higher than below the gouge. i see fewer corn (?) stalks. So there was definitely some ke "up" in the
pic. Below the gouge looks more like a "splash" of dirt made by the belly of the plane. So it looks like it didn't bore straight in, but rather had
some "up" elevator dialed in. Trim? Pilot didn't eject and tried to save it?
This would explain the v-shaped gouge. Either a trimmed up elevator or a pilot trying to save the plane would put a g-load on that would flex the
wings some.
The gouge also looks deeper in the center, made by the fuselage, just like in Shanksville.
