9/11: A Boeing 757 Struck the Pentagon, page 91

Originally posted by bsbray11 Seriously, it does not take a genius to look at those two pics and visually calculate that there is a problem with your theory.

Believe me, I never concluded that I was dealing with a genius ray...

Originally posted by bsbray11 So, CatHerder, are you going to admit that you're claiming that the top "3/5" of the fuselage above the wings did very little damage to the facade and was then sucked into the hole created only by the part of the plane beneath the wings? Or are you going to claim that the wings magically moved up the fuselage? Or maybe you'll finally admit that those marks can't possibly have been wing damage from a 757. I doubt this last one, though.

Why would I admit to something so daft when I know it's completely unfounded and entirely inaccurate? It's not me who can't grasp the dimensions of the plane compared to the dimensions of the Pentagon! But here, since you keep asking I will take the time to show you why the damage matches a 757. A Boeing 757 is a ~13 foot across/up/down tube mounted on top of some wings. The tail accounts for upwards of two thirds of the measured (wheels down) height of the aircraft (42.5 ft). The Boeing 757 is designed like almost every other commercial airliner out there with the bottom 2/5ths of the aircraft having the majority of the structural support and the top 3/5ths being primarily a hollow tube with seats for passengers. The American Airlines paint scheme is somewhat convenient for this example as one can visually ascertain that the primary structure of the aircraft is from and below the red stripe on the fuselage. I took the image of an American Airliners Boeing 757 (inset) and cropped out the background and the landing gear (because the gear was not down when the 757 hit the Pentagon).

You can see that it is indeed to scale compared to the wall of the Pentagon (the Pentagon is 77.35 feet high, the Boeing 757 is approximately 42.5 feet high from the top of it's tail to the bottom of it's engines). I then repositioned the "Pentagon" wall from left to right (on the exact same level as it was originally) and overlaid 5 equal height blocks to represent the 5 floors (the 5th floor of the Pentagon has no windows on the outside ring). I then gave the 757 a -2 (two) degree pitch (which is actually less than it would have had based on the flight path through the light poles into the building and its impact with the generator).

As you can see, the 757 fits almost completely into the bottom floor. Only part of the thin upper fuselage impacted the 2nd floor (and you can see the damage to the 2nd floor on the Pentagon building in many photos). The tail also damaged the 2nd and third floors (also visible in many photos). According to the ASCE study (called The Pentagon Performance Report) the 757 impacted the building at an angle, bounced off the floor after penetrating inside the building, impacted the ceiling and pushed the second floor upwards breaching the floor (photos included inside above link), and continued onwards damaging or destroying 89 concrete pillars in an 80 foot swatch from impact and up to approximately 230 feet into the building and finally part of it (primarily the nose gear punched a hole through the inner wall of the third ring). The above images are to scale (+/- 1% error) -- I used pixels as my measurement for the above graphics to ensure they remained to scale and they are pretty accurate (my original images were done on a 1200x750 workspace at 200 dpi). The images on this page have been cropped and reduced (proportionately) and then compressed (JPEG) to make them fit the page and to load faster for you. They are as accurate as possible and remain to scale. Now, lets look at the 757 from nose on. I couldn't find a good photo of an American Airlines 757 from nose-on so I simply used one from another company. It's still the same plane; I even made sure it had RB211 engines so they're the same size (the PW engines are a bit larger and are shaped slightly different). It's also not perfectly dead on, and it's looking slightly down on the aircraft, but it's pretty close. (You can see a bit of the port fuselage and a bit of the top.) You seem to have a very hard time looking at one image and comparing it or combining it with another image. So, here is a circle -- and an airplane.

It's pretty evident that the wings are located on the bottom of the aircraft. Gosh ray, it sure looks like they're also in the bottom 2/5ths of the fuselage. I wonder how they'd line up on the building if we put the plane at an angle (and near to scale)... heck lets see just for giggles. Flight 77's approximate position at impact

The starboard (right) wing and engine hit the generator 100-110 feet in front of the building; the engine possibly detached and penetrated the building separate of the wing/fuselage. The 757/767 are both designed to safely detach the engines during a water impact (ditching attempt) without critical damage to the wings. So it's not surprising that one would detach when hitting a 30+ ton generator. The left engine hit a steam vent and then impacted the ground at almost the same time that the nose impacted the wall of the Pentagon. The 757 hit (and sheered off) multiple light poles on it's final approach into the Pentagon, so it wouldn't be at all surprising if some of the wingtip (or both of the wingtips) was smashed off in one or more of those impacts. That would certainly account for 10-20 feet of wing impact damage being unapparent on the facade of the building. This would certainly account for the wings being slightly longer than the plainly evident impact marks (slashes) into 18-24 inches of reinforced concrete from the wing on the starboard side (right) and the 2 or 3 inches of missing rock (facade damage) on the port side. Now, I'm not making up the fact that the bulk of an airliner's strength and structure is in the bottom 2/5ths of the aircraft. But just incase you missed this bit of information from the FIRST page of this thread; here it is again. Here is an airliner being scrapped, notice how much of the plane is structure, and how much of the plane is an empty hollow shell.

Here is a 757 being built. Notice again how all the support structure is in the bottom 2/5ths of the plane.

Recalling that: The 757 was not perfectly level at impact, the flight data recorder evidences that it was rolling to the port (left) and was traveling at 514mph (a few eyewitness reports also say the plane appeared to roll to the left just before impact, and the damage pattern on the facade of the building supports this). Added note: I think by viewing this photo of the Pentagon you can agree that my splitting of the floors into 5 equal sections is pretty accurate to the actual levels in this building (yes, there are 4 floors with windows, but the top floor of the building is the same height as any floor below it -- it actually appears to be slightly taller by perhaps a foot or two but I kept it to 5 equal heights to simplify it for you). At least everyone can see that I am in no way intentionally misleading you (or anyone else) with my dimensions.

[edit on 27-8-2005 by CatHerder]