Was Video Fakery Employed on 9/11? [HOAX]

reply to post by weedwhacker

Originally posted by weedwhacker
reply to post by brainsandgravy

 

Thanks for that link.

I do, however,have some bones to pick with Mr. Bursill regarding the "remote control" article he points to, in that.

He makes a LOT of assumptions that, while couched in a lot of technical detail that is accurate and in-depth, he studiously AVOIDS quite a few other aspects of the Auto Flight Systems on the 757/767 that would seriously dispel his "remote control" theories.


IN any case, his attempt to claim that such technology was used on 9/11 FAILS terribly after a simple review of the two FDRs that data was recovered from. I wonder why he ignores the fact that American 77 was hand-flown for the last several minutes? AND, why he also ignores the fact that United 93's autopilot was in a mode called "control wheel steering" for its few last minutes...then disconnected only a few seconds before the final rollover and plunge to impact?

I have to admit that the precision with which those aircraft were flown seems to defy common sense for amateur pilots flying at such extreme velocities. What are the chances that BOTH pilots would be able hit the WTC so precisely on their first runs in a real jet? It seems highly unlikely. Others find it questionable also:

Originally posted by brainsandgravy


I have to admit that the precision with which those aircraft were flown seems to defy common sense for amateur pilots flying at such extreme velocities. What are the chances that BOTH pilots would be able hit the WTC so precisely on their first runs in a real jet? It seems highly unlikely. Others find it questionable also:

I think you have to take into account the weather conditions at the time, a perfect sunny day for maximum distance visibility and the hijackers would have had plenty of time to line up their target, and the fact that the Twin Towers literally stood head and shoulders above any other buildings in the surrounding area and were a big,big target.

The hitting Pentagon would seem to be the much harder target to hit but perhaps the hijackers took this into consideration and put their best pilot in the Pentagon Plane.

Originally posted by Logical one

Originally posted by brainsandgravy


I have to admit that the precision with which those aircraft were flown seems to defy common sense for amateur pilots flying at such extreme velocities. What are the chances that BOTH pilots would be able hit the WTC so precisely on their first runs in a real jet? It seems highly unlikely. Others find it questionable also:

I think you have to take into account the weather conditions at the time, a perfect sunny day for maximum distance visibility and the hijackers would have had plenty of time to line up their target, and the fact that the Twin Towers literally stood head and shoulders above any other buildings in the surrounding area and were a big,big target.

The hitting Pentagon would seem to be the much harder target to hit but perhaps the hijackers took this into consideration and put their best pilot in the Pentagon Plane.

edit on 11-2-2011 by Logical one because: (no reason given)

A 767 (200 tons) flying at over 500mph (an enormous amount of inertia), power-diving (UA175 10,000 ft. per minute) for a target 64 m square--I wouldn't consider that a "big, big target"--yet it hits level and perpendicular. How?

reply to post by brainsandgravy


Those two videos.....are over-analyzed pieces of nonsense. If nonsense had any mass.....there would almost be enough there to collapse the whole of ATS into a black hole.....


Video #1, I can't say how unbelievably BAD its analogy is.....a car on ice??! THAT little piece of misdirection poisons the well for what's to follow.

The remainder, and all the fancy computer graphics, are just someone who has a great deal of skill (he thinks) at USING a computer, but has ZERO practical knowledge of flying and aviation reality. In addition, credibility, already at a low ebb, dips to below zero at the 7:30 mark, or so....with the garbage about FOIA and the BTS records...of the airplanes' never having flown since year 2000 prior to that day. That was just the video maker's icing and toss-off, apparently without any due diligence on his part to validate its accuracy. Other mistakes abound....I recall a mention of the last moments of the descent approach, and he referred to it as the "same" as a landing approach!!! Rubbish.


Video #2 is another "Whaaaa?" moment, to me. All that distraction about the sound, as recorded by the Naudet brothers' camera, at their location. The sound being deflected and altered by the buildings and such IS a act of the event...but not in the way presented in that video. He neglected to take into consideration any echoes and reflections of the sound waves. WAY over-simplistic "analysis"...

The bit about the arcing final course, for AAL 11 too....more hogwash and "over-thinking".

Both videos, really, are committing a form of fallacious argument, the one of incredulity. By attempting (and failing miserably) to "back-engineer" based on many, many assumptions, and not understanding the nuanced variables of actual flying that, as I said, is lacking in people without the hands-on experience. Those of us who DO know what it feels like to fly an airplane may find difficulty describing it in words....because, there is no adequate way TO describe it in just words.

Oh, more random memory, also...not sure which video, but I recall another toss-off fallacious attempt (more "poisoning the well" tactic) of mentioning the Flight Manuals found in the hijackers' rental cars or apartments.....firstly, this is so ridiculous it should be obvious to ANYONE WHO HAS EVER DRIVEN A CAR (to borrow from video #1's opening crap sequence). You don't refer to the books AS YOU OPERATE the vehicle!!! You study them beforehand, to learn and become more familiar with layout and operations of controls, etc. IN ADDITION, once you have had some experience (and they DID, in real simulators), not the (yet another "poisoning" attempt) MicroSoft Flight Simulator for your desktop PC, as the videos try to allege!!!....the practical REAL simulator experience is reinforced, afterwards, by then reviewing the printed material, books and manuals. And, so on. THAT is how it's done in all aspects of flight training. Also, they would have "boned up" prior to embarking on the operation, as well.

Think of it as studying for a test......you've seen the material already, you just review it last minute, so it's fresh in your mind....


_____________

On a side tangent note: I believe the maker on YT is a fellow who has done some GOOD work discrediting the silly "Apollo Hoax" garbage that also infests the Webz, and YT. I am disappointed that his critical thinking skills have left him, in these instances. I may feel the need to contact him on his YT page......

reply to post by brainsandgravy


It DIDN'T!!

"--yet it hits level and perpendicular. How?

The video clips clearly show it was not "perpendicular". The longitudinal axis of the airplane WAS angled relative to the plane of the face or "facade" of the building.

That is WHY the hijacker flying had to add that left bank, at the final moments...he was CORRECTING his aim!

The descent was very minimal, but was still there, also. The "video" was simply NOT that precise, in its assessment and calculations. The final damage patterns are what give the real story regarding actual trajectories.

reply to post by Logical one


I must beg to differ, here:

The hitting Pentagon would seem to be the much harder target to hit but perhaps the hijackers took this into consideration and put their best pilot in the Pentagon Plane.

No, not hardly. This thread is, ostensibly, about the claims of "fakery" involving the footage of the NYC attacks, and those airplanes. SO, Pentagon is bit outside that parameter. However, check the numerous threads on it, have posted the video clip from a Dutch TV documentary showing a rather low-time pilot, in a real full-motion simulator fly into the Pentagon....and hit it almost the same way...THREE times in a row.

AND< when reviewing the NTSB data that was made into an animation of the last several minutes OF AAL 77, the "sloppiness", in general, of Hanjour in the turn around is evident....BUT, being "sloppy" in no way inpeded him (or any of them) from being able to aggressively keep correcting their aim. Adrenaline can be responsible for some of the "jitters" too.

reply to post by weedwhacker


I would agree that achimspock is likely no expert when it comes to flying large air-craft. I am probably much more ignorant than he in that respect. So perhaps your grievances are valid. I cannot say. But I know that flying such an aircraft by hand with no real experience would be extremely difficult, especially at speeds above normal operation. To hit such a relatively small target seems (to me anyway) like it would be almost impossible given their experience. But I'm open to the fact that I could be wrong. Common sense isn't always applicable to uncommon situations. Any commercial pilots out there have an opinion?

Originally posted by brainsandgravy

A 767 (200 tons) flying at over 500mph (an enormous amount of inertia), power-diving (UA175 10,000 ft. per minute) for a target 64 m square--I wouldn't consider that a "big, big target"--yet it hits level and perpendicular. How?

I meant a big target as in on a clear day as was Sept 11 2001 the towers would have been visible for miles allowing plenty of time to get the line of sight pretty well centred.

Buildings that didn't stick out like the twin towers would have made harder targets, that's the point I'm making.

Originally posted by weedwhacker

You might be right weed, but to a non pilot like me, flying at a low level without hitting the ground first would seem a bit more challenging, but hey, I am no pilot,

I meant a big target as in on a clear day as was Sept 11 2001 the towers would have been visible for miles allowing plenty of time to get the line of sight pretty well centred.

Would the Towers have been visible from the point where the airplanes were allegedly hijacked (180 miles or so away and 25,000 feet in the air)? How was the Flight 11 hijacker pilot, who had no in flight experience with a 757, able to navigate this plane in such an expert fashion, making a virtual bee line toward WTC 1? He not only had to fly the plane directly towards the Towers with no visual references from that absurd distance, he had to descend from 25,000 feet or so to about 800 feet during this 180 mile journey.

Was there some sort of highway type sign floating in the air which gave him directions such as: WTC 1 Thataway >>>>>? No wonder the airplanes in those videos are described as being cartoonish. Beep! Beep!

Originally posted by weedwhacker
reply to post by brainsandgravy

 

It DIDN'T!!

"--yet it hits level and perpendicular. How?

The video clips clearly show it was not "perpendicular". The longitudinal axis of the airplane WAS angled relative to the plane of the face or "facade" of the building.

That is WHY the hijacker flying had to add that left bank, at the final moments...he was CORRECTING his aim!

The descent was very minimal, but was still there, also. The "video" was simply NOT that precise, in its assessment and calculations. The final damage patterns are what give the real story regarding actual trajectories.

edit on 11 February 2011 by weedwhacker because: (no reason given)

The descent was "very minimal?" ATC doesn't seem to share your opinion:

reply to post by Logical one


Well....those hijackers all had several hundred hours. The basics are the basics...I was thinking about it like this:

You could put anyone, even without experience, in a car and just tell them to steer, right? Take away all the distractions of traffic, signals, stopping, parking etc. See the way I'm going, here?

Now, one more step....simulation, while useful for safely recreating situations that are potentially hazardous, and thus giving some instruction in them...simulation also allows for some repetitive and faster training, since you can virtually "re-set" anywhere, and do things over and over, for practice. But, in say...a driving simulator (think of that PC game you may have played) there are several things missing, aren't there? Compared to a real car.

First, something we take for granted, (most of us) is peripheral vision. Often, it's so natural, you don't realize how much you rely on it, until it's taken away. (Think, even in a real car, if all your windows were iced over, except for a narrow spot directly in front of you).

But, the real biggie, is sensation. This the sense of motion, not only from your vestibular organs, but the rest of your body....your skin and bones can FEEL the various directions and forces of acceleration....forward, back and side. THAT makes controlling a real car all that much more intuitive, and effortless, compared to the intense concentration needed to do it merely by sight alone...handicapped sight, lacking peripheral vision.

In an airplane, same concepts apply. PLUS, you have the added acceleration sensations of vertical forces...those also contribute to your perception, and fine tune your eye-hand coordination. It doesn't take many hours before this is more and more "natural" to you....it is a sensory feedback of sorts....what you do, with your hands and arms and feet, affects the airplane, and you FEEL the results, and adjust what you're doing accordingly. How much input, how little....feedback. Perspective, visually too. The airplane, in a way, becomes an extension of your extremities. (Waxing poetic, now I am....).

That is what is so hard to put into words...sensation just cannot be described properly. You have to DO it, right??


While I was waxing....I searched, and some nostalgia hit me...in a YT video that I just found (it's from only ten months ago). A full-motion Level D simulator that is VERY familiar to me (one of three 737 Sims we have, as I recall...in additon to many other types) since I've spent some hours in it. Here, these two kids from nearby University get a their "dreams" fulfilled, in a way. The first guy, as you listen to them chat, is close to finishing his Instrument Rating. This tells me a bit, even without knowing more details, as to his approximate level of experience. Roughly the same as the hijackers. Maybe a bit less than some, even.

(The second, kid, I have NO idea what his skill level is...but, it's a good example how, even with the motion ON in the simulator, it is still not exactly like a real airplane...and you can get a bit of pilot-induced-oscillation going...nervousness, over-controlling, etc. The real airplane doesn't handle with as much difficulty. ALSO, it is a truism that the FAA requires simulators to be a bit more challenging, as a rule, than the real thing. It really is a markedly different experience, once you've spent your hours training in new equipment, and all that time in the Sim, then go fly the real jet...it's like 100% easier, due to all the reasons I outlined above).

Back to YT maker, "Kid #1"...for his first time, considering it's a new feeling for him....it's OK...but, if you know what to look for, you can see he's "sloppy"....even though, as a guy with a couple of hundred hours (likely) he should be able to better hold his altitude, and such. A requirement for the Instrument Rating standards!!!
(The flashing amber light, above the altimeter...when he was more than 250 feet above the selected altitude. The soft horn sound is the altitude alert sound, either approaching the selected altitude, or when you are there, and then deviate too far off, above or below (~250-300) feet.

They let him of a bit easy, the instructors in the "box" with him, there. Odd that he has to be reminded to keep his hand on the throttles.....guess it's just ingrained in me....

Keep in mind, you don't just "jump in" to these....there is about two hours (at least) of briefings first as well...discussing the upcoming procedures and for familiarizations. So, he DID get some coaching there...but, an "amateur" doing a lot more "precision" a flying than just steering into buidings at high speed....:



(BTW....in the Sim, "I can see my house from here!" is an OLD, OLD joke.....).


[ "Vitaly", at the end, at least kept it on the centerline of the runway!! ]

reply to post by weedwhacker


Those engines appear to be impacting at the exact same time. It looks perpendicular to me.

[atsimg]http://files.abovetopsecret.com/images/member/d5c7bbe9869f.gif[/atsimg]

Here are some additional resources for the questions we are pursuing,
including diagrams of the number of floors consisting of steel trusses
filled with 4-8" of concrete, which killtown presents as archived here:

killtown.911review.org...

reply to post by brainsandgravy

Originally posted by JimFetzer
Here are some additional resources for the questions we are pursuing,
including diagrams of the number of floors consisting of steel trusses
filled with 4-8" of concrete, which killtown presents as archived here:

killtown.911review.org...

reply to post by brainsandgravy

 

Jim PLEASE GETS YOUR FACTS RIGHT the trusses are NOT REPEAT NOT filled with concrete, on top the trusses was steel decking the concrete is poured on top of this.

So as we can see you NOTHING about, physics,kinetic energy or construction, OH I see you have not answered the question re the paint fleck hitting the shuttle window I wonder if you will which according to your flawed physics would not have caused any damage to the window.

reply to post by weedwhacker

IN ADDITION, once you have had some experience (and they DID, in real simulators), not the (yet another "poisoning" attempt) MicroSoft Flight Simulator for your desktop PC, as the videos try to allege!!!....the practical REAL simulator experience is reinforced,

Is there any actual "proof " that they trained in a simulator or is that just an assumption...??

On a side tangent note: I believe the maker on YT is a fellow who has done some GOOD work discrediting the silly "Apollo Hoax" garbage that also infests the Webz, and YT. I am disappointed that his critical thinking skills have left him, in these instances. I may feel the need to contact him on his YT page......

Now that's a "LMAO" moment if there ever was one...
The guy's great when he's agreeing with you but saddly lacking when he disagrees with you..

reply to post by brainsandgravy


Key word, there is "appear" to be. As in, from the distance of the camera, its limited resolution capability, and the speed of the action....a matter of several inches difference, due to being any bit askew, will be virtually undetectable, in this event.

I do not recall OTTOMH (off the top of my head) the estimated heading, and angle that was cited from NIST, in official reports, prior to the assertions there by that video maker. The overhead animation was set at what he took, I presume, from NIST's estimates, at 13 degrees. It IS possible that, since there wasn't a standing building to get extremely accurate measurements from, post-impact, that angle, from NIST, was merely wrong.

Doesn't seem to me that a few errors of that nature should indict everything, though....they ARE only doing the best they can, from imprecise methods and sources. I'd say, though, on watching the debris ejecta, the skewing seems evident.

BTW....and I have no way to prove, nor disprove...only a thought here. When examining the trajectory of the airplane, THAT is what is key. It is defined as the aggregate path the center of mass (Center of Gravity, in aeronautical terms...C/G) is taking. The controls can cause movement about that center, in the three axes of motion. He was in a left turn, as it looks (to me) that last second, he saw his aim was off, and he was correcting. It is (here's where opinion comes in) possible that he augmented that turn with a hefty rudder input as well...LEFT rudder. This could easily have produced a yaw moment, and resulted in the nearly perpendicular appearance at impact...even as the trajectory of the airplane's mass had a slightly different vector...at the angle that resulted in the debris exiting the other side of the building, as witnessed/recorded.

On that same concept.....would also explain the pitch attitude, as filmed/photographed, at impact. You should know it is normal, in turns, to apply a bit of UP elevator force to the control wheel. These could have all been conbtrol inputs he added, just milliseconds before hit....the airplane attitudes would change, but its momentum would continue for a while, unchanged. HAD the building not been in the way, of course, the new attitudes selected by the controls would have eventually resulted in a changed trajectory.

We are talking VERY minor angles, here remember.....
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Oh, yes....also, in Video #1, when he discussed the vertical, and used the 3D graphics....it drew the path as a straight line. This, again, was another error I forgot to mention, that I noted whilst watching. The lines and "measurements" he made were inexact, at best....so, the fallacious conclusion of perfectly, exactly at the same altitude for the last few hundred feet of flight is deceptive. Really, a few degrees of nose UP/DOWN pitch attitude is very hard to determine, given those exterior views, from the various camera angles. AND, when levelling from a descent, that path describes an arc, (when viewed from the side), NOT a straight line.....

reply to post by SphinxMontreal


YOUR questons here have all been answered multiple times in other threads. Do you not recall those??

If not, then I will have to dig back, and find....will post links to old posts that provide that information. (Is it this thread I already linked the NTSB "Flight Path Study" reports?? Possibly...they help answer, too...).

reply to post by JimFetzer


I remembered reading a pretty decent article regarding WTC crash physics a while back at "pumpitout" by a physicist comparing the WTC impacts to an F-4 Phantom jet crash-test video. I went back to see if I could find it. I did. Unfortunately, there's no reference posted (that I can see) for who the author is except a first name, Serguei. Anyway, I'll re-post it here because I think he makes some good points regarding impact physics at the WTC. The original post can be found here: s1.zetaboards.com...

Hi,

(I leave it up to you to quote chosen excerpts of this elsewhere, but don't be afraid to quote a bit more and/or to explicitly state that the quotes are taken from a somewhat longer piece. Otherwise the readers may find my points lacking and the whole argument will be all the less credible. Disclaimers for the win.)
_______________

It's odd how people keep referring to the planes as "prevailing" in the impacts. The towers stood through the impacts and would have stood forever if it wasn't for their improbable "collapse". As for the planes, they were quite thoroughly destroyed and quite effectively halted in the process. I mean, look at that Phantom jet crashing into a solid wall: www.jokeroo.com...

Clearly the plane doesn't "prevail" in this case: it may appear to "pierce" through the wall "like knife through butter", but what it actually does is "splash" against that wall, pulverized inch by inch as it goes. The incoming parts of it remain virtually intact for longer than one could expect, but for every section of the plane there comes a moment where it reaches the wall, and from then on that part of the plane is history. Halfway through the impact, for example, it would be wrong to look at the tail and infer the position of the nose as being deep inside the wall: the nose simply doesn't exist at that point, it's already been blown to smithereens. So in this case, clearly the plane doesn't penetrate the wall in any way, instead it is thoroughly destroyed, "disappears into dust" as they put it. To be fair, the "dust" we see is just the lighter and faster kind of debris: the impact may have produced somewhat larger chunks, but they travel slower than the dust and so can't be seen in the video.

As for the wall, it essentially stood its ground, although it may have to be replaced after such an incident. Note that it's a "smart wall", so it is actually designed to give way a bit, just like the structure of modern cars and trains and such. So it's not like it's intact or merely dented, either.

(The most relevant difference between that video and 9/11 is that the towers had a lot of solid obstacles such as slabs of concrete, but also a lot of hollow spaces in between. This means that the debris had much of an opportunity to continue flying in the general direction of the initial impact, whereas a solid wall would have deflected all the junk sideways or backwards. So the planes were still "atomized" upon impact, gradually, just like the F4 here - but unlike here the debris mostly went into the building, plowing through the cluttered office floors, possibly hitting the core, and eventually either coming to a halt or breaking out the other side, like the infamous engine of the South Tower plane.)

Back to your fundamental question about speed. First of all, the plane was definitely NOT "somehow harder because it was moving fast and the building wasn't". The relevant parameter of the impact is the RELATIVE velocity of both objects: in the big scheme of things, maybe the plane was moving backwards at 200 mph through the solar system and the building was chasing it at 700 mph. Thus the velocity can be distributed differently between the objects, depending on the frame of reference, and so the relative 500 mph figure has no reason whatsoever to specifically harden the plane with respect to the building, or vice-versa.

On a more important note, neither the plane nor the building are homogeneous solid objects, and so it's not just about the raw mechanical properties of either steel and aluminium, such as hardness or tensile strength. There are complex structures colliding: both the plane and the building are engineered assemblies of metal beams, designed with certain operating conditions in mind. The detailed behavior of these structures during the impact will be determined not only by material properties, but also by the size, shape and orientation of the structures. It is with all these characteristics in mind that the role of the velocity can be determined. In other terms, it's not as clear-cut as "a big chunk of steel VS a big chunk of aluminum": in order to analyze the impact you have to take a closer look at the colliding structures.

I've addressed this in my writeups before, and the key point is that stress and deformation propagate through the materials and structures at a certain velocity (it's not as simple as the speed of sound in either material; there are structural considerations too).

At low impact speeds, the stress has the time to propagate from the point of impact throughout either object: either it concentrates in some kind of weak spot, causing irreversible deformation (mechanical damage and failure); or it ends up stored in the whole structure, reversibly, in the form of elastic energy - this elastic energy can then be released when the impacting objects bounce off each other, or as they vibrate/resonate in the aftermath of the collision.

Conversely, if the impact velocity is high enough, then the stress and deformation will fail to propagate through the structure much or at all - in this case, material or structural failure can only occur in the close vicinity of the point of impact, whereas on a larger scale the structures will remain intact.

From here on, the 9/11impacts have two very distinct features that should be addressed separately. First, on a large scale, the rear part of the plane sustains no visible deformation as the front part impacts the tower and is supposedly shredded to bits. Second, on a small scale, it appears that the fuselage and wings have (respectively) punched and cut through the perimeter columns.

As for the first point, that Phantom-jet-VS-wall video is enough to provide a basic understanding. Whatever happens upon impact (the wall being dented or the plane being crushed), the tremendous stress and deformation do not have the time to propagate through the plane backwards like they would for a slower impact velocity. Thus the collision is all the more violent as it's localized at the current point of impact, whereas the incoming rear part is virtually intact and mostly doesn't even "know" that something unspeakably horrible is happening up front.

It is fair to think of stress and deformation as elementary "information" about the progressive impact with the wall - this information fails to travel across the structure of the plane, or rather is beaten to it by the progressive impact itself.

As for the second point, we must have a closer look at just what kind of structures are colliding, on the small scale. As an example, let's consider a wing impacting the perimeter columns - and for the sake of the argument let's assume that the plane is a regular jetliner, i.e., that the wings were not reinforced in any way, nor were they fitted with shaped charges or such.

Above we noted that stress and deformation essentially fail to propagate through the plane (or building), in regard of the large velocity of the impact. This means that the outcome of the impact between the wing and the columns is decided locally, on the scale of no more than, say, a couple of feet. At every point of impact we basically have a one-on-one encounter between a single aluminium beam and a single steel beam, both of them a couple of feet long (technically those foot-long beams are an integral part of larger structures, but since they don't have the time to share the stress around, they're essentially on their own).

Now what can we say at this point? A vertical steel beam and a horizontal aluminium beam are hurled at each other at 500 mph, who wins? The answer is, we don't know. The material properties of both steel and aluminium are relevant, but the outcome of the impact also depends on the size and type of either beam. What if the steel "beam" is a guitar string? clearly it doesn't have much of a chance against the wing of a plane (although technically it's harder than aluminium, and will thus leave a scratch on the wing). So, structure matters just as much as material here, and steel can definitely "lose the fight", i.e., it can fail as a structure, despite its higher "hardness" and tensile strength. Like I said before, the problem is more subtle than two large chunks of metal crashing together.

In the case of 9/11, as far as I know, the perimeter columns were not regular beams but essentially boxes, with a square-foot hollow section surrounded by inch-thick walls (roughly). This is well-adapted to the task of supporting and redistributing top-down stress, in the normal operating conditions of the building. However, it is possible that the rather thin walls of the box make such a beam quite vulnerable to being hit from the side, in a cutting motion.

Note that even though the perimeter columns are multiply redundant (i.e., in a hurricane they will work together very effectively, redistributing the stress among them as needed), the wing hits them one by one, andvery quickly. So what really matters here is how strong a single column is, and how much of a cut it can take from an aircraft wing.

On the other hand, we have an airplane longeron (that's what the thicker structural beams of a plane are called), which is responsible for the stiffness of the wing, in a variety of operating conditions; when the aircraft is grounded, the fuselage is propped up and the wings would fall off if it wasn't for the longerons; when airborne, the role is reversed, because the wings generate lift and it's the fuselage that weighs them down; the longeron must also cope with the engine pod pulling forwards, and the rest of the wing being subject to drag.

All in all, the aluminium beams used in wings are apparently quite resistant to all kinds of bending stress, and by inference they'd do well in "cutting" situations too.

For example, suppose such a wing hits a road sign pole or a metal-tube lamp post, which is designed to support just its own weight and then some (safety margin), in an upright position, with moderate wind. I expect the aircraft wing to do quite well in a high-velocity collision against such a pole.

This is where intuition fails me, as far as 9/11 is concerned. I have no clear idea of the structures used in the construction of the planes (be it the Boeings from the official story or whatever they really were). I also don't know much about the material properties of the actual flavors of steel and aluminium that we are looking at. Therefore I can not make a definitive statement about what really happened to the wings and columns (and fuselage) upon impact. Maybe a regular airframe could do the trick, and maybe it couldn't. Since there is no evidence that the planes were regular Boeing 767s, that's a moot point. It was certainly possible for SOME kind of plane to puncture the perimeter, cutting every column across the wingspan and punching a bigger hole in the middle where the fuselage hit.

Then again, it was not necessary for the wings to consistently cut through every column, neither have I seen thorough evidence that they did. Suppose that some column or other was merely dented and bent but not broken by the impact; or that it DID break, but that the eventual gap was, say, a couple of inches wide, in other words not enough to let the whole wing pass. What then? nothing special, really; the wing would take a lot of damage itself, and then it would fly past the column, left and right rather than through the gap, and into the building.

At any rate, there are trusses and corrugated steel and concrete right behind the columns, and that's something the wings just can't keep winning against. So it's not like the aluminium has to beat the steel beam "hands down" here; it's OK if a wing section is cut by a column and flies in through the adjacent windows, merely denting the column in the process; on the pictures of the aftermath, you can't really tell the difference.

Keep in mind that the fuselage impact is the only place where you can see anything like a "gaping hole" (and even so it's not really gaping because the floors are still there, mostly). Across the wingspan, what is seen from a distance (and often mistaken for a hole) is the outline of the missing aluminium cladding that fell off the steel beams shortly after the impact - the beams themselves are mostly intact and the actual impact points (dents and gaps and such) can only be resolved on a few extreme closeups shot from helicopters.

There, hope this helps, and maybe I'll forward some more emails to you if you still have questions afterwards.
_______
Serguei

reply to post by SphinxMontreal

Was there some sort of highway type sign floating in the air which gave him directions such as: WTC 1 Thataway >>>>>? No wonder the airplanes in those videos are described as being cartoonish. Beep! Beep!

Did you flunk geography....?

Yes Sherlock - its called the HUDSON RIVER which runs for over 150 miles north of the NYC - deep and wide
enough for ocean going ships to sail that far. Floow it south until hit NYC

For UAL 175 all hijackers needed to do was fly east (into morning sun) until ATLANTIC OCEAN - cant miss it as
is over 2000 miles wide. Once reach it head north for few miles until see massive smoke cloud from burning North Tower.

From where I live in NJ can easily see NYC skyscapers (including new Freedom Tower) from 20 miles from top
of ridges at elevation of 500-700 ft above sea level