Magic planes and free-falling towers remembered, 17 years on

 

On 11 September this year, the world will remember the day when:

*Three buildings… were knocked down by two planes, with the third (WTC 7) collapsing into its footprint at free-fall speed, despite sustaining only a few small office fires. The North and South towers collapsed in exactly the same way, symmetrically and neatly – like this. 

*And let’s not also forget… the mysterious and unprecedented ‘power downs’ at the World Trade Center three weeks before 9/11. All security systems and cameras were shut down in the lead up to the later reports of massive explosions tearing through the sub-basement levels of the North tower before the first plane hit. But I guess that doesn’t warrant any investigation..

*We must also be vigilant of amateur pilots… One of whom was Hani Hanjour. He could barely fly a single-engine Cessna but navigated his way to his target without any knowledge of the instruments on board the plane (or help from ground traffic control). He then skillfully executed a perfect 350mph descending corkscrew turn of 330 degrees in a Boeing 757, bringing it to ground level and crashing it into the Pentagon. Let’s hear from a career pilot on this one.

“I know from my experience that it would have been highly improbable that even a seasoned military test pilot could have flown a T-category aircraft like the 757 into the first floor of the Pentagon because of a thing called ground effect.” – Fred Fox, a retired US Navy pilot, 33 years flying for American Airlines.

*Oh, and 9/11 also marks the day that the laws of Physics were defied… as the jet fuel from the planes (which burns at a maximum of 815 degrees Celsius) melted the World Trade Center’s steel beams (which can only melt at 1,480 degrees Celsius). An international cohort of qualified physicists, architects, pilots and engineers are demanding answers, but don’t worry, they’re just batshit crazy conspiracy theorists. Trust the word of George W Bush – he’s never deceived anybody