In Jan of 2004, I visited the crash site in PA. A cold damp day and I was the only visitor at the time. I was approached by a man who seemed pleased to talk as I explained that as an aviation person I just wanted to be there and read the messages.
He told me he had lived in a house about half a mile from the impact site where he had lived all his life. (Skyline Road) .... but a dirt track. He'd be around fifty. He told me that on the day, he was outside the house and first observed the Boeing low above the trees on the horizon. I estimate perhaps one mile away. He said it was banked. (I gestured some likely bank angles) ..... with smoke coming from what he thought was an engine but certainly from the aircraft.
It descended towards the ground and exploded on impact.
He then said that within seconds a fighter type Jet appeared. It completed one orbit of the crash site and flew off. I tried different types with him. F18 etc, but he couldn't be positive on any of them.
Apparently after the crash, various vehicles with government agents appeared "within minutes" He was extensively interrogated.
Now it just seems to me as an ex RAF man, that had I been ordered to bring down an airliner, (I wouldn't) ..... I would have to follow the standard procedure of following it down to the ground and impact to ensure 'the kill.'
There is a problem with individual eyewitness reports- I am told that the police do not like to rely on witnesses, to RTAs for example, as their memories of events leading to a traumatic incident (such as a crash) can be affected by the event itself- in effect memory can be altered by what a witness thinks should have happened in the few moments before the event.
There is not dishonesty - it's just the way our brains work.
However, this idea does not account for the reports of debris spread over a large area, or indeed the fact that several witnesses stories tie-in with each other.
If I remember correctly the families of these victims on board was allowed to hear the CVR. Would have to be a big coverup for this to happen. They said the same about TWA 800. Just a play on words or mistakes said under pressure. Someone would have spilled the beans by now. If it was shot down no one would have argued about it, so no need to lie. The nation was being attacked and this aircraft was indeed a prime suspect. Its apparent the pax were trying to do something about it. Most of us would like to remember it this way, the other explanation just does not fit.
Its flight 93 that is being referred to here, nothing else. There is always somone trying to broaden the discussion therby allowing it to dissolve into a free for all.
Is it or is it not true, that debris from this flight was found 8 miles from the crash site and that very large engine sections were found more than a mile away. If so, then why.
Its seems a slip up by Rumblefeld, though IMO not exactly a "Freudian" one. Taken in the context of the transcript, he's implying UA93 was downed by bad guys (the ones who attacked NY, the Pentagon, etc.). As one of the comments below the story speculates, perhaps he was in one of his mumbly moments, and "brought down" either came out (was heard as) "shot down."
I have no doubt Feds of all bent were on the scene ASAP, surely to be expected given the circumstances. Given that fighters supposedly had been scrambled to intercept, neither is there any great surprise in a flyover later. Exact timing of either could be prone to distortion in the perception of witnesses.
Did this information about engine parts found miles away from the crash site come from the NTSB report, or a news agency trying to stir the pot to make headlines? 911 changed it for us all in many ways, our industry is just now starting in some cases to return, some cases worse. Perhaps one day we will all be able to enjoy things as we once took for granted. Un- documented conspiracy news wont help.
The engine that was recovered from UA93 was measured at less than 1800ft from the main impact site. Recovery was carried out by the FBI using a local contractors equipment.
"The terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001 are under the jurisdiction of the Federal Bureau of Investigation. The Safety Board provided requested technical assistance to the FBI, and this material generated by the NTSB is under the control of the FBI. The Safety Board does not plan to issue a report or open a public docket."
Not a stretch to imagine that they spotted the smoke from the impact, came over and orbitted the scene once, then hopped back up to altitude to look for other potential hijacked aircraft.
What most forget about that bloody morning is that we had no idea when it was going to end, or how many aircraft were involved. The few fighter types airborne must have been dying to spot any other aircraft.
My uncle was a United 767 captain then. He heard all the inside scoop. A shoot down didn't happen.
Ignoring all of the anecdotal stuff, is it safe to say that there is no hard information, either confirming or denying the existence of debris several miles from the crash site, including the precise location of the major engine component.
An article on Flight 93 by John Carlin, reporting from Shanksville, appeared in The Independent on 13 August 2002, which has been since widely copied on the net, though mostly on conspiracy websites. Excerpts from the article:
Quote:
The wide displacement of the plane's debris, one explanation for which might be an explosion of some sort aboard prior to the crash. Letters – Flight 93 was carrying 7,500 pounds of mail to California – and other papers from the plane were found eight miles (13km) away from the scene of the crash.
A sector of one engine weighing one ton was found 2,000 yards away. This was the single heaviest piece recovered from the crash, and the biggest, apart from a piece of fuselage the size of a dining-room table. The rest of the plane, consistent with an impact calculated to have occurred at 500mph, disintegrated into pieces no bigger than two inches long.
Other remains of the plane were found two miles away near a town called Indian Lake. All of these facts, widely disseminated, were confirmed by the coroner Wally Miller.
Quote:
The paper debris eight miles away, the FBI says, was wafted away by a 10mph wind; the jet-engine part flew 2,000 yards on account of the savage force of the plane's impact with the ground.
The FBI conclusion: "Nothing was found that was inconsistent with the plane going into the ground intact." Aviation experts I have contacted are very doubtful about this. One expert expresses astonishment at the notion that the letters and other papers would have remained airborne for almost one hour before falling to earth.
I am told that the police do not like to rely on witnesses
Are you sure? The cops LOVE it when witnesses suit their purposes- that is, support their case against the accused. In this case I suggest the authorities don't want to hear from witnesses who might upset the official view of what really happened that day.
During accident investigation training by the NTSB we were shown a film of an in-flight breakup at an airshow, followed by impact. Note that, unlike the actual witnesses, we knew in advance that we were going to see a crash. After running the film once we were invited to state what we had seen. Various versions of the accident were given and a few requests to see it again were refused "No, you only get one chance in the real world" A general discussion ended up with twenty four future investigators divided neatly into three different camps. After the film was re-run several times we worked out what happened and found that not one of the 24 versions of the event provided by aviation professionals was accurate. That rammed the message home very effectively - you can't trust even expert eye-witness accounts to be accurate; you can only get a general overview. Its the actual wreckage and the marks on the ground that reveal the truth. Pieces of an aeroplane hitting the ground at normal flying speed can travel a very long way.
Surely it is possible that parts of the aircraft broke away during the prolonged high speed dive. Maybe the fuselage ruptured spilling mail, or an engine broke off on the way down. This would account for wreckage being so far from the crash site.
I remember experts being surprised that the second jet to hit the Trade Centre didn't break up before impact as it was being flown so fast, and that was only diving from a few thousand feet not cruising level.
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