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Eyewitnesses Accounts
Eric Bart's Pentagon Attack Eyewitness Account Compilation
French researcher Eric Bart posted on his
website
an extensive compilation of eyewitness accounts of the
September 11th attack.
The compilation, perhaps the most complete anywhere,
is mirrored here.
Eric's compilation is in two parts:
Entries within each part are alphabetically sorted.
Eyewitness Accounts
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Air
Force Lt. Col. Marc Abshire, 40, a speechwriter for Air Force Secretary
James Roche, was working on several speeches this morning when he felt
the blast of the explosion at the Pentagon. His office is on the D ring,
near the eighth corridor, he said. "It shot me back in my chair.
There was a huge blast. I could feel the air shock wave of it,"
Abshire said. "I didn't know exactly what it was. It didn't rumble.
It was more of a direct smack. I said, 'This isn't right. Something's
wrong here.'" "We all went out in the hallway. People were yelling 'Evacuate!
Evacuate!' And we found ourselves on the lawn and looking back on our
building. It was very much a surrealistic sort of experience. It's just
definitely not right to see smoke coming out of the Pentagon. It was
a very strange sight to see."
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/metro/daily/sep01/attack.html
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I
witnessed the jet hit the Pentagon on September 11. From my office on
the 19th floor of the USA TODAY building in Arlington, Va., I have a
view of Arlington Cemetery, Crystal City, the Pentagon, National Airport
and the Potomac River. ... Shortly after watching the second tragedy,
I heard jet engines pass our building, which, being so close to the
airport is very common. But I thought the airport was closed. I figured
it was a plane coming in for landing. A few moments later, as I was
looking down at my desk, the plane caught my eye. It didn't register
at first. I thought to myself that I couldn't believe the pilot was
flying so low. Then it dawned on me what was about to happen. I watched
in horror as the plane flew at treetop level, banked slightly to
the left, drug it's wing along the ground and slammed into the west
wall of the Pentagon exploding into a giant orange fireball. Then
black smoke. Then white smoke.
http://www.jmu.edu/alumni/tragedy%5Fresponse/read%5Fmessages.html
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Lt.
Col. Ted Anderson : "We ran to the end of our building, turned left
and saw nothing but huge, billowing black smoke, and a brilliant,
brilliant explosion of fire." (...) One of the Pentagon's two fire
trucks was parked only 50 feet from the crash site, and it was "totally
engulfed in flames," Anderson says. Nearby, tanks full of propane
and aviation fuel had begun igniting, and they soon began exploding,
one by one. (...) Back in the building again, Anderson said he began
"screaming and hollering for people as secondary and third-order explosions
started going off. One of them was a fire department car exploding-I
think my right eardrum exploded at the same time, and it unequivocally
scared the heck out of me."
http://www.msnbc.com/news/635293.asp
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Mrs.
Deb Anlauf, resident of Colfax, Wisconsin, was in her 14th floor of
the Sheraton Hotel [located 1.6 mile from the explosion], (immediately
west of the Navy Annex) when she heard a "loud roar": Suddenly I saw
this plane right outside my window. You felt like you could touch it;
it was that close. It was just incredible. "Then it shot straight across
from where we are and flew right into the Pentagon. It was just this
huge fireball that crashed into the wall (of the Pentagon). When it
hit, the whole hotel shook. (...) Jeff didn't feel the impact of
the plane crash as directly as his wife. He was attending an environmental
meeting on the second floor of the hotel when the plane struck the Pentagon.
About five seconds before the crash, Jeff said he heard the sound of
"tin being dropped," likely as construction workers building an addition
to the hotel saw the plane and dropped their building materials. "Then,
about 5 seconds later, the whole hotel shook," Jeff recalled.
" I could feel it moving. We said 'Oh, my gosh, what's going on?'
"
http://www.leadertelegram.com/specialreports/attack/storydetail.asp?ID=7
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Gary
Bauer, a former Presidential candidate, happened to be driving into
Washington, D.C. that morning, to a press conference on Capitol Hill.
"I was in a massive traffic jam, hadn't moved more than a hundred yards
in twenty minutes. ... I had just passed the closest place the Pentagon
is to the exit on 395 . . . when all of a sudden I heard the roar
of a jet engine. I looked at the woman sitting in the car next to
me. She had this startled look on her face. We were all thinking the
same thing. We looked out the front of our windows to try to see the
plane, and it wasn't until a few seconds later that we realized the
jet was coming up behind us on that major highway. And it veered to
the right into the Pentagon. The blast literally rocked all of
our cars. It was an incredible moment."
massnews.com / Amy Contrada / December 2001
http://www.massnews.com/past_issues/2001/dec%202001/1201bauer.htm
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Anger
and guilt still sear Lieutenant Colonel Michael Beans who shakes his
head ruefully and asks himself why he survived: "Why you, not them?
Who made that decision?" (...) Inside the Pentagon, the blast lifted
Beans off the floor as he crossed a huge open office toward his
desk. "You heard this huge concussion, then the room filled with
this real bright light, just like everything was encompassed within
this bright light," said Beans. "As soon as I hit the floor, all
the lights went out, there was a small fire starting to burn."
His friends were not so lucky. Not far away on the same floor, Beans'
once familiar world had turned into a terrifying maze as well. Opening
a door to the outer E-ring corridor, Beans saw waves of fire rolling
towards him like surf on a beach. Turning back, he groped slowly back
across the room on hands and knees. The sprinkler came on and that kept
the smoke and heat down. But it was nervewracking and Beans was alone,
listening as the building burned. "It was so quiet," he recalled. "There
was no screaming, nobody saying anything, just nothing." He thought
he might not make it out alive. He thought about his wife, his daughter
and son, his 22 years in the army. "I remember taking a couple of breaths
there, and I made up my mind: I just can't go out this way," he said.
Suddenly out of the smoke a man ran by. "I tried to grab him, and I
tried to yell at him," Beans said. But "he just disappeared into the
smoke." Alone again, Beans crawled with his face to the floor. Then
the carpet turned to wet tile, and he looked up and saw he was in a
corridor. He ran and as the smoke cleared, he saw a guard. Beans discovered
later that his head and forearms were burned. He now wears special flesh-colored
compression sleeves on his arms. "These burns are going to heal, eventually,"
he said. But the memories "will be with me for the rest of my life."
http://www.theosuobserver.com/main.cfm/include/smdetail/synid/54846.html
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Paul
Begala, a Democratic consultant, said he witnessed an explosion near
the Pentagon. "It was a huge fireball, a huge, orange fireball," he
said in an interview on his mobile phone. He said another witness told
him a helicopter exploded. AP, Washington, 9/12/2001 11:45:33 PM
http://www.guardian.co.uk/wtccrash/story/0%2C1300%2C550486%2C00.html
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Mickey
Bell : The jet came in from the south and banked left as it entered
the building, narrowly missing the Singleton Electric trailer and the
on-site foreman, Mickey Bell. Bell had just left the trailer when he
heard a loud noise. The next thing he recalled was picking himself off
the floor, where he had been thrown by the blast. Bell, who had been
less than 100 feet from the initial impact of the plane, was
nearly struck by one of the plane's wings as it sped by him. In shock,
he got into his truck, which had been parked in the trailer compound,
and sped away. He wandered around Arlington in his truck and tried to
make wireless phone calls. He ended up back at Singleton's headquarters
in Gaithersburg two hours later, according to President Singleton, not
remembering much. The full impact of the closeness of the crash wasn't
realized until coworkers noticed damage to Bell's work vehicle. He had
plastic and rivets from an airplane imbedded in its sheet metal,
but Bell had no idea what had happened. During Bell's close call,
other Singleton workers, including sub-foreman Greg Cobaugh, were doing
other work on the first and third floors. The blast wasn't very loud
to them. They were talking about reports that two planes crashed into
the World Trade Center in Manhattan, New York - not considering the
noise they heard could be a similar attack.
http://www.necanet.org/whats_new/report.cfm?ID=1003
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Richard
Benedetto, a USA TODAY reporter, was on his way to work, driving on
the Highway parrallel to the Pentagon : "It was an American
Airlines airplane, I could see it very clearly.(...) I didn't see
the impact. (...) The sound itself sounded more like a thud rather
than a bomb (...) rather than a loud bomb explosion it sounded
muffled, heavy, very deep. I didn't see any flaps, it looked like
the plane was just in normal flying mode but heading straight down.
It was straight. The only thing we saw on the ground outside there
was a piece of a ... the tail of a lamp post. (Video)
high bandwidth :
http://digipressetmp3.teaser.fr/uploads/491/Benedetto2.ram
low bandwidth :
http://digipressetmp3.teaser.fr/uploads/491/Benedetto.ram
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Members
of Congress have been shuttled to the site to inspect the damage. Rep.
Judy Biggert (R-Ill.) made the trip on Thursday. She saw remnants
of the airplane. 'There was a seat from a plane, there was part
of the tail and then there was a part of green metal, I could not tell
what it was, a part of the outside of the plane,' she said.
'It smelled like it was still burning.'
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LTC
Brian Birdwell. He was just heading back down the hall to his office
when the building exploded in front of him. The flash fire was immediate
and the smoke was thick. The blast had thrown him down, giving
him a concussion. He wanted to head down the hall toward the A ring...but
because he couldn't see anything he had no idea which way to go and
he didn't want to head in the wrong direction. (...) Once they stabilized
Brian, they transferred him to George Washington Hospital where...the
best, cutting edge burn doctor in the U.S. The doctor told him that
had he not gone to Georgetown first, he probably would not have survived
because of the jet fuel in his lungs.
http://www.aog.usma.edu/Class/1961/BirdwellLuncheon.htm
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Down
the hall from Yates, Lt. Col. Brian Birdwell, 40, had been at his desk
in Room 2E486 since 6:30 a.m. (...) Birdwell walked out to the men's
room in corridor 4, a move that saved his life. He had just taken three
or four steps out of the bathroom when the building was rocked. "Bomb!"
the Gulf War vet immediately thought as he was knocked down. When he
stood up, he realized he was on fire. "Jesus, I'm coming to see you"
http://www.hjpa.org/morenews.html
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Sean
Boger, Air Traffic Controller and Pentagon tower chief - "I just looked
up and I saw the big nose and the wings of the aircraft coming right
at us and I just watched it hit the building." "It exploded. I fell
to the ground and covered my head. I could actually hear the metal
going through the building." The crew, Boger and Spc. Jacqueline
Kidd, air traffic controller and training supervisor, prepared for President
George W. Bush to arrive from Florida around 12:30 p.m.
http://www.dcmilitary.com/army/pentagram/6_46/local_news/12049-1.html
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Donald
R. Bouchoux, 53, a retired Naval officer, a Great Falls resident, a
Vietnam veteran and former commanding officer of a Navy fighter squadron,
was driving west from Tysons Corner to the Pentagon for a 10am meeting.
He wrote: At 9:40 a.m. I was driving down Washington Boulevard (Route
27) along the side of the Pentagon when the aircraft crossed about 200
yards [should be more than 150 yards from the impact] in front
of me and impacted the side of the building. There was an enormous
fireball, followed about two seconds later by debris raining down. The
car moved about a foot to the right when the shock wave hit. I had what
must have been an emergency oxygen bottle from the airplane go flying
down across the front of my Explorer and then a second piece of jagged
metal come down on the right side of the car. Washington Post, Sept.
20, 2001
http://web.lexis-nexis.com...
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John
Bowman, a retired Marine lieutenant colonel and a contractor, was in
his office in Corridor Two near the main entrance to the south parking
lot. "Everything was calm,' Bowman said. " Most people knew it was
a bomb. Everyone evacuated smartly. We have a good sprinkling of
military people who have been shot at."
http://www.dcmilitary.com/army/pentagram/6_37/local_news/10380-1.html
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Staff
Sgt. Chris Braman : The lawn was littered with twisted pieces of
aluminum. He saw one chunk painted with the letter ``A,'' another
with a ``C.'' It didn't occur to Braman what the letters signified until
a man in the crowd stooped to pick up one of the smaller metal shards.
He examined it for a moment, then announced: ``This was a jet.''
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Defense
Protective Service officers were the first on the scene of the terrorist
attack. One, Mark Bright, actually saw the plane hit the building. He
had been manning the guard booth at the Mall Entrance to the building.
"I saw the plane at the Navy Annex area," he said. "I knew it was going
to strike the building because it was very, very low -- at the height
of the street lights. It knocked a couple down." The plane would have
been seconds from impact -- the annex is only a few hundred yards from
the Pentagon. He said he heard the plane "power-up" just before it
struck the Pentagon. "As soon as it struck the building I just called
in an attack, because I knew it couldn't be accidental," Bright said.
He jumped into his police cruiser and headed to the area.
http://www.dcmilitary.com/marines/hendersonhall/6_39/local_news/10797-1.html
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At
the Pentagon, employees had heard about or seen footage of the World
Trade Centre attack when they felt their own building shake. Ervin Brown,
who works at the Pentagon, said he saw pieces of what appeared to be
small aircraft on the ground, and the part of the building by the heliport
had collapsed.
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Pentagon
staff raced along a wooden pathway opposite the Pentagon building, all
heading towards bridges that would take them across the Potomac River.
Grown men ran at full pace. Rich Brown was sitting at his desk and "there
was just a huge sound that shook the building for a second or two".
"I don't know what's happened. I assume it's a co-ordinated terrorist
attack."
http://www.smh.com.au/articles/2002/08/23/1030052968648.html
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Lisa
Burgess, a reporter for the Army newspaper Stars and Stripes, said she
was walking in a corridor near the blast site and was thrown to the
ground by the force of the blast.
http://www.neurosis.org...
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Lisa
Burgess : Stars and Stripes reporter Lisa Burgess was walking on the
Pentagon's innermost corridor, across the courtyard, when the incident
happened. " I heard two loud booms - one large, one smaller, and the
shock wave threw me against the wall," she said.Burgess, reporting
by telephone from the scene at about 4 p.m., said that five hours
after the blast, still no one was able to get into the building.
After the first casualties were removed, no one was brought out of the
building, either dead or alive.
http://www.pstripes.com/01/sep01/ed091201i.html
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It
was a passenger plane. I think an American Airways plane, Mr Campo said.
"I was cutting the grass and it came in screaming over my head. I felt
the impact. The whole ground shook and the whole area was full
of fire. I could never imagine I would see anything like that here."
http://www.guardian.co.uk/wtccrash/story/0%2C1300%2C550486%2C00.html
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As
former Cincinnatian James R. Cissell sat in traffic on a Virginia interstate
by the Pentagon Tuesday morning, he saw the blur of a commercial jet
and wondered why it was flying so low. ''Right about the time it was
crossing over the highway, it kind of dawned on me what was happening,''
said Cissell, son of Hamilton County Clerk of Courts Jim Cissell. In
the next blink of an eye, he realized he had a front-row seat to history,
as the plane plowed into the Pentagon, sending a fireball exploding
into the air and scattering debris - including a tire rim suspected
of belonging to the airplane - past his car. (...) In the next seconds
dozens of things flashed through his mind. ''I thought, 'This isn't
really happening. That is a big plane.' Then I saw the faces of some
of the passengers on board,'' Cissell said. While he remembers seeing
the crash, Cissell remembers none of the sounds. ''It came in in a perfectly
straight line,'' he said. ''It didn't slow down. I want to say it accelerated.
It just shot straight in.''
http://www.cincypost.com/attack/cissel091201.html
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Allen
Cleveland of Woodbridge Virginia looked out from a Metro train going
to National Airport, to see a jet heading down toward the Pentagon.
"I thought, 'There's no landing strip on that side of the subway tracks,'
" Before he could process that thought, he saw "a huge mushroom cloud.
A lady staThe lady next to me was in absolute hysterics."" . . a silver
pasenger jet, mid sized"
http://mfile.akamai.com/920/rm/thepost.download.akamai.com/920/nation/091101-5s.ram
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Soon after the crash (Within 30 seconds of the crash) I witnessed
a military cargo plane (Possibly a C130) fly over the crash site and
circle the mushroom cloud. My brother inlaw also witnessed the same
plane following the jet while he was on the HOV lanes in Springfield.
He said that he saw a jetliner flying low over the tree tops near Seminary
RD in Springfield, VA. and soon afterwards a military plane was seen
flying right behind it. I think this was also a reason for the false
threat of another plane about to crash which caused rescuers
to have to evacuate for a short time after the initial crash. I have
done my research onthis and according to time magazine it took 24 minutes
before Norad was supposedly notified about this particuliar jet and
fighters were scrambling to intercept at that time. Isn't it odd how
there is Not a single mention of this aircraft in ANY of the articles
written about this crash? Also if you had not noticed... There is not
a single picture or live footage of the actual jet prior to its crash
at the Pentagon. Nor is there any of the one that crashed in Pennsylvania.
But if Anyone who rides the metro-rail knows, there are plenty of Video
cameras all around National airport at the parking Garages and the high
level security buildings found all around Crystal city. (3 of which
I have personally found pointed directly towards crystal city which
would have given a great line of site shot of that jet prior to the
crash as well as any other plane which might have been following it.
I personally believe that the government new full well that this was
about to happen and they are hiding something a lot bigger than they
are willing to let out. I was interviewed at Washingtonpost.com and
gave them my full story, but they did not print it as I have told you.
I also find it interesting that one of the planes engines in the pennsylvania
crash was supposedly found 5 miles prior to the crash site
(This information I'm unsure of).
The only thing that I'm aware of that might cause that
would be a heat seeking missle. A weapon which I am pretty familiar
with form Ord.training. I'm not saying that the government new exactly
what was about to happen, but I do believe that they are definitely
hiding something here. Many of my friends in intelligence have said
the same. I work in a Gov. building in DC., but my heart is right there
with you and your team. I hope you and those who served with you are
doing well. Take care.
http://www.spooky8.com/reviews.htm
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[We didn't know what kind of plane had hit the Pentagon, or where it had hit.
Later, we were told that]
it was a 757 out of Dulles, which had come up the river in back of
our building, turned sharply over the Capitol, ran past the White House
and the Washington Monument, up the river to Rosslyn, then dropped to
treetop level and ran down Washington Boulevard to the Pentagon (...)
As we watched the black plume gather strength, less than a minute after
the explosion, we saw an odd sight that no one else has yet commented on.
Directly in back of the plume, which would place it almost due west
from our office, a four-engine propeller plane, which Ray later said
resembled a C-130, started a steep decent towards the Pentagon.
It was coming from an odd direction (planes don't go east-west in the
area), and it was descending at a much steeper angle than most aircraft.
Trailing a thin, diffuse black trail from its engines, the plane reached
the Pentagon at a low altitude and made a sharp left turn, passing just
north of the plume, and headed straight for the White House. All the
while, I was sort of talking at it: "Who the hell are you? Where are
you going? You're not headed for downtown!" Ray and Verle watched it
with me, and I was convinced it was another attack. But right over the
tidal basin, at an altitude of less than 1000 feet, it made another
sharp left turn to the north and climbed rapidly. Soon it was gone,
leaving only the thin black trail.
http://www.clothmonkey.com/91101.htm
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"It
was striking to me how little of the building was involved in the
fire," said Dr. Corley, who has reviewed the Pentagon report. The
fire, he said, "didn't spread and and trap other people in the building.
"While 125 Pentagon workers and 59 passengers and crew members on the plane
died, few if any of the workers who died were from outside the immediate
impact zone."
http://www.nytimes.com/2002/11/05/nyregion/05TOWE.html
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LTC
Victor Correa work at the Pentagon. (...) LTC Victor Correa's office,
what was the Army's Deputy Chief of Staff for Personnel, now the Army
G-1, was in the path of the Boeing 757 that crashed into the Pentagon
on a sunny fall morning. He was walking over to talk to a co-worker
in the next cubicle when he was knocked down by the impact. " I
saw a fireball come over my head," said Correa, an Active Guard
Reservist now assigned to Joint Chiefs of Staff, J-5. " The fireball
was coming like a wind-cloud of smoke trailing it. I also noticed
to my right the windows going out and coming back in. The
fireball came in and out quick - the speed of lightning. As it went
back, it left a cloud of smoke and started dropping. At that time the
fire system went up." Being knocked down turned out to be a life-saver.
(...) "We thought it was some kind of explosion. That somehow someone
got in here and planted bombs because we saw these holes."
http://www.army.mil/usar/news/2002/09-11anniv/herotellsall.html
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He
and two colleagues from Oracle software were stopped in a car near the
Naval Annex, next to the Pentagon, when they saw the plane dive down
and level off. "It was no more than 30 feet off the ground, and
it was screaming. It was just screaming. It was nothing more than a
guided missile at that point," Creed said. "I can still see the plane.
I can still see it right now. It's just the most frightening thing in
the world, going full speed, going full throttle, its wheels
up," Creed recalls.
http://www.ahwatukee.com/afn/community/articles/020906a.html
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Near
the Lincoln Memorial, Dave heard two booms, which sounded like
the artillery salutes on the Mall on the Fourth of July, he said. It
was likely the noise from a secondary blast at the Pentagon -
http://www.gridlockmag.com/911/
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For one
employee with Wedge One's mechanical subcontractor John J. Kirlin
Inc., Rockville MD, "lucky" is an understatement. "We had one guy
who was standing, looking out the window and saw the plane when it
was coming in. He was in front of one of the blast-resistant windows,"
says Kirlin President Wayne T. Day, who believes the window structure
saved the man's life. According to Matt Hahr, Kirlin's senior project
manager at the Pentagon, the employee "was thrown about 80 ft down
the hall through the air. As he was traveling through the air,
he says the ceiling was coming down from the concussion. He got thrown
into a closet, the door slammed shut and the fireball went past him,"
recounts Hahr. "Jet fuel was on him and it irritated his eyes,
but he didn't get burned. Then the fireball blew over and the
sprinklers came on, and he was able to crawl out of the closet and
get out of the building through the courtyard."
http://www.designbuildmag.com/oct2001/pentagon1001.asp
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Instead
of following the streams of people away from the Pentagon, Steve DeChiaro
ran toward the smoke. As he reached the west side of the building he
saw a light post bent in half. "But when I looked at the site, my
brain could not resolve the fact that it was a plane because it only
seemed like a small hole in the building," he said. " No tail.
No wings. No nothing." He followed the emergency crews that had
just arrived. He saw people hanging out of windows and others crawling
from the demolished area. "These people were covered in what I thought
was powder - I don't know anything about medicine or first aid, I'm
an engineer - but it looked like powder," DeChiaro said. "Only later
did I find out that it was their skin." Civilians and soldiers joined
emergency crews who were rushing inside to pull out anyone they could.
But shortly after 10 a.m. police yelled at people to get back. "Just
as we're about to open the door, they start screaming, 'There's another
inbound plane', " DeChiaro said. "At that moment, your thoughts are:
'I go in the building, I get killed, then I'm no help to anybody.' In
hindsight, I think we should have gone back in that building." For nearly
15 minutes, they stood watching the Pentagon burn and periodically checked
the sky for another plane. That plane never reached Washington but fell,
instead, in rural Pennsylvania. Teams of two and three eventually were
sent back in to find more victims. But as the day grew longer, the flow
of the injured stopped.
http://www.gomemphis.com/mca/america_at_war/article/0,1426,MCA_945_1300676,00.html
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" The
only way you could tell that an aircraft was inside was that we saw
pieces of the nose gear. The devastation was horrific. It was obvious
that some of the victims we found had no time to react. The distance
the firefighters had to travel down corridors to reach the fires was
a problem. With only a good 25 minutes of air in their SCBA bottles,
to save air they left off their face pieces as they walked and took
in a lot of smoke," Captain Defina said. Captain Defina was the shift
commander [of an aircraft rescue firefighters crew.]
http://www.nfpa.org/NFPAJournal/OnlineExclusive/Exclusive_11_01_01/exclusive_11.01.01.asp
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Michael
DiPaula 41, project coordinator Pentagon Renovation Team - He left a
meeting in the Pentagon just minutes before the crash, looking for an
electrician who didn't show, in a construction trailer less than 75
feet away. "Suddenly, an airplane roared into view, nearly shearing
the roof off the trailer before slamming into the E ring. 'It sounded
like a missile,' DiPaula recalls . . . Buried in debris and covered
with airplane fuel, he was briefly listed by authorities as missing,
but eventually crawled from the flaming debris and the shroud of black
smoke unscathed.
http://www.sunspot.net/search/bal-archive-1990.htmlstory
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Marine Corps officer Mike Dobbs was standing on one of the upper levels
of the outer ring of the Pentagon looking out the window when he saw
an American Airlines 737 twin-engine airliner strike the building.
"It seemed to be almost coming in slow motion," he said later Tuesday.
"I didn't actually feel it hit, but I saw it and then we all started
running. They evacuated everybody around us."
http://www.abqtrib.com/archives/news01/091201_news_dcscene.shtml
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"...
we saw a plane coming toward us, for about 10 seconds ... It was like
watching a train wreck. I was mesmerized. ... At first I thought it
was trying to crash land, but it was coming in so deliberately, so level...
Everyone said there was a deafening explosion, but with the adrenaline,
we didn't hear it."St. Louis Post-Dispatch, Sept. 13, 2001 - Philip
Dine
http://web.lexisnexis.com ...
http://www2.hawaii.edu/~julianr/lexisnexis/dobbs.txt
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Steve
Eiden, a truck driver, had picked up his cargo that Tuesday morning
in Williamsburg, Va., and was en route to New York City and witnessed
the aftermath. He took the Highway 95 loop in the area of the Pentagon
and thought it odd to see a plane in restricted airspace, thinking to
himself it was odd that it was flying so low. "You could almost see
the people in the windows," he said as he watched the plane disappear
behind a line of trees, followed by a tall plume of black smoke.
Then he saw the Pentagon on fire, and an announcement came over the
radio that the Pentagon had been hit.
http://www.baxterbulletin.com/ads/chronology2001/page2.html
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Traffic
was at a standstill. I heard a rumble, looked out my driver's side window
and realized that I was looking at the nose of an airplane coming straight
at us from over the road (Columbia Pike) that runs perpendicular to
the road I was on. The plane just appeared there- very low in the air,
to the side of (and not much above) the CITGO gas station that I never
knew was there. My first thought was "Oh My God, this must be World
War III!" In that split second, my brain flooded with adrenaline
and I watched everything play out in ultra slow motion, I saw
the plane coming in slow motion toward my car and then it banked in
the slightest turn in front of me, toward the heliport. In the nano-second
that the plane was directly over the cars in front of my car, the plane
seemed to be not more than 80 feet off the ground and about 4-5 car
lengths in front of me. It was far enough in front of me that I saw
the end of the wing closest to me and the underside of the other wing
as that other wing rocked slightly toward the ground. I remember recognizing
it as an American Airlines plane -- I could see the windows and the
color stripes. And I remember thinking that it was just like planes
in which I had flown many times but at that point it never occurred
to me that this might be a plane with passengers. In my adrenaline-filled
state of mind, I was overcome by my visual senses. The day had started
out beautiful and sunny and I had driven to work with my car's sunroof
open. I believe that I may have also had one or more car windows open
because the traffic wasn't moving anyway. At the second that I saw the
plane, my visual senses took over completely and I did not hear or
feel anything -- not the roar of the plane, or wind force, or impact
sounds. The plane seemed to be floating as if it were a paper glider
and I watched in horror as it gently rocked and slowly glided straight
into the Pentagon. At the point where the fuselage hit the wall, it
seemed to simply melt into the building. I saw a smoke ring surround
the fuselage as it made contact with the wall. It appeared as a smoke
ring that encircled the fuselage at the point of contact and it seemed
to be several feet thick. I later realized that it was probably the
rubble of churning bits of the plane and concrete. The churning smoke
ring started at the top of the fuselage and simultaneously wrapped down
both the right and left sides of the fuselage to the underside, where
the coiling rings crossed over each other and then coiled back up to
the top. Then it started over again -- only this next time, I also saw
fire, glowing fire in the smoke ring. At that point, the wings disappeared
into the Pentagon. And then I saw an explosion and watched the tail
of the plane slip into the building. It was here that I closed my
eyes for a moment and when I looked back, the entire area was awash
in thick black smoke.
http://americanhistory.si.edu/september11/collection/supporting.asp?ID=30
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Former
ammunition plant official evacuated building moments before suicide
airliner collision.Col. Bruce Elliott, former commander of the Iowa
Army Ammunition Plant who was reassigned to the Pentagon in July, watched
in horror Tuesday as a hijacked 757 airliner crashed into the nerve
center of the U.S. military command. Elliott, in a phone interview Wednesday,
said he had just left the Pentagon and was about to board a shuttle
van in a south parking lot when he saw the plane approach and slam into
the west side of the structure. "I looked to my left and saw the plane
coming in," said Elliott, who watched it for several seconds. "It was
banking and garnering speed. I felt it was headed for the Pentagon."
(...) "It was like a kamikaze pilot. I felt it was going to ram the
Pentagon," he said. He said the craft clipped a utility pole guide wire,
which may have slowed it down a bit before it crashed into the building
and burst into flames. (...) Elliott said the rubble was still smoldering
Wednesday morning.
http://www.thehawkeye.com/features/911/IdxThur.html
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The plane
approached the Pentagon about six feet off the ground, clipping
a light pole, a car antenna, a construction trailer and an emergency
generator before slicing into the building, said Lee Evey, the
manager of the Pentagon's ongoing billion-dollar renovation. The plane
penetrated three of the Pentagon's five rings, but was probably stopped
from going farther by hundreds of concrete columns. The plane peeled
back as it entered, leaving pieces of the front of the plane near
the outside of the building and pieces from the rear of the aircraft
farther inside, Evey said. The floors just above the impact remained
intact for about 35 minutes after the crash, allowing many people
in those offices to escape, Evey said
http://detnews.com/2001/nation/0110/06/nation-312016.htm
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Internally,
the Wedge One project included: complete demolition of existing facilities;
significant abatement of hazardous materials (most notably, 28 million
lbs. of asbestos-contaminated material was removed); installation
of all new electrical, mechanical, plumbing and telecommunication
systems within the existing floorplan; structural steel reinforcement;
and replacement of all 1,282 windows in the section, including 386
blast-resistant units on the outermost "E Ring" and innermost "A Ring"
of the building. All-new office space was created with an open space
plan aimed at enhancing flexibility (...) Amazingly, the plane pushed
through the outermost "E Ring", and drove deep into the interior,
its nose coming to rest just inside the "C Ring."
http://www.designbuildmag.com/oct2001/pentagon1001.asp
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We've
learned -- this is wedge one, okay, the newly-renovated area. The
path of the airplane seems to have taken it along this route, so it
entered the building slightly, on this photo, slightly to the left
of what we call corridor four. There are 10 radial corridors in the
building that extend from A ring out through E ring, and this is the
fourth of those radial corridors. So it impacted the building in an
area that had been renovated, but its path was at a -- it appears
to be at a diagonal, so that it entered in wedge one but passed through
into areas of wedge two, an unrenovated portion of the building. And,
of course, you all know it's got rings A through E, five stories tall,
et cetera. QUESTION: That seems to indicate that it came to rest in
ring C, the nose cone. EVEY: Let me talk to that, because you've asked
a number of questions already about the extent of penetration, et
cetera. This is an overhead of the building. The point of penetration
was right here, and we blocked that out to show that's the area of
collapse. The plane actually penetrated through the E ring, C ring
-- excuse me -- E ring, D ring, C ring. This area right here is what
we call A-E Drive. And unlike other rings in the building, it's actually
a driveway that circles the building inside, between the B and the
C ring. The nose of the plane just barely broke through the inside
of the C ring, so it was extending into A-E Drive a little bit. So
that's the extent of penetration of the aircraft. The rings are E,
D, C, B and A. Between B and C is a driveway that goes around the
Pentagon. It's called A-E Drive. The airplane traveled in a path about
like this, and the nose of the aircraft broke through this innermost
wall of C ring into A-E Drive. QUESTION: One thing that's confusing
-- if it came in the way you described, at an angle, why then are
not the wings outside? I mean, the wings would have shorn off. The
tail would have shorn off. And yet there's apparently no evidence
of the aircraft outside the E ring. EVEY: Actually, there's considerable
evidence of the aircraft outside the E ring. It's just not very visible.
When you get up close -- actually, one of my people happened to be
walking on this sidewalk and was right about here as the aircraft
approached. It came in. It clipped a couple of light poles on the
way in. He happened to hear this terrible noise behind him, looked
back, and he actually -- he's a Vietnam veteran -- jumped prone onto
the ground so the aircraft would not actually -- he thinks it (would
have) hit him; it was that low. On its way in, the wing clipped. Our
guess is an engine clipped a generator. We had an emergency temporary
generator to provide life-safety emergency electrical power, should
the power go off in the building. The wing actually clipped that generator,
and portions of it broke off. There are other parts of the plane
that are scattered about outside the building. None of those parts
are very large, however. You don't see big pieces of the airplane
sitting there extending up into the air. But there are many small
pieces. And the few larger pieces there look like they are veins
out of the aircraft engine. They're circular. QUESTION: Would you
say that the plane, since it had a lot of fuel on it at the impact,
and the fact that there are very small pieces, virtually exploded
in flames when it tore into the building? I mean, since there are
not large pieces of the wings laying outside, did it virtually explode?
EVEY: I didn't see it. My people who did see it enter the building
describe it as entering the building and then there being flames
coming out immediately afterwards. Whether you describe it as
an explosion or not, people I talk to who were there, some called
it an explosion. Others called it a large fire. I'm not sure. I wasn't
there, sir. It's just a guess on my part.
http://www.patriotresource.com/wtc/federal/0915/DoD.html
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Walker
Lee Evey, program manager of the Pentagon restoration project :
The fire was so hot, Evey said, that it turned window glass to liquid
and sent it spilling down walls into puddles on the ground.
The impact cracked massive concrete columns far beyond the impact site,
destabilizing a broader section of the building than contractors had
originally thought.
http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2002/03/07/attack/main503257.shtml
On Sept.
11, Flight 77 sliced through the outermost three of the Pentagon's
five concentric rings. Fires from the plane's 20,000 gallons of fuel
melted windows into pools of liquid glass. The impact of the
crash fractured concrete pillars well beyond the incisions in the
three outer rings.
http://www.grandforks.com/mld/grandforks/2821782.htm
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I
hate to disappoint anyone, but here is the story behind the photograph.
At the time, I was a senior writer with Navy Times newspaper. It is
an independent weekly that is owned by the Gannett Corporation (same
owners as USA Today). I was at the Navy Annex, up the hill from the
Pentagon when I heard the explosion. I always keep a digital camera
in my backpack briefcase just as a matter of habit. When the explosion
happened I ran down the hill to the site and arrived there approximately
10 minutes after the explosion. I saw the piece, that was near the heliport
pad and had to work around to get a shot if it with the building in
the background. Because the situation was still fluid, I was able to
get in close and make that image within fifteen minutes of the explosion
because security had yet to shut off the area. I photographed it twice,
with the newly arrived fire trucks pouring water into the building in
the background. The collapse of the building above area happened long
after I left the scene. I was not even aware that that had happened
until that evening when I watched the news. My photos were on the wire
by noon. That was the only piece of wreckage of any SIZE that I saw,
but was by no means the ONLY piece. Right after photographing that piece
of wreckage, I also photographed a triage area where medical personnel
were tending to a seriously burned man. A priest knelt in the middle
of the area and started to pray. I took that image and left immediately.
As I stepped onto the highway next to the triage area, I knelt down
to tie my shoe and all over the highway were small pieces of aircraft
skin, none bigger than a half-dollar. Anyone familiar with aircraft
has seen the greenish primer paint that covers many interior metal surfaces
- that is what these shards were covered with. I was out of the immediate
area photographing other things within 20 minutes of the crash.
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/frameup/message/1254
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Kim
Flyler was trying to sneak into a parking space near to the building
when she saw the plane: "At that moment I heard a plane and then a loud
cracking noise.... Right before the plane hit the building, you could
see the silhouettes of people in the back two rows. You couldn't
see if they were male or female, but you could tell there was a human
being in there."
The Observer, Sept. 8, 2002
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"Traffic
was at a standstill, so I parked on the shoulder, not far from the scene
and ran to the site. Next to me was a cab from D.C., its windshield
smashed out by pieces of lampposts. There were pieces of the
plane all over the highway, pieces of wing, I think. (...) "There
were a lot of people with severe burns, severe contusions, severe lacerations,
in shock and emotional distress"
http://www.msnbc.com/news/635293.asp
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Navy
Capt. Charles Fowler : Navy Capt. Charles Fowler, assigned to the Joint
Chiefs, was working on a speech for Gen. Henry Shelton, the chairman
of the Joint Chiefs, when he heard the explosion. " You could feel
the building shake," said Fowler. "You knew it was a major explosion.
I grabbed all my gear and grabbed the laptop and headed out." "The interesting
part was we didn't hear the alarm go off, but word got around very fast.
It was an orderly evacuation" Fowler's office, on the river side,
appeared to be on the opposite side from the explosion, he said.
"Tons of smoke was coming up from the wedge-lots of black and gray smoke."
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/metro/daily/sep01/attack.html
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Dan
Fraunfelter : After the meeting, just before 9:30 a.m., the young engineer
grabbed a subcontractor to help him repair a damaged ceiling grid on
the third floor of the Pentagon's E-Ring. The two were in the middle
of the job when a strange sound ripped through the room. It lasted just
a split second, says Fraunfelter, " A strange sucking, whirring sound,
like a loud vacuum cleaner." Then the sound stopped, the building
shook violently, and the lights went out.
http://www.msnbc.com/news/635293.asp
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Kat
Gaines, heading south on Route 110, approached the parking lots, saw
a low-flying jetliner strike the top of nearby telephone poles. "
http://www.fccc.org/News/valor.htm
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Gilah
Goldsmith, personnel attorney at the Pentagon. When she got to her office
sometime around 9, she phoned her daughter and heard "an incredible
whomp noise." It didn't seem so unusual since her office is situated
near a narrow area where trucks sometimes come by and hit the wall.
Goldsmith was told to evacuate. "We saw a huge black cloud of smoke,"
she said, saying it smelled like cordite, or gun smoke.
http://www.jewishsf.com/bk010921/usp14a.shtml
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Afework
Hagos, a computer programmer, was on his way to work but stuck in a
traffic jam near the Pentagon when the plane flew over. "There was a
huge screaming noise and I got out of the car as the plane came over.
Everybody was running away in different directions. It was tilting
its wings up and down like it was trying to balance. It hit some
lampposts on the way in."
http://www.guardian.co.uk/wtccrash/story/0%2C1300%2C550486%2C00.html
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Asework
Hagos, 26, of Arlington, was driving on Columbia Pike on his way to
work as a consultant for Nextel. He saw a plane flying very low and
close to nearby buildings. "I thought something was coming down on me.
I know this plane is going to crash. I've never seen a plane like this
so low." He said he looked at it and saw American Airline insignia and
when it made impact with the Pentagon initially he saw smoke, then flames.
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Harrington
was working on the installation of new furniture in Wedge One, when
he was called out to the parking lot to talk about security with his
customer moments before the crash. "About two minutes later one of my
guys pointed to an American Airlines airplane 20 feet high over Washington
Blvd.," Harrington said. " It seemed like it made impact just before
the wedge. It was like a Hollywood movie or something.
http://www.dcmilitary.com/army/pentagram/6_37/local_news/10380-1.html
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At
about 9:20 a.m., Lt. Col. Art Haubold, a public affairs officer with
air force, was in his office on the opposite side of the complex when
the plane struck. "We were sitting there watching the reports on the
World Trade Center. All of a sudden, the windows blew in," he
said. "We could see a fireball out our window."
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/metro/daily/sep01/attack.html
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From
the view of the Navy Annex : After a few moments, Lt Gen Ron Kadish,
Director of the Ballistic Missile Defense Organization entered the Secure
Conference Room to pursue the day's activities and do real work. This
office, with two nice windows and a great view of the monuments, the
Capitol and the Pentagon was "good digs" by any Pentagon standard. I
walked in the office and stood peering out of the window looking at
the Pentagon. As I stood there, I instinctively ducked at the extremely
loud roar and whine of a jet engine spooling up. Immediately, the large
silver cylinder of an aircraft appeared in my window, coming over my
right shoulder as I faced the Westside of the Pentagon directly towards
the heliport. The aircraft, looking to be either a 757 or Airbus, seemed
to come directly over the annex, as if it had been following Columbia
Pike - an Arlington road leading to Pentagon. The aircraft was moving
fast, at what I could only be estimate as between 250 to 300 knots.
All in all, I probably only had the aircraft in my field of view for
approximately 3 seconds. The aircraft was at a sharp downward angle
of attack, on a direct course for the Pentagon. It was "clean",
in as much as, there were no flaps applied and no apparent landing
gear deployed. He was slightly left wing down as he appeared in
my line of sight, as if he'd just "jinked" to avoid something. As he
crossed Route 110 he appeared to level his wings, making a slight
right wing slow adjustment as he impacted low on the Westside of the
building to the right of the helo, tower and fire vehicle around corridor
5. What instantly followed was a large yellow fireball accompanied
by an extremely bass sounding, deep thunderous boom. The yellow fireball
rose quickly as black smoke engulfed the entire Westside of the
Pentagon, obscuring the whole of the heliport. I could feel the concussion
and felt the shockwave of the blast impact the window of the Annex,
knocking me against the desk.
http://lists.travellercentral.com/pipermail/tml/2001-September/013153.html
http://www.ournetfamily.com/WarOnTerror/emails/pentagonwitness.shtml
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Pinned
in his chair and wrapped in a shroud of thick smoke and darkness, Jerry
Henson had almost given up hope. He could feel all his limbs, but they
wouldn't move. It was as if he were frozen at his desk by forces he
couldn't battle. Through the smoke, he mustered some pleas for help.
His mind still raced to figure out what happened and whether this was
real. It was 9:40 a.m., Sept. 11. (...) airliner (...) slammed into the
Pentagon. " The impact was quite clear," Henson said. " But
it wasn't what you would think. It was just a loud kathump. Just a loud
noise." Then all his senses failed him. The plane had sliced through
the emergency lighting generators leaving everything in blackness. Books
and computer monitors tumbled from the shelves behind him. Then his
head throbbed. Pain shot through his legs. He couldn't move. All he
could taste was smoke and dust. "I knew I was wounded some place because
you can tell the difference between water and blood," he said. "Blood
is sticky and tacky and warm. But I couldn't tell where the blood was
coming from." For 15 minutes he and two of his staff who also were trapped
in the office yelled for help. They yelled for Punches, Henson's deputy.
They yelled for other survivors. They yelled for anyone at all.
http://www.gomemphis.com/mca/america_at_war/article/0,1426,MCA_945_1300676,00.html
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Inside
the hell that was once his office, Jerry Henson freed his hands enough
to move rubble off of his shoulders. He dislodged his head. But he couldn't
move the heavy desktop from his lap. It had been 15, maybe 20 minutes
since everything turned dark and painful. Still no answer from Capt.
Punches. Now fires were burning closer as deposits of jet fuel ignited.
"You could hear them lighting off," Henson said. "They would go 'poof,'
kind of like when you light a furnace. You could hear these getting
closer." The two other men in the office couldn't get to Henson, but
they found a hole in the wall to crawl through. And they found help.
Minutes passed slowly as Henson remained trapped in the dark and more
conscious of every breath. He heard rubble crumbling and splashes like
footsteps in puddles. Then he saw a slice of light. "I'm a doctor, I'm
here to help you," said a voice. Navy Lt. Cmdr. David Tarantino, the
doctor, and Capt. David M. Thomas Jr. had dodged slithering electrical
wires and dripping solder to reach Henson. Tarantino, realizing Henson
was pinned, got on his back and lifted the table top with his feet enough
for Henson to slide out. Thomas and Tarantino pulled him back out through
the maze. With a blur of light and a rush of fresh air, Henson knew
he was safe. Jerry Henson, now 65, spent four days at nearby Arlington
Hospital Center. Doctors sewed up the gash in the back of his head and
on his chin. His neck was sprained, his back was sore, and he still
needed treatment for smoke inhalation. "I was eager to get out," he
said. "I thought the sooner I was able to get walking and breathing,
the better I'd avoid pneumonia and things like that."
http://www.gomemphis.com/mca/america_at_war/article/0,1426,MCA_945_1300676,00.html
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Nicholas
Holland, an engineer with AMEC Construction Management of Bethesda,
Md., had spent the last two years working to reinforce the walls. Two
summers ago, a blast wall of reinforced steel and concrete was installed
right where the plane hit. It stood for 25 minutes after it was hit
before collapsing, long enough for people to escape, Holland said.
http://www.detnews.com/2001/nation/0109/11/nation-291261.htm
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Being
a former transport type (60's era) I cannot understand how that plane
hit where it did giving the direction the aircraft was taking at
the time. As most know, the Pentagon lies at the bottom of two hills
from the west with the east side being next to the river at 14th street
bridge. One hill is at the Navy Annex and the other is Arlington Cemetery.
The plane came up I-395 also known as Shirley Hwy. (most likely used
as a reference point.) The plane had been seen making a lazy pattern
in the no fly zone over the White House and US Cap.
Why
the plane did not hit incoming traffic coming down the river from the
north to Reagan Nat'l. is beyond me
. Strangely, no one at the
Reagan Tower noticed the aircraft. Andrews AFB radar should have also
picked up the aircraft I would think. Nevertheless, the aircarft went
southwest near Springfield and then veered left over Arlington and then
put the nose down coming over Ft Myer picking off trees and light poles
near the helicopter pad next to building. It was as if he leveled
out at the last minute and put it square into the building. The
wings came off as if it went through an arch way leaving a hole in the
side of the building it seems a little larger than the wide body
of the aircraft. The entry point was so clean that the roof (shown
in news photo) fell in on the wreckage. They are just now getting to
the passengers today. The nosewheel I understand is in the grass near
the second ring. Right now it is estimated that it will take two years
to repair the damage. Ironcally, the area had just been remodeled with
most of the area was still blocked off and some offices were empty.
I know a young Army Major who went to a planned staff meeting at 8:30
am sharp. He left his office and attended the meeting, there was something
he needed. He called his friend also a major near his office on his
cell phone. As they were talking his friend said, My God a plane has
just came through near your office "(which was not part of the new area,
but near it ). Fire rolled down the hallway, somehow his friend on the
phone ducked down another hallway. Four of the Major's friends did not
make it. Incidently, the fireball also went along the outside of the
building as shown by the blackend side of the building to left of the
impact point. The reason the fire took so long to put out was because
the attic was filled with "horse hair" for insulation put there in 1942
when the building was built.
http://www.beanerbanner.com/a_father____.htm
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office
when the explosion at the Pentagon occurred. "About a third of the sky
was blacked with smoke", He said. Hunt was in contact with this office
via e-mail on September 11 until he left work and decided to walk, rather
than catch a crowded subway. "I talked to a number of average people
in route who said they saw the plane hovering over the Washington Mall
Area at an altitude lower that the height of the Washington Monument"
Hunt stated. He said they reported to him they could clearly see the
markings of an American Airlines airliner and some even said they could
make out faces of passengers in the aircraft windows. Again, this is
what Bob Hunt heard from witnesses on the street in Washington D.C.
on September 11, 2001.
http://www.sierratimes.com/02/03/15/arjj031502.htm
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From
time spent on military aircraft as part of his job at the Pentagon,
Will Jarvis (who graduated with a bachelor of applied science in 1987
while attending New College) knows what aviation fuel smells like.
That smell was his only clue that a plane had crashed into the Pentagon,
where he works as an operations research analyst for the Office of the
Secretary of Defense. Jarvis, who was around the corner from the disaster,
tried but failed to see the plane when he left the building. " There
was just nothing left. It was incinerated. We couldn't see a tail or
a wing or anything," he says. "Just a big black hole in the building
with smoke pouring out of it." For someone sitting only 300 metres away
from the carnage of American Airlines Flight 77, Jarvis and his officemates
were surprisingly well insulated from it. "We thought the plane was
a dump truck backing into the building, because there was a lot of construction
going on," he says. The group noticed that the sky was darker than normal,
but still didn't think much of it. " Then I saw little bits of silver
falling from the sky," says Jarvis.
http://www.magazine.utoronto.ca/02winter/f02.htm#jarvis
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Terrance
Kean, 35, who lives in a 14-story building nearby, heard the loud jet
engines and glanced out his window. "I saw this very, very large passenger
jet," said the architect, who had been packing for a move. "It just
plowed right into the side of the Pentagon. The nose penetrated into
the portico. And then it sort of disappeared, and there was fire
and smoke everywhere. . . . It was very sort of surreal."
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn?pagename=article&node=&contentId=A13766-2001Sep11
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Rep.
Mark Steven Kirk (R-Ill.), a Naval Reserve intelligence officer. ''Apparently,
the fire killed everybody in there,'' said Kirk, shortly after he learned
that two friends perished in the center. Kirk also went to the site.
''The first thing you smell is the burning. And then you can smell
the aviation fuel. And then you can smell this sickly, rotten-meat
smell,'' he said.
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One
of the aircraft's engines somehow ricocheted out of the building and
arched into the Pentagon's mall parking area between the main building
and the new loading dock facility, said Charles H. Krohn, the Army's
deputy chief of public affairs. Those fleeing the building heard a
loud secondary explosion about 10 min. after the initial impact.
http://www.aviationnow.com/content/publication/awst/20010917/aw48.htm
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Sgt.
William Lagasse, a pentagon police dog handler, the son of an aviation
instructor, was filling up his patrol car at a gas station near the
Pentagon when he noticed a jet fly in low. He watched as the plane plowed
into the Pentagon. Initially, he thought the plane was about to drop
on top of him -- it was that close. Lagasse knew something was wrong.
The 757's flaps were not deployed and the landing gear was retracted.
http://206.181.245.163/ebird/e20011108vivid.htm
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I
saw the aircraft above my head about 80 feet above the ground, 400 miles
an hour. The reason, I have some experience as a pilot and I looked
at the plane. Didn't see any landing gear. Didn't see any flaps down.
I realized it wasn't going to land. . . . It was close enough that
I could see the windows and the blinds had been pulled down. I read
American Airlines on it. . . .I got on the radio and broadcast. I said
a plane is, is heading toward the heliport side of the building.
http://web.lexis-nexis.com...
http://www2.hawaii.edu/~julianr/lexisnexis/lagasse1.txt
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After
the second plane hit the World Trade Center, Major Lincoln Leibner jumped
in his pickup truck and raced to the Pentagon. As he ran to an entrance,
he heard jet engines and turned in time to see the American Airlines
plane diving toward the building. "I was close enough that I could
see through the windows of the airplane, and watch as it as it hit,"
he said. "There was no doubt in my mind what I was watching. Not for
a second. It was accelerating," he said. " It was wheels up,
flaps up, engines full throttle. "
http://www.theosuobserver.com/main.cfm/include/smdetail/synid/54846.html
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Maj.
Leibner drove in and made it as far as the south parking lot, where
he got out on foot. "I heard the plane first," he said. "I thought it
was a flyover Arlington cemetery." From his vantage point, Maj. Leibner
looked up and saw the plane come in. "I was about 100 yards away,"
he said. " You could see through the windows of the aircraft.
I saw it hit." The plane came in hard and level and was flown full
throttle into the building, dead center mass, Maj. Leibner said.
"The plane completely entered the building," he said. "I got a little
repercussion, from the sound, the blast. I've heard artillery, and
that was louder than the loudest has to offer. I started running
toward the site. I jumped over a fence. I was probably the first person
on the scene." A tree and the backend of a crash truck at the heliport
near the crash site were on fire and the ground was scorched, Maj.
Leibner recounted. " The plane went into the building like a toy into
a birthday cake," he said. "The aircraft went in between the second
and third floors." At that point, no one was outside. Spotting a Pentagon
door that had been blown off its hinges, Maj. Leibner went in and out
several times, helping rescue several people. "The very first person
was right there," he said. "She could walk. I walked her out onto the
grass." Maj. Leibner said a police officer pulled up onto the grass
and began to help. "Everybody was hurt," Maj. Leibner said. "They were
all civilian females. Everybody was burned on their hands and faces.
http://www.usmedicine.com/article.cfm?articleID=384&issueID=38
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Captain
Lincoln Leibner says the aircraft struck a helicopter on the helipad,
setting fire to a fire truck. We got one guy out of the cab," he said,
adding he could hear people crying inside the wreckage. Captain Liebner,
who had cuts on his hands from the debris, says he has been parking
his car in the car park when the crash occurred."
http://abc.net.au/news/2001/09/item20010911230953_1.htm
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It
was so shocking, I was listening to the news on what had happened in
New York, and just happened to look out the window because I heard a
low flying plane and then I saw it hit the Pentagon. It happened so
fast... it was in the air one moment and in the building the next...
I still have a hard time believing it, but every time I look out
the window, it seems to be more real than it did the time before...
K.M., Pentagon City, USA
http://newsvote.bbc.co.uk/hi/english/talking%5Fpoint/newsid%5F1537000/1537530.stm
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David
Marra, 23, an information-technology specialist, had turned his BMW
off an I-395 exit to the highway just west of the Pentagon when he saw
an American Airlines jet swooping in, its wings wobbly, looking like
it was going to slam right into the Pentagon: "It was 50 ft. off the
deck when he came in. It sounded like the pilot had the throttle
completely floored. The plane rolled left and then rolled right.
Then he caught an edge of his wing on the ground." There is a helicopter
pad right in front of the side of the Pentagon. The wing touched there,
then the plane cartwheeled into the building.
http://www.time.com/time/world/article/0,8599,174655-4,00.html
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``I
saw a big jet flying close to the building coming at full speed. There
was a big noise when it hit the building,'' said Oscar Martinez,
who witnessed the attack. Extrait article : Away from the Pentagon,
unexplained explosions were reported in the vicinity of the State Department
and the Capitol.
http://www.firehouse.com/terrorist/11_APdc.html
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Daniel
and his wife Cynthia McAdams : Two other witnesses, Daniel McAdams and
his wife, Cynthia, said they were sitting in their kitchen drinking
coffee in their third-floor condominium in Arlington, Va., just two
miles from the Pentagon when they heard a plane fly directly overhead
around 9:45 a.m. It was unusually loud and low. Seconds later, they
heard a big boom and felt the doors and windows of their three-story
building shake. From their window, they could see a plume of black smoke
coming from the Pentagon. I said, Oh my God, ... I can t even come to
grips. It s just a shock, said Daniel McAdams, a freelance journalist.
It s scary to just be so close .... Who knows if there's another one
being hijacked that could miss the target? I feel like a target here.
Soon after, military planes including F-15s were circling the Pentagon.
Traffic clogged McAdams street as workers fled.
http://www.delawareonline.com/newsjournal/local/2001/09/pdf/09112001EXTRA2.pdf
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Traffic
is normally slow right around the Pentagon as the road winds and we
line up to cross the 14th Street bridge heading into the District of
Columbia. I don't know what made me look up, but I did and I saw a very
low-flying American Airlines plane that seemed to be accelerating. My
first thought was just 'No, no, no, no,' because it was obvious the
plane was not heading to nearby Reagan National Airport. It was going
to crash.
http://depts.washington.edu/uweek/archives/2001.10.OCT_04/_article9.html
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Father
Stephen McGraw was driving to a graveside service at Arlington National
Cemetery the morning of Sept. 11, when he mistakenly took the Pentagon
exit onto Washington Boulevard, putting him in a position to witness
American Airlines Flight 77 crash into the Pentagon. "The traffic was
very slow moving, and at one point just about at a standstill," said
McGraw, a Catholic priest at St. Anthony Parish in Falls Church. "I
was in the left hand lane with my windows closed. I did not hear anything
at all until the plane was just right above our cars." McGraw estimates
that the plane passed about 20 feet over his car, as he waited in the
left hand lane of the road, on the side closest to the Pentagon. "The
plane clipped the top of a light pole just before it got to us, injuring
a taxi driver, whose taxi was just a few feet away from my car. "I saw
it crash into the building," he said. "My only memories really were
that it looked like a plane coming in for a landing. I mean in the sense
that it was controlled and sort of straight. That was my impression,"
he said. " There was an explosion and a loud noise and I felt the
impact. I remember seeing a fireball come out of two windows (of the
Pentagon). I saw an explosion of fire billowing through those two windows.
"He literally had the stole in one hand and a prayer book in the other
and in one fluid motion crossed the guardrail," said Mark Faram, a reporter
from the Navy Times who witnessed McGraw in the first moments after
the crash.
http://www.dcmilitary.com/army/pentagram/6_39/local_news/10772-1.html
http://www.mdw.army.mil/news/Pentagon%5Fcrash%5Feyewitness%5Fcomforted%5Fvictims.html
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The
crew of a military cargo plane watched helplessly on Sept. 11 as a hijacked
airliner plunged into the Pentagon, a defense official confirmed Tuesday.
The report confirms the eyewitness account of two Hampton Roads residents
who were near the Pentagon that day and said they saw a second plane
flying near the doomed passenger jet. A C-130 cargo plane had departed
Andrews Air Force Base en route to Minnesota that morning and reported
seeing an airliner heading into Washington 'at an unusual angle,' said
Lt. Col. Kenneth McClellan, a Pentagon spokesman. Air-traffic control
officials instructed the propeller-powered cargo plane 'to let us know
where it's going,' McClellan said. But, he said, there was no attempt
to intercept the hijacked airliner. 'A C-130 obviously goes slower than
a jet,' McClellan said. 'There was no way he was going to intercept
anything.' The C-130 pilot 'followed the aircraft and reported it was
heading into the Pentagon,' he said. 'He saw it crash into the building.
He saw the fireball. In the days immediately following the Sept. 11
hijackings, the Pentagon had no knowledge of the C-130's encounter,
because all reports were classified by the Air National Guard, the Pentagon
spokesman said. 'It was very hard to get any information out,' McClellan
said. ("C-130 crew saw Pentagon strike, official confirms", Terry Scanlon
et David Lerman, Daily Press, 17 octobre 2001) -
http://dailypress.com
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Crawling,
McNair turned toward the E Ring. The heat grew even fiercer, and as
he neared the door to the corridor he saw bright orange through
the crack along its bottom. He reversed course, yelling, ``We've got
to get out the other way.''
http://www.pilotonline.com/special/911/pentagon2.html
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The
worker, William Middleton Sr., was running his street sweeper through
the cemetery when he heard a harsh whistling sound overhead. Middleton
looked up and spotted a commercial jet whose pilot seemed to be fighting
with his own craft. Middleton said the plane was no higher than the
tops of telephone poles as it lurched toward the Pentagon. The jet
accelerated in the final few hundred yards before it tore into the
building.
http://www.s-t.com/daily/12-01/12-20-01/a02wn018.htm
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I
was right underneath the plane, said Kirk Milburn, a construction supervisor
for Atlantis Co., who was on the Arlington National Cemetery exit of
Interstate 395 when he said he saw the plane heading for the Pentagon.
"I heard a plane. I saw it. I saw debris flying. I guess it was hitting
light poles," said Milburn. "It was like a WHOOOSH whoosh, then there
was fire and smoke, then I heard a second explosion." - (Washington
Post, September 11, 2001) -
http://
www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/metro/daily/sep01/attack.html
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This
is a hole in -- there was a punch-out. They suspect that this was where
a part of the aircraft came through this hole, although I didn't
see any evidence of the aircraft down there. (...) This pile here
is all Pentagon metal. None of that is aircraft whatsoever. As
you can see, they've punched a hole in here. This was punched by the
rescue workers to clean it out. You can see this is the -- some of
the unrenovated areas where the windows have blown out.
http://www.patriotresource.com/wtc/federal/0915/DoD.html
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Sheila
Moody, in Room 472, heard a whoosh and a whistle and she wondered where
all this air was coming from. Then a blast of fire that left as fast
as it came. She looked down and saw her hands aflame, so she shook
them. She saw some light from a window but could not reach it and could
not find anything to break it with in any case. Then she heard a voice.
"Hello!" a man called out. "I can't see you." Hello, she called back,
and clapped her hands. She heard him approach and sensed the shoosh
of a fire extinguisher and then saw him through a cloud of smoke, the
rescuer who would bring her out and ease her fear that she would never
get to see her grandchildren.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A38407-2001Sep15
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Terry
Morin, a former USMC aviator, Program Manager for SPARTA, Inc was working
as a contractor at the BMDO offices at the old Navy Annex. Having just
reached the elevator in the 5th Wing of BMDO Federal Office Building
(FOB) # 2. He heard "an increasingly loud rumbling" One to two seconds
later the airliner came into my field of view. By that time the noise
was absolutely deafening. The aircraft was essentially right over the
top of me and the outer portion of the FOB (flight path parallel the
outer edge of the FOB). Everything was shaking and vibrating, including
the ground. I estimate that the aircraft was no more than 100 feet above
me (30 to 50 feet above the FOB) in a slight nose down attitude. The
plane had a silver body with red and blue stripes down the fuselage.
I believed at the time that it belonged to American Airlines, but I
couldn't be sure. It looked like a 737 and I so reported to authorities.
Within seconds the plane cleared the 8th Wing of BMDO and was heading
directly towards the Pentagon. Engines were at a steady high-pitched
whine, indicating to me that the throttles were steady and full.
I estimated the aircraft speed at between 350 and 400 knots. The flight
path appeared to be deliberate, smooth, and controlled. As the aircraft
approached the Pentagon, I saw a minor flash (later found out that the
aircraft had sheared off a portion of a highway light pole down on Hwy
110). As the aircraft flew ever lower I started to lose sight of the
actual airframe as a row of trees to the Northeast of the FOB blocked
my view. I could now only see the tail of the aircraft. I believe I
saw the tail dip slightly to the right indicating a minor turn in that
direction. The tail was barely visible when I saw the flash and subsequent
fireball rise approximately 200 feet above the Pentagon. There was
a large explosion noise and the low frequency sound echo that
comes with this type of sound. Associated with that was the increase
in air pressure, momentarily, like a small gust of wind. For those formerly
in the military, it sounded like a 2000lb bomb going off roughly
1/2 mile in front of you. At once there was a huge cloud of black smoke
that rose several hundred feet up. Elapsed time from hearing the
initial noise to when I saw the impact flash was between 12 and 15 seconds.
(...) the aircraft had been flown directly into the Pentagon without
hitting the ground first or skipping into the building. (...) The
firemen were appreciative, as the heat inside the building generated
from the 8,500 gallons of jet fuel was, in their words, "unbelievable."
It was reported that at least three of the fireman had to be given IV
fluids due to the extreme heat.
http://www.coping.org/911/survivor/pentagon.htm
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