9/11 The Pentagon Ooggetuigen III

M. K.

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

Marra David

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

Martinez Oscar

``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

McAdams

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

McClain Tom

Lt Col (ret) Tom McClain : I saw the remains of the engines in the North parking lot of the Pentagon as well as melted aluminum and other debris left from the aircraft. [email] http://www.geoffmetcalf.com/pentagon/pentagon-email_20020316.html

McCusker Elaine

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

McGraw Stephen

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

McClellan Kenneth

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

McNair Phil

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

Mencl Peggy

Inside a courtyard deep inside the Pentagon, program analyst Peggy Mencl (cq) heard the blast. "The doors blew out and debris just came flying out from the doors," Mencl said. "It blew me 10 feet." She was uninjured but still had debris in her hair. http://www.detnews.com/2001/nation/0109/11/nation-291261.htm http://www.abqtrib.com/archives/news01/091201_news_dcscene.shtml http://maninut.com/patriotic_sites/tribute.htm

Middleton William Sr.

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

Milburn Kirk

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

Mitchell Terry

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

Moody Sheila

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

Morin Terry

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 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

Mosley James

James Mosley, four stories up on a scaffold at the Navy Annex, "`... I looked over and saw this big silver plane run into the side of the Pentagon" http://www.anderson.ucla.edu/admin_dept/ext_affairs/loeb/finalists/entry/september11-2.pdf

Munsey Christopher

A silver, twin-engine American Airlines jetliner gliding almost noiselessly over the Navy Annex, fast, low and straight toward the Pentagon, just hundreds of yards away. It was a nightmare coming to life. The plane, with red and blue markings, hurtled by and within moments exploded in a ground-shaking "whoomp" as it appeared to hit the side of the Pentagon. A huge flash of orange flame and black smoke poured into the sky. Smoke seemed to change from black to white, forming a billowing column in the sky. http://www.navytimes.com/story.php?f=1-292925-467181.php

Murphy Peter M.

Mr. Peter M. Murphy : No Marine Corps offices were closer to the impact point than those of Mr. Peter M. Murphy, the Counsel for the Commandant of the Marine Corps and the most senior civilian working for the Marine Corps. Mr. Murphy and Major Joe D. Baker were having a discussion in Mr. Murphy's office on the fourth floor of the Pentagon's outermost ring, the E-Ring, overlooking the helo-pad. With CNN on a TV monitor across the room, they stopped their discussion when the news of the World Trade Center attacks came on. After watching awhile, Mr. Murphy asked Mr. Robert D. Hogue, his Deputy Counsel, to check with their administrative clerk, Corporal Timothy J. Garofola, on the current security status of the Pentagon. Garofola had just received an e-mail from the security manager to all Department of Defense employees that the threat condition remained "normal." He passed this information to Hogue, who stepped back into the doorway of Mr. Murphy's office to relay the message. At that instant, a tremendous explosion with what Mr. Murphy said was a noise "louder than any noise he had ever heard" shook the room. Mr. Murphy, who had been standing with his back to the window, was knocked entirely across the room, while Hogue was jolted into his office. Garofola's desk literally rose straight up several inches then slammed down. The airplane had crashed almost directly below Mr. Murphy's offices. The floor buckled at the expansion joint that ran between the two offices and created a discernible step up between the two rooms. The air was filled with dust particles, and the ceiling tiles fell, leaving the lights dangling from their electrical connections; the building was crumbling.The men did not know what had hit them, but they did know that it was time to get out. There was no panic, just a shock-hazed determination to survive. Hogue went to Garofola and told him to "get us out of here." The corporal attempted to open the heavy magnetized door, but it had been jammed and did not budge. Then, Mr. Murphy saw the "Marine" come out in Garofola. He yanked the door as hard as he could and it came open. http://www.mca-marines.org/Leatherneck/nov01pentagonarch.htm

Myers Richard

General Richard Myers, vice-chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said that before the crash into the Pentagon, military officials had been notified that another hijacked plane had been heading from the New York area to Washington. http://www.guardian.co.uk/wtccrash/story/0%2C1300%2C550486%2C00.html

Narayanan Vin

"The plane exploded after it hit, the tail came off and it began burning immediately. Within five minutes, police and emergency vehicles began arriving," said Vin Narayanan, a reporter at USA TODAY.com, who was driving near the Pentagon when the plane hit. http://www.usatoday.com/news/nation/2001/09/11/washscene.htm

Narayanan Vin

At 9:35 a.m., I pulled alongside the Pentagon. With traffic at a standstill, my eyes wandered around the road, looking for the cause of the traffic jam. Then I looked up to my left and saw an American Airlines jet flying right at me. The jet roared over my head, clearing my car by about 25 feet. The tail of the plane clipped the overhanging exit sign above me as it headed straight at the Pentagon. The windows were dark on American Airlines Flight 77 as it streaked toward its target, only 50 yards away. The hijacked jet slammed into the Pentagon at a ferocious speed. But the Pentagon's wall held up like a champ. It barely budged as the nose of the plane curled upwards and crumpled before exploding into a massive fireball. The people who built that wall should be proud. Its ability to withstand the initial impact of the jet probably saved thousands of lives. I hopped out of my car after the jet exploded, nearly oblivious to a second jet hovering in the skies. Hands shaking, I borrowed a cell phone to call my mom and tell her I was safe. Then I called into work, to let them know what happened. But not once was I able to take my eyes off the inferno in front of me. I think I saw the bodies of passengers burning. But I'm not sure. It could have been Pentagon workers. It could have been my mind playing tricks on me. I hope it was my mind playing tricks on me. The highway was filled with shocked commuters, walking around in a daze. http://www.usatoday.com/news/nation/2001/09/17/first-person.htm

O'Brien

At the Dulles tower, O'Brien saw the TV pictures from New York and headed back to her post to help other planes quickly land. "We started moving the planes as quickly as we could," she says. "Then I noticed the aircraft. It was an unidentified plane to the southwest of Dulles, moving at a very high rate of speed I had literally a blip and nothing more." O'Brien asked the controller sitting next to her, Tom Howell, if he saw it too. "I said, 'Oh my God, it looks like he's headed to the White House,'" recalls Howell. "I was yelling 'We've got a target headed right for the White House!'" At a speed of about 500 miles an hour, the plane was headed straight for what is known as P-56, protected air space 56, which covers the White House and the Capitol. "The speed, the maneuverability, the way that he turned, we all thought in the radar room, all of us experienced air traffic controllers, that that was a military plane," says O'Brien. "You don't fly a 757 in that manner. It's unsafe." The plane was between 12 and 14 miles away, says O'Brien, "and it was just a countdown. Ten miles west. Nine miles west Our supervisor picked up our line to the White House and started relaying to them the information, [that] we have an unidentified very fast-moving aircraft inbound toward your vicinity, 8 miles west." Vice President Cheney was rushed to a special basement bunker. White House staff members were told to run away from the building. "And it went six, five, four. And I had it in my mouth to say, three, and all of a sudden the plane turned away. In the room, it was almost a sense of relief. This must be a fighter. This must be one of our guys sent in, scrambled to patrol our capital, and to protect our president, and we sat back in our chairs and breathed for just a second," says O'Brien. But the plane continued to turn right until it had made a 360-degree maneuver. "We lost radar contact with that aircraft. And we waited. And we waited. And your heart is just beating out of your chest waiting to hear what's happened," says O'Brien. "And then the Washington National [Airport] controllers came over our speakers in our room and said, 'Dulles, hold all of our inbound traffic. The Pentagon's been hit.'" http://www.abcnews.go.com/sections/2020/2020/2020_011024_atc_feature.html

O'Keefe John

Northern Virginia resident John O'Keefe was one of the commuters who witnessed the attack on the Pentagon. 'I was going up 395, up Washington Blvd., listening to the the news, to WTOP, and from my left side-I don't know whether I saw or heard it first- I saw a silver plane I immediately recognized it as an American Airlines jet,' said the 25-year-old O'Keefe, managing editor of Influence, an American Lawyer Media publication about lobbying. 'It came swooping in over the highway, over my left shoulder, straight across where my car was heading. I'd just heard them saying on the radio that National Airport was closing, and I thought, That's not going to make it to National Airport." And then I realized where I was, and that it was going to hit the Pentagon. There was a burst of orange flame that shot out that I could see through the highway overpass. Then it was just black. Just black, thick smoke.'" http://www.lexisone.com/news/nlibrary/b091201a.html

O'Keefe John

"I don't know whether I saw or heard it first -- this silver plane; I immediately recognized it as an American Airlines jet," said the 25-year-old O'Keefe, managing editor of Influence, an American Lawyer Media publication about lobbying. "It came swooping in over the highway, over my left shoulder, straight across where my car was heading. "The eeriest thing about it, was that it was like you were watching a movie. There was no huge explosion, no huge rumbling on ground, it just went 'pfff'. It wasn't what I would have expected for a plane that was not much more than a football field away from me. "The first thing I did was pull over onto the shoulder, and when I got out of the car I saw another plane flying over my head, and it scared ...me, because I knew there had been two planes that hit the World Trade Center. And I started jogging up the ramp to get as far away as possible. "Then the plane -- it looked like a C-130 cargo plane -- started turning away from the Pentagon, it did a complete turnaround. http://www.nylawyer.com/news/01/09/091201l.html

O'Keefe John

"There was a burst of orange flame that shot out that I could see through the highway overpass. Then it was just black. Just black thick smoke. "The eeriest thing about it, was that it was like you were watching a movie. There was no huge explosion, no huge rumbling on ground, it just went 'pfff'. It wasn't what I would have expected for a plane that was not much more than a football field away from me. http://www.nylawyer.com/news/01/09/091201l.html

Owens Mary Ann

Mary Ann Owens, a journalist with Gannett News Service - was driving along by the side of the Pentagon. Here, she recalls the events of that horrific day and her feelings about the tragedy 12 months on. The sound of sudden and certain death roared in my ears as I sat lodged in gridlock on Washington Boulevard, next to the Pentagon on September 11. Up to that moment I had only experienced shock by the news coming from New York City and frustration with the worse-than-normal traffic snarl ... but it wasn't until I heard the demon screaming of that engine that I expected to die. Between the Pentagon's helicopter pad, which sits next to the road, and Reagan Washington National Airport a couple of miles south, aviation noise is common along my commute to the silver office towers in Rosslyn where Gannett Co Inc. were housed last autumn. But this engine noise was different. It was too sudden, too loud, too encompassing. Looking up didn't tell me what type of plane it was because it was so close I could only see the bottom. Realising the Pentagon was its target, I didn't think the careering, full-throttled craft would get that far. Its downward angle was too sharp, its elevation of maybe 50 feet, too low. Street lights toppled as the plane barely cleared the Interstate 395 overpass. Gripping the steering wheel of my vibrating car, I involuntarily ducked as the wobbling plane thundered over my head. Once it passed, I raised slightly and grimaced as the left wing dipped and scraped the helicopter area just before the nose crashed into the southwest wall of the Pentagon. Still gripping the wheel, I could feel both the car and my heart jolt at the moment of impact. An instant inferno blazed about 125 yards from me. The plane, the wall and the victims disappeared under coal-black smoke, three-storey tall flames and intense heat. As the thudding stopped, screams of horror and hysteria rose from the line of cars () The full impact of actually being alive overwhelmed me. A mere 125 yards had made me a witness instead of a casualty. Survival wasn't a miracle, it was luck ... pure luck. http://www.thisislocallondon.co.uk/news/display.var.624436.Top+Stories.0.html

Owens Mary Ann

Gannett News Service employee Mary Ann Owens was stopped in traffic on the road that runs past the Pentagon, listening on the radio to the news of the World Trade Center attacks, when she heard a loud roar overhead and looked up as the plane barely cleared the highway. "Instantly I knew what was happening, and I involuntarily ducked as the plane passed perhaps 50 to 75 feet above the roof of my car at great speed," Owens said. "The plane slammed into the west wall of the Pentagon. The impact was deafening. The fuselage hit the ground and blew up." http://www.delawareonline.com/newsjournal/local/2001/09/12terrorspreadsto.html

Patterson Steve

Steve Patterson, who lives in Pentagon City, said it appeared to him that a commuter jet swooped over Arlington National Cemetery and headed for the Pentagon "at a frightening rate ... just slicing into that building." Steve Patterson, 43, said he was watching television reports of the World Trade Center being hit when he saw a silver commuter jet fly past the window of his 14th-floor apartment in Pentagon City. The plane was about 150 yards away, approaching from the west about 20 feet off the ground, Patterson said. He said the plane, which sounded like the high-pitched squeal of a fighter jet, flew over Arlington cemetary so low that he thought it was going to land on I-395. He said it was flying so fast that he couldn't read any writing on the side. The plane, which appeared to hold about eight to 12 people, headed straight for the Pentagon but was flying as if coming in for a landing on a nonexistent runway, Patterson said. "At first I thought 'Oh my God, there's a plane truly misrouted from National,'" Patterson said. "Then this thing just became part of the Pentagon ... I was watching the World Trade Center go and then this. It was like Oh my God, what's next?" He said the plane, which approached the Pentagon below treetop level, seemed to be flying normally for a plane coming in for a landing other than going very fast for being so low. Then, he said, he saw the Pentagon "envelope" the plane and bright orange flames shoot out the back of the building. "It looked like a normal landing, as if someone knew exactly what they were doing," said Patterson, a graphics artist who works at home. "This looked intentional.". Barbara Vobejda - Washington Post Staff Writer - Sept. 11, 4:59 PM http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/metro/daily/sep01/attack.html

Perkal Don

The airliner crashed between two and three hundred feet from my office in the Pentagon, just around a corner from where I work. I'm the deputy General Counsel, Washington Headquarters Services, Office of the Secretary of Defense. () My colleagues felt the impact, which reminded them of an earthquake. People shouted in the corridor outside that a bomb had gone off upstairs on the main concourse in the building. No alarms sounded. I walked to my office, shut down my computer, and headed out. Even before stepping outside I could smell the cordite. Then I knew explosives had been set off somewhere. I looked to my right and saw a raging fire and smoke careening off the facade to the sky. () Two explosions, a few minutes apart, prompted me to start walking. http://www.mcsweeneys.net/2001/09/19perkal.html

Peterson Christine

October 18, 2001 - Christine Peterson, '73 found herself in the thick of last month's terrorist tragedy, and submitted this report. It offers a personal perspective on the events in Washington, D.C., which have perhaps been overshadowed in the media by the scope of the horrors in New York. It was 9:30 a.m. on Tuesday, September 11th, and traffic was terrible. For all of my twenty-eight years living in the Washington, D.C. area, terrible traffic was a constant. I'd been in Boston the day before and gotten home late. That morning I repacked my suitcase because I was heading out to San Francisco on the 3:20 p.m. flight. I just needed a few hours in the office first, and now I was officially late for work. I was at a complete stop on the road in front of the helipad at the Pentagon; what I had thought would be a shortcut was as slow as the other routes I had taken that morning. I looked idly out my window to the left -- and saw a plane flying so low I said, "holy cow, that plane is going to hit my car" (not my actual words). The car shook as the plane flew over. It was so close that I could read the numbers under the wing. And then the plane crashed. My mind could not comprehend what had happened. Where did the plane go? For some reason I expected it to bounce off the Pentagon wall in pieces. But there was no plane visible, only huge billows of smoke and torrents of fire. () A few minutes later a second, much smaller explosion got the attention of the police arriving on the scene. http://www.naualumni.com/News/News.cfm?ID=613&c=4

Pfeilstucker Daniel C. Jr

Daniel C. Pfeilstucker Jr., caught in the flying debris, didn't know if he was going to make it out alive. The Pentagon was on fire. "It was horrifying," Mr. Pfeilstucker says () Danny Pfeilstucker is a commissioning agent for John J. Kirlin Inc., a Maryland-based mechanical contracting company that worked on the Pentagon renovation project that was nearing completion September 11. () Kirlin Inc., among many companies involved in renovating the Pentagon since the early 1990s, was in charge of updating plumbing and heating units. Around 9:30 a.m., Mr. Pfeilstucker and a co-worker got orders to check a hot-water leak in a third-floor office on the western side. After doing so, he stepped off an elevator on the second floor in Corridor 4, ladder in hand. Suddenly the walls and the ceiling began to collapse around him. The lights went out. "It went from light to dark to orange to complete black," Mr. Pfeilstucker says. "It was so dark I couldn't even see my hand in front of my face."Within seconds, his left leg buckled. Unable to grab on to anything, he was thrust 70 feet down the corridor and into a tiny telephone closet halfway down the hallway connecting E Ring and A Ring. All I know is that the blast must have pushed open the steel door to the closet," says Mr. Pfeilstucker, who had been 40 feet away from the plane's point of impact.He remembers shutting the door and trying to stand up, not understanding what had just happened. "I thought it was some sort of a construction blast," Mr. Pfeilstucker says. "Or maybe there was a helicopter accident." His hard hat and work goggles were blown away. His ladder also had disappeared. () The fire sprinklers came on as the temperature shot up.Then he smelled jet fuel and smoke. The putrid odor was seeping into the closet."It was this odor that I can't describe, but one that I'll never forget, that's for sure," Mr. Pfeilstucker says. "It was so hard to breathe. I didn't think I was going to make it out." http://www.washtimes.com/september11/heaven.htm

Plaisted

Plaisted, an artist, was sitting at her desk at home less than one mile from the Pentagon ... I jumped up from my chair as the screeching and whining of the engine got even louder and I looked out the window to the West just in time to see the belly of that aircraft and the tail section fly directly over my house at treetop height. It was utterly sickening to see, knowing that this plane was going to crash. The sound was so incredibly piercing and shrill- the engines were straining to keep the plane aloft. It is a sound I will never stop hearing- and I now imagine the screams of the innocent passengers were commingled with the sounds of the engines and I am haunted. I was unaware at this time that the World Trade center had been attacked so I thought this was just" a troubled plane en route to the airport. I started to run toward my front door but the plane was going so fast at this point that it only took 4 or 5 seconds before I heard a tremendously loud crash and books on my shelves started tumbling to the floor. http://arlingtondpca.homestead.com http://www.wherewereyou.org contribution #1148

Probst Frank

Frank Probst : a Pentagon renovation worker and retired Army officer, he was inspecting newly installed telecommunications wiring inside the five-story, 6.5-million-square-foot building.The tall, soft-spoken Probst had a 10 a.m. meeting. About 9:25 a.m., he stopped by the renovation workers' trailer just south of the Pentagon heliport. Someone had a television turned on in the trailer's break room that showed smoke pouring out of the twin towers in New York. "The Pentagon would make a pretty good target," someone in the break room commented. The thought stuck with Probst as he picked up his notebook and walked to the North Parking Lot to attend his meeting. Probst took a sidewalk alongside Route 27, which runs near the Pentagon's western face. Traffic was at a standstill because of a road accident. Then, at about 9:35 a.m., he saw the airliner in the cloudless September sky.American Airlines Flight 77 approached from the west, coming in low over the nearby five-story Navy Annex on a hill overlooking the Pentagon. He has lights off, wheels up, nose down," Probst recalled. The plane seemed to be accelerating directly toward him. He froze. "I knew I was dead," he said later. "The only thing I thought was, 'Damn, my wife has to go to another funeral, and I'm not going to see my two boys again.'." He dove to his right. He recalls the engine passing on one side of him, about six feet away. The plane's right wing went through a generator trailer "like butter," Probst said. The starboard engine hit a low cement wall and blew apart. He still can't remember the sound of the explosion. Sometimes the memory starts to come back when he hears a particularly low-flying airliner heading into nearby Reagan National Airport, or when military jets fly over a burial at Arlington National Cemetery. Most of the time, though, his memory is silent."It was pretty horrible," he said of the noiseless images he carries inside him, of the jet vanishing in a cloud of smoke and dust, and bits of metal and concrete drifting down like confetti. On either side of him, three streetlights had been sheared in half by the airliner's wings at 12 to 15 feet above the ground. An engine had clipped the antenna off a Jeep Grand Cherokee stalled in traffic not far away. http://www.militarycity.com/sept11/fortress1.html

Probst Frank

"I was standing on the sidewalk (parallel to the site of impact)...and I saw this plane coming right at me at what seemed like 300 miles an hour. I dove towards the ground and watched this great big engine from this beautiful airplane just vaporize," said Frank Probst, a member of the Pentagon renovations crew commented. "It looked like a huge fireball, pieces were flying out everywhere." http://www.dcmilitary.com/army/pentagram/6_55/local_news/10660-1.html

Ragland Clyde

Naval officer Clyde Ragland, who works near the Pentagon, was stuck in his office because the streets outside were clogged with traffic. He and his co-workers were watching television reports of the disaster in New York when "we gazed out our own windows and, to our horror and disbelief, saw huge billows of black smoke rising from the northeast, in the direction of D.C. and the river . . . and the Pentagon." Ragland described billowing black smoke and "what looked like white confetti raining down everywhere." He said it soon became apparent "that the 'confetti' was little bits of airplane, falling down after being flung high into the bright, blue sky." http://bernie.house.gov/documents/articles/20010912170838.asp http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la%2D091201main.story

Rains Lon

Eyewitness: The Pentagon By Lon Rains Editor, Space News - In light traffic the drive up Interstate 395 from Springfield to downtown Washington takes no more than 20 minutes. But that morning, like many others, the traffic slowed to a crawl just in front of the Pentagon. With the Pentagon to the left of my van at about 10 o'clock on the dial of a clock, I glanced at my watch to see if I was going to be late for my appointment. At that moment I heard a very loud, quick whooshing sound that began behind me and stopped suddenly in front of me and to my left. In fractions of a second I heard the impact and an explosion. The next thing I saw was the fireball. I was convinced it was a missile. It came in so fast it sounded nothing like an airplane. Friends and colleagues have asked me if I felt a shock wave and I honestly do not know. I felt something, but I don't know if it was a shock wave or the fact that I jumped so hard I strained against the seat belt and shoulder harness and was thrown back into my seat. 'http://www.space.com/news/rains_september11-1.html

Ramos

When she thinks of that day, Ramos also recalls another burn patient whom she treated just after getting Maj. Leibner into the ambulance. "I turned around and a burn patient was coming out," she said. "I was afraid I'd be caught with her in the line of fire." The woman's clothes were literally exploded off her body, Ramos said. "Her legs were so bad that her skin was coming off," she said. "She was really in shock. She had like a vacant stare. She was all sweaty, her legs were burned, and her clothes were blasted off her back because her back was bare. We got her onto a stretcher face down and DiDi started an IV, and they were ready to take her into the ambulance. We evacuated at that point." They later heard that the burn patient died a couple of days afterward. The victims exited the building in waves, but after a short while they stopped coming out. "After the first hour, it was very frustrating," Ramos said. "You felt hopeless," added Lopez. "You can't go in and no one is coming out." Ramos said she still gets galvanic skin responses when she recalls the events of that morning. "Everything was so busy, you couldn't remember everything," she said. ()It took some time before Ramos, Maj. Leibner and others were able to talk openly of their experiences that day. "We went to several debriefings," Ramos said. http://www.usmedicine.com/article.cfm?articleID=384&issueID=38

Rasmusen Floyd

Floyd Rasmusen, a senior management analyst at the Pentagon, was inside. "All of a sudden all of my telephones cut off," he said. "I heard an explosion. All of a sudden I saw all of this flaming debris come flying toward me." He got his staff out of the building. http://www.abqtrib.com/archives/news01/091201_news_dcscene.shtml

Regnery Alfred S.

Alfred S. Regnery, saw () a jetliner ... not more than a couple of hundred yards above the ground" http://www.humanevents.org/articles/09-17-01/regnery.html Renzi Rick

Rick Renzi a law student - The plane came in at an incredibly steep angle with incredibly high speed,... was driving by the Pentagon at the time of the crash about 9:40 a.m. The impact created a huge yellow and orange fireball, he added. Renzi, who was interviewed at the scene by FBI agents, said he stopped his car to watch and saw another plane following and turn off after the first craft's impact. http://www.pittsburgh.com/partners/wpxi/news/pentagonattack.html

Robbins James S

James S Robbins a national-security analyst & 'nationalreviewonline' contributor: "I was standing, looking out my large office window, which faces west and from six stories up has a commanding view of the Potomac and the Virginia heights." "The Pentagon is about a mile and half distant in the center of the tableau. I was looking directly at it when the aircraft struck. The sight of the 757 diving in at an unrecoverable angle is frozen in my memory, but at the time. " I did not immediately comprehend what I was witnessing. There was a silvery flash, an explosion, and a dark, mushroom shaped cloud rose over the building. I froze, gaping for a second until the sound of the detonation, a sharp pop at that distance, shook me out of it. " http://www.nationalreview.com/robbins/robbins040902.asp

Roberts Willis

Lt. Willis Roberts : "We're having a lot of trouble in there. It's about 3,000 degrees inside. The walls, the water and the metal are hot," said Lt. Willis Roberts, U.S. Army Rescue. http://maninut.com/patriotic_sites/tribute.htm

Rodriguez Meseidy

Meseidy Rodriguez confirms "it was a mid size plane". His brother inlaw also 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. http://mfile.akamai.com/920/rm/thepost.download.akamai.com/920/nation/091101-5s.ram http://www.newsbytes.com/news/01/170005.html http://www.spooky8.com/reviews.htm

Rosati Arthur

Arthur Rosati, another security officer and an army reservist , was in a meeting when the plane hit. "I ran down the hallway and there was smoke everywhere. You could smell the jet fuel, it was unbearable" http://www.dcmilitary.com/marines/hendersonhall/6_39/local_news/10797-1.html

Ryan James

He tilted his wings, this way and in this way (Ryan mimics). He kinda did like that. At that point the plane was slow, so that happened concurrently with the engines going down. And then straighten up in sort of suddenly and hit full gas. (Ryan mimics). It was just so loud.(Video) low bandwidth : http://digipressetmp3.teaser.fr/uploads/488/Ryan.ram high bandwidth : http://digipressetmp3.teaser.fr/uploads/488/Ryan2.ram