9/11 The Pentagon Ooggetuigen III

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