9/11 The Pentagon Ooggetuigen IV

Verklaringen van Ooggetuigen:

Tamillow Michael

FBI evidence teams combing the area of impact along the building's perimeter found parts of the fuselage from the Boeing 757, said Michael Tamillow, a battalion chief and search and rescue expert for the Fairfax County, Virginia, Fire Department. No large pieces apparently survived. http://www.cnn.com/2001/US/09/12/pentagon.terrorism/

Terronez Tony

Around 9:40 a.m. I reached the heliport area (beside the Pentagon). So I got about 100 yards or so past the heliport and then all of the sudden I heard this loud screeching sound that just came out of nowhere and it intensified. This huge WHOOSH! And something made me look in my rearview mirror and by the time I looked up I saw the side of the Pentagon explode. I was stunned. It was just so surreal, like something out of a movie, like Die Hard. The side of a building just exploded! As the fireball got higher and higher, you saw this debris go up in the air. I am watching this in my rearview mirror, and then I thought, Oh my God, there is debris coming toward me! So my reaction was, I ducked into my passenger seat and I heard the pitter-patter of pebbles and concrete bouncing off my car. And the next thing you know, I heard this big crash come from somewhere. It sounded like glass being shattered and I thought maybe, at first, it was one of my windows so I popped up to look but everything was fine. But when I looked to the car next to me I realized that something went through (the drivers) rear windshield and shattered it. There was a hole where you could see that something went through it. I put the car in park - it is amazing how instinct takes over because I will never know how it is I kept my foot on the brake when I ducked at the same time. I should have rammed right into the guy in front of me. I got out of the car and the guy in front of me, he and I just looked at each other. It seemed like everybody who was on the road got out of their cars and just looked in disbelief as the fireball just kept getting bigger and bigger. My jaw was dropped, his jaw was dropped, and then, at that point, something about trying to make sure people were OK overtook me and I started going around to the people in the other cars to see if they were all right.I and the guy in front of me went to the car next to me and asked the driver if he was all right and if he was OK to drive. He was in shock, you could tell. He just kept looking straight ahead. He didn't even look back, he was so fixated on looking north. He didn't want to look south at the Pentagon. And it took a couple of times for me and the other guy to say, Can you drive? Hello? Are you OK? Are you OK? And he said, Yeah, I think I can drive. We asked him again, Can you drive? and that time he was more sure and said, Yes, yes, I can drive. Then both I and the guy in front of me looked at his rear windshield and saw what was about a four-inch hole in it and the rest of the window was shattered as if someone took a baseball bat to it. At that point I realized - you see at that point I didn't know it was a plane, I thought it was a missile strike - how dangerous things were. And I just started yelling, We gotta get out of here, to the guy in front of me - and he agreed - and we started yelling at people, Get back in your cars! We gotta get the f--- out of here! And I just kept repeating, Get in your cars! Let's go, let's go! Get the f--- out of here. Go! Go! Go! And people must have listened because down the road you heard more people telling everyone to get in their cars and go. Cars were going over the median on Route 27 because there wasn't any traffic coming southbound toward the Pentagon. People were hopping over it any way they could, on the grass, anything. It was a little scary at that point.Pulling away from the Pentagon there was tons of stuff on the ground, big pieces of metal, concrete, everything. We got up to a certain point and there was this huge piece of something - I mean it was big, it looked like a piece of an engine or something - in the road. And there was somebody, definitely a security guard or maybe a military person, with his car in front of it making sure no one touched it. () I looked back and I saw the fire, it was just huge and just incredible. I still cannot believe it. At that point in time, I remembered I had a camera in my trunk. I got off an off-ramp beside the Pentagon and parked my car in the grass and started taking pictures. The whole time I was taking pictures it was so detailed. I could this huge piece of a wheel on fire through the black smoke, but I could not see into the Pentagon itself. http://www.counseling.org/ctonline/news/amazing1001.htm

Theall David

Carl Mahnken and his colleague in the Army public relations office, David Theall, had been in a first-floor studio only a few dozen feet from where the plane hit. A computer monitor had blown back and hit Theall in the head, but he was conscious and he led the way out for his buddy. They were walking over electrical wires, ceiling panels. They could see no more than five feet in any direction. After the initial whoosh and blast, it had seemed eerily silent until they reached the D Ring hallway, where they heard other people, crying, moaning, talking. () Theall said to Mahnken, "Buddy, I ain't going to let you go. We had survived this. This force that drove us through walls." http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A38407-2001Sep15

Thompson Carla

"I glanced up just at the point where the plane was going into the building," said Carla Thompson, who works in an Arlington, Va., office building about 1,000 yards from the crash. "I saw an indentation in the building and then it was just blown-up up--red, everything red," she said. "Everybody was just starting to go crazy. I was petrified." http://bernie.house.gov/documents/articles/20010912170838.asp

Thompson Phillip

There is no doubt in my mind that last week's attack on America was an act of war. I fought in the Gulf War. I saw bombs and missiles explode overhead. I saw people die. And when, on my way to work Sept. 11, I saw an American Airlines jet come overhead and slam into the Pentagon, it all came back. Hard. I was sitting in heavy traffic in the I-395 HOV lanes about 9:45 a.m., directly across from the Navy Annex. I could see the roof of the Pentagon and, in the distance, the Washington Monument. I heard the scream of a jet engine and, turning to look, saw my driver's side window filled with the fuselage of the doomed airliner. It was flying only a couple of hundred feet off the ground - I could see the passenger windows glide by. The plane looked as if it were coming in for a landing - cruising at a shallow angle, wings level, very steady. But, strangely, the landing gear was up and the flaps weren't down. I knew what was about to happen, but my brain couldn't quite process the information. Like the other commuters on the road, I was stunned into disbelief. The fireball that erupted upon impact blossomed skyward, and the blast hit us in a wave. I don't remember hearing a sound. It was so eerily similar to another experience during the Gulf War - a missile strike that killed a Marine in my unit - that when I jumped out of my SUV, I felt like I'd jumped into my past and was in combat once again. The feeling was the same, but the context was all wrong. (...) What if 'dash two' was inbound to the Pentagon? Then a gray C-130 flew overhead, setting off a new round of panic. I tried to reassure people that the plane was not a threat. All around me people began to panic, fleeing for their lives. Afraid of being trapped, I drove through a gap in the median barrier and drove across 395 to an exit ramp. http://www.militarycity.com/sept11/911_1068139.html

Thurman John

Major John Thurman reflects on the friends and colleagues he lost. He was prepared for the dangers of war, he says. But this was so unexpected. () Thurman also was blown backward. () But it was a plane passing beneath him, smashing through pilons and shaking the building's 60-year-old structure. "I saw flames coming over the walls, and then retreat back. And immediately the room was filled with smoke and the like," Thurman said. () Thurman was trying to orient himself in a darkened room. His once familiar office was a jumble of toppled wall lockers and upended furniture. Two officemates, a man and a woman, were alive. The three crawled face down through the wreckage, looking for a way out but finding only fire and blind alleys. One officemate passed out, then the other. An overpowering desire to sleep overcame Thurman. "Suddenly it hit me that I was going to die." "I thought,'Oh my god, my parents are going to have their first grandchild and same day they are going to lose their first son, their first child," he said. "And I got really mad." The burst of adrenalin gave Thurman just enough strength to push his way to safety before his soot-coated lungs gave out. http://www.theosuobserver.com/main.cfm/include/smdetail/synid/54846.html

Ticknor Henry

Henry Ticknor, intern minister at the Unitarian Universalist Church of Arlington, Virginia, was driving to church that Tuesday morning when American Airlines Flight 77 came in fast and low over his car and struck the Pentagon. "There was a puff of white smoke and then a huge billowing black cloud," he said. http://www.uua.org/world/2002/01/feature3a.html

Timmerman Tim

A pilot who saw the impact, Tim Timmerman, said it had been an American Airways 757. "It added power on its way in," he said. "The nose hit, and the wings came forward and it went up in a fireball." Smoke and flames poured out of a large hole punched into the side of the Pentagon. Emergency crews rushed fire engines to the scene and ambulancemen ran towards the flames holding wooden pallets to carry bodies out. A few of the lightly injured, bleeding and covered in dust, were recovering on the lawn outside, some in civilian clothes, some in uniform. A piece of twisted aircraft fuselage lay nearby. No one knew how many people had been killed, but rescue workers were finding it nearly impossible to get to people trapped inside, beaten back by the flames and falling debris. http://www.guardian.co.uk/wtccrash/story/0,1300,550486,00.html

Timmerman Tim

Tim Timmerman : Pilot. I was looking out the window; I live on the 16th floor, overlooking the Pentagon, in a corner apartment, so I have quite a panorama. And being next to National Airport, I hear jets all the time, but this jet engine was way too loud. I looked out to the southwest, and it came right down 395, right over Colombia Pike, and as is went by the Sheraton Hotel, the pilot added power to the engines. I heard it pull up a little bit more, and then I lost it behind a building. And then it came out, and I saw it hit right in front of -- it didn't appear to crash into the building; most of the energy was dissipated in hitting the ground, but I saw the nose break up, I saw the wings fly forward, and then the conflagration engulfed everything in flames. It was horrible. It was a Boeing 757, American Airlines, no question. It was so close to me it was like looking out my window and looking at a helicopter. It was just right there. (We were told that it was flying so low that it clipped off a couple of light poles as it was coming in) That might have happened behind the apartments that occluded my view. And when it reappeared, it was right before impact, and like I said, it was right before impact, and I saw the airplane just disintegrate and blow up into a huge ball of flames. And the building shook, and it was quite a tremendous explosion. I noticed the fire trucks and the responses was just wonderful. Fire trucks were there quickly. I saw the area; the building didn't look very damaged initially, but I do see now, looking out my window, there's quite a chunk in it. But I think the blessing here might have been that the airplane hit before it hit the building, it hit the ground, and a lot of energy might have gone that way. That's what it appeared like. http://www.cnn.com/TRANSCRIPTS/0109/11/bn.32.html

Timmerman Donald "Tim"

Donald "Tim" Timmerman, watched from across Interstate 395: I was looking out the window; I live on the 16th floor, overlooking the Pentagon, in a corner apartment, so I have quite a panorama. And being next to National Airport, I hear jets all the time, but this jet engine was way too loud. I looked out to the southwest, and it came right down 395, right over Colombia Pike, and as it went by the Sheraton Hotel, the pilot added power to the engines. I heard it pull up a little bit more, and then I lost it behind a building. And then it came out, and I saw it hit right in front of -- it didn't appear to crash into the building; most of the energy was dissipated in hitting the ground, but I saw the nose break up, I saw the wings fly forward, and then the conflagration engulfed everything in flames. It was horrible. What can you tell us about the plane itself? It was a Boeing 757, American Airlines, no question.You say that it was a Boeing, and you say it was a 757 or 767? 7-5-7.757, which, of course..American Airlines.American Airlines, one of the new generation of jets. Right. It was so close to me it was like looking out my window and looking at a helicopter. It was just right there. . .cnn.com TRANSCRIPT http://commemoratewtc.com/transcripts/tr-13-46.php

Turner Ron

Ron Turner, the Navy's deputy chief information officer, was standing solemnly at a funeral at Arlington National Cemetery when American Airlines Flight 77 crashed into the Pentagon Tuesday morning. He had only to turn to watch the disaster unfold. "There was a huge fireball," he said, "followed by the [usual] black cloud of a fuel burn." Turner, a helicopter pilot during the Vietnam War, said the explosion was just the same as explosions of jet fighters and helicopters during his tour of duty in 1971. "It reminded me of being back in Vietnam," he said, "watching Tan Son Nhut Air Base burn." http://www.govexec.com/dailyfed/0901/091301j3.htm

Velasquez Jose

It wasn't like a rumble, it was just - boom, said Tom Van Leunen of the Navy Public Affairs Office. It was shocking. ... It immediately put you on your heels, in fact in my case, actually, it kind of knocked me down. http://www.boston.com...

Velasquez Jose

Jose Velasquez : "It was like an earthquake" , "By the time I got outside all I could see was a giant cloud of smoke, first white then black, coming from the Pentagon," he said.Velasquez says the gas station's security cameras are close enough to the Pentagon to have recorded the moment of impact. "I've never seen what the pictures looked like," he said. "The FBI was here within minutes and took the film." http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2001/12/1211_wirepentagon.html

Wallace Alan

Alan Wallace usually worked out of the Fort Myer fire station, but on Sept. 11 he was one of three firefighters assigned to the Pentagon's heliport. Along with crew members Mark Skipper and Dennis Young, Wallace arrived around 7:30 in the morning. After a quick breakfast, the 55-year-old firefighter moved the station's firetruck out of the firehouse. President Bush had used the heliport the day before: he'd motorcaded to the Pentagon, then flown to Andrews Air Force Base for a trip to Florida. Bush was scheduled to return to the Pentagon helipad later on Tuesday, Wallace says. So Wallace wanted the firetruck out of the station before Secret Service vehicles arrived and blocked its way. He parked it perpendicular to the west wall of the Pentagon. Wallace and Skipper were walking along the right side of the truck (Young was in the station) when the two looked up and saw an airplane. It was about 25 feet off the ground and just 200 yards away-the length of two football fields. They had heard about the WTC disaster and had little doubt what was coming next. "Let's go," Wallace yelled. Both men ran. Wallace ran back toward the west side of the station, toward a nine-passenger Ford van. "My plans were to run until I caught on fire," he says. He didn't know how long he'd have or whether he could outrun the oncoming plane. Skipper ran north into an open field. Wallace hadn't gotten far when the plane hit. "I hadn't even reached the back of the van when I felt the fireball. I felt the blast," he says. He hit the blacktop near the left rear tire of the van and quickly shimmied underneath. "I remember feeling pressure, a lot of heat," he says. He crawled toward the front of the van, then emerged to see Skipper out in the field, still standing. "Everything is on fire. The grass is on fire. The building is on fire. The firehouse is on fire," Wallace recalls. "There was fire everywhere. Areas of the blacktop were on fire." Wallace ran over to Skipper, who said he was OK, too. They compared injuries-burned arms, minor cuts, scraped skin. He ran back into the station to try to suit up. But he found debris everywhere. The ceiling had crumbled, there were broken lights and drywall everywhere. His boots were on fire. His fire pants filled with debris. The fire alarm was blaring.Then Wallace heard someone call from outside. "We need help over here," someone yelled. He ran back outside over to the Pentagon building and helped lower people out of a first-floor window, still some six feet off the ground. He helped 10 to 15 people to safety. Most could walk, though he helped carry one badly burned man. "He wasn't too responsive," Wallace recalls. He helped two other men drag him to the other side of the heliport then he turned around. "I've got to go back," he said. Working with a civilian, Wallace headed back to the building. He could hear more cries for help from inside. There was trash and debris everywhere. The trees were on fire. Wallace headed into the building through an open door, but couldn't find anyone else to save. "After a while I didn't hear anybody calling anymore," he says. "They probably found another way out." http://www.msnbc.com/news/635293.asp

Wallace Alan

About 9:40, Alan Wallace had finished fixing the foam metering valve on the back of his fire truck parked in the Pentagon fire station and walked to the front of the station. He looked up and saw a jetliner coming straight at him. It was about 25 feet off the ground, no landing wheels visible, a few hundred yards away and closing fast. "Runnnnn!" he yelled to a pal. There was no time to look back, barely time to scramble. He made it about 30 feet, heard a terrible roar, felt the heat, and dove underneath a van, skinning his stomach as he slid along the blacktop, sailing under it as though he were riding a luge. The van protected him against burning metal that was flying around. A few seconds later he was sliding back out to check on his friend and then race back to the firetruck. He jumped in, threw it into gear, but the accelerator was dead. The entire back of the truck was destroyed, the cab on fire. He grabbed the radio headset and called the main station at Fort Myer to report the unimaginable. The sun was still low in the sky, obscured by the Pentagon and the enormous billowing clouds of acrid smoke, making it hauntingly dark. The ground was on fire. Trees were on fire. Hot slices of aluminum were everywhere. Wallace could hear voices crying for help and moved toward them. People were coming out a window head first, landing on him. He had faced incoming fire before -- he was with the hospital corps in Vietnam when mortars and rocket shells dropped on the operating room near Da Nang -- but he had never witnessed anything of this devastating intensity. http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A38407-2001Sep15

Wallace Alan

The morning of Sept. 11 was crystal clear in Washington, still summer warm. It would be easy to relax on a morning like that, but outside the Pentagon, firefighter Alan Wallace and the safety crew at the Pentagon's heliport pad already were too busy. President Bush was scheduled to fly from Florida that afternoon, and his helicopter, Marine One, would carry him to the Pentagon. Secret Service was everywhere and their cars blocked the driveway. So the meticulous Wallace moved the fire truck out of the way, parking it about 15 feet from the Pentagon. That's when Wallace got a call from his chief at nearby Fort Myer telling him of the attacks in New York and to be on alert. Minutes later, Wallace and his buddy Mark Skipper looked up and saw the gleam of a silver jetliner. But it was flying too low. Maybe less than 25 feet off the ground. And it was heading right at them. "I yelled to Mark, 'Let's go!' " He bolted to the right, and a second later felt the searing heat of the blast behind him. He hit the ground and rolled under a parked van as a fire engulfed his fire truck, then blew through the firehouse. Wallace got back to his feet, saw Skipper had escaped, then rushed to the scorched fire truck to see if it would run, but the truck only belched fire. It wouldn't move. So Wallace switched on the truck's radio. "Foam 61 to Fort Myer," he said. "We have had a commercial carrier crash into the west side of the Pentagon at the heliport, Washington Boulevard side. The crew is OK. The airplane was a 757 Boeing or a 320 Airbus." Although he was still frantic and shaken, Wallace's report turned out to be painfully accurate. () With bits of cloth and fiberglass still raining down outside the blackened section of the Pentagon, Alan Wallace's instincts focused on trying to help somehow. The truck was useless. So he dashed for his gear inside the torched firehouse. His boots were filled with debris. His suspenders were on fire. Wallace and two other firefighters rushed to a window, where Pentagon employees were crammed together, frantic to escape the darkness. Fire burst through the windows above them. The ground burned near Wallace with heat so hot he thought several times that his pants were on fire. They began grabbing arms and pulling people out - 15 in all. " They were all burned," Wallace said. But there wasn't time for Wallace and the other firefighters to get emotional. "We just seemed to stay in one mode there until we ran out of people coming out," Wallace said. And no one was sure how many more remained inside. www.gosanangelo.com...

Wallace Terry

Terry C. Wallace - Southern Arizona Seismic Observatory - I looked pretty hard -- and to be honest I can't find any CONCLUSIVELY above the noise. I calculated an expected magnitude assuming that the impact was on the wall, not vertical (like UA flight), and got a magnitude of .8 The noise at all the stations (closest is 60 km aways) is above this. http://www.unknownnews.net/cdd060702.html

Walter Mike

Washington, Mike Walter, USA Today, on the road when a jet slammed into the Pentagon: "I was sitting in the northbound on 27 and the traffic was, you know, typical rush-hour -- it had ground to a standstill. I looked out my window and I saw this plane, this jet, an American Airlines jet, coming. And I thought, 'This doesn't add up, it's really low.' "And I saw it. I mean it was like a cruise missile with wings. It went right there and slammed right into the Pentagon. "Huge explosion, great ball of fire, smoke started billowing out. And then it was chaos on the highway as people tried to either move around the traffic and go down, either forward or backward. "We had a lady in front of me, who was backing up and screaming, 'Everybody go back, go back, they've hit the Pentagon.' "It was just sheer terror." http://www.cnn.com/2001/CAREER/trends/09/11/witnesses/ http://www.cnn.com/2001/US/09/11/pentagon.terrorism/

Wheelhouse Keith

Her brother, [Keith Wheelhouse], of Virginia Beach, spotted the planes first. The second plane looked similar to a C- 130 transport plane, he said. He believes it flew directly above the American Airlines jet, as if to prevent two planes from appearing on radar while at the same time guiding the jet toward the Pentagon. http://indymedia.org/front.php3?article_id=131871

Daily Press; Newport News; Sep 14, 2001; TERRY SCANLON

Winslow Dave

Dave Winslow : AP reporter Dave Winslow also saw the crash. He said, "I saw the tail of a large airliner ... It ploughed right into the Pentagon." http://www.guardian.co.uk/wtccrash/story/0,1300,550486,00.html

Wright Don

Don Wright from the 12th floor, 1600 Wilson Boulevard, in Rosslyn: " .. I watched this ...it looked like a commuter plane, two engined ... come down from the south real low ... " (Real Audio) http://www.sun-sentinel.com...

Wyatt Ian

Ian Wyatt glanced into the sky just as a commercial airplane roared by about 100 yards off the ground. "I was so scared I thought it was coming after me and just ducked for cover," said Wyatt, a 1999 graduate of Mary Washington College who was walking to his federal job when terrorists struck at the heart of the nation's defense yesterday morning. "It was going so fast and it was so low," he said, standing on Army-Navy Drive. "The only intelligent thought that came into my head was, 'Oh my God, they hit the Pentagon.' I could then hear cars squealing all around and people were just stunned." After the plane struck the west side of the famed five-sided building, thick black smoke billowed from a huge crater as fire raged within. http://www.fredericksburg.com/News/FLS/2001/092001/09122001/390193/printer_friendly

Yates John

Security officer John Yates was picked up and hurled 30 feet. Sgt. Maj. Tony Rose, punched into a ceiling column, watched as the glass in the C Ring windows spidered into tiny cubes. The sound erupted a heartbeat later, a monstrous boom and crunch like a thousand file cabinets toppling at once. To demographer Betty Maxfield, the room seemed to freeze, intact, for a moment, then in slow motion the computers clicked off and the lights failed and a fireball rolled through the cubicle farm like a wave, with bulbous head and tapered tail, and as it passed, everything around it burst into flames. Cabinets overturned, partitions exploded, ceiling tiles burned and danced and fell with their metal frames. The air boiled. (...) John Yates came to his senses to find that his death was at hand. He could not breathe. He could not see. The room was ablaze around him. The metal furniture jumbled all about was hot enough to raise blisters. He heard screams. He wasn't sure that some weren't his. His glasses remained on his face. They were smeared with something -- unburned jet fuel, which Yates mistook for blood. He carefully took them off, folded them, and slipped them into his shirt pocket, then stumbled toward the big room's interior. http://www.pilotonline.com/special/911/pentagon2.html

Yates John

John Yates worked in 2E471, a warren of cubicles. At 50, he was an Army security manager who handed out keys and employee badges. (...) He had been sitting on a table watching TV. When he stood up, the Pentagon shuddered. A big ball of fire knocked him to the floor. Black smoke flooded the room. Searing heat scorched him. Upended file cabinets blocked him. http://www.hjpa.org/morenews.html

Yeingst William

Just prior to the impact there were three firemen on the helipad at the Pentagon. The president was supposed to land at the helipad two hours after the impact, and so they had just pulled the foam truck out of the firehouse and were standing there when they looked up and saw the plane coming over the Navy Annex building. They turned and ran, and at the point of impact were partially shielded by their fire truck from the flying debris of shrapnel and flames. They were knocked to the ground by the concussion, were able to get up, go over to the fire truck, and initially they were able to get it started to call for help at Fort Myer. And then they had to put out parts of their uniform--their bunker gear was actually on fire, so the first thing they had to do was put out their own fire truck and their fire equipment and they tried to start the truck and move it, but they discovered that it wouldn't move. They got out and looked, and the whole back of the fire truck had melted. Audio : http://americanhistory.si.edu/september11/collection/audio.asp?ID=6 Transcript : http://americanhistory.si.edu/september11/collection/transcript.asp?ID=6

Yonkers Terry

``The whole building shook with the impact, said Terry Yonkers, an Air Force civilian employee at work inside the Pentagon at the time of the attack. ``There was screaming and pandemonium, he said, but the evacuation ordered shortly afterward was carried out smoothly. http://www.firehouse.com/terrorist/11_APdc.html

Zakhem Madelyn

Madelyn Zakhem, executive secretary at the STC (VDOT Smart Traffic Center), had just stepped outside for a break and was seated on a bench when she heard what she thought was a jet fighter directly overhead. It wasn't. It was an airliner coming straight up Columbia Pike at tree-top level. "It was huge! It was silver. It was low -- unbelievable! I could see the cockpit. I fell to theground.... I was crying and scared". "If I had been on top of our building, I would have been close enough to reach up and catch it," http://www.roadstothefuture.com/VA_Sept21.txt

Abc

"It's a bomb. Get out," said a Pentagon spokesman as authorities ordered an evacuation of the building. In addition there have been explosions at the State Department and on Capitol Hill in Washington. http://abc.net.au/news/2001/09/item20010911230953_1.htm Americanmemorials

Other witnesses said the plane crash was followed by an explosion about 15 minutes later that could be heard miles away - apparently the sound of a large portion of the Pentagon collapsing. http://www.americanmemorials.com/memorial/tribute.asp?idMemorial=1316&idContributor=7466

Aviationnow

The large aircraft struck the outermost corridor (E-ring) of the five-ring building at ground level (the second floor) at 9:43 a.m. EDT and continued smashing its way through the D and C rings. Navy survivors on the B-ring looked out their interior windows and saw flames and falling debris.() Blast damage was also limited by new Kevlar panels, but they didn't protect those nearby from fires from exploding fuel tanks, estimated to have produced the equivalent of 200-400 tons of TNT. Fuel triggered an intense fire that caused the roof of the damaged E-ring section to give way at 10:10 a.m. It was still burning 18 hr. later. () Navy officers not in the aircraft's direct path reported heavy safes being flung across rooms and people thrown from their chairs. http://www.aviationnow.com/content/publication/awst/20010917/aw48.htm

Cbsnews

Radar shows Flight 77 did a downward spiral, turning almost a complete circle and dropping the last 7,000 feet in two-and-a-half minutes. The steep turn was so smooth, the sources say, it's clear there was no fight for control going on. And the complex maneuver suggests the hijackers had better flying skills than many investigators first believed. The jetliner disappeared from radar at 9:37 and less than a minute later it clipped the tops of street lights and plowed into the Pentagon at 460 mph. http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2001/09/11/national/main310721.shtml

CNN

PLANT (LIVE): Well, and speaking to people here at the Pentagon, as they're being evacuated from the building. I'm told by several people that there was, in fact, an explosion. I was told by one witness, an Air Force enlisted - senior enlisted man, that he was outside when it occurred. He said that he saw a helicopter circle the building. He said it appeared to be a U.S. military helicopter, and that it disappeared behind the building where the helicopter landing zone is - excuse me - and he then saw fireball go into the sky.[...]It's a very tense situation obviously, but initial reports from witnesses indicate that there was in fact a helicopter circling the building, contrary to what the AP reported, according to the witnessess I've spoken to anyway, and that this helicopter disappeared behind the building, and that there was then an explosion. That's about all I have from here. September 11 Live CNN Transcript, Europe

Delawareonline

Smoke and flames engulfed the west wall. Cars traveling nearby were lifted up off the roadway and showered with rocks and other debris. Among the trash littering the road was a scorched green oxygen tank marked "Cabin air. Airline use." When the debris shower stopped, people began getting out of their cars, some of them screaming. http://www.delawareonline.com/newsjournal/local/2001/09/12terrorspreadsto.html http://www.thejournalnews.com/newsroom/091201/12wtcpentagon.html

Fantasysplace

An explosion at the Pentagon. A car-bomb explosion outside the State Department. A loud explosion reported in the vicinity of the Capitol. There were also reports of a fire on the National Mall, a stretch of open, green space between the Capitol and the Washington Monument. That report was not immediately confirmed. At the White House, employees ran out of the executive mansion as police cleared it. Aides said a "credible threat" against the White House had come in. At first, the evacuation was orderly but, under orders from the Secret Service, employees were soon ordered to run out of the gates. At the State Department, a senior government official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said the incident at State appeared connected with the events in New York and at the Pentagon."Something has happened at the State Department," the source said. "We don't know what yet." http://www.geocities.com/fantasysplace2/pentagon.html

Federation of American Scientists

Another aspect of overpressure occurring in air bursts is the phenomenon of Mach reflections, called the "Mach Effect." When a bomb is detonated at some distance above the ground, the reflected wave catches up to and combines with the original shock wave, called the incident wave, to form a third wave that has a nearly vertical front at ground level. This third wave is called a "Mach Wave" or "Mach Stem," and the point at which the three waves intersect is called the "Triple Point." The Mach Stem grows in height as it spreads laterally, and as the Mach Stem grows, the triple point rises, describing a curve through the air. In the Mach Stem the incident wave is reinforced by the reflected wave, and both the peak pressure and impulse are at a maximum that is considerably higher than the peak pressure and impulse of the original shock wave at the same distance from the point of explosion. Using the phenomenon of Mach reflections, it is possible to increase considerably the radius of effectiveness of a bomb. By detonating a warhead at the proper height above the ground, the maximum radius at which a given pressure or impulse is exerted can be increased, in some cases by almost 50%, over that for the same bomb detonated at ground level. The area of effectiveness, or damage volume, may thereby be increased by as much as 100%. http://www.fas.org/man/dod-101/sys/land/docs/warheads.pdf

Firehouse

The nerve center of the nation's military burst into flames and a portion of one side of the five-sided structure collapsed when the plane struck in midmorning. Secondary explosions were reported in the aftermath of the attack and great billows of smoke drifted skyward toward the Potomac River and the city beyond. http://www.firehouse.com/terrorist/11_APdc.html

Lavieenjaune

"It was pitch-black, and it was full of smoke. It was very, very hot. We were pretty close to the fire and the explosion," the official said, declining to give his name for security reasons. http://lavieenjaune.50megs.com/september112001_archive2.html

Maryland Geological Survey

Since the time of plane impact at the Pentagon had often been reported with large scatter, the United States Army contacted us to inquire whether we could obtain an accurate time of the Pentagon attack on September 11, 2001 based upon our seismic network. We analyzed seismic records from five stations in the northeastern United States, ranging from 63 to 350 km from the Pentagon. Despite detailed analysis of the data, we could not find a clear seismic signal. Even the closest station (?= 62.8 km) at Soldiers Delight, Baltimore County, Maryland (SDMD) did not record the impact. We concluded that the plane impact to the Pentagon generated relatively weak seismic signals. However, we positively identified seismic signals associated with United Airlines Flight 93 that crashed near Shanksville, Somerset County, Pennsylvania. The time of the plane crash was 10:06:05?5 (EDT). http://www.mgs.md.gov/esic/publications/download/911pentagon.pdf

Navymedicine

Medical practitioners should acquire additional skills to become knowledgeable in all aspects of blast injuries. The range of injuries runs from pneumothorax, visceral injuries, to the fracture of multiple sites (e.g., ribs, femur, ankle, wrist, and jaw), blast lung, facial burns, concussion, and contusion. Practitioners also need to know all their medevac assets and become knowledgeable and practiced in principles of mass casualty and triage medicine. There are several final "takehome" points. "Crises don't always come to someone else," said Marc Grossman, former Director General, now Undersecretary for Political Affairs at the Department of State. "It can't happen to me" is a myth. Embassies can be front lines, as illustrated by the bombings in East Africa. The case study of the Cole demonstrates the complexity of activities and multiple participants in managing a large scale disaster. That is why such an event is called a "complex emergency!" There are important lessons to be learned from any disaster that should be shared. The bottom line is: Are you ready? navymedicine.med.navy.mil...

Ournetfamily

Anon, from the Naval Annex: We constantly scanned skyward with our "eyeball radar," noting the sound of every jet engine seemed to make us jump. Fortunately, the only aircraft noise was the crisp distinctive ripping sound was of Air Force F-16's or the roar and popping of the rotor blades of a Park Police UH-1 helicopter surveying the damage. The only large fixed wing aircraft to appear was a gray C-130, which appeared to be a Navy electronic warfare aircraft, he seemed to survey the area and depart in on a westerly heading. http://www.ournetfamily.com/WarOnTerror/emails/pentagonwitness.html

Patriotresource

The fire was so hot that firefighters could not approach the impact point itself until approximately 1 P.M. The collapse and roof fires left the inner courtyard visible from outside through a gaping hole. The area hit by the plane was newly renovated and reinforced, while the areas surrounding the impact zone were closed in preparation for renovation, so the death toll could have been much higher if another area had been hit. http://www.patriotresource.com/wtc/timeline/pentagon.html

Usatoday

In the renovated section outside the immediate crash zone, most damage was caused by smoke and water that poured out of brand-new sprinklers. Many of these offices are occupied again.But there was extensive fire damage hundreds of feet away in unrenovated areas that had not yet had sprinklers installed. The fire was so intense it cracked concrete. http://www.usatoday.com/news/sept11/2002/01/01/pentagon.htm

Washingtonpost

The attack destroyed at least four of the five "rings" that spiral around the massive office building, hitting in a recently renovated section between corridors four and five.Fairfax County's Urban Search and Rescue Team sent two ten-person squads into the Pentagon to search for survivors and to assess the damage. About 70 members of the team, staffed with paramedics, doctors, engineers and search dogs, headed to the scene at 1 p.m. The specially trained unit, one of two in the United States, has previously responded to bombings in Oklahoma City and Nairobi, Kenya, and also to earthquakes in Turkey, Taiwan and Armenia.Ten patients were brought to Inova Alexandria Hospital suffering from injuries ranging from burns to head lacerations, according to Kathleen Barry, chief nurse executive. By 1 p.m., two had been discharged, seven were in stable condition and one was in critical condition suffering from smoke inhalation. Earlier reports of other explosions in the Washington region, at the State Department and the Capitol, were not accurate, law enforcement officials said. The crash at the Pentagon, which occurred less than an hour after the New York attacks, triggered immediate security steps in the Washington area, including evacuation of the State Department, the Capitol building and the West Wing of the White House. A 38-year-old Marine major who asked to remain anonymous said he and dozens of his colleagues rushed to the area in the Pentagon that appeared most heavily damaged -- the B ring between the 4th and 5th corridors. The major said that hundreds of people worked in the B-ring area and that it was "decimated ... that heat and fire, it could eat you alive in three seconds." http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/metro/daily/sep01/attack.html

Washingtonpost

Another Pentagon employee, a 37-year-old Marine major, said he was at a meeting in the innermost A Ring when he heard a thud and felt the building shudder. He and his colleagues rushed to help rescue people from an area that appeared most heavily damaged, the B Ring between corridors 4 and 5. The search for survivors was hampered by intense heat and smoke. As late as 10 p.m., rescue teams were having trouble getting close enough to the worst damage. "We went down that first ring, but we only got 100 feet," said Derek Spector, 37, an Arlington firefighter. "It was an intense amount of heat." By afternoon, the investigation was underway. At one point, a column of 50 FBI officers walked shoulder-to-shoulder across the south grounds of the Pentagon, picking up debris and stuffing it into brown bags. The lawn was scattered with chunks of the airplane, some up to four feet across. http://www.washingtonpost.com...

Washingtonpost

ANYONE WHO deliberately set out to invent a government program with the specific aim of terrifying the Orwell-reading public could hardly have improved on the Information Awareness Office. Tucked away in the outer reaches of the Defense Department, brandishing an eerie and cryptic logo -- an all-seeing eye atop a pyramid and the slogan "Scientia Est Potentia" ("Knowledge Is Power") -- the office is headed by retired Rear Adm. John M. Poindexter, the Reagan administration official who was convicted in the wake of the Iran-contra scandal of five felony counts of lying to Congress, destroying official documents and obstructing the congressional inquiry into the affair. Not surprisingly, there have already been some fast-breathing reactions to recently published information about the office, including allegations that it is funded by the Homeland Security Bill (it isn't) and that Adm. Poindexter has compiled a computer dossier on every American (he hasn't, or not yet). In fact, the program is still a research project of the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), the high-tech innovators who helped create the Internet -- and who claim that this project is equally benign. Among other things, the Information Awareness Office is trying to find ways of better identifying potentially dangerous people by using video cameras and biometrics, and of processing large amounts of data from different sources so as to predict and prevent terrorist attacks (the "Total Information Awareness System"). Police tracking the Washington sniper suspects might, for example, have caught them more quickly with the help of a computer program that could simultaneously search their motel records, their immigration and police histories, and the traffic violations tied to their Chevrolet Caprice. Yet, given both the context and the content of the program, DARPA should hardly have been surprised by the bad publicity. For however revolutionary and innovative it may be, this is not neutral technology, and the potential for abuse is enormous. If information that once took five people a week to find will now take one person 15 minutes to find, then instant -- and instantly updatable -- computer dossiers on everyone really do cease to be science fiction. If computers can learn to identify a person through a video camera, then constant surveillance of society becomes possible, too. Because the legal system designed to protect privacy has yet to catch up with this technology, Congress needs to take a direct interest in this project, and the defense secretary should appoint an outside committee to oversee it before it proceeds. Privacy concerns need to be built into the technology from the beginning -- if the public decides, after being fully acquainted with the possibilities, that it is to be built at all. Finally, everyone involved might also want to consider whether Adm. Poindexter is the best person to direct this extremely sensitive project. Though his criminal convictions were overturned on appeal, his record of lying to Congress hardly makes him an ideal protector of the legal system, and his conduct of Iran-contra hardly makes him an advertisement for government competence. Even his choice of logo calls into question his tact and taste. Adm. Poindexter's presence on this project, the lack of clear public information about it and the absence of any real oversight already indicate a serious lapse of judgment. http://www.washingtonpost.com...