THE BIJLMER CRASH
- JOE VIALLS - CAUGHT IN A LIE.
On the 4th of October 1992, an Israeli El Al cargo plane, flight 1862 (a Boeing 747-200F), crashed into a 12-story apartment block in the Amsterdam suburb of Bijlmer. At least thirty nine people on the ground, and all four people aboard the aircraft, were killed. During the following months, some eight to nine hundred people, including local residents and rescue workers, complained of health problems. For years, Israel and friends put pressure on the Dutch government to hush up details of the crash, especially, the contents of the cargo. However, in October 1998, Avner Yarkoni, a senior officer with El Al, revealed that the downed aircraft contained barrels of dimethyl methylphosphonate and the government was finally forced to set up a committee to investigate. It was eventually determined that the health problems were due to the airline illegally carrying dangerous chemicals, and a large quantity of depleted uranium, from the United States to Israel. It is worth noting, that among the 10 tonnes of chemicals aboard the plane, were hydrofluoric acid, isopropanol and the dimethyl methylphosphonate mentioned above, three of the four components needed for the manufacture of the lethal nerve gas Sarin.
As to the crash, it was determined that it was caused by the loss of both jet engines from the right wing, which made the aircraft difficult, and in the end, impossible to handle. The following is a photo of the El Al flight.
Some time ago, Joe Vialls wrote an article,
French Claim About Pentagon Jet is a Sick Joke,
which was designed to "rebut French suggestions that American Airlines flight 77 did not strike the Pentagon on September 11, 2001." This article is full of discrepancies and misleading statements. Anyway, Joe felt that his article did not sufficiently address the strange circumstance: that flight 77, an American Airlines Boeing 757 with a wingspan of 124 feet, knocked a hole in the Pentagon that was significantly less than 124 feet wide. In fact, since flight 77 struck the Pentagon at an angle of roughly 45 degrees to the wall, it should have carved a 177 foot wide hole in the building. For details, see the article:
A Detailed Analysis of whether a Boeing 757 hit the Pentagon.
So he wrote another article:
Pentagon Attack Plane Was An El Al Look Alike
in which he claims that the Bijlmer crash is an example of a crash where the width of the impact hole was less than the width of the wingspan. The wingspan of a Boeing 747-200F is 212 feet and he claims that the hole in the apartment block is less than half that. This claim is false, and once again Joe has produced an article full of discrepancies, misleading statements and outright lies. Both of Joe's articles (with comment) are repeated below. But first, we will deal with one of the outright lies. Joe states that:
"We know from the official accident reports that although now fatally under powered, El Al Flight 1862 remained under control while descending into the building, and thus was horizontally orientated at the point of impact".
This is a bald-faced lie, premised on the fact that the reader is unlikely to read the official accident report, which is in Dutch. If you can read Dutch, the official report (which was finally published in 1998) is to be found at
http://www.luchtvaartbeleid.nl/nr/dglresource/upload/rapport.pdf
Even if you cannot read Dutch, the pictures and graphics still tell a story. Even without reading the report, it is easily established that El Al Flight 1862 did NOT crash horizontally into the apartment block.
Also, consider how desperate one has to be to make the absolutely ridiculous statement:
"El Al Flight 1862 remained under control while descending into the building".
In a feeble attempt to back up his (frankly, quite ridiculous) assertion, Joe also states that:
"What Henk Prijt Junior saw was Israeli El Al Flight 1862, a massive 747 Jumbo freighter with a wingspan of 212 feet, crashing horizontally into the apartment block".
Here, Joe avoids the direct lie. He just implies that (Dutch citizen) Henk Prijt Junior stated that a massive 747 Jumbo freighter with a wingspan of 212 feet, crashed horizontally into the apartment block. In fact, Henk Prijt Junior, said nothing of the sort. Joe just deceptively implies that he did. And, just in case you do not yet believe this lie, Joe repeats it again.
"El Al Flight 1862, a Boeing 747-200, had a wingspan of 212 feet, is known to have crashed with its wings level".
Here is a photo of the crash site, taken the following day.
And here is another photo taken the night of the crash. Oh yeah, don't forget, it gets dark early this far north and that the crash occurred after sunset.
Now, as I claimed, it is easy to establish that El Al flight 1862 did NOT crash horizontally into the apartment block. Have a look at the following graphic which was plotted from radar readings of the flight. The thing to notice is that the plane was in a tight (uncontrolled) turn when it hit the apartment block. Ask any pilot you like, and he will tell you that it is impossible to turn a plane without banking the wings. That is, the plane did not hit the apartment block while flying horizontally, or at anything even approaching horizontal flight.
This chart can be found on page 41 of the report (related charts can be found on pages 40 and 63). Here is an artists impression of flight 1862, just before slamming into the apartment block. It is taken from the web page:
http://www.omroep.nl/nos/parlementaire_enquete/animatie.html
from which you can watch a little animation about the flight. I have a copy of the animation and report (just in case they go missing from the sites mentioned).
So the moment of the crash would have been something like:
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Which one hopes, makes it perfectly clear why the impact hole is not as "wide" as Vialls expects, and also why he insisted (contrary to all the available evidence) that flight 1862 hit the apartment block while flying horizontally. The following graphic shows the route of the flight overlaid on a map of Amsterdam.
Here is a link to further information on the Bijlmer crash,
http://members.ams.chello.nl/j.wiersema2/bijlmer/
And if you have not read the following article, you should.
A Detailed Analysis of whether a Boeing 757 hit the Pentagon.
Pentagon Attack
Plane Was An El Al Lookalike
Flights 77 and 1862 both had "vanishing" wings
Joe Vialls, May 2002
Flights 77 and 1862 both had "vanishing" wings
Joe Vialls, May 2002
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| El Al Flight 1862, Amsterdam | American Airlines Flight 77, Pentagon | El Al Flight 1862, Amsterdam |
Many weeks ago I wrote a report designed to rebut arcane French suggestions that American Airlines Flight 77 did not strike the Pentagon on September 11, 2001. According to the French, the building was allegedly hit either by a much smaller aircraft, or perhaps by a bomb planted inside the Pentagon by its own "evil" occupants, the United States Military.
Though I was not surprised by such extraordinary suggestions from a bunch of wine swilling Parisians, I was certainly surprised by the immediate and rampant American response. Within days, hundreds of US bulletin boards and web sites were awash with similar claims. It was an incredibly successful "divide and rule" exercise that pitted American against American, and civilian against soldier. Needless to say, the French were delighted. Why were they delighted Joe? Do they plan to divide and RULE the US?
The apparent problem was quite simple. American Airlines Flight 77 was a Boeing 757 twin-jet with a wingspan of 124 feet, but the hole in the Pentagon was less than 124 feet across. Actually, since the aircraft hit the Pentagon at an angle of about 45 degrees, the hole should have been roughly 177 feet across. It was in fact about half this width. Conspiracy heaven! You bet! Obviously then, according to those determined to undermine American national security, the attack aircraft was a remotely-controlled F-16 fighter or Martell missile, almost certainly guided to its American military target by a crazed four-star American general buried deep inside Cheyenne Mountain at NORAD headquarters. So, uncle Joe, everyone who wants an answer to the questions that have been raised, are "obviously", out to undermine American national security. Uncle Joe is paranoid.
My original report (Joe's disinformation) sought to stem this rising tide of disinformation by using the personal example of a British Mach 2 Lightning fighter with a wingspan of 35 feet, which vanished completely into a hole in the ground with a diameter of only 22 feet. Unfortunately I could not prove this with a photo because the 400 mph Lightning crash occurred at the height of the Cold War, and anyone [including me] caught taking happy snaps of the impact crater with a Brownie box camera, would probably still be locked up in the Tower of London today. This paragraph (as you may have already concluded for yourself) is just bullshit to cover the fact that Joe couldn't back up the claims that he had made earlier.
What I should have done instead, was conduct a simple Internet search for photographs of civil equivalents of this exact phenomena where a big plane vanishes into a small hole. Joe thinks that finding a picture of an aircraft crash where the width of the impact hole is less than the wingspan, somehow implies that the wings of the plane ended up in the hole. An absolutely ridiculous assumption, but that's Joe for you. So should the French... Not far north of the wine-swilling Parisians lies the elegant Dutch city of Amsterdam, whose residents had a terrible shock at 6:35 PM on October 4, 1992. Henk Prijt in the suburb of Bijlmer put it this way:
"We were in the living room, watching the sports program on television, like so many others in our neighborhood did that Sunday evening. It was a few minutes after sunset when I noticed an airplane flying low. Low-flying airliners are nothing special here since we live near Schiphol and the route over our heads is one of the busiest for Amsterdam airport."
"But this particular plane did something strange: it flew in the wrong direction. I didn't pay much attention and it flew out of my sight. Shortly after, however, there it was again, coming right at us as we stared out of the window. My son yelled and dashed for the back of the house. As he looked out the door he saw something no one should ever have to see: the huge plane plunging into the next block, some 250 meters to the east of our building."
What Henk Prijt Junior saw was Israeli El Al Flight 1862, a massive 747 Jumbo freighter with a wingspan of 212 feet, crashing horizontally into the apartment block. This outright lie has been dealt with above. At the point of impact in Bijlmer, El Al Flight 1862 weighed 680,000 pounds, roughly three times the gross weight of American Airlines Flight 77 when it crashed into the Pentagon
Shortly after take-off from Amsterdam for Tel Aviv, the Israeli jumbo lost both starboard [right side] engine pods, and was attempting to return for an emergency landing on Schipol Airport's runway 27. We know from the official accident reports that although now fatally under powered, El Al Flight 1862 remained under control while descending into the building, and thus was horizontally orientated at the point of impact. The outright lie, again.
"At 17.27:30, as the aircraft was climbing through 6500ft, the no.3 engine and pylon separated from the wing in an outward and rearward movement, colliding with the no.4 engine causing this engine and pylon to separate as well (incidently, this is physically impossible). An emergency was declared and the crew acknowledged their intention to return to Schiphol Airport and reported that they had a no.3 engine failure and a loss of engine thrust of both no.3 and 4 engine".
"At 17.28.57 the Amsterdam Radar controller informed the crew that runway 06 was in use with a 040 deg / 21kts wind. The crew however requested runway 27 for landing. A straight in approach to runway 27 was not possible because of airplane altitude (5000ft) and distance to the runway (7mls). The Amsterdam Arrival controller then instructed the crew to turn right heading 360deg and descend to 2000ft. During this descending turn the El Al crew reported that the no.3 and 4 engine were out and that they were having flap problems".
"Final clearance was given to turn right heading 270 to intercept the final approach course. When it became apparent that the aircraft was going to overshoot the localizer, the controller informed the crew accordingly and directed them to turn to heading 290 to try and intercept the final approach path again".
"A further instruction was given a 310 heading and descent clearance for 1500ft. These instructions were acknowledged and the crew added that they were experiencing control problems now as well. While reducing speed for the final approach, control was lost and the aircraft crashed into an apartment building in the Bijlmer suburb of Amsterdam."
Though the photos at the top of this page are good enough to illustrate the points I intend to make, larger ones would have been much better. The photos at the top of this article do not illustrate his points at all. Also, it is interesting to note that Joe had to reduce the size of all the photos he says illustrate his points. I had no trouble finding the same photos, and have reproduced them above at the same size that they appear on the various web-sites on which I found them. Unfortunately, someone seems to have done a good job of "scrubbing" the Internet of these images. Even the British BBC had managed to "accidentally" break the links to its better photographs of the crash site. Bearing in mind what was on board the El Al plane, and its final destination, this is hardly surprising. The Israelis and friends at work.
Nestled amongst the mostly innocuous cargo on board the jumbo was 50 GALLONS of dimethyl methylphosphonate, intended for Sarin nerve gas production at the Jewish Chemical and Biological Weapons Factory in Nes Ziona, near Tel Aviv. Despite frantic attempts to cover up this catastrophe, which today affects the health of more than 600 Dutch citizens, word finally leaked out - as indeed had the dimethyl methylphosphonate. The Times of London noted:
"Israel has repeatedly accused Arab and Islamic countries hostile to it of manufacturing such weapons on a large scale, but has never admitted possessing biological or chemical weapons, just as it has never owned up to a nuclear capability, although it is an open secret that the country has at least 200 nuclear warheads" ... "the shadowy biological institute situated in the growing suburban community of Nes Ziona, is believed by many foreign diplomats to be one of the most advanced germ warfare institutions in the Middle East."
Israel's covert production of American-supplied weapons of mass destruction, interesting though it may be, has little to do with explaining how large aircraft can be fitted into small holes, so we'd better get back to the subject in hand.
Take a close look at the Bijlmer photographs and the Pentagon graphic, because we are about to take a short though very simple crash course in the dynamics of flight. Very simple. In fact, so simple as to be totally wrong. Not for us the overly complicated scientific equations, and accredited academic "experts" who manage to confuse everyone apart from their own students. Joe doesn't seem to like anything to be complicated (i.e., beyond his limited comprehension).
In the simplest of terms and purely for background information, the energy produced by any object hitting another object, is the product of the first object's mass [weight] multiplied by its velocity [speed]. In these terms Flight 77 had a mass of 240,000 pounds when it hit the Pentagon at +/- 450 mph, and Flight 1862 had a mass of about 680,000 pounds when it hit the Bijlmer apartment block at 255 mph. Both aircraft therefore produced colossal energy on contact with targets constructed from very similar materials, i.e. concrete. This paragraph graphically illustrates Joe's ignorance of even the most basic laws of physics. Note that the (kinetic) energy is not the object's mass multiplied by its speed. What he describes is the momentum of the object. The (kinetic) energy of an object is equal to one half the mass multiplied by the speed squared.
As an instructive exercise I will calculate the kinetic energy of both of the planes in question. I will use Joe's estimates of the speeds and weights of the aircraft and will use the metric system since the imperial system is cumbersome and antiquated when it comes to questions involving energy, work and power. I use the following conversions to the metric system,
450 mph = 450 x 0.44704 = 201 m/s,
255 mph = 255 x 0.44704 = 114 m/s,
240,000 lbs = 240,000 x 0.4536 = 108,864 kg,
680,000 lbs = 680,000 x 0.4536 = 308,448 kg.
Using the well known formula for kinetic energy that I quoted above we have that,
the Kinetic Energy of the Boeing 747 = 0.5 x 308,448 x (114)^2 = 2,004,295,104 Joules,
the Kinetic Energy of the Boeing 757 = 0.5 x 108,864 x (201)^2 = 2,199,107,232 Joules.
So we see that the impact of the Boeing 757 at the Pentagon was about ten percent more energetic than the crash of the much larger Boeing 747 in Amsterdam. This is because the speed of the aircraft is the dominant factor.
A high proportion of the mass in any aircraft is contained within its fuselage, which presents a very small cross section at the point of impact, relative to the thin but very wide and fragile wings. Not true, for one thing the wings include the jet engines, which are always a large proportion of the mass of any aircraft. Although the weight of aluminum alloy in the wings is less than that in the fuselage, the wings are also filled with large quantities of jet fuel and thus actually have a large mass (which decreases over the period of the flight). Thus in both cases the high mass and low cross section caused Flight 77 and Flight 1862's fuselages to punch holes deep into and through the concrete targets.
The wings are a different matter. By design the wings are immensely strong but also very brittle, and in both these cases swept back for aerodynamic efficiency. Put simply they cannot compete with the speed [velocity] of penetration of the fuselage [mass], and simply snap off on impact. This is an aeronautical reality that can be observed in thousands of assorted crash photographs.
The problem when an aircraft hits a flat building is that, although the wings snap off, they still have enormous inertia and will continue moving forward if at all possible. With swept wing aircraft, the tendency is for the angled wings to collapse back along the sides of the fuselage section, very much in the manner of swing-wing aircraft such as the General Dynamics F111 and Panavia Tornado. "The wings snap off and will continue moving forward if at all possible." This is true, but then Joe writes, "the tendency is for the angled wings to collapse back along the sides of the fuselage section". In other words, the wings now arc backwards towards the fuselage. This is somewhat different from his initial statement that the wings will continue moving forward if at all possible. That Joe contradicts himself in consecutive sentences should surprise no one.
I think that Joe believes that when the nose of the aircraft hits the wall, the "immensely strong, but very brittle wings" (his words, not mine) survive the brutal de-acceleration at the wing roots (which applies a force that rotates the wing-tips forward (and inward)), and then these same, "immensely strong, but very brittle wings" are dragged into the hole formed by the impact of the nose. Being dragged into the hole applies a force that rotates the wing-tips backward (and inward). It is often difficult to tell exactly what Joe means, but in any case it doesn't matter, because as you would imagine, the "immensely strong, but very brittle wings" snap off and thus do not get dragged into any hole.
Now think about this very carefully (thinking carefully is way beyond Joe's capabilities) because these events are happening at hundreds of miles per hour - hardly the ideal medium for visual observation. Because both aircraft have swept wings (name an aircraft that has been manufactured in the last fifty years or so, that doesn't have swept wings (and isn't a helicopter)) the first part of the wing to hit the target is the wing root at the inner front of the wing, considerably further forward than the wingtip. This is often not true. The wing tips are also candidates for hitting the wall first.
In the first microsecond of impact the front of the swept wing starts to fold back as it collapses, and perhaps in the next two or three microseconds the wings are crushed inwards and backwards to less than half the original wingspan. No perhaps about it. This did NOT and does NOT ever happen. What did happen (in the Pentagon crash) is that when the nose of the aircraft hit the wall, the fuselage concertinaed (compressed) and slowed down by a couple of hundred miles per hour, while the wings tried to continue forward at their original speed. This put immense strain on the wing roots and the wings snapped off and smashed into the wall as separate units. Both the fuselage and wings penetrated the outer wall, however, the fuselage penetrated significantly further into the structure.
This is proved beyond any doubt by the pictures of the Bijlmer crash site shown above. El Al Flight 1862, a Boeing 747-200, had a wiingspan of 212 feet, is known to have crashed with its wings level, but the gap in the tower block is only half that wide. "With its wings level", there's the lie again. Joe is a great believer in the theory, that if you tell someone a lie often enough, they will finally believe it. "This is proved beyond any doubt",... ha, ha, ha,... Joe, you missed you true vocation, a stand-up-comic.
Next we have the vexed question of aircraft debris as understood by the public, i.e. identifiable parts of the aircraft that can be visually matched to an aircraft schematic diagram, or even mechanical parts that can be visually matched to items in the manufacturer's handbook. Look at the Bijlmer crash site again.
Can you see any large or even small wing sections? Can you see engines, or perhaps part of the tail assembly? In fact, can any of you positively identify any single aircraft bolt, or human body part belonging to El Al Flight 1862? Joe shows the reader two of the smallest photos of the Bijlmer crash that he can produce, and then asks if the reader can spot any aircraft debris. In fact, as Joe knows perfectly well, flight 1862 smashed right through the apartment block and much of the wreckage was recovered some distance away, so there is next to no chance of spotting aircraft debris in photos of the apartment block. I should also mention, that there is next to no chance of spotting aircraft debris outside the Pentagon, as both the fuselage and wings smashed right through the outer wall and entered the building.
No, absolutely not, because the dynamics of the crash and the fire that followed immediately afterwards, fragmented and burned more than 300 tons of aircraft completely beyond recognition. The only way we can be sure that the photographs show us the real crash site of El Al Flight 1862 is to rely on air traffic control records, eyewitnesses at the scene, and the multiple media reports that followed. Don't be stupid Joe. The aircraft did not just evaporate. In fact, like with (nearly) all aircraft crashes, the debris was gathered together (in this case in hanger 8 at Schiphol Airport) where it could be examined for clues regarding the crash. Sometimes, the aircraft is reconstructed from the debris. Also, just because you did not see aircraft debris in the one or two photos that you glanced at, does not mean that other photographs do not show such debris. In fact here is one:
So we have a photo of the debris of El Al flight 1862. However, we do not have, even a single photo of the debris of flight 77. The Bush administration could easily provide such a photo, but refuses to do so. The fact that it has not done so, is very puzzling and also, very suspicious. It is also worth noting that the black box and voice-recorder of flight 1862 were both recovered from the debris, but that the voice-recorder "went missing".
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You see, the Bijlmer crash was subject to a cover up much like the one we see occurring in the US over the Pentagon crash. The Dutch government, like the US government, refused to conduct an investigation into the crash (until the revelation of further facts and public opinion forced their hand). Similarly, the black box and voice-recorder were recovered from flight 77, but the Bush administration has refused to make them available to investigators (or anybody else). This is very, very suspicious. Joe is right about one thing, the Bijlmer and Pentagon crashes are amazingly similar. Here are some quotes from Dutch sources concerning the results of the cover-up of the Bijlmer crash on Dutch society:
"This, in addition to the inherent working style of the commission, will only perpetuate conspiracy theories."
"This is a Calvinistic trait, this unbridled faith in the government that surely must have been put in place by God. However, the Bijlmer disaster has shown a completely different government, one that deserves deep suspicion."
"The biggest casualty of the Bijlmer files is perhaps the Dutch citizenry's faith in their government."
Expect to see similar developments in US society. So what is the commonality of the two crashes? Israel.
It must be said that the French only showed American viewers the photographs it wanted them to see - a known and much abused media trick. Joe only showed American viewers the photographs he wanted them to see (the little ones at the beginning of his article) - a known and much abused media trick. The more comprehensive photographs circulated by the Pentagon shortly after the crash show conclusively that the aircraft penetrated three of the Pentagon "rings", i.e. rings of office blocks circling the center gardens, each with its own "garden" space in-between. Such a structure is as difficult to penetrate by an aircraft, as a bullet fired through individual separated baffle plates on a firing range.
I have neither the Cray supercomputer nor the time (nor the intellect) needed to do exact calculations, but I can assure you that the "object" which hit the Pentagon was of enormous weight travelling at very high velocity. In fact, it was American Airlines Flight 77.
The only thing that allowed the French to put up this widespread myth in the first place, was the lack of a second aircraft directed at the Pentagon, which would certainly have been recorded by media cameras. The planners of the attack probably thought this unnecessary, because Flight 77 appears to have been largely a decoy. Joe, please expand on the "decoy theory".
Insofar as it is possible for any analyst to have an opinion, it is my opinion (which is essentially worthless) that the only real attack [i.e. with a strategic motive and result] was the very public attack on the World Trade Center itself, home of the established financial order within the United States, otherwise known to conspiracy buffs and George Bush Senior as the "New World Order".
There was no logical or aeronautical reason for the long time interval between the first strike of the WTC North Tower, and the second strike on the WTC South Tower. Given their known take off times, both aircraft could easily have been used in synchronized back-to-back sneak attacks only seconds apart, not unlike those on Pearl Harbor. In fact, from an air defense perspective, this would have been the most sensible course of action.
The only viable reason to divert and delay United Flight 175 for so long, was to allow sufficient time for every network camera in New York to be focused on the twin towers. Once the sickening footage of Flight 175's attack run on the WTC South Tower had been seen in its raw form by the public, denial would be impossible for the Administration. Without this footage, no doubt the creative establishment media would have reported a "mid-air collision" between two commercial airliners, which then "accidentally" ploughed into the twin towers. In other words, even now you would still not know what really happened.
The calculated delay of Flight 175 prevented any such administration or media illusion. Rather than being in control of the news, just for once someone else was deliberately controlling the media networks from outside. Every American citizen was obliged to watch the attack in raw form dozens and dozens of times, but it was left up to each individual citizen to work out why the attack was launched in the first place.
First option would be to believe the false line peddled by the politicians and the establishment media, i.e. that all Americans had been attacked and needed to respond collectively. Initially most people did this, grabbing the nearest American flag they could find, and volunteering to go kill someone [anyone] in Afghanistan, or Iraq, or anywhere.
The second option took far more time to sink in, but nowadays gains more currency and thus believers every hour of every day, as indeed it should, because it is the only sensible analysis of what was in reality a highly targeted attack. Americans across the continent were not the targets of this attack, but only the World Trade Center, home of the power elite who in both essence and reality controlled America and half of the known world. At a single stroke the attack inverted the power structure, throwing banks and the stock markets into a slow but steady decline.
The resulting "War on Terror" is the last pathetic gasp of a bunch of ashen-faced losers in New York and Washington DC, trying desperately to hang onto the reins of power before the American people take all power away from them permanently, which now seems inevitable in the not too distant future. If I was still living in America, I think I'd be sharpening the tines on my pitchfork.
Electronic Hijack
Mother of All Lies
War in Palestine
Vialls Home
The author is a former member of the Society of Licenced
Aeronautical Engineers and Technologists, London
This report may be copied unedited onto other websites
in the interests of public safety.
French Claim About Pentagon Jet is a Sick Joke
Captain Charles Burlingame's widow is unlikely to appreciate the humor
Joe Vialls, March 2002
The author is a former member of the Society of Licenced
Aeronautical Engineers and Technologists, London
This report may be copied unedited onto other websites
in the interests of public safety.
French Claim About Pentagon Jet is a Sick Joke
Captain Charles Burlingame's widow is unlikely to appreciate the humor
Joe Vialls, March 2002
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| Click Here for Giant Enlargement on US Military Server | ||
In what appears to be a major disinformation exercise, a French web site has caused a minor storm on the Internet by claiming American Airlines Flight 77 did not crash into the Pentagon on September 11. That's right folks, American Airlines was and still is merely a figment of your overworked imagination! No Joe, they are just claiming that there is no evidence that flight 77 hit the Pentagon.
This is heady stuff, perhaps enough to put genuine sleuths off the track, and direct even more suspicion and hatred towards the United States military, who many mutter darkly are an evil bunch of people who wantonly killed their own men, and vast numbers of America's women and children.
Well Joe, lets have a look at the evidence.
- Flight 77 leaves Dulles International Airport at 8:20 am.
- Flight 77's transponder is turned off at 8:56 am.
- Flight 77 disappears from all radar screens a couple of minutes later, somewhere near the Kentucky border.
- An aircraft appears on radar south of Washington DC, close to the city.
- This aircraft eventually crashes into the Pentagon.
Starting where the French start, let us take a closer look at this new conspiracy. The French claim that the Boeing 757 was "too big" to fit in the hole left in the Pentagon, which therefore proves that a Boeing 757 could not have hit the Pentagon. It proves no such thing... Yes it does Joe.
Visit any one of several hundred vertical or near-vertical high-speed crash sites and you will observe a strange phenomena - the aircraft all seem to vanish into relatively small holes. Joe you seem to be under the misapprehension that flight 77 hit the Pentagon in a near-vertical dive (although your little graphic says flight 77 was in a 45 degree dive). This is not even close to correct. In fact, it is difficult to see how you could possibly have come to such a conclusion. There is no easy explanation for this, but rest assured I speak from direct experience. Sorry Joe, given the evidence above, I cannot take your word for anything (at all).
In the early sixties we were sent out to find the crash site of an English Electric Lightning Mach 2 fighter, which went in vertically at nearly 400 miles per hour during an aerobatics display. Despite having a wingspan of 35 feet, the Lightning impact crater measured only 22 feet across. Did we find the wings lying around in the field next door? No, we did not.
By some strange twist of physics the wings were in the same impact crater, near the top. What was left of the Lightning fuselage lay many feet beneath the wings, having acted in all respects like a Barnes Wallace "Earthquake Bomb".Joe is just lying (yet again).
American Airlines Flight 77 was seen to take off from Washington, was tracked somewhat erratically on radar because its transponder was off (flight 77 was still visible on radar. The fact that an aircrafts transponder is off means that the aircraft stops transmitting its name and altitude, etc, but it is still very visible to radar) and was then seen by hundreds of people as it hurtled back overhead Washington at high speed , before pulling an almost impossibly-high "G" turn through 180 degrees, and slicing down towards the Pentagon in a steep dive. Many of these eye-witnesses described different circumstances, for example, one engineer described the plane that hit the Pentagon as a small passenger aircraft containing 10-12 people.
Civilian aviation eyewitnesses at the time estimated Flight 77's speed to be in excess of 400 miles per hour, which in the dense atmosphere found at low altitudes, is almost enough to tear the wings off. 400 miles per hour is nowhere near fast enough to rip the wings off. Not only that. Two airline captains pilots on the internet speculated meaningfully that no human pilot could have held the control yoke through the 180 degree (the turn was closer to 360 degrees, ie, a complete (horizontal) loop) high "G" turn, which they estimated at a minimum of 5G but more likely 6 or 7G. The term "G" simply means gravity, so if your arm weighs 20 pounds at rest, at 5G it will weight 100 pounds.
If you want to get a feel for this, stretch both of your arms right out in front of you as far as they will go (no bending please), and then ask a friend to place a 100 pound weight on the palm of each of your hands. Now simply stand there for 15 seconds without either arm dropping below the horizontal. Tricky, huh? But I digress, back to the French conspiracy.
Next up the French show you dazzling "proof" that the Boeing 757 did not slice down through the roof (the French are correct, the plane did not slice down through the roof) but instead managed to squeeze its way into the Pentagon through a single first-floor window. To reinforce this Gallic claim they show you a genuine photo taken by a genuine US Marine. As American as apple pie, so it must be true! This is stirring stuff until you peer through the thick smoke haze on the photo and realize this is a different part of the Pentagon. Sacre Bleu! These French are as slippery as frogs...
Next, before turning to the hard evidence, the French try to distract us with a parallel or sub conspiracy. The evil American military have spread sand across the perfectly good green lawn outside the Pentagon. "Why", they ask,..." did someone cover up the lawn with sand?" Obviously the French believe we are looking at an evil sub-conspiracy here which rivals their home-grown Count de Marenches of the SDECE. Perhaps the sinister sand obscures a secret missile silo pointed at Paris, or something like that?
Well, not exactly, you wine-swilling Parisians. The American military engineers built a road covered with sand, over which they could drive their heavy trucks to and from the disaster area. You know how it is with these ten and twenty ton trucks. They all have the same irritating tendency to become completely bogged down on soft ornamental lawns. Joe has found an answer to one of the questions asked, he answers it and then pretends that this answers all the questions - a known and much abused media trick. Joe seems to know quite a few of these media tricks. The French also ask why the grass in front of the Pentagon is green and has not been burnt by the huge fireball that exploded right above it. Hey Joe, have a look at the first photo (at the top of this page), what do you notice. Yes, all the grass and vegetation within a couple of hundred feet of the apartment block has been browned by the explosion. Any explanation as to why this didn't happen at the Pentagon?
Hard evidence? Ah, yes. Despite having access to the same images as you or I, the French cunningly edit their copies to obscure the large pile of second-hand Boeing 757 spare parts (like desks and filing cabinets) piled outside the left front of the Pentagon disaster area, shown in the center picture at the top of this page. Click on the red link below it and you will be taken as if by magic to a giant high-resolution photo on an American military server, which will show you the entire area in huge detail. Sorry Joe, what you claim is aircraft debris, is quite clearly, not aircraft debris.
You don't have to be James Bond, and no password is required at all. Fancy that! The American military covering up its terrible guilty secrets by posting them on a server with public access.
Which bits of the pile are which bits of American Airlines Flight 77 you had best decide for yourself (I have decided for myself) because there are lots of bits to choose from. The three men in white at the front of the pile are grouped around a Bobcat, which provides a handy scale for this massive photograph taken on September 14 by the USAF's Tech. Sgt. Cedric Rudisill.
Though most of the Boeing 757 was still in the Pentagon basement [or even below it] on that date, only three days after the crash, there is already enough scrap metal on the pile to construct a pair of fighter aircraft from scratch. And because this aircraft wreckage utterly destroys the French conspiracy, they failed to show it to you. Worse than that. The French deliberately edited it out completely, so you would be unable to reach your own conclusions.
As the picture at top right shows, once the French cat was out of the bag, others (your mates, Joe) decided to cash in on the story and build thrilling sub-conspiracies all over the Internet. This pic shows what is claimed to be an American F-16 fighter approaching at about zero feet [circled in red], presumably just before the point of impact. Actually, this explanation is more believable than the "official media" story which claims that the picture shows a Boeing 757.
Oh, sure! And obviously, immediately after this picture was snapped the "F-16" suddenly skyrocketed upwards, looped the loop at near sonic speed, then came down vertically on the building. Then it probably used advanced American military alchemy to double in mass to equal the pile of junk already gathered at the front left of the Pentagon building. All good clean fun I suppose, but I doubt Captain Charles Burlingame's widow would be amused.
If you have not read the following article, you should.
Home Page (an assortment of articles on September 11 and Palestine).
A Detailed Analysis of whether a Boeing 757 hit the Pentagon.