Pentagon Attack Hole

[The figure above] is where the plane's fuselage punched through into the interior. This picture is to scale, but shows a reasonably flat on direct hit. The plane can be angled anti-clockwise 15 to 30-degrees if you prefer, causing the right wing to impact first. Let's concentrate on the hole, supposedly made by the 757-200's fuselage and attempt to gain some appreciation of its size.

[The figure above] shows the full width of the hole, which is only two windows and a centre column space in overall width...or about 10 feet. The hanging piece of centre debris is the remains of the shattered, blown out column, which was reduced to some clumps of concrete held together by reinforcing rods. You'd get a Volkswagen through the hole if it weren't for the residual floor to ceiling reinforcing. Getting a huge passenger aircraft with a fuselage width of 14 feet minimum is out of the question.

Add to that the necessity to provide access for the wing spars, which run beyond the jet engines to a minimum width of 52 feet. The metallurgy required to produce the spars is at the leading edge of technology and they are exceptionally strong. At the very least, the windows and structure to each side of this hole would have been obliterated and the hole would have been huge.

The hanging remains of the vertical column, or fully intact horizontal beam, plus a whole lot more structure above, would have been smashed by the tail section and sustained considerably more than some minor chipping of the frontal floor joist beam 4-6 inches behind the stone cladding. The overall height of 757-200 fuselage is 38 feet, including the tail section. This is with the landing gear up in the retracted position. How many ft./lbs. of shock pressure would it have taken to slice that beam holding up the 3rd story...considering its depth and width were only 20 inches? Why wouldn't a tough tail section, shaped like a knife-edge and with the accrued inertia of an oversized ax traveling at 300-400 MPH, be able to crash through that beam? The same argument applies to any upright columns, relatively thin façade cladding or window frames encountered by the plane's wings.