Physical and mathematical analysis of Pentagon crash
by Gerard Holmgren

PART 7. WERE THE LAWS OF PHYSICS DIFFERENT ON SEPT 11?

There are some who like to point to the WTC crashes to make the point that planes can and do explode into nothing in a crash. It is curious that the only examples which can be found of this allegedly explosive cremation of crashing planes just happens to be on Sept 11, 2001. A thorough examination of the history of aviation disasters on any other day shows that this simply doesn’t happen. This will be demonstrated by a library of aviation disaster photos to be presented shortly.

Unless the laws of physics were different on September 11 2001, all that the WTC crashes demonstrate is that these planes must have been loaded with explosives, because a tank of kerosine does not have the capability for that kind of explosive force without the input of an extra energy source, nor the total available energy to do the job. Following is a series of photos of planes which crashed into mountains, nosedived into the ground, collided with other aircraft, crashed on take off, crashed into buildings, streets or forests, had bombs planted aboard them, or crashed next to petrol stations. Note the remarkably intact wreckage compared to what happened in the WTC crashes and what is alleged to have happened in to AA 77.
Not all of the crashes are entirely comparable in terms of impact and fuel load, but there are enough different situations here to make the point that total cremation of crashing aircraft, without the input of additional energy other than the fuel load does not and cannot happen.

Here’s a good comparison. An American Airlines Boeing 757 which crashed into a mountain.
http://www.planecrashinfo.com/w951220.htm

Here’s three more 757 crashes and a 767
http://www.airsafetyonline.com/photos/britannia226/1.shtml
http://www.airsafetyonline.com/photos/transavia.1/1.shtml
http://www.airsafetyonline.com/photos/xiamen8301/1.shtml
http://www.airsafetyonline.com/photos/lauda004/1.shtml

This plane crashed into a field 80 degrees nose down.
http://www.airdisaster.com/photos/yr-lcc/photo.shtml

This DC 10 crashed into a mountain.
http://www.planecrashinfo.com/w791128.htm

This one crashed right next to a petrol station and still didn’t blow anything up.
http://www.airsafetyonline.com/photos/swa1455/1.shtml

And here’s a whole lot of other crashes This is what real wreckage of real plane crashes looks like.

http://www.airsafetyonline.com/photos/aa1420/1.shtml
http://www.airsafetyonline.com/photos/korean1533/1.shtml
http://www.planecrashinfo.com/w651111.htm
http://www.airsafetyonline.com/photos/hapag-lloyd3378/2.shtml
http://www.planecrashinfo.com/w601216.htm
http://www.planecrashinfo.com/w551101.htm
http://www.planecrashinfo.com/w920928.htm
http://www.planecrashinfo.com/w850219.htm
http://www.planecrashinfo.com/w820709.htm
http://www.planecrashinfo.com/w720618.htm
http://www.planecrashinfo.com/w650520.htm
http://www.airdisaster.com/photos/f-ogqs/photo.shtml
http://www.airsafetyonline.com/photos/crossair3597/1.shtml
http://www.airsafetyonline.com/photos/aa587exclusive/25.shtml
http://www.airsafetyonline.com/photos/vladivostokavia/4.shtml
http://www.airsafetyonline.com/photos/sq006/4.shtml
http://www.airsafetyonline.com/photos/af-concorde/6.shtml
http://www.airsafetyonline.com/photos/allianceairlines7412/1.shtml
http://www.airsafetyonline.com/photos/airphilippines541/1.shtml
http://www.airsafetyonline.com/photos/airfrance.3/1.shtml
http://www.airsafetyonline.com/photos/alaska261/2.shtml
http://www.airsafetyonline.com/photos/qantas001/3.shtml
http://www.airsafetyonline.com/photos/uni873/2.shtml
http://www.planecrashinfo.com/w580206.htm
http://www.planecrashinfo.com/w000419.htm

Wreckage photos of the plane which crashed into the Empire State Building in 1945 are unclear, but here is a description of the wreckage.

http://history1900s.about.com/library/misc/blempirecrash.htm

"Some debris from the crash fell to the streets below, sending pedestrians scurrying for cover, but most fell onto the buildings setbacks at the fifth floor. Still, a bulk of the wreckage remained stuck in the side of the building. After the flames were extinguished and the remains of the victims removed, the rest of the wreckage was removed through the building."

Here's the wreckage of the cessna which crashed into a building in Tampa in Jan 2002.
http://www.cnn.com/2002/US/01/06/tampa.crash/

That should be enough to make the point. But in case you want to see more, these sites - from which the above photos were sourced,

http://www.airsafetyonline.com/photos/
http://www.planecrashinfo.com/
http://www.airdisaster.com/photos/

have photos of hundreds more crashes which I haven’t linked to individually. In the first list, they are listed from top to bottom by date. One famous date is conspicuous by its absence. Sept 11, 2001. There were 4 plane crashes that day. But none of them left any wreckage. What it means is that the WTC crash planes and whatever hit the Pentagon were destroyed with powerful explosives. Information about UAL 93 has been so scarce that it's hard to comment. (Why the secrecy?) The preceeding photos demonstrate that the WTC crashes were unique in aviation history. (It’s already been demonstrated that a full tank of jet fuel doesn’t have the available energy to do the job.)

The analysis below demonstrates from a different perspective why crashed planes do not explode in massively destructive fireballs. Kerosine (jet fuel) is not a volatile enough material. But what would happen, just supposing we could get a fuel tank to blow up? Although jet fuel is not a particularly explosive substance, it is possible to get it to explode in some situations.

Because it so rarely happens, we are forced to examine a different kind of air disaster - TWA 800, which blew up in mid air, shortly after take off. The official story is that it was caused by an exploding fuel tank. Sceptics say that it was hit by a missile. Regardless of which it was, there was plenty of wreckage. The following analysis of arguments relating to TWA 800, demonstrate that both sides of the argument act to debunk the official story of AA 77. If it was hit by a missile, then it demonstrates that even an impact of this ferocity still doesn’t reduce a plane to dust and ashes, and doesn’t set off a catastrophic fuel tank inferno capable of cremating a plane. If the official story is true, then the arguments put forward to support it (several years before AA 77) act as inadvertent rebuttals to the official AA 77 story.

In this article on TWA 800,

Petroleum engineering research offers clue to TWA 800 explosion, by David S. Salisbury,
http://www.stanford.edu/dept/news/report/news/july30/twa800.html

he discusses a theory put forward by Stanford University Professor Sullivan S. Marsden about why TWA 800 exploded. Professor Sullivan has had to propose a very complex set of circumstances to try to explain how such a unique event as the alleged explosion of a fuel tank could have occurred.

Salsibury writes

"Jet fuel normally is not explosive at temperatures below 100 degrees Fahrenheit. But on TWA 800 the air-conditioner heat exchangers probably warmed the air/fuel mixture in the tank above that point. When the aircraft is flying, the energy given off by the heat exchangers is effectively dissipated to the outside air. But when the air conditioners are run while the aircraft is on the ground and the tank is nearly empty, the heat exchangers put out enough heat to raise the temperature of the air/fuel mixture into the danger zone, Marsden says."

In other words, it’s impossible to blow up a full tank of fuel, without input of extra energy, because the air/fuel mixture isn’t right, and the presence of the full fuel load cools it to below explosive temperature. Even a full fuel tank falls ridiculously short of the energy required to even melt a plane, let alone cremate it, and this theory is saying that the only real risk of an explosion is with a near empty tank. Which is why TWA didn’t get blown into nothing . And why it simply can’t happen, even when planes have bombs planted aboard or are shot down.

TWA 800 was a 747. Marsden’s theory cited very specific concerns with the fuel delivery systems of 747s. Whether or not his ideas on TWA 800 are plausible, what it demonstrates is that aviation experts, even when concocting cover stories for the government, if this is what Marsden was doing, do not accept that aircraft simply explode and are cremated as a matter of course. It’s a very complex argument to try to explain how a fuel tank might have exploded. Or at least, that was the official view before Sept 11, 2001

Sceptics claim that even Marsden’s theory is ludicrously overestimating the explosive capabilities of jet fuel. From this Washington post article
http://members.aol.com/bardonia/washtime.htm:

"Congress has quietly begun probing a retired Navy officer's claim that jet fuel in TWA flight 800's center wing tank was too cold to explode without being first shaken into a volatile mist. William S. Donaldson's assertion challenges virtually every remaining theory of the NTSB in its search for the cause of the July 17 ... crash. Rep. James A. Traficant Jr., Ohio Democrat, who has been probing the issue virtually alone, was asked by aviation subcommittee Chairman John J. Duncan Jr., Tennessee Republican to 'investigate all the circumstances' and report back. Mr. Duncan ordered staff help for Mr. Traficant, whose staff has consulted with Mr. Donaldson. 'You could basically sit in that tank with a lit cigarette and snuff the cigarette out in the fuel and it won't explode,' said Paul Marcone, Mr.. Traficant's top aide. 'Your agency has been depicting the volatility of the fuel as if it were nitrobenzene,' the former navy jet pilot said in a combative letter to NTSB Chairman James E. Hall, accusing him of covering up important facts and basing his judgments on fuel-temperature testing done on the ground in a desert. he said the fuel never reached the danger point of 127 degrees Fahrenheit and believes only an explosion outside the plane could have set off the chain of events."

(Emphasis added.) This is a significant comment.

5 years later, with the occurrence of the Sept 11 crashes, the allegedly explosive nature of jet fuel has been further ramped up to the power of dynamite.

Of course ,the article also cites opinions rebutting Donaldson’s remarks, but it reinforces the point that a glib statement that “AA 77 blew up and disintegrated to nothing - perfectly normal, end of story, what’s the all argument about?” is not credible.

The controversy over TWA 800 continues, shedding more light on how ridiculous is the claim that it was a full fuel load which blew AA 77 into nothing. In this extract, a supporter of the official TWA 800 story suggests that a full fuel tank is safer than an empty one.

http://members.aol.com/bardonia/prime.htm (June 1997)

"Large airliners don't need to fill up all their fuel tanks for most of their flights. They save money and reduce the risk of accidents by not carrying excess fuel. Loeb sees a hazard in this. TWA 800, with no more than 100 gallons of fuel in its big center wing fuel tank, had been waiting two hours to take off. Loeb claimed on PrimeTime Live that its air-conditioning packs, located beneath the fuel tank, heated the fuel enough to vaporize some of it, creating what host Sam Donaldson called 'a virtual bomb ready to explode.' Loeb admitted that the investigators had not been able to find anything that might have ignited this 'bomb,' but he brushed that aside, saying if there had been no explosive vapor, there would have been no accident."

So, even those who are claiming that TWA 800 went down because of an exploding fuel tank, have as a central part of their theory, that a full fuel tank reduces the risk of explosion. From the same article:

"The New York Times reported that the NTSB planned to set off a 747 center wing fuel tank explosion this year to see if the vapor from 100 gallons of fuel would have enough force to break a 747 in two. That important test has not been made, and there are no plans to make it. Instead, the NTSB plans to explode a small bomb near the center wing fuel tank of a 747 in England in July to see what kind of damage a small shaped charge will do and 'more importantly,' they say, what sound it will make."

So they’re arguing about whether an exploding fuel tank can even break a plane in two, not whether it can reduce it to dust and ashes. According to their theories, it can’t explode if it’s full (it still wouldn’t have enough energy anyway) and if it’s empty enough to explode, it’s arguable whether it could break a plane in two.

Another article about TWA 800

International Herald Tribune, July 24 1996,
http://www.aircrash.org/burnelli/ht960724.htm:

"'If it was an accident, it would scare the hell out of us,' said Michael Barr, director of aviation safety programs at the University of Southern California. 'These planes just don't blow up. There's too many fire walls, too many checks and balances.'

Chrisotpher Ronay is equally troubled. As head of the FBI bomb unit for seven years, he investigated 30 aircraft bombings before retiring in 1994.

'I can't recall anything that has had a catastrophic effect like this case,' he said. 'You could blow the hell out of a cargo compartment with a luggage bomb, but you have to blow up a fuel cell or an engine to get an explosion like that.'"

And yet, this explosion, of a violence unprecedented in aviation history still left lots of wreckage.

http://www.airsafetyonline.com/photos/twa800/1.shtml

From the same article

"The specific fuel involved is called Jet A, a derivative of kerosene and a sluggish explosive. To explode, it must mix with air, an indication that one or more of the eight fuel cells in the jumbo jet's wings were breached — either by violent engine or mechanical failure, by a well-placed bomb or possibly by a missile.

There have been cases of sudden mechanical failure that caused fire and the loss of aircraft. An Air Force C-141 transport plane crashed in Europe in the late 1970s when an engine exploded; spraying hot fragments that ignited paint in a cargo hold.

A Boeing 767 ripped to pieces over Thailand in 1991 when a computer error caused one engine to deploy its reverse thruster, sending the plane into a vicious spin.

But in neither case was there a cataclysmic explosion.

Before TWA 800 went down last week, there had never been an explosion of such ferocity aboard a 747-100, a 'wet-wing,' or plane that carries all its fuel in wing tanks.

'You have to have instant ignition into a large fuel source,' said Mr. Barr, who trains accident investigators. 'The way those fuel tanks are sealed, it just doesn't happen.'

Few bombings of commercial aircraft have ended in such a fiery conclusion. In many cases, jetliners have survived even severe damage from explosions and landed safely.

In 1986, terrorists planted a sheet of plastic explosive the size of a business letter under one seat on a TWA flight from Rome to Athens. The explosion killed one man, blowing his seat out of the plane. A grandmother, daughter and grandchild were sucked out of the resulting hole. But the plane survived.

In the 1988 crash of Pan Am 103 at Lockerbie, Scotland, there was no fiery explosion- until fuel-laden parts of the plane hit the ground.

In that case, a bomb using 10 to 14 ounces (about 340 grams) of a plastic explosive was hidden in a radio cassette player. When detonated it blew a hole in the fuselage skin, which rapidly fractured and peeled away. The plane broke into five sections that tumbled to Earth over the Scottish countryside."

This mentions a fiery explosion at the Lockerbie site, when fuel laden parts hit the ground. I’m not saying that no explosion can occur. What I’m saying is that it’s not easily triggered, and doesn’t have enough energy to cremate a plane. In the case of the Lockerbie bombing, the bomb itself was not enough to trigger an explosion of the fuel tank. Since the plane broke up into five sections, the impact of the exploding fuel upon the full wreckage could not be tested. Here’s one section of the wreckage.

http://www.airsafetyonline.com/photos/panam103/1.shtml

So if a bomb, breaking a plane into 5 pieces, still doesn’t trigger a sudden explosion of the fuel tank, then what does? Crashing into something solid, like a mountain or a building - but apparently only on sept 11, 2001. There’s no evidence that an explosion of the type and power alleged to have cremated AA 77 or the WTC planes has ever happened to any other plane, or ever could in the situation of a normal crash. Although the political circumstance behind the Sept 11 crashes, and (in the case of WTC crash 2) the spectacular imagery involved was unprecedented, there was nothing unusual in the impact physics of the crashes. Planes regularly crash into mountains, streets, the ground, buildings and other planes, and are not cremated.

Web author Jack Cashill writes (August 16 2001)

http://www.worldnetdaily.com/news/article.asp?ARTICLE_ID=24075

"Until recently, the only listed 'fuel tank explosion' in the 80-year history of airline disasters was a Philippine Air Lines 737 that blew while the plane was backing out a Manila airport gate in May of 1990. And even this case is suspect."

In all of these cases significant wreckage - at least - survived. In some cases, the whole plane. So many are saying that even the alleged explosion of jet fuel aboard TWA 800, which left plenty of identifiable wreckage, was impossible. If the official story on TWA 800 is a cover up, then the fuel tank never exploded, and the whole matter of an allegedly exploding fuel tank even breaking a plane in two is an outrageous lie. If the official story is correct, or at least genuinely plausible, then fuel tank explosions are only a risk with near empty tanks, and don’t have anything like the necessary energy to disintegrate a plane. And photographic records of aviation disasters demonstrate that fuel tank explosions don’t happen as a result of regular crashes, or if they do they don’t cremate the planes.

In the entire history of aviation, only four passenger jets have ever exploded into nothing, or are alleged to have done so as a result of a crash. All four just happen to have been the Sept 11 planes. And in the case of the WTC, the impact surface was mostly glass - about as soft a target as a plane can hit, with the possible exception of water. So this debunks any assertion that the alleged explosion of AA 77 was a result of being flown into a fiercely resistant surface, which itself is already debunked by examples of planes which flew into mountains and weren’t cremated, including the earlier linked photo of an American Airlines 757 which crashed into a mountain. That’s about as conclusive a comparison as one can get. The only possible conclusion is that the WTC planes had powerful explosives aboard, and that whatever hit the Pentagon was a much smaller object, also destroyed by explosives.

Not only was the alleged explosion of AA 77 impossible in the context of the modest damage to the Pentagon wall, and impossible because there wasn’t enough energy in the fuel - it’s also been shown anecdotally to be impossible in the context of aviation history.

Nevertheless, I’m once again going to suspend these findings, to examine another aspect.


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