9/11 Plane Speaking Part 2

What happened at the World Trade Center

The confusion over events at the Pentagon has encouraged speculation over whether planes crashed into the World Trade Center (WTC) on 9/11.

In support of the notion that the planes were faked by Computer-Generated Imagery (CGI), it has been claimed that a video filmed on 9/11 by Michael Hezarkhani shows a portion of the wing of Flight 175 disappearing when it passes a building. The red brick tower in question is the Downtown Athletic Club at 20 West Street which is half a mile from the World Trade Center. In the video, this building is between the plane and Hezarkhani, which is why the wing is temporarily obscured. Hezarkhani’s footage can be compared with more recently uploaded footage from Kevin Westley. The onlookers surrounding Westley are in no doubt that they saw a plane. One man immediately identifies it as a United Airlines aircraft.

Westley’s footage can be added to a compilation of thirty videos of Flight 175 striking the South Tower, of which twenty-nine show the plane. In these clips numerous witnesses refer to the planes. One piece of footage filmed from a helicopter is sometimes presented in low quality as showing no plane but when the same footage is viewed in sufficent resolution the approaching aircraft is visible.

The Hezarkhani video is used to support the notion of unbelievable or ‘cartoon physics,’ on account of the plane’s penetration of the South Tower. This is due to a lack of understanding of the situation, and of kinetic energy. As we have seen, physicist David Chandler estimates that, "the kinetic energy of the plane hitting the Pentagon was the equivalent of …more than half a ton of TNT.” This gives an idea of the power of the planes crashing at similar speeds into the WTC.

The Twin Towers were covered in aluminium cladding which the plane could penetrate. Claims that the wing tips severed structural steel beams, as propagated by Judy Wood in an interview with Richard D Hall, are simply untrue. Close inspection of the impact zone in photographs shows that only the areas of greatest mass on the plane, severed the perimeter columns.

“If real planes did not impact the towers how were the perpetrators able to create large holes that exactly match the dimensions of 767's with exterior steel beams and/or entire steel panels bent or punched INWARD?”

“Additionally, how were they able to create impressions of the wingtips and vertical stabilizers, indentations in the outer aluminum cladding ONLY that left the steel underneath intact, or in some cases bent (again, inward)?”

Also cited to support the notion that no planes were used on 9/11 is footage which appears to show the nose of Flight 175 emerging unscathed after passing through the South Tower. When other footage is examined it becomes clear that this is not the nose of the aircraft but a debris flow most likely containing the engine that ended up at the corner of Church and Murray Streets along with other plane wreckage that littered the area. That the so-called nose is not a CGI glitch is clear from the fact that when compared to the plane (as below), the debris flow, “can clearly be seen morphing and expanding as it exits.”

It has also been suggested that the WTC planes were holograms. To demonstrate that this technology exists, footage of a whale sounding through the floor of a gymnasium is cited, although this is not a real scene but an animation. So-called holographic light shows are also considered but these are not holograms and are performed in darkness. Holograms like those now used in concerts are projected in controlled lighting and the audience watches from a predetermined viewpoint, from which it is still possible to recognise the hologram. These holograms also benefit from a dark background. This is quite different from staging a hologram of a plane flying over New York city in broad daylight, that is successfully deceptive from all 360 degrees on the compass and from a range of elevations.

Flight 175 was filmed all over NYC and witnessed by many people including firefighters whose testimonies are trusted in relation to the explosions in the WTC. Such evidence for controlled demolition is overwhelmed by the ‘no plane’ trope.

Unlike the evidence for the impacts of the planes and controlled demolition at the WTC, the no planes claim has no direct supporting evidence and requires a denial of existing evidence as well as the further explanation of the absence of flight crews and passengers. It antagonises witnesses and family members by denying their experience or loss. 9/11 Truth advocate, Albert Lucientes writes, “No Planes claims are designed to do a number of things, not least of which is to be as offensive as possible by denying the victims even existed, or, did not die at that location.”

This frustration is exhibited by one of many witnesses to the plane crash at the Pentagon, Sgt William Lagasse, who finished an illuminating rebuttal to the no plane claim by writing,

“I live with what I saw every day of my life, It has taken a long time to deal with the images, screams and anger I felt that day, to be honest your (no plane) website angered me to the point I wanted to just curse and rant and rave but I decided this (correspondence) would be much more helpful in quelling misconceptions.”

Lagasse also mentions that, “Because of the Doppler effect no one could have heard the plane if they were on route 27 until it was already in the building.” This effect may help explain why some witnesses at the WTC did not see the second plane hit the South Tower. It is clear from the compiled video footage that the sight and sound of the rapidly approaching plane was not especially perceptible from certain vantage points, particularly on the street on the blind side of the building. The event also happened extremely fast.

The speeds of the planes have also provoked the claim that they were beyond the aircrafts’ capabilities. Clearly this is a false claim as the planes were filmed and witnessed flying at those speeds. Pilots have also found the aircaft to have been “ well within their structural limits,” athough this is not possible to demonstrate as, “it would be against the aircraft manufacturer’s recommendations, outside of standard company operating procedures and against the authorities’ rules.” Tests in a simulator found, “far greater speeds possible than the required official airspeed of 560mph or .74 Mach by some 16% at the minimum and 20% if the actual flight conditions were simulated in a shallow dive,” such, “as seen made by AA11 and UA175 on 9/11.”

It has been claimed that Flight 77 which hit the Pentagon would not have been possible because of ground effect - a phenomenon of increased lift experienced when a plane “flies at or below approximately half its wingspan above the ground.” As Flight 77 descended to crash this concerns only the final moments of its flight. The concern is negated by jets flying low and fast at airshows, including high speed passes in which, “The height of the plane above the runway is little more than the diameter of the fuselage.”

The effect of the no planes claim,

“is to discredit the larger body of 9/11 research through guilt by association with its sensational and unscientific approach.”

This lends itself to, “the idea that all people who question the basic tenets of the official story are loony conspiracy theorists, whose ideas are not worthy of consideration.”

Speaking in 2018, reporter Jamie McIntyre who was in the Pentagon on 9/11, illustrated that this conflation has been successful. “I discovered as I engaged with the folks who did not believe in the ‘official story,’ over the years…I never changed anyone’s mind. If they believed that it was a conspiracy, that it was an inside job, that it wasn’t really a plane but it was a cruise missile that hit the (Pentagon) building, they believed that no matter what I said and what arguments I made.”

Yet, as Albert Lucientes writes of the Pentagon event, using an argument that is equally true of the WTC attacks, the absence of a plane, “would have served no conceivable purpose or benefit from the perspective of the attackers, while adding numerous unnecessary complications.”

Again writing of the Pentagon, Lucientes notes, “there was no way the attackers could have known ahead of time that, when the attack was over, they alone would be in control of all images and/or videos of the attack. The attack occurred in a highly exposed area during rush hour on a weekday morning. A single image would have revealed the lie. This is what happened in Manhattan when a documentary filmmaker working nearby heard a plane low overhead and swung his camera upward just in time to catch the North Tower impact.”

A cursory, first-glance approach and an unfamiliarity with high speed plane crashes and the effects of kinetic energy have been exacerbated by the misleading presentation of results that are not intuitive. Even in the apparently mystifying case of the crash of Flight 93 in Shanksville a measured consideration of the evidence is useful.

The distraction of the no planes trope and its perception among the wider public as being the foundation of 9/11 Truth limits the spread of that truth and associated efforts for justice and peace. Discussions about planes mean that many more important questions go unheard and unanswered.

The no planes claim has been used to divide the 9/11 Truth Movement. One psychological trick at play is that once people adopt an opinion they are disinclined to abandon it, regardless of their exposure to new evidence. The absence of the ability to dispassionately and rationally appraise evidence that prevents the adoption of the truth outside the movement, also corrodes it from within. It is not without irony that the Truth Movement is undermined by its failure to recognise the truth.