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Originally Posted by willravel
*Apology for the 16' thing. I should have been more specific. The firefighters measured it to be roughly 16' WIDE, not tall. It was only about 11' tall. Good eye. One thing; it wasn't going 600 mph. This huge engine that punched the hole burned to a crisp? Why so little fire damage where it would have burned to nothing?
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At 9:37:46,American Airlines Flight 77 crashed into the Pentagon, traveling at approximately 530 miles per hour.61 All on board, as well as many civilian and military personnel in the building,were killed.
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http://www.9-11commission.gov/report/911Report_Ch1.pdf [The quote above is on the top of page 10]
You are correct, the plane wasn't traveling 600mph it was going 530mph. And no I don't believe the engine burned a crisp in any of the crashes, it was likely found somewhere on the other side of the hole in the wall where the picture wasn't taken. Like this:
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Originally Posted by willravel
The WTC had fire sprinklers (the same as the Pentagon has). So the fire supression system prevented any serious fire damage (like frame melting), but the fire was easily able to melt away almost the whole plane? Also, the Pentagon does have steel reinforcement.
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The WTC had sprinklers but the system would have been incapable of the providing the water flow that would have been necessary to even try to extinguish the fire. The fire was several hundered feet up and consumed 3 whole floors, to supply the water necessary there would have needed to be a massive water tank on the roof or a super pressurized water piping system, as the pressures that would be needed to supply pressurized water at that height with a pumping system would have been extreme. The forensic study also concluded that the crash likely destroyed the sprinkler system on the floors in question but even if it hadn't the supply lines would have quickly depressurized. There are massive engineering problems with trying to supply flow rates that high in the middle of a sky scraper.
The pentagon on the other hand would have been fed with a large connection point to the municpal system and solid gravity driven pressures that would have supplied the volume and pressure needed to keep the sprinklers that survived running.
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Originally Posted by willravel
The Pentagon is constructed with 42,000 40 cm. (15") square steel reinforced concrete pillars. The graphics below, provided by the DoD, shows the extent of the damage from the attack on 9/11 as destroyed pillars. By their count, there were 32 pillars destroyed, and a lesser number stripped to their steel reinforced core. What is astonishing is the fact that the destroyed pillars form an almost perfectly straight line on a 45 degree angle. Nothing in the chaos of the disintegration of a soft shelled mass of fluid like an airliner hitting a stone, concrete and brick wall with steel reinforced load bearing pillars, would lead you to expect an almost perfectly linear path of destruction. A plane is like a sausage skin: it doesn't have much strength and virtually crumbles on impact.
The damage to the interior is too deep and too collimated to be from the liquid fuel of an airliner.
Again, thank you for posting honestly and respectfully.
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I'm sorry you dismiss it so quickly, frankly >220,000 lbs (that's empty curb weight) moving at 530mph has a significant amount of momentum. That momentum cannot be dismissed just because the skin is comprised of aluminum. Instrument panels, seats, luggage, human bodies and even liquid fuel become capable of structuraly destroying 15" columns. You have to remember when they say it was destroyed they aren't saying it was turned to powder, only that the column was severed or compromised to the point that it could not longer bear a load. I simply can't dismiss what you do, my education (civil engineering btw) and my review of the forensic analysis's that were presented in the engineering trade magazines completely explain what occured.
The pentagon crash was not even interesting to me as an Engineer, the WTC was far more fascinating as the building was designed to withstand an impact with a plane that is larger than the one that hit it. I was astonished that the impacts collapsed the structures (I still remember my astonishment when I watched it happen), although I still believe the second collapse was only triggered by damage from the first collapse and had the first tower not collapsed the second would not have. The Pentagon simply reinforced that redudant designs with the ability to load shift was a procedure that should be used more to prevent loss of life in disasters like that which occured. If you would like a more technical discussion of what occured and you have the skills to understand the material I suggest you consult "The Pentagon Report".
https://www.asce.org/bookstore/book.cfm?book=4241