Since our joint statement was written Frank Legge and Warren Strutt have published a new analysis of the data from the American Airlines Flight 77 FDR (Flight Data Recorder). The previously published analysis omitted the last records and so appeared to be inconsistent with the official narrative of the flight path of AA77 into the Pentagon. This new analysis is consistent with the path of damage inside and outside the Pentagon and the vast majority of eyewitness testimony. The article is published at the Journal of 9/11 Studies.
Frank Legge has compiled a spreadsheet analysing witness testimony. (Other researchers, including Jim Hoffman, Eric Bart, and Arabesque have also compiled useful witness lists.)
Frank Legge and David Chandler have also done an analysis of the plausibility of a “North of Citgo (NOC)” flight path, based on flight dynamics, concluding that even with a broad interpretation of the data, the transition to the NOC flightpath would have been impossible. These results have been published in two articles, The Pentagon Attack on 9/11: A Refutation of the Pentagon Flyover Hypothesis Based on Analysis of the Flight Path, published on the Scholars for 9/11 Truth and Justice web site, and Addendum to the Paper Refuting the Pentagon Flyover Hypothesis, published in the Foreign Policy Journal. Frank Legge published another summary paper in the Journal of 9/11 Studies in 2012 with some additional information: The 9/11 Attack on the Pentagon: the Search for Consensus.
Pilots for 9/11 Truth attempts to prove that a large plane could not have hit the Pentagon based on has an analysis of the g-force needed to level out in the last seconds. That analysis is based on flawed calculations, as pointed out to them by the late Dr. Frank Legge over 5 years ago. They continue to promote the flawed analysis on their website. Here is my own independent analysis (DC) that supports Frank Legge’s results.
Dwain Deets, flight research engineer, who once endorsed the CIT, no crash at the Pentagon theory has revised his position and now argues in favor of a crash consistent with the American Airlines Flight 77 aircraft. He presented a paper describing his reasoning at 9/11: Advancing the Truth, a 9/11 Commemoration Conference, September 14-15, 2013 in Washington DC. The paper is posted on his personal page at the Scientists for 9/11 Truth web site.
Physicist John Wyndham has written a comprehensive review of the literature in a paper entitled The Pentagon Attack: Problems with Theories Alternative to Large Plane Impact, originally published in the Journal of 9/11 Studies with an updated version on the Scientists for 9/11 Truth website. He concludes that “a large plane hitting the Pentagon is by far the most plausible theory.”
The Physics of High Speed Collisions
(Or view it on Bitchute here)
This is what happens to a plane (F4 Phantom jet) striking an impenetrable barrier at 500+ mi/hr. A plane moving at this speed has 25 times the kinetic energy of a plane moving at 100 mi/hr. All that kinetic energy must be dissipated by the time it comes to rest. The results are not intuitive. In the case of a passenger plane hitting the pentagon, or a plane hitting the ground at Shanksville PA, if it is traveling at the same speed it has the same kinetic energy per kilogram of mass. Therefore the same degree of destruction is to be expected. This is the major fallacy of exercises such as “Hunt the Boeing” at the Pentagon. Look at this video then I invite you to “Hunt the Phantom”
9/11 Film Festival, Oakland 2015
I did a presentation in Oakland on 9/10/2015 on the Pentagon evidence. At the time this web page was started the primary concern was the theories being circulated by CIT. The newest incarnation of speculative Pentagon theories center on Barbara Honegger. (By agreement with the organizers of the event, I didn’t mention her by name in the talk, but it is her theories I was addressing.) My talk was back-to-back with a presentation of the eyewitness testimony in a short film by Ken Jenkins. (This is one part of a longer work he is producing.)
On a side note, several of the witnesses in the video were viewing the incident from upper stories of buildings in Roselyn, VA, which is a little north of the Pentagon. They would have been in a position to see the plane if it had flown over the Pentagon, but they testify instead that it crashed into the Pentagon, which directly contradicts CIT’s speculation. Also, (as Frank Legge has pointed out) several of the witnesses testify that the plane went very low as it approached the Pentagon, so low that it disappeared from view before it hit. Once the plane was that low that close to the Pentagon, it would have been impossible to pull up in time and there was no place else for it to go. Therefore, even though these people didn’t actually see the impact itself, they should be considered witnesses to impact, because there is no alternative consistent with their testimony.
The 9/10/2015 Oakland talk was actually a preliminary sampling of the ongoing work by a group of us who were working on a major paper refuting the Honegger hypotheses. That paper is now available: The Pentagon Event: The Honegger Hypothesis Refuted
by (listed alphabetically) Victoria Ashley, David Chandler, Jonathan H. Cole, Jim Hoffman, Ken Jenkins, Frank Legge, and John D. Wyndham. This paper is long, because Barbara Honegger’s speculations and inferences are so wide-ranging. In our view it was important to address this theory (like the C.I.T. fly-over theory before it) because theories that are this blatantly flawed can seriously damage the credibility of the scientific basis of the 9/11 Truth Movement. This is still a topic of heated controversy within the movement, but perhaps a slow read through this analysis can bring some light to the issue.
More on CIT
Although Craig Ranke and Aldo Marquis of CIT have seemingly faded from the scene, their surrogates appear to be actively promoting their theories and disparaging their critics on Truth and Shadows and elsewhere. This has prompted me (David Chandler) to write up something that has been brewing for a long time, a critique of the fundamental methodology used by CIT. It analyzes Craig Ranke’s telephone interview of Albert Hemphill and video interview of Sgt. William Lagasse. The techniques CIT uses in their interviews do not qualify as “truth seeking” and the conclusions have no validity.