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What about all the witnesses? |
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This site has listed here only the witness testimony
that we feel offers significant evidence to both sides of the debate.
Since this site (and most other conspiracy sites) believes that
another plane or aircraft that looked like a "plane" crashed into the
Pentagon instead of Flight 77 and no eyewitnesses have described seeing
something other than a "plane", we have omitted the eyewitnesses who
only testify of just seeing a "plane" and have no other description of
that plane for the purpose of avoiding redundant testimony.
Also,
we have noted the description of the color of an American Airlines plane
as neutral to this debate since any aircraft can be painted to look like
an American Airlines plane, decals included.
For other
collections of eyewitness testimony, please visit the following sites...
It
was a plane bomb
(This site supports the conspiracy.)
Pentagon Crash Witness Accounts
(This site supports the Pentagon's official claim.)
They saw the
Aircraft (This site supports the Pentagon's official
claim. Note: Links do not work on this mirrored page.)
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Eyewitness'
testimony has been color coded as the following...
Supports conspiracy - Describes
something very different than an American Airlines Boeing 757 or other
suspicious stuff.
Supports official claim - Describes a large
aircraft, a Boeing 757, or something very similar (i.e. 727,
747).
Aircraft hitting ground - Describes the aircraft
hitting the ground which conflicts with the
lawn photos.
Aircraft hitting light poles - Describes aircraft
hitting light poles which is consistent with the light pole
evidence..
Second Plane - Describes seeing a second plane in the area at
the time of the crash other than the military jetfighters who arrived
later.
Odd/Unique/Strange - Testimony that has not
been corroborated or seems to contradict everybody.
Trajectory of
aircraft - Describes the altitude and
action of the aircraft as it flew in.
Description of interest - Describes something of a
particular interest.
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Witnesses... |
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Steve Anderson |
-
saw a
commercial jet barrel into the Pentagon. "To say it was like a dream is an
understatement," he says. "It was unbelievable. This giant, incredible,
orange ball of fire shot into the air."
(More) - A
few moments later, as I was looking down at my desk, the plane caught my
eye. I thought to myself that I couldn't believe the
pilot was flying so
low. I watched in horror
as the plane flew at treetop level,
banked slightly to the left, drug it's wing along
the ground and slammed
into the west wall of the Pentagon exploding into a giant orange fireball.
Then black smoke. Then white
smoke. |
|
Maurice L. Bease,
Sergeant, Marines |
- had worked around Marine aviation long
enough to know what a fly-by was, and it sounded like one as he stood
outside his office near the Pentagon on Sept. 11.
Turning around expecting to
see a fighter jet fly over, he saw only a split-second glimpse of
a white
commercial airliner
streaking low toward the building, and him! He did not even have time to
duck before it plowed into the side of the Pentagon around the corner and
about 200 yards from where he stood. |
|
Mickey Bell, Singleton Electric foreman |
- The jet
came in from
the south and banked left as it entered the
building, narrowly missing
the Singleton Electric trailer and the on-site foreman. Bell had just left
the trailer when he heard a loud noise. The next thing he recalled was
picking himself off the floor, where he had been thrown by the
blast. Bell, who had been less than 100 feet from the initial impact
of the plane, was nearly struck by
one of the plane's wings as it
sped by him.
(More) -
The full impact of the closeness of the crash wasn't realized until
coworkers noticed damage to Bell's work vehicle. He had
plastic and rivets from an airplane imbedded in
its sheet metal, but Bell had no
idea what had happened. |
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Richard Benedetto, USA TODAY reporter
|
-
saw the
plane slam into the Pentagon. "It sounded like an artillery
shell. It hit on the west
side of the building, near the helipad." |
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Sean Boger, Air Traffic Controller and Pentagon tower chief
|
"I
just looked up and I saw the
big nose and the wings of the aircraft coming right at us and I just watched it hit the
building." "It exploded. I fell to the ground and covered my head.
I could actually hear the metal
going through the building." The
crew, Boger and Spc. Jacqueline Kidd, air traffic controller and training
supervisor, prepared for President
George W. Bush to arrive from Florida around 12:30 p.m. |
|
James R. Cissell, former photojournalist |
(Note that this witnesses says his
original witness report was skewed by the media.)
''Out of my peripheral
vision,'' Cissell said, ''I saw this
plane coming in and it was low - and getting
lower. ''I thought,
'This isn't really happening. That is a big plane.' Then I saw the faces of some
of the passengers on board,'' Cissell said. Then the plane, which
was taking out
telephone and power lines
on its way in, hit the building. While he remembers seeing the
crash, Cissell remembers none of the sounds. ''It came in in a
perfectly straight line,'' he said. ''It didn't slow down. I want to
say it accelerated. It just shot straight in.'' -
cincypost.com
►
Proof That 'Flight 77' Eyewitness
Report Skewed
"James R. Cissell, an eyewitness to the object that struck the
Pentagon on September 2001, is furious with a Cincinnati newspaper
for falsely attributing quotes to him that he never made.
The Cincinnati Post reported Cissell's comments in a September 12 story
headlined, 'I saw the faces of some of the passengers.'
James R. Cissell contacted us to
express his anger at the newspaper for taking his comments completely
out of context.
The Cincinnati Post article, which you
refer, angered me greatly after reading it. It is almost completely
fiction based loosely on an interview I did with a Cincinnati Post
reporter Kimball Perry who called me in response to an on air phone
report that I did for Channel 12 in Cincinnati."
Cissell relates what he actually told the reporter.
"The reporter took extreme creative license not only with the title
but also with the story as a whole. Why he felt the need to
sensationalize anything that happened on September 11 is beyond me.
My words to the reporter were, "I was about four cars back from
where the plane crossed over the highway. That it happened so quickly I
didn't even see what airline it was from. However, I was so close to
the plane when it went past that had it been sitting on a runway, I
could have seen the faces of passengers peering out." -
prisonplanet.com (07/30/06) |
|
Richard Cox, Arlington County Police Dept. |
- On September 11,
2001, at approximately 9:37 a.m., ACPD Corporal Barry Foust and Officer
Richard Cox, on patrol in south Arlington County,
saw a large American Airlines aircraft in steep descent on a
collision course with the Pentagon.
The 'Other' Tragedy
"The hijacked jetliner, traveling at 350 miles an hour, was only about 100
feet from the ground when it cruised over Arlington police officer Richard
Cox's head, just a quarter mile from the Pentagon. "It was low enough for
me to see the reflection of cars and trees and buildings on its underside
as it passed by," he says. "It was low enough for my heart to stop." -
USNews (12/10/01)
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Steve DeChiaro,
engineer |
As he
reached the west side of the building he saw a light post bent in half.
"But when I looked at the site, my brain could not resolve the fact
that it was a plane because it only seemed
like a small hole in the building," he said. "No
tail. No wings. No nothing." -
GoMemphis.com (08/01/02) |
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Michael DiPaula, 41, project coordinator Pentagon Renovation Team
|
He
left a meeting in the Pentagon just minutes before the crash, looking
for an electrician who didn't show, in a construction trailer less than
75 feet away. "Suddenly, an airplane roared into view, nearly shearing
the roof off the trailer before slamming into the E ring. 'It sounded like a
missile,' DiPaula
recalls . . . Buried in debris and covered with airplane fuel, he was briefly listed by authorities as missing,
but eventually crawled from the flaming debris and the shroud of black
smoke unscathed. |
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Daryl Donley |
"It just was amazingly
precise," Donley... said
of the plane's impact. "It completely disappeared into the
Pentagon." |
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Steve Eiden,
truck driver |
He
took the Highway 95 loop in the area of the Pentagon and thought it odd
to see a plane in restricted airspace, thinking to himself it was odd
that it was
flying so
low.
"You could almost see the people
in the windows," he said as he
watched the plane disappear behind a line of trees, followed by a tall
plume of black smoke. |
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Penny Elgas |
The plane was directly over the cars in front
of my car, the plane seemed to be not more than 80 feet off the ground and
about 4-5 car lengths in front of me. It was far enough in front of me
that I saw the end of the wing closest to me and the underside of the
other wing as that other wing rocked slightly toward the ground. I
remember recognizing it as an
American Airlines plane --
I
could see the windows and the color stripes.
In my adrenaline-filled state of mind, I
was overcome by my visual senses. The day had started out beautiful and
sunny and I had driven to work with my car's sunroof open. I believe
that I may have also had one or more car windows open because the
traffic wasn't moving anyway. At the second that I saw the plane, my
visual senses took over completely and I did not hear or feel
anything -- not the roar of the plane, or wind force, or impact sounds.
The plane seemed to be floating as if it were a paper glider and I
watched in horror as it gently rocked and slowly glided straight into
the Pentagon. At the point where the fuselage hit the wall, it
seemed to simply melt into the building. I saw a smoke ring surround
the fuselage as it made contact with the wall. It appeared as a smoke
ring that encircled the fuselage at the point of contact and it seemed
to be several feet thick. I later realized that it was probably the
rubble of churning bits of the plane and concrete. The churning smoke
ring started at the top of the fuselage and simultaneously wrapped down
both the right and left sides of the fuselage to the underside, where
the coiling rings crossed over each other and then coiled back up to the
top. Then it started over again -- only this next time, I also saw fire,
glowing fire in the smoke ring. At that point, the wings disappeared
into the Pentagon. And then I saw an explosion and watched the
tail of the plane slip into the building. |
|
Barry Foust, Corporal, Arlington County Police Dept. |
On
September 11, 2001, at approximately 9:37 a.m., ACPD Corporal Barry Foust
and Officer Richard Cox, on patrol in south Arlington County,
saw a large American Airlines aircraft
in steep descent on a collision course with the Pentagon. |
|
Fred Gaskins,
national editor at USA TODAY |
"(The plane) was flying fast and low and
the Pentagon was the obvious target," who was driving to his job... near
the Pentagon when the plane passed about 150 feet overhead.
"It was flying
very smoothly and calmly, without any hint that anything was
wrong." |
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Gilah Goldsmith,
personnel attorney at the Pentagon |
- "We saw a huge
black cloud of smoke," she said, saying it smelled
like cordite, or gun smoke.
(cordite
- A smokeless explosive powder consisting of nitrocellulose, nitroglycerin,
and petrolatum that has been dissolved in acetone, dried, and extruded in
cords.)
|
|
Afework Hagos, computer programmer |
- was on his way to work
but stuck in a traffic jam near the Pentagon when the plane flew over.
"There was a huge screaming noise and I got out of the car as the plane
came over. It
was tilting its wings up and down like it was trying to
balance.
It hit some lampposts on the
way in."
"Afework Hagos, a consultant who was
commuting to his job, saw the plane bank around and fly into the Pentagon,
its wings see-sawing before it disappeared.
''It created a huge smoke,'' Hagos said, before a man in an FBI
windbreaker whisked him off to get his eyewitness account." -
Boston Globe (09/12/01)
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Terrance Kean, 35 |
- who lives in a 14-story building nearby,
heard the loud jet engines and glanced out his window.
"I saw this
very, very large passenger jet," said the architect, who had been packing for a
move. "It just plowed right into the side of the Pentagon. The nose
penetrated into the portico. And then it sort of disappeared, and there
was fire and smoke everywhere. . . . It was very sort of
surreal." |
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D. S. Khavkin |
- my husband and I heard an aircraft directly
overhead. At first, we thought it was the jets that sometimes fly
overhead. However, it appeared to be a small commercial
aircraft. The engine was
at full throttle. First, the plane knocked down a number of street lamp
poles, then headed
directly for the Pentagon and crashed on the lawn near the west side the
Pentagon. |
|
Kelly Knowles,
22 |
- Another Hampton Roads native says she
saw a second plane in the air over the Pentagon as a hijacked jet
plunged into the five-sided military fortress Tuesday.
Kelly Knowles, a First Colonial High School alumnus who now lives in an
apartment a few miles from the Pentagon, said some
sort of plane followed the doomed American Airlines jet toward the Pentagon,
then veered away after the explosion.
"Thank God somebody else saw that. There was most
definitely a second plane," Knowles said. "It's so frustrating
because nobody knows about the second plane, or
if they do they're hiding it for some reason."
FBI spokesmen say they have not heard about it, although both Knowles and
Keith Wheelhouse, the Virginia Beach man, were interviewed by FBI agents. A
Pentagon official said late Friday no other plane was flying with the
jetliner. But he said it was possible a military plane was in the area at
the time of the attack.
Planes never pass over her Fairfax County apartment, she said, so when a
low-flying, high-speed plane buzzed the high-rise, she jumped up, ran to the
windows and saw the rear of a jet heading toward Washington, D.C. A
few seconds later, a second plane that seemed to be
chasing the first passed over at a slightly different angle, she
said. -
Daily Press/Newport News (09/15/01) [Reprinted at:
cooperativeresearch.org] |
|
Allan Lindsley, Army Captain, Physicians
Assistant for Emergency Medical Services at Dewitt Army Community Hospital,
Ft. Belvoir, VA. |
"At the time we could walk right up to the building. I
walked right down, I was within 100 meters of the building, right in front
of the crash site.
I didn’t see any of the plane. By then,
the floors had collapsed.
Two FBI agents looking for airplane parts closer to the building walked into
a yellow jacket nest and got stung several times.
I walked by that and looked up on the outer ring and you could see right at
the crash site, and you could see filing cabinets and a computer monitor
sitting there. They weren’t blackened, they didn’t look like they’d been
moved, it looked like somebody had just driven by and broke a hole and
nothing was touched. That was on the outer ring.
A lot of water, you could tell there were broken pipes and stuff, you could
see that. You could see where the fire had extended almost a complete length
to the left of the crash site and to the right, it only went maybe five
windows over. I was told that that was because of the new construction that
they were doing and fire walls had been put in. You could tell that to the
right the structural integrity was much better. To the left is where they
were really having to do a lot of shoring up of the building. To the right
there was more steel, and to the left there wasn’t as much steel in it. So
they’ve been replacing that." -
Soldiers to the Rescue/Responding in the Pentagon [HTML] |
Lincoln Liebner, Army Captain |
"An eye-witness says an American Airlines
passenger jet flew low straight into the Pentagon and crashed into the
first floor of the building.
I saw this large
American Airlines passenger jet coming in fast and low," said
Army Captain Lincoln Liebner.
"My first thought was I've never seen one that high. Before it hit I
realised what was happening," he said.
Captain Liebner says the aircraft struck a
helicopter on the helipad, setting fire to a fire truck.
"We got one guy out of the [fire truck] cab," he said, adding he could hear
people crying inside the wreckage.
Captain Liebner, who had cuts on his hands from the debris, says he has been
parking his car in the car park when the crash occurred." -
Australian Broadcasting Corp (09/12/01) [Reprinted with
Wayback Machine]
(More)
From his vantage point, Maj. Leibner looked
up and saw the plane come in. "I was about 100 yards away," he said.
"You could see through the windows
of the aircraft. I saw it
hit."
Excerpts from an
interview with Major Lincoln Leibner, who worked in Cables Office of the
Office of the Secretary of Defense in the Pentagon.
"I was just about to make my turn up the sidewalk towards one of the
entrances when I heard jet engines. It was not the normal jet track into
National Airport, which is very, very different. I turned my head about
maybe 90 degrees towards the sound of the engines, which were very loud.
I fully expected to see A-10s or F-15s or something, and
I saw the American Airlines airplane coming
down. I watched the entire terminal descent into the building. It’s
probably the loudest noise I ever heard in my life. I have heard artillery
very close. I have heard rock concerts, but nothing came close to that
noise. I watched the entire airplane go into the building. I was
personally shook by whatever percussion, and not hit, and the fireball
from my angle wasn’t as dramatic as I have subsequently seen on the file
tape.
I got to the building. Remarkably, there was no
debris from the airplane. In the immediate area around the
Pentagon, the grass was all scorched and blackened.
Windows were obviously knocked out and you could hear a fire inside the
building but the fires weren’t that prevalent at that point. It was
just smoke, and it wasn’t even all that bad.
One man in the ambulance with me had no idea what happened, kept asking
whether it was a bomb.
I told them what I had seen and what I gather is that I was the first
personal account that he had. Even at this point, I
don’t believe the Secretary was confident that, in fact, a civilian airliner
had hit the building. I think they still
speculated about a bomb, a cruise missile, a small aircraft, but
I was glad I was able to give useful information. I told them the plane
came in full throttle, level, flaps up, wheels up, wasn’t crashed into
the building, was flown into the building.
The Secretary was essentially incredulous, but, then again, maybe that was
just his manner. He asked me if I was sure. And as I said, I was close
enough to look into the windows of the airplane as it flew passed. There
was no doubt in my mind what I had seen." -
Soldiers to the Rescue/Responding in the Pentagon [HTML]
|
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David Marra, 23, information-technology specialist |
"It was
50 ft. off the deck when he came in. It sounded like the pilot had the
throttle completely floored. The plane rolled left and then rolled right.
Then he caught
an edge of his wing on the ground." There is a helicopter pad right in front of the
side of the Pentagon. The wing touched there, then
the plane cartwheeled into the
building. |
|
Father Stephen McGraw |
- "I did not hear anything at all until the plane
was just right above our cars." McGraw estimates that the plane passed
about 20 feet over his car, as he waited in the left hand lane of the
road, on the side closest to the Pentagon. "The plane clipped the top of a
light pole just before it
got to us, injuring a taxi driver, whose taxi was just a few feet away
from my car. "I saw it crash into the building," he said. "My only
memories really were that it looked like a plane coming in for a landing.
I mean in the
sense that it was controlled and sort of straight. That was my impression," he
said. |
|
William Middleton Sr. |
was running his street sweeper through the
cemetery when he heard a harsh whistling sound overhead. Middleton looked
up and spotted a commercial jet whose
pilot seemed to be fighting with his own
craft. Middleton
said the plane was no higher than the tops of telephone poles as it
lurched toward the Pentagon. The jet accelerated in the final few hundred
yards before it tore into the building. |
|
Terry Morin |
The aircraft was essentially right over the top
of me and the outer portion of the FOB. I estimate that the aircraft
was no more than 100 feet above me in a slight nose down attitude.
The plane had a silver body with
red and blue stripes down the fuselage. I believed at the time that it belonged to
American Airlines, but I couldn’t be sure.
It looked like a
737 and I so reported to
authorities. Within seconds the plane cleared the 8th Wing of BMDO
and was heading directly towards the Pentagon. Engines were at a
steady high-pitched whine, indicating to me that the throttles were steady
and full. The flight path appeared to be deliberate, smooth, and
controlled. I could now only see the tail of the aircraft.
I then confirmed that the aircraft had been flown directly into
the Pentagon without hitting the
ground first or skipping into the building. |
|
Christopher Munsey, Navy Times reporter |
"I couldn’t believe what I
was now seeing to my right: A silver, twin-engine American Airlines
jetliner gliding almost
noiselessly over the Navy Annex, fast, low and straight toward the
Pentagon, just hundreds of yards away.
The plane, with
red and blue markings, hurtled by and within moments exploded in a
ground-shaking “whoomp,” as it appeared to hit the side of the
Pentagon." |
|
Eileen Murphy,
Head Nurse of the Minor Surgery Clinic at the DiLorenzo TRICARE Health
Clinic |
"I knew it was a crash site before we got there, and I didn’t know what it
was going to look like. I couldn’t imagine because the building is like rock
solid. I expected to see the airplane, so I guess my initial
impression was, “Where’s the plane? How come
there’s not a plane?” I would have thought the building would
have stopped it and somehow we would have seen something like part of, or
half of the plane, or the lower part, or the back of the plane. So it was
just a real surprise that the plane wasn’t there." -
Soldiers to the Rescue/Responding in the Pentagon [HTML] |
|
Vin Narayanan, reporter USA
Today |
"The plane exploded
after it hit, the tail came off and it began burning
immediately... driving
near the Pentagon when the plane hit.
(More) -
Then I looked up to my left and saw an American Airlines jet flying
right at me. The jet roared over my head, clearing my car by about 25
feet. The tail
of the plane clipped the overhanging exit sign above me as it headed straight at the
Pentagon. The windows were
dark on American Airlines Flight
77 as it streaked toward its target, only 50 yards away. But
the Pentagon's wall held up like a
champ. It barely budged as
the nose of the plane curled
upwards and crumpled before
exploding into a massive fireball.
The people who built that wall
should be proud. Its ability to withstand the initial impact of the jet
probably saved thousands of lives.
I hopped out of my car after the jet
exploded, nearly oblivious to a second jet hovering in the
skies. |
Steve O'Brien, Lt. Col., pilot of
the Minnesota National Guard C-130 cargo plane seen flying around the
Pentagon |
Lt. Col. Steve O'Brien started his day at the controls of a
Minnesota National Guard C-130 cargo plane.
He and his crew were heading back to the Twin Cities after moving military
supplies around the Caribbean. About 9:30 a.m., O'Brien throttled the
lumbering plane down a runway at Andrews Air Force Base, just southeast
of the District of Columbia.
"When we took off, we headed north and west and had a beautiful view of the
Mall," he said. "I noticed this airplane up and to the left of us, at 10
o'clock. He was descending to our altitude, four miles away or so.
That's awful close, so I was surprised he wasn't calling out to us.
"It was like coming up to an intersection. When air traffic control asked me
if we had him in sight, I told him that was an understatement - by then, he
had pretty much filled our windscreen. Then he made a pretty aggressive turn
so he was moving right in front of us, a mile and a half, two miles away. I
said we had him in sight, then the controller asked me what kind of plane
it was.
"That caught us up, because normally they have all that information. The
controller didn't seem to know anything."
O'Brien reported that the plane was either a 757 or
767 and its silver fuselage meant it was probably an American Airlines jet.
"They told us to turn and follow that aircraft - in 20-plus years of
flying, I've never been asked to do something like that. With all of
the East Coast haze, I had a hard time picking him out.
"The next thing I saw was the fireball. It was huge.
I told Washington the airplane has impacted the ground. Shook
everyone up pretty good. I told them the approximate location was close to
the Potomac. I figured he'd had some in-flight emergency and was trying to
get back on the ground to Washington National. Suddenly, I could see the
outline of the Pentagon. It was horrible. I told Washington this thing
has impacted the west side of the Pentagon."
O'Brien asked the controller whether he should set up a low orbit around the
building but was told to get out of the area as quickly as possible. "I
took the plane once through the plume of smoke and thought if this was a
terrorist attack, it probably wasn't a good idea to be flying through that
plume."
He flew west, not exactly sure where he was supposed to land.
Somewhere over western Pennsylvania, O'Brien looked down at a
blackened, smoldering field. "I hoped it was just a tire fire or
something, but when I checked with Cleveland center, he told me he'd just
lost a guy off the scope pretty close to where we saw it.
He finally landed at the Youngstown, Ohio, airport." -
Highbeam.com/Star Tribune (09/11/02) [Reprinted at:
cooperativeresearch.org]
A Minnesota guard crew witnessed
hijackers crashing American Airlines Flight 77 into the Pentagon on
September 11, 2001, and were also the first to report the smoke of United
Airlines Flight 93 minutes after it went down in Pennsylvania.
Lt. Col. Steve O'Brien was at the controls of the
C-130 aircraft on that day. His crew had just departed Andrews
AFB on what he thought would be a normal flight home to Minnesota. But what
he and his crew witnessed defies odds and will forever be woven into the
fabric of the history of the infamous day.
"You just wonder how you could be in those two geographic locations at
those exact times and witness those events," O'Brien told 5 EYEWITNESS
NEWS.
On September 11, 2001, O'Brien's plane had just taken off when air traffic
controllers asked him to identify and follow Flight 77, which was suspected
of being a hijacked plane. O'Brien saw that plane pass directly in front of
his Minnesota National Guard C-130 aircraft.
"We told them we did have it in sight, and they asked us to follow the
suspect aircraft." O'Brien remembered. "In 20 years of flying I'd never been
asked to do that, especially following a commercial jetliner."
A few minutes later, O'Brien saw the first horrific sight of his day:
American Airlines Flight 77 had hit the Pentagon.
"We were having a hard time keeping up with that aircraft, but we saw
the explosion on the ground."
After that, O'Brien and his crew headed west toward home. But over
Pennsylvania, air traffic controllers asked him and his crew if they saw
another aircraft in trouble.
The crew of the C-130 saw the smoke from United Airlines Flight 93,
which had crashed just 2 minutes earlier.
"You feel like you are a part of history," O'Brien said. "Even if you were
not directly involved, you had a chance to witness it." -
5 Eyewitness News
(12/25/04)
|
|
John O’Keefe |
“I don’t know whether I saw or heard it first
-- this silver plane; I immediately recognized it as an
American Airlines jet,” said the 25-year-old O’Keefe, managing editor
of Influence, an American Lawyer Media publication about lobbying. “It
came swooping in over the highway, over my left shoulder, straight across
where my car was heading.
“The eeriest thing about it, was that it was
like you were watching a movie. There was no huge explosion, no huge rumbling on
ground, it just went ‘pfff.’
It wasn’t what I would have
expected for a plane that was not
much more than a football field away from me.
“The first thing I did
was pull over onto the shoulder, and when I got out of the car
I saw another
plane flying over my head,
and it scared ...me, because I knew there had been two planes that hit the
World Trade Center. And I started jogging up the ramp to get as far away
as possible.
“Then the plane --
it looked like a C-130 cargo
plane -- started turning
away from the Pentagon, it did a
complete turnaround. |
|
Mary Ann Owens, Gannett News Service employee |
"Instantly I
knew what was happening, and I involuntarily ducked as the plane passed
perhaps 50 to 75 feet above the roof of my car at great speed," Owens
said. "The plane slammed into the west wall of the Pentagon. The impact
was deafening. The fuselage hit the ground and blew
up."
(More) -
Gripping the steering wheel of my vibrating car, I involuntarily ducked as
the wobbling plane thundered over my head. Once it passed, I raised
slightly and grimaced as the left wing dipped and scraped the helicopter
area just before the nose
crashed into the southwest wall of the Pentagon. |
|
Steve Patterson, 43, graphics artist |
saw a
silver commuter
jet fly past the window of his
14th-floor apartment in Pentagon City. The plane was about 150 yards away,
approaching
from the west about 20 feet off the ground.
He said the plane, which
sounded like the high-pitched
squeal of a fighter jet,
flew over Arlington cemetary so low that he thought it was going to land
on I-395. He said it was flying so fast that he couldn't read any writing
on the side.
The plane, which appeared to hold about eight to 12
people, headed straight
for the Pentagon...He said the plane, which
approached the Pentagon below
treetop level, seemed to be flying normally for a plane coming in for a
landing other than going
very fast for being so low. Then, he said, he saw the Pentagon "envelope" the
plane and bright orange flames
shoot out the back of the building.
"It looked like a normal landing,
as if someone knew exactly what they were doing," said Patterson, a
graphics artist who works at home. "This looked
intentional." |
|
Christine Peterson |
I
was at a complete stop on the road in front of the helipad at the
Pentagon; what I had thought would be a shortcut was as slow as the other
routes I had taken that morning. I looked idly out my window to the
left -- and saw a plane flying so low I said, “holy cow, that plane is
going to hit my car” (not my actual words). The car shook as the
plane flew over. It was so close that
I could read the numbers under
the wing. And then
the plane crashed. My mind could not comprehend what had
happened. Where did the
plane go? For some reason I expected it to bounce off the Pentagon
wall in pieces. But there was no plane visible, only huge billows of smoke and torrents of
fire. |
|
Maybon Pollock,
Sergeant First Class, NCOIC Logistics in the DiLorenzo
TRICARE Health Clinic. |
"At that point we were able to see the last
part of the plane, where it stopped, basically. It was a big 8 by 10 or
bigger, I’m just guessing, hole in the wall. You could see the tire, the
landing gear, were just forward of it.
I was more impressed, I was truly impressed, with how the building stood up,
after they told me the
size of the plane. And then I was in awe that I saw
no plane, nothing left from the plane. It was like
it disintegrated as it went into the building." -
Soldiers to the Rescue/Responding in the Pentagon [HTML] |
|
Lon Rains, Editor at
Space News |
With the Pentagon to the left of my van at about 10
o’clock on the dial of a clock, I glanced at my watch to see if I was going
to be late for my appointment.
At that moment I heard a very loud, quick whooshing sound that began behind
me and stopped suddenly in front of me and to my left. In fractions of a
second I heard the impact and an explosion. The next thing I saw was the
fireball.
I was convinced it was a missile.
It came in so fast it sounded nothing like an
airplane. Friends and colleagues have asked me if I felt a shock
wave and I honestly do not know. |
|
Rick Renzi, a law student |
''The plane came in at an
incredibly steep angle
with incredibly high speed,''... was driving by the Pentagon at the time
of the crash about 9:40 a.m. The impact created a huge yellow and
orange fireball, he added. Renzi, who was interviewed at the scene by FBI
agents, said he stopped his car to watch and
saw another plane
following and turn off
after the first craft's impact. |
|
Steve Riskus, 24 |
"I took these
pictures less then 1 minutes after I watched the american airlines 757
airplane crash into the pentagon on september 11 2001. I left
shortly after the picture were taken in fear of further attacks.
Feel free to contact me anytime if you have questions about my pictures.
Yes, I did actually see the plane impact the
building.
Steve Riskus
steveriskus[at]aol[dot]com
AIM: youthenraged" -
criticalthrash.com(Note that
this is Steve's personal account posted on his own website which he
created on
Sept. 10, 2001!) |
|
James S. Robbins, a national-security analyst & NRO
contributor |
I
was looking directly at it when the aircraft struck. The sight of the
757 diving in at an unrecoverable angle is frozen in my memory, but at
the time, I did not
immediately comprehend what I was witnessing.
There
was a silvery flash, an
explosion, and a dark, mushroom shaped cloud rose over the
building. |
|
Tom Seibert,
33, a network engineer at the
Pentagon |
"We heard what sounded like a
missile, then we heard a
loud boom," "We were sitting there and watching this thing from New
York, and I said, you know, the next best target would be us. And five
minutes later, boom." |
|
Noel Sepulveda,
Master Sgt., Air Force |
He saw the plane fly above a nearby
hotel and drop
its landing gear.
The plane’s right wheel struck a light
pole,
causing it to fly at a
45-degree angle, he said.
The plane tried to recover, but hit a second light pole and continued
flying at an angle. "You could hear the engines being revved up even
higher," Sepulveda said. The plane dipped its nose and crashed into
the southwest side of the Pentagon. "The right engine hit high, the
left engine hit low,"
Sepulveda said. "For a brief moment,
you could see the body of the plane sticking out
from the side of the building. Then a ball of fire came from behind
it." -
dcmilitary.com (04/19/02) |
|
Levi Stephens, 23, courier Armed Forces Information Service |
According to one witness, "what looked like a 747" plowed into the south side of the Pentagon,
possibly
skipping through a heliport before it hit the
building. Personnel
working in the Navy Annex, over which the airliner flew, said they heard
the distinct whine of jet engines as the airliner approached. "I was
driving away from the Pentagon in the South Pentagon lot when I hear this
huge rumble, the ground started shaking … I saw this [plane] come flying
over the Navy Annex. It flew over the van and I looked back and I saw this
huge explosion, black smoke everywhere." |
|
Joel Sucherman, USA Today Editor |
"My first thought was he's
not going to make it across the river to [Reagan] National Airport. But
whoever was flying the plane made no attempt to change direction," Sucherman said. "It was coming in at a high rate of speed, but
not at a steep
angle--almost like a heat-seeking missile was locked onto its target and
staying dead on course."
"I
didn't feel anything coming out of the Pentagon [in terms of
debris]," he said. "A couple of
minutes later, police cars and fire trucks headed to the scene."
Ironically, the passage of emergency vehicles got traffic moving again,
which was now crunching over twisted metal Sucherman guessed was
the skin of the plane.
Off to the west,
Sucherman saw another plane
climb steeply and make a sharp turn. "I thought, 'Is this thing coming around to make
a second attack? If there is another explosion, we're
toast.'"
(Video) -
"I did not see
the engines, I saw the
body and the tail; and it was a
silver jet with the markings along the windows that spoke to me as an
American Airlines jet, this was
not a commercial, excuse me, a business jet, it was not a lear jet,
it was a
bigger plane than that."
|
|
Tim Timmerman |
A pilot who saw the impact... said it had been
an American
Airways 757. "It added
power on its way in," he said. "The nose hit, and the wings came forward
and it went up in a fireball."
(More) -
And then it came out, and I saw it hit right in front of --
it didn't
appear to crash into the building; most of the energy was dissipated in
hitting the
ground, but
I saw the nose
break up, I saw the wings
fly forward, and then the conflagration engulfed everything in flames. It
was horrible. It was a Boeing 757, American
Airlines, no
question. |
|
Jose Velasquez,
NEXCOM
Citgo station supervisor |
"I knew something was wrong. The planes come
more from the north and west [to land at Reagan National Airport] not from
the south. And not so low." His gas station, open only to Department of
Defense personnel... Velasquez
says the gas station's security
cameras are close enough to the
Pentagon to have recorded the
moment of impact.
"I've never
seen what the pictures looked like," he said. "The FBI was here within minutes and took the
film." |
|
Alan Wallace, Pentagon Firefighter |
- was standing outside his
fire station when he looked across the nearby interstate and saw a white airplane
with orange and blue trim
heading almost straight at him. It slammed into the building just a couple
hundred feet from him. "When I felt the fire, I hit the ground," he
said.
(More) -
President Bush was scheduled to
fly from Florida that afternoon,
and his helicopter, Marine One, would carry him to the Pentagon. That
meant Secret Service everywhere
and their cars blocking the driveway.
So the meticulous
Wallace moved the fire truck out of the way,
parking it about 15 feet from the Pentagon.
Wallace looked up and saw the gleam of a
silver jetliner. But
it was flying too low. Maybe less than
25 feet off the
ground.
"I yelled to
Mark, 'Let's go!'" He bolted to the right and a second later felt the
searing heat of the blast behind him. He hit the ground and rolled under a parked van as
a fireball engulfed his fire truck, then blew through the nearby firehouse.
So
Wallace switched on the truck's radio. "Foam 61
to Fort Myer," he said. "We have had a commercial carrier crash into the west side of the Pentagon at the
heliport, Washington Boulevard side. The crew is OK.
The airplane was a 757
Boeing or a 320
Airbus." |
|
Mike Walters |
"I looked off, I was, you know I looked out my window. I saw this plane,
a jet, American Airlines jet coming,
and I thought this doesn't add up. It's really low. I mean, it was like a
cruise missile with wings, went right there and slammed right into the
Pentagon, a huge explosion, a great ball of fire. Smoke started billowing
out and then it was just chaos on the highway as people either tried to move
around the traffic and go down either forward or backwards." -
CNN (03/07/02) |
|
Keith Wheelhouse |
"Her brother,
Wheelhouse, of Virginia Beach, spotted the planes first.
The second plane looked similar to a C- 130
transport plane, he said. He believes it flew directly above
the American Airlines jet, as if to prevent two planes from appearing on
radar while at the same time guiding the jet toward the Pentagon.
As the hijacked jet started its descent, "it's like it stepped on its gas
pedal," Wheelhouse said. "As soon as he did that, the second plane banked
off to the west."
Wheelhouse's account of a second plane is unlike everything else that has
been reported about the attack. Some initial reports on television said a
second airliner might be headed for the Pentagon, but authorities later
dismissed that. A Norfolk-based FBI agent interviewed Wheelhouse Wednesday
evening.
A possible explanation for the second plane could be a plane landing at
nearby Ronald Reagan National Airport. The Pentagon is between the cemetery
and the airport. But Wheelhouse insists he was not confused by other air
traffic.
After the attack on the Pentagon, reporters in Washington saw Air Force
planes patrolling the skies over the capital.
Wheelhouse said it's possible the second plane was a military plane, but the
military has not said it had a plane shadowing the hijacked jet." -
Daily Press/Newport News (09/14/01) [Reprinted at:
cooperativeresearch.org]
"FBI
spokesmen say they have not heard about it, although both Knowles and Keith
Wheelhouse, the Virginia Beach man, were interviewed by FBI agents. A
Pentagon official said late Friday no other plane was flying with the
jetliner. But he said it was possible a military plane was in the area at
the time of the attack.
At
the same time, Wheelhouse and his sister, Pam Young, who lives in Surry,
were preparing to leave a funeral at Arlington National Cemetery, which is
less than a mile from the Pentagon, when they watched the jet approach and
slam into the Pentagon. Both of them, as well as at least one other person
at the funeral, insist that there was another plane
flying near the hijacked jet.
Wheelhouse said the second plane looked like it may have been
a C- 130 transport plane, but the other
three witnesses say they're not sure what the plane looked like." -
Daily Press/Newport News (09/15/01) [Reprinted at:
cooperativeresearch.org] |
|
Dave Winslow, AP reporter |
"I saw the
tail of a large
airliner ... It ploughed
right into the Pentagon." |
|
Pam Young |
- Perhaps more remarkable is
her insistence that a second plane was flying near
and along the same path as the hijacked jet. -
Daily Press/Newport News (09/14/01) [Reprinted at:
cooperativeresearch.org] At the
same time, Wheelhouse and his sister, Pam Young, who lives in Surry, were
preparing to leave a funeral at Arlington National Cemetery, which is less
than a mile from the Pentagon, when they watched the jet approach and slam
into the Pentagon. Both of them, as well as at least one other person at the
funeral, insist that there was another plane flying
near the hijacked jet. -
Daily Press/Newport News (09/15/01) [Reprinted at:
cooperativeresearch.org] |
|
Unidentified Witnesses... |
|
Air Force senior
enlistee (Chris Plant,
CNN correspondent) |
PLANT: Well, and speaking to people here at
the Pentagon, as they're being evacuated from the building. I'm told by
several people that there was, in fact, an explosion.
I was told by one witness, an Air Force enlisted - senior enlisted man,
that he was outside when it occurred. He said that
he saw a helicopter circle the building. He said it appeared to be a U.S.
military helicopter, and that it disappeared behind the building where the
helicopter landing zone is - excuse me -
and he then saw fireball go into the sky.
It's a very tense situation obviously, but initial reports from witnesses
indicate that there was in fact a helicopter circling the building, contrary
to what the AP reported, according to the witnesses I've spoken to
anyway, and that this helicopter disappeared behind
the building, and that there was then an explosion. That's about
all I have from here. -
CNN (09/11/01) |
|
Arlington worker |
- Another
Arlington worker who declined to be interviewed in front of the media told a
story that the military historians had not heard in the 244 interviews they
had conducted through last week. The man said a
mysterious second plane was circling the area when the first one
attacked the Pentagon. -
South Coast Today/Pittsburgh Post-Gazette (12/20/01) |
|
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