The purpose of this blog is to document America's nuclear aero-space program being run out of AREA-51 using open sources. It has been said that 90% of intelligence analysis uses open sources. The preponderance of the evidence shows that the American Military runs part of their Black Space Program out of AREA-51 utilizing nuclear powered propulsion.
1981: Bin Laden Visits Chicago to Recruit American-Trained Engineers, Meets Yassin Kadi
Yassin Kadi, a Saudi working for a Chicago architectural firm, will say in 2008 that he first met Osama bin Laden in Chicago in 1981. He will further state that the purpose of bin Laden’s visit is to recruit American-trained engineers for his family’s construction business. Kadi says that he puts bin Laden in touch with a group of engineers, several of whom are eventually hired. [NEW YORK TIMES, 12/12/2008]
Entity Tags: Osama bin Laden, Yassin Kadi
Timeline Tags: Complete 911 Timeline
September 1992: Osama Bin Laden Visits Chechnya
The Chechen delegation on the terrace at the House of Commons in London.
From the left: Eduard Khachilaev, Sir Gerrard Neale, Berkan Yashar, Dzhokhar Dudaev, Den Dover, and Yusef Shamsuddin.
The Chechen delegation on the terrace at the House of Commons in London. From the left: Eduard Khachilaev, Sir Gerrard Neale, Berkan Yashar, Dzhokhar Dudaev, Den Dover, and Yusef Shamsuddin. [Source: Pan Books]
Osama bin Laden visits the city of Grozny, Chechnya, according to a claim made 19 years later by Berkan Yashar, who will be identified in the media as “a Turkish politician and a former US intelligence agent.” Bin Laden resides downtown, on the first floor of a two-story building, with the second floor being occupied by the deposed president of Georgia, Zviad Gamsakhurdia, and his family. Yashar, whose operational name is “Abubakar,” will claim that in the early 1990s he is employed by the CIA for subversive operations against Russia in the Northern Caucasus. He is currently the deputy minister of foreign affairs under Chechen President Dzhokhar Dudaev. [CHANNEL ONE (RUSSIA), 4/22/2008; PRAVDA, 5/19/2011]
Osama Bin Laden, the al-Qaeda chief, died a natural death nearly 5 years before it was announced that he was eliminated by the American commandos in Pakistan, unveiled a former CIA agent.
Speaking in an interview with Russia’s Channel One, Berkan Yashar, a Turkish politician and former US intelligence agent claimed that the Americans did not kill al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden and, in fact, he died naturally.
The journalists of Channel One first met Yashar in 2008. At the time he was featured in the documentary “Plan Caucasus,” talking about the attempts of the western intelligence services in the early 1990’s to separate the Northern Caucasus and, in particular, Chechnya from Russia.
Chechen by nationality, Yashar is now a Turkish politician, but in those years he was one of the ideologists of Johar Dudayev. He asked for a meeting, promising to tell the truth about the death of Osama bin Laden whom he met in the early 90-ies in Chechnya.
“In September of 1992 I was in Chechnya, that’s when I first met the man whose name was Bin Laden. This meeting took place in a two-story house in the city of Grozny; on the top floor was a family of Gamsakhurdia, the Georgian president, who then was kicked out of his country. We met on the bottom floor; Osama lived in the same building, “said Berkan Yashar.
Berkan said he did not know why bin Laden visited while in Grozny, and said only one thing about his meetings: “Just wanted to talk.”
However, according to Channel One, in those years the former employee of Radio Liberty Berkan Yashar already had an operational name Abubakar, given to him by the CIA.
According to Berkan, after that trip Chechen nationals appeared in Osama bin Laden’s circle. Berkan Yashar emphasized that they did not participate “directly in the terror bombings.” “They protected bin Laden, it was his choice because he trusted them entirely, and knew that they would never betray,” said Yashar.
According to Yashar he was not the only one who knew about it, but the Russian security services and the CIA were aware of this as well.
Answering the question whether he believed that the Americans killed Osama bin Laden in Pakistan, Berkan Yashar answered, “Even if the entire world believed I could not possibly believe it.”
“I personally know the Chechens who protected him, they are Sami, Mahmood, and Ayub, and they were with him until the very end. I remember that day very well, there were three sixes in it: 26 June 2006. These people, as well as two others from London and two Americans, all seven of them, saw him dead. He was very ill, he was skin and bones, very thin, and they washed him and buried him,” said Berkan Yashar.
Yashar stressed that although the two American Muslims and two British Muslims the guards of bin Laden and saw him dead, they did not participate in the funerals.
“Only three Chechens buried him, according to his will,” said Yashar. Bin Laden was buried, according to Yashar, in the mountains on the Pakistan-Afghan border.
“There was no assault,” said Yashar. “I know the American operations from the inside: they find the grave, dig out bin Laden and tell everyone about this. They need to show how technologically the security services worked, how each step was controlled, and then present it as a great victory to show that taxpayers are not paying taxes for nothing. “
Berkan now blames himself for the fact that the Chechens from the protection of bin Laden, “the terrorist number one” are no longer alive after the US intelligence services began to tap Berkan’s telephone conversations.
He said he was the first one who announced the date of death of bin Laden.
“I was the first one who announced the date of his death in November of 2008 at a conference in Washington, not naming any names, and it looks like it was when the Americans began to track my contacts,” he said.
The last security guard Berkan saw Sami, who, according to him, a few days before bin Laden was declared killed, was kidnapped by the US intelligence agencies.
According to Berkan, most likely, it was him who disclosed to them the exact place of burial in the mountains on the Pakistan-Afghan border.
In any case, the last call from Sami was from Pakistan. Berkan explained why he informed the journalists of Channel One: he feared for his life. According to him, only wide publicity around the world can protect him from the CIA. However, just in case, the Turkish secret services, according to him, provided him with guards and weapons.
(Between 9:05 a.m. and 11:00 a.m.) September 11, 2001: AWACS Plane near Washington Told to Return to Oklahoma, Limiting NEADS’s Communications and Surveillance Capabilities
AWACS Sent Back to Oklahoma - According to author Lynn Spencer, the AWACS is directed to return to Tinker Air Force Base “in the immediate confusion after the attacks.” The exact time the plane’s crew receives this order, and the identity of the person or organization that gives the order, are unstated. NORAD’s Northeast Air Defense Sector (NEADS) will contact the AWACS later on, and instruct it to turn around and head to Washington, to provide radio and radar coverage over the capital (see (11:25 a.m.) September 11, 2001). [SPENCER, 2008, PP. 265-266]
Patrick Madigan, the commander of the Somerset Barracks of the Pennsylvania State Police, arrives at the Flight 93 crash scene around 10:20 a.m. [DEPARTMENT OF THE ARMY AND THE AIR FORCE NATIONAL GUARD BUREAU, 2002 pdf file] He says that at some point later in the day (he does not specify a time), a “strange incident” occurs: “We were there at the site and an airplane started circling. It was a jetliner circling the crash site very low. No one knew what to expect because we knew that all of the planes were supposedly grounded.” (The FAA had, at about 9:45 a.m., ordered that all aircraft be instructed to land at the nearest airport (see (9:45 a.m.) September 11, 2001).) After a few minutes of uncertainty, it is announced that the plane is carrying United Airlines executives, who are circling the site to view it before they land in nearby Johnstown. [KASHURBA, 2002, PP. 63] Another low-flying jet plane was witnessed over the site earlier on, around the time Flight 93 went down (see (Before and After 10:06 a.m.) September 11, 2001).
AWACS have Electronic Warfare Capabilities that allow them to shootdown aircraft. The "airliner" seen circling over the crash site was an AWACS or Brent Scowcroft in the E-4B. ALL three E-4B's were in the air a sure sign that DEFCON ONE was in effect. I am wondering if (as a counter measure) the Soviets/Russians constructed an ICBM with a air to air guided missile payload to take out the E-4Bs and Air Force One. Would the Russian Woodpecker or other system be able to image the planes allowing an ICBM BUS to get in range then hand off to the Sidewinder or smart missile armed with a nuke. Certainly if communications are down for the USA getting out of range could be a problem. This assuming that an ICBM armed with air to air missiles is even feasible.
HELICALLY WOUND column reinforcement helped limit the death toll during the terrorist attack on the Pentagon on 11 September 2001, according to the first official report into the disaster. Energy absorbing helical reinforcement, continuity of beam reinforcement through supports and the insitu concrete outer wall combined to prevent a more extensive collapse of the building, the report says. The concrete outer wall acted as a transfer girder, creating substantial residual load capacity and alternative load paths, says the report.
During the attack 125 Pentagon personnel and 64 passengers and crew on a hijacked Boeing 757 died when the aircraft flew into the building (see box). The Pentagon Building Performance Report, published by the American Society of Civil Engineers (ASCE), concludes that fire was the cause of the limited collapse that did occur 20 minutes after impact. The blaze acted directly on the main steel reinforcement bars of badly damaged columns, weakening them (see box).
The report commends the performance of recently installed anti-blast measures, which helped keep most of the jet fuel and the post impact fireball outside the building. Some damaged columns suffered dramatic deformations yet still supported the floor above. The report recommends more research into the residual performance of such extremely deformed columns, and into the energy-absorbing capacity of reinforced concrete elements. It acknowledges that ‘much has been written on means to prevent progressive collapse, but little detailed guidance’ has been incorporated into US building codes. A ‘focused effort to accumulate research and practical experience’ into structural robustness is also recommended.
British engineers said the report confirms European opinions on the need for robustness and resistance to progressive collapse in structures. Babtie director Gordon Masterton said the report contained nothing ‘particularly surprising - we already knew about the benefits of spirally reinforced columns, and of continuity at joints and alternative load paths.’ He added: ‘However, I am surprised that the investigators didn’t recommend more work on fire performance.
‘After all, one third of those in the Pentagon who died did so as a result of the fire, and fire was a contributing factor in the deaths of another third.’ US codes are still trying to absorb the lessons of the 1995 Oklahoma bomb disaster, said ASCE World Trade Center investigation leader Gene Corley. ‘This latest report will reinforce the need for change, especially for buildings seen as potential terrorist targets, ’ he added.
Built to last
The Pentagon was a typical US concrete framed building of its time. It was built in record time during the early 1940s in response to wartime needs and designed to become a document store once hostilities were over. By modern standards spans were short, column centres close together and partitions were heavy and dense. Typically on the ground floor the columns would measure 530mm by 530mm at maximum centres of little more than 6m. So when the Boeing smashed through the insitu concrete outer wall it entered a very different environment to that of the World Trade Center twin towers in New York which were struck by hijacked aircraft on the same day.
Instead of a large clear floorplate and a drywall core the Pentagon offered defences in depth: rows of sturdy columns with spirally wound shear reinforcement, good continuity at joints and over designed floors. Had the hijackers aimed at almost any other wall of the Pentagon the results might have been very different, says the ASCE report. After more than 50 years of high intensity use the building was ageing. Plans for refurbishment were hastily modified in the light of the 1995 Oklahoma bomb.
This meant protection against external explosions was rapidly incorporated: Kevlar mesh reinforced the masonry infill wall panels and modern blast resistant windows were installed. But only one ‘wedge’ of the building had been refurbished before the terrorists struck, and it was the reinforced outer walls and window frames of this refurbished section that took the initial impact.
Columns in a wedge shaped area extending some 75m from the point of impact took severe damage, with many blasted out of the way completely. As the fuselage began to disintegrate, the area of damage narrowed. Many columns on the fringe of this wedge shaped area suffered severe displacements, but kept standing.
At least a dozen columns at the point of impact or immediately behind it were wiped out. The first floor slab sagged an estimated 600mm at an external expansion joint, but only collapsed 20 minutes after impact. And the new windows seem to have performed well, keeping much of the external fireball out of the building.
Generally, damage from the ensuing internal fire was typical of serious office fires. But close to the impact point, columns still struggling to support the first floor stood little chance. With cover to the reinforcement stripped off over large areas and the main steel reinforcement exposed directly to the fire, the columns could only hold up for a vital 20 minutes.
9/11: What happened
At 9.38am local time on Tuesday 11 September 2001 a Boeing 757-200 with 64 people on board struck the west wall of the Pentagon’s outer ring just below first floor level, at an angle of about 42infinity. Investigators concluded that on impact the Boeing weighed around 82,000kg and was travelling close to 250m/sec. Its inner wing and fuselage tanks probably contained 16,500kg of fuel. At the moment of impact it appears the aircraft was flying almost level with the ground but with a slight bank to the left. The left engine hit the ground at almost the same moment the nose struck the outer wall.
As the fuselage penetrated the dense forest of columns inside the concrete framed building its nose section disintegrated almost instantaneously, spilling the cockpit crew and hijackers. Massive kinetic energy kept the rest of the fuselage moving forward, decelerating at 30G or more.
Most of the wings were ripped off as they hit the facade, rupturing the fuel tanks and causing an external fireball. An avalanche of building debris and shredding aluminium roared through the ground floor offices, as far as the opposite wall. When it subsided, all on board were dead and scattered around. Among their bodies were 125 dead and dying Pentagon workers. Then the fire began to spread.
Holloway's Commentary:
Was 911 a worst case scenario? 911 was a case where American spooks knew the attack was coming and were completely unable to do anything about it. America's pants were up and we still got hit. DIA spooks bungle two assassination attempts on Putin. The Russians then declare they will use nuclear weapons in response to America's spook war in Chechnya. Americans had already experienced two tactical nuke attacks in CONUS. WTC-93 and OKC Bombing were both tactical nuclear attacks. In response the DIA/NOC offices, the Pentagon's most important offices are reinforced.
Russia declares they will respond with nuclear weapons to America's actions in Chechnya.
The NSA publicizes the NORTHWOODS forgeries to cover their ass in anticipation of the attack. After a cover story is released to the press claiming he lost a briefcase with classified material, FBI Special Agent John P. O'Neil is put in charge of WTC security knowing that an attack was about to occur. Spooks in the know start making stock bets. America's spook agencies were looking in all the right places but were unable to remotely image a nuclear weapon the size of a baseball. 911 was a combined cyber warfare and commando attack.
Unsolved Mysteries with Robert Stack - Season 8 Episode 4 - Full Episode
The most logical explanation to this UFO story is this was a nuclear powered landing craft of some sort. The fact that the camera's film was ruined by radiation shows the craft was nuclear powered. The landing gear was like the landing gear found on the lunar lander. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lonnie_Zamora_incident
There was not even the grace of instant death. Instead, there was time to call from the sky over Virginia, fingers pumping cell phones, terrified passengers talking to loved ones for one final time. Herded to the back of the plane by hijackers armed with knives and box-cutters, the passengers and crew members of American Airlines Flight 77 -- including the wife of Solicitor General Theodore Olson, a Senate staffer, three D.C. schoolchildren and three teachers on an educational field trip and a University Park family of four headed to Australia for a two-month adventure -- were ordered to call relatives to say they were about to die.
About an hour after takeoff from Dulles International Airport yesterday morning, Flight 77, a Boeing 757 headed for Los Angeles with 64 people aboard, became a massive missile aimed at the White House. The target would change suddenly, but the symbolism was equally devastating. By about 9:40 a.m., when the diving plane carved out a massive chunk of the Pentagon, its passengers had experienced unspeakable terror, hundreds died, and the nation's greatest symbol of security lay shattered, thick plumes of smoke camouflaging a gaping hole in its heart.
Barbara K. Olson, the former federal prosecutor who became a prominent TV commentator during the impeachment of President Bill Clinton, called her husband twice in the final minutes. Her last words to him were, "What do I tell the pilot to do?" "She called from the plane while it was being hijacked," Theodore Olson said. "I wish it wasn't so, but it is." The two conversations each lasted about a minute, said Tim O'Brien, a CNN reporter and friend of the Olsons. In the first call, Barbara Olson told her husband, "Our plane is being hijacked." She described how hijackers forced passengers and the flight's pilot to the rear of the aircraft. She said nothing about the number of hijackers or their nationality.
Olson's first call was cut off, and her husband immediately called the Justice Department's command center, where he was told officials knew nothing about the Flight 77 hijacking. Moments later, his wife called again. And again, she wanted to know, "What should I tell the pilot?" "She was composed, as composed as you can be under the circumstances," O'Brien said. But her second call was cut off, too.
"Incidentally, she wasn't even supposed to be on this flight," O'Brien added on CNN. "She was booked on a flight yesterday, but today is Ted's birthday, so she wanted to be here this morning to have breakfast with him before she left." On the ground, air traffic controllers watching Flight 77's progress westward suddenly lost touch with the plane, which disappeared from radar screens and cut off radio contact. Someone on board Flight 77 had flipped off the transponder, the device that sends a plane's airline identification, flight number, speed and altitude to controllers' radar screens.
But soon after losing contact, Dulles controllers spotted an unidentified aircraft speeding directly toward the restricted airspace that surrounds the White House. Federal aviation sources said Dulles controllers noticed the fast-moving craft east-southeast of Dulles and called controllers at Reagan National Airport to report that an unauthorized plane was coming their way.
Controllers had time to warn the White House that the jet was aimed directly at the president's mansion and was traveling at a gut-wrenching speed -- full throttle.
\
But just as the plane seemed to be on a suicide mission into the White House, the unidentified pilot executed a pivot so tight that it reminded observers of a fighter jet maneuver. The plane circled 270 degrees to the right to approach the Pentagon from the west, whereupon Flight 77 fell below radar level, vanishing from controllers' screens, the sources said.
Less than an hour after two other jets demolished the World Trade Center in Manhattan, Flight 77 carved a hole in the nation's defense headquarters, a hole five stories high and 200 feet wide.
Aviation sources said the plane was flown with extraordinary skill, making it highly likely that a trained pilot was at the helm, possibly one of the hijackers. Someone even knew how to turn off the transponder, a move that is considerably less than obvious.
Details about who was on Flight 77, when it took off and what happened on board were tightly held by airline, airport and security officials last night. All said that the FBI had asked them not to divulge details. "Because of the heightened security due to the nature of today's events," American Airlines said in a statement, the airline "is working closely with U.S. government authorities and will not release more information at this time."
But some passengers on the flight were identified by friends and family. Flight attendant Michelle Heidenberger had been trained to handle a hijacking. She knew not to let anyone in the cockpit. She knew to tell the hijacker that she didn't have a key and would have to call the pilots.
None of her training mattered. "I'm just so heartbroken," said Ruby Ramer, Heidenberger's neighbor in Chevy Chase, where she lived with her husband, Tom, a pilot for US Airways, and their 11-year-old son and college-age daughter. "I just can't believe she won't be one of our neighbors."
Flight 77 was to be the first leg of a long, happy journey for Leslie A. Whittington and Charles S. Falkenberg, both 45, and their two young girls. The University Park family was on its way to Australia, where Whittington, a Georgetown University professor of public policy, was to work as a visiting fellow at Australian National University. Her husband, a software engineer and nature buff, was looking forward to exploring and encountering the wildlife -- kangaroos, koala bears, scorpions and snakes -- said James Gekas, a neighbor who hosted a farewell dinner for the family Sunday night.
Three District schoolchildren and three teachers were on Flight 77, headed to Santa Barbara, Calif., for an ecology conference sponsored by National Geographic. School board President Peggy Cooper Cafritz said the students and educators, whose names were not released, were from elementary and middle schools. In the hazy hours that followed the attack, it was unclear which of four hijacked planes ended up where. But witnesses soon identified the aircraft that smashed into the Pentagon as an American flight, and then as Flight 77, which was unusually light on passengers this day.
On a Metro train to National Airport, Allen Cleveland looked out the window to see a jet heading down toward the Pentagon. "I thought, 'There's no landing strip on that side of the subway tracks,' " he said. Before he could process that thought, he saw "a huge mushroom cloud. The lady next to me was in absolute hysterics." At the Dulles Airport Marriott, which American Airlines used last night as a bereavement center, families of passengers began arriving about 11 a.m.
Paul Sharp, a hotel manager, said three or four families, totaling about 10 people, were meeting with grief counselors and clergy in private suites. In the lobby, dozens of anxious travelers whose flights had been diverted watched news programs solemnly.
Kathy Foley, 49, a United Airlines flight attendant from Chicago, was stranded in the hotel lobby after mechanical problems delayed her 9 a.m. flight. "Everything was perfect at 8 o'clock this morning," she said. "Nobody had any idea anything was happening. This is not what our country was about. As horrible as it is to say it, I want revenge. "Shaken Pentagon worker Tracy Williams watches the flames. Employees evacuate the Pentagon after American Airlines Flight 77's crash tore a hole in the building's west side.
HOLLOWAY'S COMMENTARY:
There are two Flight 77 stories. They are at odds with one another. There is the Washington Post account you read here and there is the NTSB account. The Washington Post account has the plane flying south past the White House, forcing the Secret Service to rush Vice President Cheney to the PEOC, then with the engines full throttle pulling a 270 degree turn crashing through the windows 1E462 and 1E466 at over the speed of sound greater than 761 mph at sea level. Eyewitnesses on the ground heard a sonic boom as the plane passed over them [1]. Air Traffic Controllers thought Flight 77 was a military plane the way it flew that day.
The second story is Flight 77 flying from the west pulled a 330 degree turn before crashing through the windows 1E462 and 1E466 doing 530 mph and taking out the NOC/DIA offices at the Pentagon. The two most important offices for the American Empire in the management of world trade.
These two accounts are contradictory. They have Flight 77 flying at headings perpendicular to one another. In the NTSB account the plane is not flying supersonic. The initial account has it flying well over Mach-1. Which makes sense given the amount of damage done to the West wing.
So, what did the government do to cover this up? They created the "missile hit the Pentagon distraction." And, created the cover story that Barbara Olson was talking to her husband on her cell phone as Flight 77 careened into DIA-NOC offices at the Pentagon.
The main thing that was covered up was the planes were electronically hijacked.
Evasive Maneuvers
Flight 77 took evasive maneuvers in order to avoid the Pentagon's air defenses. It went into a steep dive and then executed a corkscrew descent going Mach 2.2 before the whole fuselage of the plane was stuffed through a window of the newly fortified wedge of the Pentagon. Which accounts for the sparse debris field on the Pentagon's lawn [5]. The 767 has the horsepower [2] and the aluminum [4] used to make the plane can handle the stress for a short period of time. A diving dash into the Pentagon. The computer flying the plane does not panic when stretching the envelope of the planes capabilities.
NOTES:
Boeing 707 Barrel Roll - Pilot Tex Johnston Performs Roll In Dash-80 Prototype Aircraft In 1955
1.
Sucherman, Joel
USAToday.com
Multimedia Editor, saw it all: an American Airlines jetliner fly left to right across his field of vision as he commuted to work Tuesday morning.
It was highly unusual. The large plane was 20 feet off the ground and a mere 50 to 75 yards from his windshield. . . .
"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."
"
Journalist Witnesses Pentagon Crash
," by John Dodge,
eweek.com
, 9/13/01
. . . There was a sonic boom and looking straight ahead there was a jet, what looked to be an American Airlines jet, probably a 757. And it came screaming across the highway, it was Route 110, on the west side of the Pentagon. The plane went west to east, hit the west side of the Pentagon. Immediately flames were strewing up into the air. There was white smoke. And then within seconds, thick black smoke. Everybody got out of their cars. People were shocked.
Then there was another plane that was off to the southwest and that made a beeline straight up into the sky and then angled off and we weren't sure if that was going to come around and make another hit or if it was just trying to get out of the way. That disappeared and we didn't see it again.
2.
The 757-200 has the horsepower needed to go over 1500 Mph at sea level. Maximum Horsepower of a 757 is 1,675,665 for 127.5 tons. 200,000 horsepower is needed to move 25 tons 1500 Mph at sea level. The 757 weighs 5.1 times 25 tons. Therefore the 757 needs 1,020,000 horsepower to fly 1500 mph or 1.97 Mach at sea level. So it is conceivable that Flight 77 hit the Pentagon travelling over Mach 2. This is another reason why the footage of the crash is still secret. If Flight 77 was going Mach 2 or more at the time of impact into this would account for the multiring breach at the Pentagon. But, this also breaks with the official story. It is impossible for them to explain. So the "it was a missile" diversion was created. It is a lot easier to throw up a lot of chaff rather than deal with explaining what really happened, especially if what really happened involves hacking the Honeywell avionics suite.
3.
Stinger (FIM-92A/B/C/D): The Stinger is similar in capabilities to the Russian Igla series. More recent versions are equipped with a cooled two-color, infrared-ultraviolet detector that discriminates between flares and the target. Stingers are able to effectively engage targets head-on, from behind and from the side. The missile's maximum range is 4800 meters, which is comparable to the Igla, but it has a much shorter minimum range (200 meters versus the Igla's 800 meter minimum). It is one of the fastest MANPADS missiles, traveling at Mach 2.2.
One problem with sustained supersonic flight is the generation of heat in flight. At high speeds aerodynamic heating can occur, so an aircraft must be designed to operate and function under very high temperatures. Duralumin, a material traditionally used in aircraft manufacturing, starts to lose strength and deform at relatively low temperatures, and is unsuitable for continuous use at speeds above Mach 2.2 to 2.4.
A lieutenant from the U.S. Navy, who was inside the west side of the Pentagon when the plane hit and helped get some people out that morning, advised us that there was the possibility of survivors in a communications bunker on the fourth floor of the E ring. Because the bunker is where workers were informed to retreat in the case of an attack on the building, the lieutenant requested that an attempt be made to locate the bunker. Because he felt a need to help save his brothers and sisters and because he knew the layout of the Pentagon better than any of us, he donned firefighting clothes and the breathing apparatus of an injured firefighter (a piece of debris was lodged in his eye). We re-entered the Pentagon and, following his lead, attempted to reach the fourth floor. Unfortunately the bunker had not survived the initial impact of Flight 77.
James S. Robbins, from his west-facing office window, one and a half miles east of the Pentagon, saw "the 757" as it was "diving in at an unrecoverable angle." "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."
