WHAT DID HAPPEN TO FLIGHT 93?

RICHARD WALLACE, US Editor, examines riddle of hijacked jet as he visits crash site

THE unmarked military-style jet swooped down at high speed through the valley, twice circled the smouldering black scar where Flight 93 had careered into the ground just seconds earlier and then hurtled off over the horizon.

At least six eyewitnesses saw the mysterious aircraft on the morning of September 11 last year. But the US authorities deny it ever existed.

So when George Bush laid a wreath yesterday at the crash site in a remote valley outside Shanksville, Pennsylvania, he was one of only a handful of people who know what really happened to the 40 innocents and four hijackers aboard the doomed United Airlines Boeing 757-200.

Those unimaginable final seconds as passengers showed courageous defiance apparently wrestling for control of the aircraft have become one of the defining images of the tragedy.

And "Let's roll" - ringleader Todd Beamer's no-nonsense call to arms - became a defining battle cry in America's war on terror.

But of the four aircraft taken on September 11, the exact fate of Flight 93 after its two-hour journey is proving difficult for US officials to explain.

What was the white jet doing there and why won't they admit to its presence? Why did other witnesses see smoke and flames trailing from Flight 93 as it fell from the sky, indicating a possible explosion aboard?

Or - and this is proving to be the most uncomfortable question of all - in the moments before the airliner piled into the black, spongey earth at 575mph did an American fighter pilot have to do the unthinkable and shoot down a US civil airliner?

Susan Mcelwain, 51, who lives two miles from the site, knows what she saw - the white plane rocketed directly over her head.

"It came right over me, I reckon just 40 or 50ft above my mini-van," she recalled. "It was so low I ducked instinctively. It was travelling real fast, but hardly made any sound.

"Then it disappeared behind some trees. A few seconds later I heard this great explosion and saw this fireball rise up over the trees, so I figured the jet had crashed. The ground really shook. So I dialled 911 and told them what happened.

"I'd heard nothing about the other attacks and it was only when I got home and saw the TV that I realised it wasn't the white jet, but Flight 93.

Ididn't think much more about it until the authorities started to say there had been no other plane. The plane I saw was heading right to the point where Flight 93 crashed and must have been there at the very moment it came down.

"There's no way I imagined this plane - it was so low it was virtually on top of me. It was white with no markings but it was definitely military, it just had that look.

"It had two rear engines, a big fin on the back like a spoiler on the back of a car and with two upright fins at the side. I haven't found one like it on the internet. It definitely wasn't one of those executive jets. The FBI came and talked to me and said there was no plane around.

"Then they changed their story and tried to say it was a plane taking pictures of the crash 3,000ft up.

"But I saw it and it was there before the crash and it was 40ft above my head. They did not want my story - nobody here did."

Mrs Mcelwain, who looks after special needs children, is further convinced the whole truth has yet to come out because of a phone call she had within hours from the wife of an air force friend of the family.

"She said her husband had called her that morning and said 'I can't talk, but we've just shot a plane down,' " Susan said. "I presumed they meant Flight 93. I have no doubt those brave people on board tried to do something, but I don't believe what happened on the plane brought it down.

"If they shot it down, or something else happened, everyone, especially the victims' families, have a right to know."

Lee Purbaugh, 32, was the only person to see the last seconds of Flight 93 as it came down on former strip-mining land at precisely 10.06am - and he also saw the white jet.

He was working at the Rollock Inc. scrapyard on a ridge overlooking the point of impact, less than half a mile away. "I heard this real loud noise coming over my head," he told the Daily Mirror. "I looked up and it was Flight 93, barely 50ft above me. It was coming down in a 45 degree and rocking from side to side. Then the nose suddenly dipped and it just crashed into the ground. There was this big fireball and then a huge cloud of smoke."

But did he see another plane? "Yes, there was another plane," Lee said. "I didn't get a good look but it was white and it circled the area about twice and then it flew off over the horizon."

Tom Spinelli, 28, was working at India Lake Marina, a mile and a half away. "I saw the white plane," he said.

"It was flying around all over the place like it was looking for something. I saw it before and after the crash."

India Lake also contributes to the view there was an explosion on board before the Newark-San Francisco flight came down. Debris rained down on the lake - a curious feat if, as the US government insists, there was no mid-air explosion and the plane was intact until it hit the ground.

"It was mainly mail, bits of in-flight magazine and scraps of seat cloth," Tom said. "The authorities say it was blown here by the wind." But there was only a 10mph breeze and you were a mile and a half away? Tom raised his eyebrows, rolled his eyes and said: "Yeah, that's what they reckon."

Light debris was also found eight miles away in New Baltimore. A section of engine weighing a ton was located 2,000 yards - over a mile -from the crash site. Theorists point out a Sidewinder heat-seeking missile attacks the hottest part of aircraft - the engine.

The authorities say the impact bounced it there. But the few pieces of surviving fuselage, local coroner Wallace Miller told us, were "no bigger than a carrier bag".

Nearly all the passengers were reduced to charcoal on impact and the largest piece of human tissue found was a section of spine eight inches long.

CURIOUSLY, military officials insist there was never any pursuit of Flight 93, although they were informed that it was a suspected hijack at 9.16am, 50 minutes before the plane came down.

At 9.35am they assumed it was heading for Washington DC after it changed course in a 180 degree turn and three F-16s - top speed 1,800mph - now patrolling over the capital were told to "protect the White House at all costs".

An anonymous flight controller said on the day that an F-16 was "in hot pursuit" of Flight 93 - Washington to Shanksville is seven to 10 minutes flying time.

A few minutes before the crash Bill Wright, piloting a single-engine Piper, could see Flight 93 three miles away, but was suddenly told to turn away and land immediately without explanation.

At 9.58am a 911 call - the last mobile phone contact from Flight 93 - was made from one of the airliner's toilets by passenger Edward Felt.

Glenn Cramer, the emergency supervisor who answered it, said on the day: "He was very distraught. He said he believed the plane was going down.

"He did hear some sort of an explosion and saw white smoke coming from the plane, but he didn't know where. And then we lost contact with him." Glenn Cramer has now been gagged by the FBI.

Also, according to sources, the last seconds of the cockpit voice recorder are the loud sounds of wind, hinting at a possible hole somewhere in the fuselage. What caused the smoke and explosion? Why the wind sounds?

The FBI's later explanation for the white jet was that a passing civilian Fairchild Falcon 20 jet was asked to descend from 34,000ft to 5,000ft some minutes after the crash to give co-ordinates for the site. The plane and pilot have never been produced or identified. Susan Mcelwain says a Falcon 20 was not the plane she saw.

FURTHER verification that some kind of military aircraft was operating in the area is scientifically irrefutable.

At 9.22am a sonic boom - caused by supersonic flight - was picked up by an earthquake monitoring station in southern Pennsylvania, 60 miles from Shanksville.

That Todd Beamer and others launched an assault on the hijackers there is no doubt. The brief extracts released from audio tapes indicate a fierce struggle going on at the cockpit door.

But nobody - official or otherwise - has categorically said the group got into the cockpit or that their actions led to the crash. Those final, agonising moments are mere presumption.

President Bush and his team have the whole story. So why aren't they telling the rest of us?

At least SIX witnesses, including Susan Mcelwain saw a small military type plane flying around shortly BEFORE UA93 crashed. The FBI denies its existence

The US Government insists the plane exploded on impact yet a one-ton section of the engine was found over a mile away and other light debris was found scattered over eight miles away

Passenger Edward Felt made an emergency call from the plane. He spoke of an explosion and seeing some white smoke. The superviser who took the call has been gagged by the FBI

UA93 was identified as a hijack at 9.16am. At 9.35am three F-16s were ordered to "protect the White House at all costs" when it turned towards the capital. At 10.06am it crashed at Shanksville, less than 10mins flying time from Washington

Sources claim the last thing heard on the cockpit voice recorder is the sound of wind - suggesting the plane had been holed

The FBI insists there was no military plane in the area but at 9.22am a sonic boom - caused by a supersonic jet - was picked up by an earthquake monitor in southern Pennsylvania, 60 miles away from Shanksville.

But of course, the *facts* don't matter to a good conspiratorialist OR a member of the general public who really has *no desire* to understand how the world (especially the technical world) functions around them.

The following was an e-mail exchange that delved a little deeper into 'reports' that were circulating and *why* certain things were improbable and unlikely to have occured.

And remember, you *won't* hear this from anybody else ...

   "one of the passengers was in the
    washroom when he called."
This, in paticular, was an early media report. I *too* heard this *early* report ...
As we now know, the hijackers, it seems, had no particular qualms (sp?) about passengers making 'phone calls'.
Additionally - making a 'phone call' from a lavatory on an aircraft like that would be doubly difficult from a signal transmissison standpoint - there are **no windows** (aperatures) from which the signal can escape the aircaft fuselage without a lot of loss!! This is an important matter if you have ever tried to work 2 Meters using an HT (Handie-Talkie) from inside a car. Granted, 146 MHz is about 1/6 that of a cell phone and will work with a proportionally smaller aperature - the signal must first traverse from inside the aircraft 'til an aperature/aperatures is encountered THEN propagation into free space and a cell site can be made.
This is an additional reason why I do not 'buy into' this story ...
Furthermore - *no* credible storys heard in the second person (the person called) have in any way alluded too or confirmed a 'cell phone' was used.
Never having tried making a phone call from an aircraft, but being intimately aware as having actually done the design, the layout, assigned the frequency reuse/freq groups and sectorization of a cellular/PCS system followed by the supervision of in-service drives by the STA (System Test Analysts) - I HIGHLY doubt a call of any usable duration could be (what is termed) 'held' if indeed a call even could have been 'dialed' ... it would be more likely in an open- terrain/open-country environ where the cells are not spaced as closely together - but the same rules basic (reuse of frequencies, etc) still apply. These systems are planned and designed to provide service to ground-based phones - and use the isolation of the landscape to re-use the same frequencies over and over - place a 'user' aboard an aircraft - and the nothing in terms of that phone call, such as freedom from interference, can be assured and the call will likely 'drop' in a short time ...
You see, all these antennas on water towers and free-standing "candlabra" structures focus the majority of their energy in a narrow beam:

 o Elevation pattern - 10 to 15 degrees or so. Assuming
   *no* downtilt, only half of this (5 to 5.5 degrees)
   pattern is above the horizon. 

 o Azimuth pattern - 120 degrees (some antennas slightly 
   more, some slightly less)

Cellular/PCS base stations therefore *do not* have much of a pattern a) overhead or b) much signal strength at even a 30 degree or 45 degree elevation angle above the horizon.
GTE Airphone base-stations, by contrast, *do* have an entirely different antenna system, and are engineered to provide 'service' into space using antennas with much *larger* vertical beamwidths.
Also, no-one seems to 'question' the simple assertion that a cell phone was used on really simple common-sense basis either. On board an aircraft, I normally place my phone in my briefcase then either stow that under the seat or place it in the overhead. We probably all do - with the exception of women who place their phone into their purses.
Now, my question is, were all these passengers, when hearded to the rear of the plane, allowed to remove their personal effects (men - briefcases, women - handbags/purses) from where they had stored them from under seats of overhead storage?
I wouldn't think so ... another *reason* all these 'cell phone' stories' are media mis-perception/mis- characterization. It is much more plausable - and ALL substantial accounts now indicate - that the aircrafts's 'Airphone' service was used ...


----- Original Message -----
From: "---------------" <------------.com>
To: "_Jim" <----------@------.com>
Sent: Thursday, September 20, 2001 11:07 AM
Subject: Re: Interesting, chilling article

>> _Jim, if I remember correctly one of the passengers was in the 
> washroom when he called. He reported a flash and the phone 
> went dead. It  may have been the plane where the passengers 
> tried to take over. ----------.
>
> _Jim wrote:
>
> >      "In recent days, snippets of **cell
> >       phone calls** that originated from
> >       the four hijacked flights ..."
> >
> > From the personal testimony (during interviews)
> > of the several people/groups receiving phone
> > calls from people aboard these planes - they did
> > NOT use cell phones, they used instead the (GTE?)
> > *Airphone* service available on these flights!!!
> >
> > In fact, Alice Hoglan (Flight Attendant) whose son
> > (aboard flight 93, the one that fought the hijackers)
> > called her CORRECTED on-the-air the interviewer TWICE
> > as to how he called her ... another call from that
> > same plane was *also* an 'Airphone' call.
> >
> > Further down in the story we have this:
> >
> >     "It is unclear from the phone account where
> >      Sweeney was when she was talking to the
> >      ground manager or what type of phone she
> >      used."
> >
> > ... we have an intellectually lazy news media who
> > have apparently NEVER flown and seen let alone USED
> > those phones that are situated on the backs of
> > most airplane seats ...
> >
> > Do you *really* think that a flight attendant
> > would use her *own* cell phone - or facilities
> > that are ever-present and *known* to work in the
> > air (such as the 'Airphone' service)?
> >
> > I would like to hear stories from someone who
> > has used a cell phone aboard a flight while in
> > the air - I have personally used 2-way handheld
> > UHF radio gear while inn flight - the range is
> > tremendous (as one would expect).
> >
> > The problem with using a cell phone aboard an
> > aircraft in flight is that the *cell phone* will
> > be literally *seeing* control channels from *multiple*
> > cell sites concurrently - quite possibly to the
> > point that no individual, clear usable signal can
> > be found such that *no* call can be placed in the
> > first place let alone the call 'held' for any
> > usable duration.
> >
> > The only reason I get 'up' like this on this subject
> > is that I have spent a goodly part of my life, both
> > professionally and as a ham radio operator, working
> > on, designing, using or planning 2-way and cellular
> > networks or working in industry in telephony and I
> > just can't stand idly (sp?) by while more 'myths'
> > are propagated by the media on a rather straight-
> > forward (but little understood) technology ....
> >
> > 
> >
> > _Jim
> >


Greetings Alpha One:

Cheers.

A picture is worth a thousand words. Post #13 re-affirms the statement. Although I never saw that photo before, the photo is consistent with the pilot's stories.

The photo in post 13 appears to have been taken some time after the crash, as there is no fireball. It is also some distance from the crash site. Needless to say, it is also quite possible that the image has been doctored, as there does appear to be editing artifacts in the image. Enlarging the image without resampling should provide even pixalation, whereas this image indicates uneven pixalation with pronounced dropoffs, especially in the areas in the top left portion of the image proceeding from the cloud of smoke.

The Mirror owns a printing press and buys its ink by the barrel. Unfortunately, those facts may give an illusion of credibility; but those facts alone do not make a left wing agenda driven publisher's information trustworthy.

Whatever the agenda of the messenger, the facts remain the same. It is simply a matter of wanting to know the truth. Typical in these situations where the truth is not out in the open, there are those that resort to ad hominem arguments in order to challenge the credibility of the information presented. I doubt those eyewitnesses that actually saw the events unfold are leftists, and I doubt that they are trying to embarrass the administration. They are simply reporting what they saw.

Military aircraft might not show up on civilian radar if they don't wish to be "seen".
Only when completely wrapped in tin-foil-backed duct tape. :)

For your information, military jets do not need to wrap themselves in "tinfoil" to avoid being seen on radar. First of all, they can set their transponders to where they don't respond to civilian transponder interrogation. Secondly, they carry electronic countermeasures that allow them to evade detection on military radar. Civilian radar is much less sophisticated than military radar, accordingly, is much easier to fool.

Air navigation rules, much like her older sister, surface navigation rules; are for safety and apply for all military, commercial, and civilian users of USA air space.

Under ordinary conditions, true. Not true when an aircraft is on a combat mission under wartime rules. I'd say that morning of September 11, 2001, our fighter aircraft guarding Washington DC were operating under wartime rules.

Chances are the US DOT has them on-line. Rules logically include assigned ATC radio frequencies, transponder use, navigation lights and traffic separation schemes, such as specific altitudes for direction traveled. On the night of 9/11, the only aircraft over Chicago where the military types, with functional navigation lights.

Once we were no longer under attack, I'm sure the rules reverted back to normal.

From my experience with radar, transponders paint a significant picture on radar. The 9/11 hijackers secured transponders, which made it very difficult for ATC'ers to follow four relatively huge radar blips.

Commercial airliners carry a transponder which identifies their altitude, airspeed, and identifying information. Military aircraft are equipped with transponders that function that way in normal conditions, but in a combat mode, they operate in a different mode using classified frequencies. They would not show up on civilian radar.

Greetings Alpha One:
The photo in post 13 appears to have been taken some time after the crash, as there is no fireball. It is also some distance from the crash site. Needless to say, it is also quite possible that the image has been doctored, as there does appear to be editing artifacts in the image. Enlarging the image without resampling should provide even pixalation, whereas this image indicates uneven pixalation with pronounced dropoffs, especially in the areas in the top left portion of the image proceeding from the cloud of smoke.

You are welcome to your opinion. In my opinion, given the facts presented in this thread, no reasonable fire science novice would agree.

Get ten people to witness anything, you'll get different, but reasonably identical versions of the event. Some are very detail oriented, others incredibly vague. However, there are very evil people in a world that can produce one Saddam Hussein. In that huge spectrum of in-between, many irrational people will always hate, and try to kill YOU, because YOU are the USA. The USA fills prison death rows with people of the same stripe. Further down that spectrum we have leftists; they despise us because as free people, we prosper.

Now I understand why this place is called the "Smokey Backroom." :)

Greetings again Alpha One:

For your information, military jets do not need to wrap themselves in "tinfoil" to avoid being seen on radar. First of all, they can set their transponders to where they don't respond to civilian transponder interrogation. Secondly, they carry electronic countermeasures that allow them to evade detection on military radar. Civilian radar is much less sophisticated than military radar, accordingly, is much easier to fool.

So why would a military pilot, in friendly skies, need to do this?

Would you mind sharing your source of this information with me?

Once we were no longer under attack, I'm sure the rules reverted back to normal.

Perhaps you are wrong? Maybe the threat condition was maintained up until commecial air traffic resumed? From there, perhaps the threat condition gradully ratched down to what we now know as our current "yellow" threat condition?

Would you mind providing a source for that information?

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