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http://urbanlegends.about.com/library/blflight77.htm


Dear Reader:

"Hunt the Boeing!" is a provocative display of smoke and mirrors, but there's little else to recommend the site. Its authors present a fraction of the available evidence in a highly selective, distorted, titillating way, proving absolutely nothing — except, perhaps, that there's always room for another conspiracy theory.

While making few explicit allegations, the authors argue, in effect, that based on photographic and physical evidence, the damage sustained by the Pentagon on September 11, 2001 could not have been caused by a crashing jetliner, contrary to the official and overwhelmingly accepted explanation.

The argument is weak. For starters, it conveniently ignores some of the most obvious, compelling evidence. For example:

Eyewitness testimony of bystanders who saw and/or heard American Airlines Flight 77 approach and collide with the Pentagon

The recovery of both black boxes belonging to the Boeing 757 from the Pentagon wreckage

The recovery and identification of the remains of all but one of the people known to be aboard Flight 77
Of course, evading bedrock evidence is standard procedure for conspiracy theorists. If pressed, they would doubtless claim that all of the above must have been planted or manufactured, but they can't even prove such a claim plausible, let alone true beyond a reasonable doubt.

An improbably successful cover-up

Make no mistake, the burden of proof is on the conspiracy theorists, whose case presupposes that all of the hundreds of people who participated in the clean-up, recovery and investigation following the 9/11 Pentagon attack — including scientists, engineers, coroners and professional air disaster investigators — are either dead wrong or participating in a massive, improbably successful government cover-up.

Eschewing plain facts and common sense, the conspiracy theorists ask us to focus instead on misleadingly posed condundrums such as the following:

Question: "Can you explain how a Boeing 757-200, weighing nearly 100 tons and travelling at a minimum speed of 250 miles an hour only damaged the outside of the Pentagon?"
Answer: It didn't only damage the outside. According to the Washington Post, structural damage extended at least 150 feet inside, well into the third ("C") ring of the building.


Question: "Can you explain how a Boeing 14.9 yards high, 51.7 yards long, with a wingspan of 41.6 yards and a cockpit 3.8 yards high, could crash into just the ground floor of this building?"
Answer: It didn't just crash into the ground floor. According to official statements and news reports, it took out both the first and second floors on impact.


Question: "Can you find debris of a Boeing 757-200 in this photograph?"
Answer: No, but we can in this one credited to a U.S. Navy photographer [enlarged version]. Bear in mind, eyewitnesses say the Boeing 757 virtually disintegrated when it struck the reinforced wall of the building. Given that, and the tremendous forward momentum of the aircraft on impact, the assumption that a significant amount of debris ought to be visible in front of the Pentagon wouldn't seem justified.

According to a CNN article published the day after the attack, Michael Tamillow, a battalion chief of the Fairfax County, Virginia Fire Department, reported that parts of the Boeing 757 fuselage had indeed been recovered from the wreckage by FBI investigators (the same team that later found the black boxes). "No large pieces apparently survived," the article said.

One visitor who surveyed the crash site a few days later, Representative Judy Biggert of Illinois, told reporters she saw remnants of the jetliner: "There was a seat from a plane," she said, "there was part of the tail and then there was a part of green metal, I could not tell what it was, a part of the outside of the plane." (Chicago Sun-Times, 16 Sep, 2001)

About Poll
Do you believe AA Flight 77 crashed into the Pentagon?
Yes.
No.
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Here's one obvious question the conspiracy theorists don't ask and certainly could not answer in any compelling way: If American Airlines Flight 77 didn't crash into the Pentagon, what did happen to the jetliner and all its passengers? Did it vanish into thin air?

(For a more detailed consideration of these and other "Hunt the Boeing" puzzles, please read the excellent commentary by engineer Paul Boutin and astrophysicist Patrick Di Justo.)

A conspiracy theory in the grand tradition

You're no doubt wondering who's behind these flights of fancy and what, exactly, they're driving at. Well, according to the French newspaper Le Monde, the culprit is Thierry Meyssan, well-known leftist radical and president of the Voltaire Network, a controversial site devoted to "the fight for freedom and secularity." His son, Rapha? Meyssan, is credited as the Webmaster of both the Voltaire Network and Utopian Asylum, which, uncoincidentally, hosts "Hunt the Boeing!"

What are they trying to prove? That the attacks of September 11 were perpetrated not by foreign terrorists, but by the U.S. government upon its own citizens — a conspiracy theory in the grand tradition.

To quote the late Carl Sagan, "Extraordinary claims require extraordinary proof."

So far we haven't seen any proof at all.


Sources and further reading:

Hunt the Boeing!
The original site on Asile.org
'Hunt the Boeing' Answers
Debunked by Paul Boutin and Patrick Di Justo

'Hunt the Boeing!'
Debunked by the Urban Legends Reference Pages

Un avion a bel et bien frapp?le Pentagone
From Le Monde, 20 March 2002 (in French)

Internet v?icule une rumeur extravagante sur le 11 septembre
From Le Monde, 20 March 2002 (in French)

No Hope of Finding More Survivors at Pentagon
From CNN, 12 Sep 2001

Images Show September 11 Pentagon Crash
From CNN, 8 March 2002

Interactive Look at Pentagon Attack
From USA Today

The Battle-Scarred Pentagon
From Jane's Information Group, 13 Sep 2001

Rebuilding the Pentagon
Graphics showing structural damage caused by Flight 77, from the Washington Post

Experts ID 184 Pentagon Fatalities
Armed Forces Institute of Pathology

The Pentagon: Facts & Figures
Offical Pentagon statistics