9/11 - WTC/Pentagon/Shanksville m.m - Tråd Nr 2

“It was going upside down and all at once it made the 45 degree angle and it went right down where that big tree is, right where my finger is pointing,” he said in 2002.
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“When I got up there, the mail was still falling out of the sky – that’s how much mail was in the bottom of that plane,” he said.

“It was moving like you wouldn’t believe. Next thing I knew it makes a heck of a sharp, right-hand turn.” It banks to the right and appears to be trying to climb to clear one of the ridges, but it continues to turn to the right and then veers behind a ridge. About a second later it crashes.
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“It dropped out of the clouds.” The plane rose slightly, trying to gain altitude, then “it just went flip to the right and then straight down.”

He sees it fly overhead, banking hard to the right. It is 200 feet or less off the ground as it crests a hill to the southeast. “I saw the top of the plane, not the bottom.

“I saw the plane flying upside down overhead and crash into the nearby trees. My buddy, Doug, and I grabbed our fire extinguishers and ran to the scene,”

“There was an incredibly loud rumbling sound and there it was, right there, right above my head—maybe 50 feet up.… I saw it rock from side to side then, suddenly, it dipped and dived, nose first, with a huge explosion, into the ground. I knew immediately that no one could possibly have survived.”

She hears a loud bang and sees the plane bank to the side. [ABC NEWS, 9/11/2001] She sees the plane wobbling right and left, at a low altitude of roughly 2,500 feet, when suddenly the right wing dips straight down, and the plane plunges into the earth. She says she has an unobstructed view of Flight 93’s final two minutes

“It came in low over the trees and started wobbling. Then it just rolled over and was flying upside down for a few seconds… and then it kind of stalled and did a nose dive over the trees.

"I just watched with my mouth open as this yellow mushroom cloud rose up just like an atomic bomb over the hill where I like to go hunting," said 72- year-old John Walsh
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Debris, including photographs and other papers that survived the fireball, was strewn over a wide area. Residents have spent days collecting it.

"It was low enough, I thought you could probably count the rivets. You could see more of the roof of the plane than you could the belly. It was on its side. There was a great explosion and you could see the flames. It was a massive, massive explosion. Flames and then smoke and then a massive, massive mushroom cloud."

"There was a crater in the ground that was really burning," Peterson said. Strewn about were pieces of clothing hanging from trees and parts of the Boeing 757, but nothing bigger than a couple of feet long, he said. Many of the items were burning.

The ensuing firestorm lasted five or 10 minutes and reached several hundred yards into the sky, said Joe Wilt, 63, who also lives a quarter-mile from the crash site.

“I looked out the window and saw the plane nose-dive right into the ground,” she said, barefoot and shaken just 45 minutes after the crash.
The explosion buckled her garage doors and blasted open a latched window on her home, she said.
“It was just a streak of silver. Then a fireball shot up as high as the clouds. There was no way anybody could have survived. I called 911 right away.

He can remember his first time there, 10.45am, Tuesday, September 11 * the stench of jet fuel, still puddled on the ground, the smell of the burnt and smouldering trees and grass, the silence of nature and the men who had arrived to find they could do nothing, the overwhelming evidence that a Boeing 757, 55 metres long and weighing 110 tonnes, had somehow been obliterated, and with it, the 44 people on board.

Retired FBI commander Roland Corvington, who investigated the site, spoke in a broken voice about what he found after the crash, how “the site was still smoldering and the smell of jet fuel permeated the air”.

While enroute to the scene, there was a concern for the potential of large numbers of casualties. Chief Shaffer requested additional ambulances and EMS units dispatched to the scene. Two ambulances from outside the county were also alerted but were placed in service while responding. Upon arrival, firefighters found small pieces of the plane, spot fires, and a large quantity of fuel scattered across a wide debris field.

"We stopped and I opened the door. The smell of jet fuel was overpowering.

"There was a spot at the end where the emergency crews were gathering. I could see that it was smoking and burning a little bit. So I ran as fast as I could towards that spot. I ran right up to the crater. I was standing a few feet away, looking down into it. I was overwhelmed by the crater's depth and size, but there was nothing that I could identify as having been an airplane, except that there was this incredibly strong smell of jet fuel."

... The jet fuel smell was really strong...There were plane parts hanging in the trees."