9/11 - what happened to the planes?

[myyve]

Thinking on from that awful day after the anniversary yesterday, one thought has come to mind.

What happened to the planes and those onboard, once they were flown into the twin towers? I know this probably does sound silly and I'm so sorry if it comes across as ignorant, but I truly do not know, and the internet doesn't mention anything, either..

Did they come to a crash landing afterwards? Or did they continue flying? What actually happened to the plane and those poor souls on board?

myyve some of us watching genuinely thought it was a film scene or movie clip. I certainly did.
This is what I remember about it. I always watched Diagnosis Murder after work and I was disappointed because I thought it had been replaced by a disaster film. It took a while to realise it was actually real. Horrific.

I remember that thread. (Threads?) Very sad, but respectful, informative and people 'showed their working' in terms of their engineering assertions.

This thread, not so much.

@WhatWhereWho as I've mentioned several times below, I have been on mumsnet for a long time, having contributed to various other posts. MNHQ have also been present on this thread. I'm sure if they believed me to be a troll, they would have taken action.

Mumsnet is really full of some of the nastiest people.

op it isn’t in poor taste at all. You seem genuinely lovely.

Exactly this!

Ignore the nasty people, they are on every thread.

None of us know everything (even though some on here think they do) and we have to learn everything, often by asking questions.

There is no such thing as a stupid question.
I’m sure there are plenty of things that you know that a lot on here don’t.

Well the US is basically doing what many other countries have done as part of empire building/establishing dominance for thousands of years, using the most up to date technology available.

In the next few hundred years other countries will do the same. One day they’ll destroy the world.

That's a whole different can of worms. They almost obliterated their Native American population and still keep them in "reserves" while creating a whole Hollywood industry making them as savages and blood thirsty animals against their colonisers.

The power of US multinationals (the ones in control of the US government) is very much felt today by all of us. From refusing to accept climate change to the war they are trying to control right now in Eastern Europe.

I can't even get through these responses.

Bunch of arseholes.

With the Titan threads whilst waiting for the conclusion, there were many discussions about there wouldn't be any debris left as everything would be vaporised, but that wasn't the case.

I am sure OP didn't mean the planes carried on as if nothing happened, but as others have said you could imagine a plane slicing through the tower and then plummeting to the ground on the other side. Again others on here have said there would be nothing left, but again some debris was found.

For those of us who were old enough to watch it real time (I was at work and we were all gathered round the tv in our reception area) it didn't feel real or possible that something like that could happen, and then to see the towers collapse, and there are many theories around as to why that happened.

Most images of aircraft crashes show parts of the plane intact, even if they exploded in flames. I am always amazed on how intact the cockpit of the Pan Am plane was in Lockerbie.

I'm not offended. However, it being in another country doesn't come into it.

There were people that were killed from every nation on earth. There were people on the island from every nation on earth.

I had a family member caught up in 9/11. He survived, however, as he has never been the same since.

I had family caught up in 7/7 in London.

So it's a matter of sensitivity, really. I did find the question a bit bizarre at first until I had read the OP other posts and understood what she was getting at and why.

Nearly everybody on earth knew where they were that day, and it certainly did change the world forever

I have been on my course for only 6 days. I'm completely new to this field. I'm still learning, and of course I will make mistakes. I am sorry for any offence caused. I wouldn't dream of posting anything like this for any reason other than the one in which I have. I wouldn't EVER want to cause upset or harm or hurt to anybody.

Way to go to deter a young woman from entering engineering, you horrid lot. We need more female engineers, not fewer, so don't attack them.

OP: it's a naive question but not a distasteful one, any more than it would be distasteful to ask why the Titanic went down bow-first. I suspect that the timing of your question, bring very close to the anniversary of 9/11, has made people suspicious of your motives.

Aeronautics isn't my specialism but generally, aircraft are pretty fragile and tend to break apart when they hit buildings or terrain. They are designed to be lightweight and have clear, per-airframe documentation of their design limits that commercial pilots have to study as part of their per-airframe certification. Flying an airliner nose-first into any large solid object is going to result in the airliner breaking into pieces because it's simply not designed to cope with head-on collisions. When the fuel tanks (which are in the wings) rupture, kerosene will leak out, ignite on contact with the hot jet engines and turn what remains of the airliner into a fireball.

As PP have hinted, this type of incident is not survivable and the people onboard would have been terrified.

Because I assumed it would be about whether wreckage had been found and examined and not the ridiculous and disrespectful question it turned out to be.

I genuinely don’t believe this person is taking the piss. They have asked on a forum where lots of people ask various questions and lots of topics are discussed. And it’s not that basic, the OP has said they’re six days into their course. I did a whole three years at uni and still couldn’t understand the basic maths required to pass.

It's nasty to point out that someone claiming to not understand what happened when planes hit the buildings or ploughed into the ground is winding people up? Or to not be able to look it up properly?

OP, don't be disheartened. If you are at the early stages of study, there's no shame in working on your research and critical thinking skills. Not everyone starts their course being an expert in that - but they are important skills to work on and perhaps some of the feedback you've received can be put to good use.

Your initial question was too emotive for what you were trying to achieve and so was always going to bring up some difficult responses. Perhaps better questions for you to ask would have been: "Does anyone know where I can find studies or reports on the engineering aspects of the damage caused on 9/11?" "What is the best academic journal for articles on [aerospace/structural engineering], particularly those covering studies following 9/11 and the WTC?"

Lots and lots of work was done by engineers on simulations of the events to learn what worked and what didn't. Most professions have academic journals that will include articles on these sorts of things.

Try Google Scholar - I found this by searching "9/11 impact engineering":
http://www.ce.memphis.edu/3121/stuff/general/aibs_2002_wtc.pdf

And via a super quick Google:
https://www.cs.purdue.edu/cgvlab/papers/popescu/popescuWTCVIS07.pdf

Obviously, you need to consider the sources of those articles to ensure you're on the right track.

As a previous poster said, it's important to properly understand what has happened - but this was a highly sensitive topic that required a little more care. I hope the above is constructive and helpful and so you know what you need to work on.

This is a 23 year old adult not a schoolchildren who may genuinely not know. I am intrigued what type of course has allowed someone on to study engineering without any basic knowledge whatsoever.

Planes are made of aluminium - they probably exploded and melted and the people died on impact. At least that is what I hope happened. It is those trapped in the basement who would have had longer and more gruesome deaths.

They were heavily laden with fuel OP as they had just taken off. They exploded on impact with the buildings.

How is the question disrespectful?

I get that you were a baby, but surely you've seen the footage of the planes hitting the towers -- they don't come out the other side.

It's against talk guidelines here to troll hunt. MN have looked and said its a genuine poster.

So yes, it's nasty to belittle and attack the OP for asking a question.