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?

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-12511237/Mumsnet-user-mocked-asking-happened-planes-9-11-wondering-crash-landed-continued-flying.html

You know what I have just googled 'what happened to the planes..." and an answer doesn't just pop up. The first replies just talk about crashes and don't explicitly say they were destroyed.

I see this thread is now being enjoyed on Twitter.

There's some footage around where the angle is such that the result of the second impact can be seen but the aircraft isn't visible but that's simply due to line of sight from where the footage was shot..

If I recall things correctly none of the data recorders or voice recorders from the two WTC aircraft were recovered - again there's no need to think, as some do, that that is a big mystery.

Whilst the recorders are very robust they are not designed to survive intact after spending multiple hours at very very high temperatures, and what was left of them would have quite likely been indistinguishable from all the other rubble on the site.

Yes when that guy says ‘let’s roll’ it gives you a lump at the back of your throat. What makes the film so good but at the same time so awful is that they had the testimonies of the people on the ground who had received phone calls from the people on the plane and I think some recordings so what you’re watching is quite true to life. It’s so horrific what they went through. But yes so brave knew they were doing it to save others.

Just out of interest, how did it suddenly go to the one 4 floors underground? Was that where the food court etc was?

Well done you've made the Daily Fail !

There’s an excellent Hollywood film about it- United 93.

I have researched 9/11 in some significant depth. There are quite a lot of errors by PP on this thread that I just wanted to post about as well as informing the OP.

1. There is only one known video of the first plane (American 11) hitting the North Tower. The angle allows only to see it from the side that got hit. It was going over 400mph. Some parts of the plane were found up to half a mile away on the other side of the plane, having been blown out by the explosion. Some body parts were also seen on the ground immediately after impact. These were subsequently obliterated in the building collapse.

2. With the second plane to hit - United 175 into the south tower - one angle does show that the nose of the plane actually did go through the entire tower and come out the other side (just the nose). The plane then exploded with most of it still embedded in / travelling though the tower across 8 floors. This all happened within one second. Again, parts of the plane were found up to half a mile away on the other side of the impact. The hijacker pilot of this plane had climbed very fast to almost 40,000 feet before putting the plane into an alarmingly fast dive. The plane was going about 540mph when he hit, which is the speed at that low height at which the plane risked breaking up. He tilted his wing before impact. This meant that although the plane travelled through the tower and the nose came out the other side for milliseconds before it all exploded, stairway A remained intact from top to bottom. This allowed some people to escape from the impact zone and this was different to the North Tower in which all three stairways were severed on impact. Witnesses explain that they felt the whole top part of the tower move alarmingly to the Hudson River when the plane hit: they were used to some movement as the towers were designed to move in high winds, but these witnesses said they felt it was more than five metres movement and it was incredibly scary to experience before the tower righted itself; so the towers did initially cope with the impacts, despite the huge impact.

3. 99% (about 20,000) of the people who were below the impact zone of both towers did successfully escape.

4. Not everyone on the two planes into the towers was 'vaporised' unfortunately (although most were, or were blown apart). The witnesses in the tower who escaped subsequently told of being told by firefighters "don't look left" (at the plaza or other areas) as they escaped on ground level. Those people explain that they then felt compelled to look left. They saw hundreds of severed body parts, some of which by that stage would have been from jumpers or fallers. But some of which were from plane passengers. One British witness who was just below the impact zone said immediately after impact she saw what she thought were briefcases falling past her window. Then she found out these were suitcases from the planes. One witness explained that he saw aircraft seats with passengers still strapped in them on the plaza (ground level between the two towers) but the bodies strapped into the plane seats had missing body parts and limbs. This was awful to me to learn. It's dreadful. When the towers collapsed this area was all obliterated along with its grim evidence.

5. The Twin Towers did not comply with building regulations. This is fact, not conspiracy theory which I don't subscribe to. Under the 1960s code, there should have been six stairways per tower. The code changed just before the towers were built, but there still should have been four stairways and fire chiefs strongly recommended they were more spaced out. The decision not to do this was very likely to have caused over 1000 deaths in the North Tower alone above the impact zone as there was no intact escape route and no escalators were working either as the three escape stairways in each tower were all central.

The design of putting the central supports all in the centre also proved fatal: when the planes exploded, the sprayed-on fire protection on horizontal beams was blown off across multiple floors. And although we were all told that the planes were designed to withstand the impact of a Boeing 707, crucially nobody considered the impact of airplane jet fuel then exploding and burning with that study.

With the planes that flew into the towers, they were bigger than a 707 and their fuel weighed more than a fully-laden double decker bus. The fuel exploded and this severed all the sprinkler pipes in the towers at or above impact zones. (They only worked lower down where it wasn't initially needed). The spray on fire retardant was blown off the horizontal support beams. And the subsequent fires at very high temperatures caused the internal structure in the centre of the towers to ultimately fail. The outside structure of the tower was designed to be much more lightweight and although it did successfully adjust to some extent to the failing central support, ultimately it failed. The fire department knew they couldn't actually put the fires out at that height, but most did not know that the towers would collapse. Studies show that it was the fires that caused the towers to ultimately collapse rather than the physics of a plane flying into them. I do wonder to what extent the terrorists knew this; did they exploit the design weaknesses of the buildings?

6. American 77 flew into the Pentagon. It was going extremely fast and was only a few feet off the ground when it hit, killing all on board and over 100 people in the building.

7. United 93 had been delayed. This meant that when passengers called their loved ones, their relatives were able to tell them what the terrorised were doing; it was unheard of for terrorists not to return to an airport for their demands - flying them into buildings as suicide attacks was new and unthinkable. The passengers launched a fight back, aided by the fact that there were only four hijackers on board compared with five in the others (because one man had been stopped from entering the USA a few weeks before). United 93 was put into a huge dive and also flew upside down before impact. It must have been terrifying - as well as impossible for the passengers to stay on their feet to continue the fight back. It hit very soft ground of a former coal mine near Shanksville, Pennsylvania, so buried itself in the ground and most passengers were unfortunately vaporised in the impact, although investigators did find fragments in the ground and surrounding woodland of most passengers.

I hope nobody is offended by my descriptions here; they are the known facts of what happened and I've done a lot of study into it, including in the past month. I find it fascinating, horrifying and important to learn about.

@neveragainagain thank you. How utterly awful. I think about the twist of fear I feel when there's a little bit of turbulence on a flight - the sheer terror that these people must have felt is just beyond comprehension. May they be at peace now.

@neveragainagain

The hijacker pilot of this plane had climbed very fast to almost 40,000 feet before putting the plane into an alarmingly fast dive. The plane was going about 540mph when he hit, which is the speed at that low height at which the plane risked breaking up. He tilted his wing before impact.

Me being me I'd be interested in where that data has come from...you'd certainly struggle to get a 767, let alone a heavy one, "very fast to almost 40,000 feet".

FWIW a lot of the rest of what went on (high speed, and the bank) is thought to have been down to poor flying/lack of knowledge rather than deliberate actions designed to increase damage, but unfortunately for those on the ground not poor enough.

@notimagain this info is from the air traffic controller who was in charge of United 175: he described how the plane was not responding to his multiple requests to "squawk" or communicate, and then jt climbed at a rate unheard of with passengers on board because it was so rapid, probably to about 40000 feet.

It then descended at an alarming angle and speed.

Some of this knowledge came from other pilots who had eyes on United 175 and some from the air traffic controllers in the airport towers in NY who physically saw it.

There are documentaries and videos about this, and these include full length recordings of ATC as well as in person 1-1 interviews with them.

I know, a quick read of wikipedia or youtube would answer this instantly. Honestly, your generation is extremely lucky with these resources alone, and that's not counting the millions of other sources. This is a piss poor attempt at research. Pure laziness.

I watched an interesting documentary on Channel 5 last night about the impact locally. The flights that were grounded, the other terrorist attacks, the impact of local people elsewhere and local news. It gave an interesting new perspective.

As an aside, if anyone gets the chance to see the musical Come From Away they absolutely should. It's about the planes that were grounded on 9/11 at a tiny remote airport in Canada with thousands of passengers onboard, and how the community there dealt with it. It's amazing.

this info is from the air traffic controller who was in charge of United 175: he described how the plane was not responding to his multiple requests to "squawk" or communicate,

Yep I know what squawk is, had to do it myself more than a few times over the years.

"and then jt climbed at a rate unheard of with passengers on board because it was so rapid, probably to about 40000 feet."

I'll be honest and say based on observation that whilst I know the 767 was a good "climber" I find find it tough to believe, without seeing the data, that a 767 fuelled up for a transcontinental US sector would be capable a rapid climb up to "about 40,000 feet" shortly after take-off, but I guess a lot depends on what the ATC'er meant by "rapid" and "about"

In the grand scheme of things of course it's a bit irrelevant so I won't bore on any more by going any further down that rabbit hole.

Thank you @Elleherd and @neveragainagain for your information, I learned some things I didn’t know from your posts.

For those asking about the burning jet fuel in the lift shafts, my guess is that the floors affected were simply down to wherever the lift doors happened to be open at the moment of impact.

There’s well documented evidence about the burning jet fuel that exploded into the lobby of the North Tower.

This interview with Jules Naudet (one of the French filmmakers who captured the only known footage of the North Tower being hit) describes what he saw, but be warned it is quite graphic.

https://www.theguardian.com/media/2002/sep/12/september112001.usnews

If all of that is accurate, especially the sections on plane debris being found in multiple locations, that somewhat justifies the OP asking what happened to the planes, and tells the posters who ridiculed her and/or claimed that the planes and everyone in them were vaporized on impact that they were in face incorrect.

@notimagain me again! You're clearly a pilot (or were) and I'm not, so I won't argue the point either; you're correct in that it's not important in the grand scheme of things.

But just to say that United 175 did not do a rapid ascent from the ground to 40,000 feet. I think my other posts may have accidentally implied this. It did a relatively normal ascent to 37,000 feet. Indeed as the plane crossed into a new ATC sector, the United 175 pilots reported the alarming radio transmissions they'd heard earlier from American 11 on the same radio frequency. That was the last transmission to ATC from the pilots of United 175.

Then shortly afterwards the ATCs working that day believe that once the hijackers took over it did a shockingly fast climb to 40,000 feet followed by an even more shocking dive. Not sure if my other posts were clear enough.

That's most informative thank you.

I keep coming back on this thread to defend the OP asking her question, I feel like I've learnt a lot from this discussion, shutting it down by belittling the OP helps nobody.

Elleherd I don't have a problem with even some of the more grotesque parts of reality. It is what it is. I've never watched any commercial films based on 9/11. I don't think I could withstand it dramatized.
Most of my research was done at the time or within the first couple of years after, when access to most material was available uncensored to anyone researching specific subjects.

GoingToBeLessRubbishAtLife.
It is not so much that fuel ‘flowed’ down elevator shafts. There was actually not that much fuel, but the weight of it combined with velocity was what allowed the wings of the planes to slice through the heavier buildings outer structures.
The fuel tanks ruptured. In both planes it's believed approximately 1/3 of the fuel burned instantly. The rest was propelled across the crash site, much of it almost certainly atomized.
In survivors’ testimonies the difficulty breathing because of it is described. There are no references from survivors to it pooling on the floor. This doesn’t mean it didn’t of course, but it is more likely most was atomized.
This is also supported by what happened in the lobby (and other exit points) very swiftly after. One of the lobby witnesses is Jules Naudet, one of the documentary makers who entered minutes after filming the impact. He rightly chose not to film what he saw.

Someone else may be able to explain this more scientifically as I've forgotten half of what I ever knew, but from a laymans pov; When a fireball forms it is combining with and ‘chasing’ oxygen to continue burning. This gives it it's speed as unburnt oxygen sucks the ball towards it. Confined shafts, corridors or routes such as ducts etc, speed it up further.

Major ventilation holes caused by the planes entering the buildings is why you see the mushroom fireballs appear outside, and expand as they suck more oxygen in from the edges. Additional ventilation happens as windows on different surrounding floors break, pulling fire towards them inside and igniting flammable material in their path.

(The ensuing fires around the planes continued to be fed by oxygen, eventually burning the planes themselves. The planes material burns at temperatures over 600 degrees.)

Additionally, there is pre-existing ‘large ventilation’ from the crash sites, in the form of lift shafts and where doors are open or destroyed- stairways.
These act to draw fireballs down them at speed. When those hit a large area of oxygen (such as a lobby) they erupt as mushrooming fire balls and a flash fire. The actual fire source self-extinguishes swiftly, but what it has hit, often doesn’t.
Fireballs do immense damage to humans in split seconds, and our bodies are combustible material.

Fires on other floors and areas didn’t directly contribute to the collapse, but caused death, injury, chaos, responder confusion, diversion of resources etc, and have been used repeatedly by conspiracy theorists for their own ends.

We know about the travel of internal fireballs from survivor testimony, aftermath in the background of footage, dispatching of firefighters to level where flash fires took hold, and the horrific injuries of those who survived them, and where they were when injured. We also have the testimonies of those who helped them or attempted to.
Later models, both physical and mathematical support the above.

Understanding these differences are really important, both in trying to design better buildings, emergency response, and survival.

Fashionqueen1183 Food courts etc were on B1, and B2.
B4 included the maintenance companies base.
There where lots of different lifts, most not traversing the whole length of the building.
One of the biggest freight lifts (50A?) connected to B4.
A fireball traveled down it with sufficient velocity to take out it's cables. An employee waiting for it on B4 was severely burned when the fireball erupted blowing out the doors. He ran badly burned into the building maintenance office where another employee who had heard the impact moments earlier (and assumed a generator explosion) helped him get out, before returning to unlock many doors for firefighters.
The testimony of the burned survivor, matched others at other locations were fireballs erupted from lift shafts, swiftly after the impact.

If all of that is accurate, especially the sections on plane debris being found in multiple locations, that somewhat justifies the OP asking what happened to the planes

DID THEY COME TO A CRASH LANDING AFTERWARDS? OR DID THEY CONTINUE FLYING?

Doesn’t really justify asking those questions imho.

The WTC had five floors below ground, so the 4th underground floor would have been just above where the jet fuel accumulated.

I'm not sure exactly what was on the fourth underground floor. The whole underground complex was shops and restaurants. I bought a pair of shoes there once.

Youu need to work a bit harder on your research OP. There are countless hours of 9/11 footage showing quite clearly what happened to the planes and passengers. Countless articles by relatives and witnesses. Why you feel its appropriate to ask on here is unfathomable to me. I'm sure 'ask mumsnet' isn't the first answer when you Google your question.