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Witness accounts
What did witnesses see, hear and experience around the Pentagon on 9/11? Here are some reports we've assembled. Please note this is just a first pass at the topic, and should not be considered as comprehensive or complete. Be sure to Google for other witness-related pages to get a rounded picture of events.
Video and audio clips
Policeman Richard Cox, "American Airlines plane"
Lt Col Steve O'Brien, "looks like a 757"
Text
I witnessed the jet hit the Pentagon on September 11.
From my office on the 19th floor of the USA TODAY building in Arlington, Va., I have a view of Arlington Cemetery, Crystal City, the Pentagon, National Airport and the Potomac River...
Shortly after watching the second tragedy, I heard jet engines pass our building, which, being so close to the airport is very common. But I thought the airport was closed. I figured it was a plane coming in for landing. A few moments later, as I was looking down at my desk, the plane caught my eye.
It didn't register at first. I thought to myself that I couldn't believe the pilot was flying so low. Then it dawned on me what was about to happen. I watched in horror as the plane flew at treetop level, banked slightly to the left, drug it's wing along the ground and slammed into the west wall of the Pentagon exploding into a giant orange fireball. Then black smoke. Then white smoke.James Madison University Alumni, October 1 2001
Like millions of people in this shocked nation, Deb Anlauf spent Tuesday morning staring in disbelief at a TV screen, watching smoke billow from the World Trade Center in New York City.
Then, at about 8:40 a.m. CDT, the largest terrorist action in this country's history hit closer to home for Anlauf and her husband, Jeff. The couple, who moved to Colfax from Australia four months ago, were at the Sheraton National Hotel in Arlington, Va., less than two blocks from the Pentagon when Deb Anlauf saw "a sight I never imagined I'd see."
Anlauf was watching TV coverage of the Trade Center burning shortly before 9:30 a.m. when she decided to return to her 14th-floor room from another part of the hotel. Once in her room, she heard a "loud roar" and looked out the window to see what was going on.
"Suddenly I saw this plane right outside my window," Anlauf said during a telephone interview from her hotel room this morning. "You felt like you could touch it; it was that close. It was just incredible.
"Then it shot straight across from where we are and flew right into the Pentagon. It was just this huge fireball that crashed into the wall (of the Pentagon). When it hit, the whole hotel shook."Leader-Telegram, September 12 2001
As an Army officer, Stuart Artman said he's seen the results of terrorist attacks in Somalia, Honduras and Nicaragua. Tuesday, he saw an attack first hand.
Artman, now a lieutenant colonel in the Army Reserve and the engineer for the city of Winter Haven, was in Washington attending a conference.
About 9:45 a.m., as he walked with a friend near the Washington Monument, he saw a plane fly low over the city. That wasn't unusual. Planes fly low over the city so often no one pays any attention to them, said Artman.
But this wasn't just any plane. "I saw the plane that hit the Pentagon," he said. "It went behind some trees." Then he saw the smoke from the Pentagon.
"It was hysteria -- cops, unmarked cars were everywhere," Artman, 44, said. "People were standing around. Nobody knew what was going on. As soon as I saw the Pentagon catch on fire, I thought, 'it's time to go."Ledger (Lakeland, FL)
Inside the Pentagon, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld had just raced to his office after hearing of the World Trade Center attack. On a house porch a little more than a mile away, Ralph Banton, 79, was enjoying a crystal-clear morning.
Then Banton heard a jet flying directly overhead, very low.
"It sounded like it was jetting instead of slowing down," he said.
Seconds later, American Flight 77, hijacked while carrying 64 people from Washington to Los Angeles, tore into the side of the Pentagon in a shocking terrorist attack aimed at the building that represents America's military power worldwide.The Topeka-Capital Journal Online, September 11 2001
"Usually, there are a lot of people walking around with a smile on their face," said David Battle, surveying an almost empty Pennsylvania Avenue, just a couple blocks from the White House. "Today, it seems like everyone is in a state of shock."
Earlier Tuesday, Battle, an office worker at the Pentagon, was standing outside the building and just about to enter when the aircraft struck. "It was coming down head first," he said. "And when the impact hit, the cars and everything were just shaking."Scripps Howard News Service
Bauer witnessed the attack on the Pentagon on Sept. 11.
“I happened to be driving into Washington, D.C. that morning. I was going to be doing a press conference on Capitol Hill about the issue of Sudan, where there is terrible Christian persecution taking place. In fact, there is a radical Islamic government in power. Millions of people have been killed. A number of groups in town felt that not enough was being done about that, so we were going to hold a press conference, put a little bit of pressure on the administration and on the Congress.
“I was in a massive traffic jam, hadn’t moved more than a hundred yards in twenty minutes. My office called to tell me about the first plane in New York, the reaction was ‘horrible accident.’ And then they called about the second plane, and clearly that meant something much worse was going on. It was only then that I really noticed where I was in that traffic jam. I was going past the Pentagon, really inching a yard or so every couple of minutes. I had just passed the closest place the Pentagon is to the exit on 395 . . . when all of a sudden I heard the roar of a jet engine.
“I looked at the woman sitting in the car next to me. She had this startled look on her face. We were all thinking the same thing. We looked out the front of our windows to try to see the plane, and it wasn’t until a few seconds later that we realized the jet was coming up behind us on that major highway. And it veered to the right into the Pentagon. The blast literally rocked all of our cars. It was an incredible moment.
Massachusetts News, December 2001
WS: On the morning of Sept 11 you were in your car. Did you literally see the plane go into the Pentagon?
GB: Yeah. I was heading into Washington to take part in a press conference on the issue of Sudan, where there is a radical Muslim government, and I was sitting in a traffic jam just outside the Pentagon. The traffic jam hadn't gone 100 yards in 20 minutes when I got the first call about a plane crashing into the World Trade Center, which at the time people thought was an accident. Then -- not that long after, which made it clear it wasn't an accident -- another plane hit, and it was at that moment when I realized I was sitting at the closest point on the road that you could get to the Pentagon. I was less than 100 yards away at that particular exit and many of us in the traffic jam had our windows down. We were comparing notes -- what radio stations we were listening to -- when all of a sudden we heard a roar of a jet engine. I looked out of my front window and I saw movement over to the side. I turned and looked and the plane came from behind us and banked to the right and went into the Pentagon. That blast literally moved our cars, so it was a fairly dramatic moment.
I knew what had happened in New York and I had just seen what happened to the Pentagon. On the radio they were reporting there was flames and fire near the White House. There were a lot of false reports on DC radio stations that morning, so it was clear -- in a dramatic way -- that this was the most significant day that I had ever experienced.The Charlotte World
Sergeant Maurice L. Bease had worked around Marine aviation long enough to know what a fly-by was, and it sounded like one as he stood outside his office near the Pentagon on Sept. 11. Turning around expecting to see a fighter jet fly over, he saw only a split-second glimpse of a white commercial airliner streaking low toward the building, and him! He did not even have time to duck before it plowed into the side of the Pentagon around the corner and about 200 yards from where he stood.
Immediately, a ball of flame shot up the side of the building, followed by smoke, lots of it. People began to flood out into the parking lot.Marine Corps Association, 2001
Paul Begala, a Democratic consultant, said he witnessed an explosion near the Pentagon. "It was a huge fireball, a huge, orange fireball," he said in an interview on his mobile phone.
He said another witness told him a helicopter exploded.The Guardian, September 12 2001
Singleton Electric was the Wedge One electrical contractor and had just completed some punch-list work in wedge (one of five) when at 9:45 a.m. (EDT) American Airlines Flight 77 plowed into the western wall of Pentagon with 64 passengers and crew aboard. The jet, which had just taken off from Dulles Airport en route to Los Angles, set the world´s largest office building ablaze between the first and second wedges.
The jet came in from the south and banked left as it entered the building, narrowly missing the Singleton Electric trailer and the on-site foreman, Mickey Bell. Bell had just left the trailer when he heard a loud noise. The next thing he recalled was picking himself off the floor, where he had been thrown by the blast.
Bell, who had been less than 100 feet from the initial impact of the plane, was nearly struck by one of the plane´s wings as it sped by him. In shock, he got into his truck, which had been parked in the trailer compound, and sped away. He wandered around Arlington in his truck and tried to make wireless phone calls. He ended up back at Singleton´s headquarters in Gaithersburg two hours later, according to President Singleton, not remembering much.
The full impact of the closeness of the crash wasn´t realized until coworkers noticed damage to Bell´s work vehicle. He had plastic and rivets from an airplane imbedded in its sheet metal, but Bell had no idea what had happened.National Electrical Contractors Association, September 13 2001
Richard Benedetto was in his car on his way to work, stuck in traffic just outside the Pentagon. He was listening -- in horror -- to an account of what had just happened at the World Trade Center in New York. "Then the plane flew right over my head. I said to myself, boy, that plane is going awfully fast," Benedetto said. "That plane is going to crash." The jet knocked over several light posts before it smashed into the Pentagon. Other observers said it seemed to come in full throttle with no attempt to slow down. "The noise was like an artillery shell, not an explosion like a bomb," Benedetto said. Then he saw a giant billow of smoke followed by a huge fireball, presumably the exploding fuel from the crashed plane. "You couldn't even see the building because there was so much smoke," said Benedetto.
Hartford Courant, September 12, 2001
Susan Bergen was sitting in a [Ritz Carlton] hotel room near the Pentagon on Tuesday morning, glued to TV news coverage of the World Trade Center attack.
Out of the corner of her eye, she saw a plane outside the window of her 11th floor room. She turned just in time to see a big jetliner skim the treetops and slam into the side of the Pentagon, less than a half mile from her hotel room. It looked like the plane sped up just before hitting the building, she said.Plastics News, September 17 2001
"I just looked up and I saw the big nose and the wings of the aircraft coming right at us and I just watched it hit the building," Air Traffic Controller and Pentagon tower chief Sean Boger said. "It exploded. I fell to the ground and covered my head. I could actually hear the metal going through the building."
The Pentagram, November 16 2001
I was driving down Washington Boulevard (Route 27) along the side of the Pentagon when the aircraft crossed about 200 yards in front of me and impacted the side of the building. There was an enormous fireball, followed about two seconds later by debris raining down. The car moved about a foot to the right when the shock wave hit. I had what must have been an emergency oxygen bottle from the airplane go flying down across the front of my Explorer and then a second piece of jagged metal come down on the right side of the car.
The Washington Post, September 20 2001
Defense Protective Service officers were the first on the scene of the terrorist attack. One, Mark Bright, actually saw the plane hit the building. He had been manning the guard booth at the Mall Entrance to the building.
"I saw the plane at the Navy Annex area," he said. "I knew it was going to strike the building because it was very, very low -- at the height of the street lights. It knocked a couple down." The plane would have been seconds from impact -- the annex is only a few hundred yards from the Pentagon.
He said he heard the plane "power-up" just before it struck the Pentagon. "As soon as it struck the building I just called in an attack, because I knew it couldn't be accidental," Bright said. He jumped into his police cruiser and headed to the area.American Forces Press Service, September 24 2001
Pam Branstetter, of the Staff Judge Advocate's Office, stops by. Like most MTMC Headquarters employees these days, she has a story to tell.
"My husband actually saw the plane crash into the Pentagon," said the administrative officer. "He works at the Navy Annex, and the plane was flying so low he thought it was going to hit his building.
Her husband of 29 years, Ross Branstetter, watched the next split seconds in horror, she said.
"He said it was like a movie," said Branstetter. "He saw the plane disappear and then there was a fireball. He was pretty shaken."Journal of Military Transportation Management, Sept-Oct 2001
Omar Campo, a Salvadorean, was cutting the grass on the other side of the road when the plane flew over his head.
"It was a passenger plane. I think an American Airways plane," Mr Campo said. "I was cutting the grass and it came in screaming over my head. I felt the impact. The whole ground shook and the whole area was full of fire. I could never imagine I would see anything like that here."The Guardian, September 12 2001
Captain Joseph Candelario, USA a first year student in the Family Nurse Practitioner Program began Tuesday, 11 September like most people. It was a clinical day, which meant getting up early and making the trip in to Ft. McNair to start seeing patients at 0630. He was first alerted that the day was drastically changing when one of the medics told him that a plane hit the World Trade Center. While watching the tower burn, another plane hit the second tower. Thinking that this was a very serious terrorist attack, I went outside to the river to take a break. As I was looking across the river towards the direction of the Pentagon, I noticed a large aircraft flying low towards the White House. This aircraft then made a sharp turn and flew towards the Pentagon and seconds later crashed into it.
Graduate School of Nursing Highlights
I was standing on the platform high above the [Washington Reagan] airport awaiting a Metro subway train to my office in the heart of the district, on Constitution Avenue, admiring the lovely blue skies when I saw the plane hit and the fireball and explosion at the Pentagon.
Jacksonville.com, September 11 2002
We live in Springfield, Virginia, and I was cruising into town and listening to a radio station, and they were getting reports a plane had crashed into the World Trade Center. About 9:30, I was in the left-hand lane of the HOV, kind of looking down on the Pentagon. I was looking at the roof, wondering if I would see guys on the roof with binoculars, just looking. I didn't see anybody up there, so I just kept cruising along. The Pentagon was on my left, and I saw this plane. I heard it, and it scared the piss out of me. It was so loud and throttled-up. I saw it come over the road, and it was like parallel. I could see the windows go by. Some of the shades were down, others were open. And it was close enough that it felt like if there were people in there, I would have seen faces, but I couldn't see anything.
You could tell how the pilot, he really kind of maneuvered the plane. The plane kind of banked side to side. He got over the parking lot and he just dipped it down, and you could visibly see the plane dive. It went below the highway and I couldn't see the actual impact, but the explosion was just massive and the fireball just towered over the Pentagon another 100 feet. You could feel the heat from the blast. The smell and the heat just came all over you.
I slammed on the brakes and pulled over to the side of the road, and I hopped out and grabbed my cell and called Pickering Chief of Staff Susan Butler. The receptionist said she was sitting there talking to somebody, and I said get her on the phone now. And so Susan picked up, and I said, "A plane just crashed at the Pentagon, get out of the office now." And she hung up and told people to evacuate. I tried to call my wife, who's an elementary counselor with the Fairfax County schools. I got her voice mail and said, "Please be careful today. There are a lot of weird things going on. I'm fine. I'll call you later."
I hung up and looked across at the Pentagon. You could see there was furniture on fire. The smell was very strong. It was noxious, like when you are behind a diesel truck, that kind of acrid smell.The National Journal, August 31 2002
Andrea: Don Chauncey, are you there? Don: Yes I am
Andrea: You witnessed what happened at the Pentagon. What did you see?
Don: From my office I was able to see ah A white jet, like a gulf-stream type commuter jet, I guess, just came at a high rate of speed, uhm, I can see National Airport’s tower from our office, and it just increased its speed as it got closer to the Pentagon, and then I just saw the big yellow ball of fire
Andrea: Don exactly where is your office, from where are you watching this?
Don: …ah, we’re, our, offices are off Brannon (?) and St. Barnabas? at the Beltway, so I overlook the Beltway from my office.
Mike: Could you tell Don, did the plane come out of National?
Don: No. No, absolutely not. There was a, it appeared to be a US Air commuter jet that went over the top of our building, which is a normal flight pattern, I guess for the commuters. And this looked like it was coming, from, I’m guessing, coming down Columbia Pike in Arlington, down that way, and then just picked up a high rate of speed, I mean from my desk right now I can see, the Pentagon, basically where the metro station is, and the buses, I can see that and to the right, but I can’t see the, I guess, the south parking area.
Sitting in his car on Washington Boulevard next to the Pentagon Tuesday morning, Jim R. Cissell saw the plane coming a couple of hundred yards to his left.
The Clifton native watched it cross over the road, then plow into the side of the Pentagon.
Mr. Cissell, son of Hamilton County Clerk of Courts Jim C. Cissell, said he doesn't even remember the sound of the explosion.
He remembers, though, muttering “oh my God” as the plane hit, and the fireball was unforgettable. Mr. Cissell said he never thought for a second that the crash was anything but intentional.
“It's as though he picked a spot on the building and that's what he was going straight for,” he said.
Mr. Cissell drives past the Pentagon every day on his way to work at the Newseum in Arlington, Va., where he heads its Web site.
http://www.enquirer.com/editions/2001/09/14/loc_tristate_residents.html
"Out of my peripheral vision, I saw this plane coming in and it was low - and getting lower. If you couldn't touch it from standing on the highway, you could by standing on your car. I thought, 'This isn't really happening. That is a big plane. Then I saw the faces of some of the passengers on board," Cissell said. "I remember thinking, The World Trade Center was just the beginning, there's going to be more." He remembers the helipad the plane flew over before smacking into the Pentagon was close enough to him that "I could have thrown a baseball at it and hit it." While he remembers seeing the crash, Cissell remembers none of the sounds. "It came in in a perfectly straight line," he said. "It didn't slow down. I want to say it accelerated. It just shot straight in."
The Cincinatti Post, quoted here
As former Cincinnatian James R. Cissell sat in traffic on a Virginia interstate by the Pentagon Tuesday morning, he saw the blur of a commercial jet and wondered why it was flying so low. Right about the time it was crossing over the highway, it kind of dawned on me what was happening, said Cissell, son of Hamilton County Clerk of Courts Jim Cissell.
In the next blink of an eye, he realized he had a front-row seat to history, as the plane plowed into the Pentagon, sending a fireball exploding into the air and scattering debris - including a tire rim suspected of belonging to the airplane - past his car.
"I've been in life and death situations before ... You can't count your thoughts. It was very surreal. It wasn't slo-mo. It was surreal. I think I was in kind of a state of shock," Cissell said.
A former photojournalist who, for the last three years, has worked for the Freedom Forum Museum in Arlington, Va., Cissell was listening to his car radio and the news of the planes slamming into the World Trade Center while sitting in traffic.
"I was thinking, 'If anything happens to the Pentagon right now, I don't have my (photo) gear with me," he said today.
He usually cuts through the Pentagon parking lot to get to work, but was stuck on Interstate 110 because of extra security at the Pentagon following the attack on the World Trade Center.
"Out of my peripheral vision," Cissell said, "I saw this plane coming in and it was low - and getting lower."
"If you couldn't touch it from standing on the highway, you could by standing on your car."
In the next seconds dozens of things flashed through his mind.
"I thought, 'This isn't really happening. That is a big plane.' Then I saw the faces of some of the passengers on board," Cissell said.
"I remember thinking, 'The World Trade Center was just the beginning, there's going to be more.' "
He remembers the helipad the plane flew over before smacking into the Pentagon was close enough to him that "I could have thrown a baseball at it and hit it."
Then the plane, which was taking out telephone and power lines on its way in, hit the building.
While he remembers seeing the crash, Cissell remembers none of the sounds.
"It came in in a perfectly straight line," he said.
"It didn't slow down. I want to say it accelerated. It just shot straight in."The Cincinatti Post, Online Edition, September 12 2001
There was a commercial airliner that said American Airliners over the side of it flying at just above treetop height at full speed headed for the Pentagon.
TLC documentary? (Unchecked)
"I was just pulling in on the subway station just at National Airport. I just happened to look over - actually my back was facing in the direction of the Pentagon - I looked to the right of the train as we were coming into the station, and noticed a jet flying in real low, about a mid-sized passenger jet flying in. I know it was silver, that's the only thing I know."
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/mmedia/nation/091101-9v.htm
...I live in Woodbridge VA.(I'm sure you are aware of the geography) I was on my way into work on the 11th. Riding the metro-rail from Springfield VA. to DC.. I had just gotten off the phone with a close friend of mine who let me in on the details of the World Trade Center incidents which had taken place a few moments earlier. I was approaching the national airport stop, when I looked off to the right(I was facing backwards on the train)When I saw a large jet approaching Crystal city.(I was one of very few people that actually saw the Plane at the pentagon prior to its actual impact) I noticed that it's flight pattern was different than others I had come to recognize over riding the rail for many years. I knew that it was not headed for a landing strip. I actually had to look over my shoulder to see if I was mistaken and I unfortunately realized all too soon that I was about to witness one of the most historic moments of our lifetime. I watched as the plane disappeared behind the line of buildings that make up Crystal city and watched as an incredible mushroom cloud appeared on the horizon. I shouted HOLY SHIT!!! as the other passengers looked at me I pointed out the window to let them know what had happened. That is when it all set in and everyone realized what happened.No one else on my Car had seen what I saw. The reason I am telling you this is because the details of this one crash were not accurate from what I witnessed first hand and what I have gathered from others whom I know, saw what I saw. Soon after the crash(Within 30 seconds of the crash) I witnessed a military cargo plane(Possibly a C130) fly over the crash site and circle the mushroom cloud. My brother inlaw also witnessed the same plane following the jet while he was on the HOV lanes in Springfield. He said that he saw a jetliner flying low over the tree tops near Seminary RD in Springfield, VA. and soon afterwards a military plane was seen flying right behind it. I think this was also a reason for the false threat of another plane about to crash which caused rescuers to have to evacuate for a short time after the initial crash. I have done my research onthis and according to time magazine it took 24 minutes before Norad was supposedly notified about this particuliar jet and fighters were scrambling to intercept at that time.
Isn't it odd how there is Not a single mention of this aircraft in ANY of the articles written about this crash? Also if you had not noticed... There is not a single picture or live footage of the actual jet prior to its crash at the Pentagon.Nor is there any of the one that crashed in Pennsylvania. But if Anyone who rides the metro-rail knows, there are plenty of Video cameras all around National airport at the parking Garages and the high level security buildings found all around Crystal city. (3 of which I have personally found pointed directly towards crystal city which would have given a great line of site shot of that jet prior to the crash as well as any other plane which might have been following it. I personally believe that the government new full well that this was about to happen and they are hiding something a lot bigger than they are willing to let out. I was interviewed at Washingtonpost.com and gave them my full story, but they did not print it as I have told you. I also find it interesting that one of the planes engines in the pennsylvania crash was supposedly found 5 miles prior to the crash site(This information I'm unsure of). The only thing that I'm aware of that might cause that would be a heat seeking missle. A weapon which I am pretty familiar with form Ord.training. I'm not saying that the government new exactly what was about to happen, but I do believe that they are definitely hiding something here. Many of my friends in intelligence have said the same. I work in a Gov. building in DC., but my heart is right there with you and your team.Spooky 8 Reviews
<mp3>911_police_dispatch_tape.mp3|download</mp3>- Listen
Attacks Dispatch Transcript
By The Associated Press
Transcript of the Arlington police communications team dispatching units to the Pentagon attack on Sept. 11:
__
Officer Barry Faust: Delta three-fifty-two. Delta three-fifty-two.
Dispatcher Kyra Pulliam: Yes three-fifty-two.
Faust: I think we've just had an airplane crash, east of here, it must be in the District area.
Pulliam: OK.
Officer Richard Cox: Four-ten. It's an American Airlines plane, headed east down over the Pike, possibly toward the Pentagon.
Pulliam: Ten-four. Cruiser 50 direct.
Lt. Robert Medairos: Fifty. Ten-four.
First Unidentified Officer: This is 36. I'm en route. I see the smoke.
Pulliam: Delta 35.
Second Unidentified Officer: Delta 35. I'm en route also.
Pulliam: Any unit responding to check the area of the Pentagon, advise on channel one please, I have Delta 35, Cruiser 34 and Delta 352.
(Several units break in at once).
Pulliam: OK, one unit at a time. Motor 11.
Third Unidentified Officer: I'm direct, and there is visible smoke coming from that area, high visible smoke.
Pulliam: Motor 11 direct. Units once again ...
Pulliam: Keep all traffic on one-Adam, restricted until further notice. Units responding for the report of the plane crash advise on one-Adam one at a time. I have Motor 11, Cruiser 34, Cruiser 49, Delta 10, Delta 453, Delta 35 and Delta 352. Any other units stand by response air, like Cruiser 50, notify each other.
Fourth Unidentified Officer: Delta 23. I'm going to be carrier three-zero-four and I will be standing by for further instructions.
Pulliam: Twenty-three, ten-four, thank you. Cruiser 50?
Medairos: Indirect. In response.
Pulliam: Ten-four. Is that enough units to respond for now or do you request additional?
Medairos: No. Stand by until we see what we've got.
Pulliam: Ten-four.
Fifth Unidentified Officer: Motor 2 responding for traffic.
Pulliam: Who's that responding for traffic?
Fifth Unidentified Officer: Motor 2.
Pulliam: Copy. Motor 2 responding for traffic also.
Third Unidentified Officer: Motor 11.
Pulliam: Motor 11.
Third Unidentified Officer: I'm responding, I'm on 110, and it's a lot, it's bad.
[breakingnews.morris.com/terrorism/stories/091801/918tapetranscript.html Associated Press (now dead), September 18 2001]
Pentagon 9/11
An airplane flying overhead still startles an Ahwatukee Foothills man a year after he witnessed a hijacked American Airlines Boeing 757-200 slam into the Pentagon.
"We were the only people, we think, who saw it live," Dan Creed said.
He and two colleagues from Oracle software were stopped in a car near the Naval Annex, next to the Pentagon, when they saw the plane dive down and level off.
"It was no more than 30 feet off the ground, and it was screaming. It was just screaming. It was nothing more than a guided missile at that point," Creed said.
"I can still see the plane. I can still see it right now. It's just the most frightening thing in the world, going full speed, going full throttle, its wheels up," Creed recalls.
The crash killed 125 people on the ground and another 64 passengers and crew members on the plane. It also caused about $800 million in damage.
"I wouldn't be honest if I didn't tell you that things like it really make you think about the value of life," Creed said.
Once back in his Ahwatukee Foothills home, Creed remembers he had to think hard about traveling.
"I knew I had to sit back and come to terms with traveling again because my livelihood was traveling at that time. I sat down and went through some soul searching about traveling, and I said in my mind something like this could have happened a long time ago and I wasn't going let it affect my life. I was back on an airplane in two weeks," Creed said.
His first trip was back to Washington, D.C.
"I tried to bury my head in a book. I took four books with me on that flight because I was going to read. I didn't listen to the pre-flight instructions or anything, I just sat there reading," Creed said with a laugh.
The effects of Sept. 11 stayed with him, including nightmares. But he has a new appreciation for life.
Counseling helped eliminate the nightmares and Creed has spent more time with his family.
He left California-based Oracle in August, not because of a fear of flying, but because "I was traveling so much I didn't have a life. I was gone all the time."
He now spends more time with his wife, children and grandchild. He also started his own technology consulting firm, Mr. Lucky Consulting Inc.
He's still wonders why he happened to be where he was that day, with a clear view of the plane slamming into the Pentagon.
"Why were we chosen to sit there and watch that day? What am I supposed to do with it?" he still wonders.
Ahwatukee Foothills News
Kim Dent, 33, who works across the street from the Pentagon, said she and some co-workers were looking out the window of their office building. "We saw the shadow of a plane. We heard the engine. We all said, 'That plane is flying kind of close.' "
USA Today, September 11 2001
"It seemed to be almost coming in in slow motion," said Marine Cmdr. Mike Dobbs. "I didn't actually feel it hit, but I saw it and then we all started running. They evacuated everybody around us."
The Washington Times, September 12 2001
Marine Commander Mike Dobbs was standing on one of the upper levels of the outer ring of the Pentagon looking out the window when he saw an American Airlines 737 two-engine airliner strike.
"It was an American airlines airliner. I was looking out the window and saw it come right over the Navy annex at a slow angle. It looked to me to be on a zero-to-zero course. It seemed to be almost coming in in slow motion. I didn't actually feel it hit, but I saw it and then we all started running. They evacuated everybody around us."Scripps Howard News Service, September 11 2001
"It just was amazingly precise," Daryl Donley, another commuter, said of the plane's impact. "It completely disappeared into the Pentagon."
Gannet News Service, September 12 2001
Every morning for years Bob Dubill drove past the Pentagon on his way to work at USA Today.
He was passing the building the morning of Sept. 11, 2001, when he saw a jetliner fly over the roadway. It filled his field of vision. The jet was 40-feet off the ground speeding toward the Pentagon.
"The wheels were up and I knew that this plane was not heading for National Airport,” he said. “This plane was going to slam into the Pentagon. I steeled myself for the explosion."The Times Herald, Olean, NY, September 12 2002
Although I live in Houston, Texas, I'm writing this column from an apartment in the Washington, DC area. I was here to attend the American Conservative Union's Policy Boot Camp.
I thought I would leave filled with the excitement of hearing from policy experts on numerous topics ranging from social security and medicare to education and technology. Unfortunately, what I take with me is a permanent image of terror and tragedy which is burned into my mind: an image of a passenger airliner, flying low and fast, and headed straight for the Pentagon.
On Tuesday morning, September 11, I was running late for my morning session. The television was on, and at about 9:00 am, we saw a report that an aircraft had struck one of the towers of the World Trade Center. My initial thought was, "Wow, what a freak accident." With that, my friend with whom I am staying and I were out the door.
We set out in the car and immediately turned on the news radio to follow what was happening in New York City. After fifteen minutes into our trip, a new report came over the radio stating that a second aircraft (another passenger airliner) had struck the World Trade Center. This time, my thoughts shifted immediately from a freak accident to "this is a terrorist attack."
My heart sank as I began to realize what was happening: those killed in the aircraft, those killed in the buildings, and the horror of the realization that this could happen in the first place.
The route from where I'm staying to my conference hotel runs right by the Pentagon. As we slowly crept along in traffic at about 9:30 am, we rounded a bend and had the Pentagon in our sites -- right in front of us. We continued to listen to the radio to take in the latest news on what was happening.
Riding in a convertable with the top down, I then heard a tremendously loud noise from behind me and to my left. I looked back and saw a jet airliner flying very low and very fast. It's amazing what can run through your mind in just a matter of seconds. As a pilot, I can't help but look at an airplane and think about airplane topics. What I saw sent a shiver down my spine as I realized something was not right.
The aircraft was so very low -- as an aircraft would be on its final approach to an airport. However, if you have watched any aircraft come in for a landing, even though the aircraft is descending, it is angled up slightly. This aircraft was angled downward. In addition, landing gear would also be visible on a aircraft so low and so near landing. This aircraft had its landing gear retracted. Finally, an aircraft on final approach is traveling rather slowly. This aircraft sped by very loudly and very quickly.
All of this flashed in my mind as the aircraft passed from behind my left shoulder to in front of me. It was then that the other events of the morning crystallized in the realization that tragedy was about to occur. With all of these images spinning in my head, the only words that came out of my mouth were "Oh no!"
With that, the airliner crashed into the Pentagon and exploded.
I shouted to my friend whose view was partially blocked by a truck in front of us, "Oh my gosh! The jet just hit the Pentagon!"
Much of the traffic stopped immediately, and the stunned looks on people's faces are unforgettable. Many picked up their cell phones, presumably to contact friends and loved ones. I did the same, but I could not get through...GOPUSA.COM, September 12 2001
Steve Eiden, a truck driver, had picked up his cargo that Tuesday morning in Williamsburg, Va., and was en route to New York City and witnessed the aftermath. While on the road, he heard radio reports that a plane had crashed into the World Trade Center. He was quoted in The Baxter Bulletin a few days later: "I thought, this sounds like an Orson Welles kind of deal." He took the Highway 95 loop in the area of the Pentagon and thought it odd to see a plane in restricted airspace, thinking to himself it was odd that it was flying so low. "You could almost see the people in the windows," he said as he watched the plane disappear behind a line of trees, followed by a tall plume of black smoke. Then he saw the Pentagon on fire, and an announcement came over the radio that the Pentagon had been hit.
The Baxter Bulletin, quoted here
I had an early appointment on September 11th, so I drove to work later than usual. I work at the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation near the White House. I headed north on 1-395 to DC from my home in Springfield, Virginia and I entered the highway a little after 9am so that I could take the High Occupancy Vehicle (HOV) express lane. As usual, traffic was very heavy and after I exited I-95, I found myself stuck in late morning rush hour traffic -- almost in front of the Pentagon. For most of my drive I had been totally focused on my radio and was extremely aware of the events that were unfolding in New York. Even though the radio reporters were cautious, I was already convinced from the first strike that it was not just an unfortunate pilot error. However, I felt that New York was under attack and I couldn't have imagined what would unfold in front of me.
Traffic was at a standstill. I heard a rumble, looked out my driver's side window and realized that I was looking at the nose of an airplane coming straight at us from over the road (Columbia Pike) that runs perpendicular to the road I was on. The plane just appeared there- very low in the air, to the side of (and not much above) the CITGO gas station that I never knew was there. My first thought was “Oh My God, this must be World War III!”
In that split second, my brain flooded with adrenaline and I watched everything play out in ultra slow motion, I saw the plane coming in slow motion toward my car and then it banked in the slightest turn in front of me, toward the heliport. In the nano-second that the plane was directly over the cars in front of my car, the plane seemed to be not more than 80 feet off the ground and about 4-5 car lengths in front of me. It was far enough in front of me that I saw the end of the wing closest to me and the underside of the other wing as that other wing rocked slightly toward the ground. I remember recognizing it as an American Airlines plane -- I could see the windows and the color stripes. And I remember thinking that it was just like planes in which I had flown many times but at that point it never occurred to me that this might be a plane with passengers.
In my adrenaline-filled state of mind, I was overcome by my visual senses. The day had started out beautiful and sunny and I had driven to work with my car's sunroof open. I believe that I may have also had one or more car windows open because the traffic wasn't moving anyway. At the second that I saw the plane, my visual senses took over completely and I did not hear or feel anything -- not the roar of the plane, or wind force, or impact sounds.
The plane seemed to be floating as if it were a paper glider and I watched in horror as it gently rocked and slowly glided straight into the Pentagon. At the point where the fuselage hit the wall, it seemed to simply melt into the building. I saw a smoke ring surround the fuselage as it made contact with the wall. It appeared as a smoke ring that encircled the fuselage at the point of contact and it seemed to be several feet thick. I later realized that it was probably the rubble of churning bits of the plane and concrete. The churning smoke ring started at the top of the fuselage and simultaneously wrapped down both the right and left sides of the fuselage to the underside, where the coiling rings crossed over each other and then coiled back up to the top. Then it started over again -- only this next time, I also saw fire, glowing fire in the smoke ring. At that point, the wings disappeared into the Pentagon. And then I saw an explosion and watched the tail of the plane slip into the building. It was here that I closed my eyes for a moment and when I looked back, the entire area was awash in thick black smoke.National Museum of American History
Former ammunition plant official evacuated building moments before suicide airliner collision.Col. Bruce Elliott, former commander of the Iowa Army Ammunition Plant who was reassigned to the Pentagon in July, watched in horror Tuesday as a hijacked 757 airliner crashed into the nerve center of the U.S. military command.
Elliott, in a phone interview Wednesday, said he had just left the Pentagon and was about to board a shuttle van in a south parking lot when he saw the plane approach and slam into the west side of the structure.
"I looked to my left and saw the plane coming in," said Elliott, who watched it for several seconds. "It was banking and garnering speed. I felt it was headed for the Pentagon."
Elliott, whose office is adjacent to the building, had been in the Pentagon on business. Along with hundreds of others, he had just been ordered to evacuate the building after the attack on the World Trade Center in New York.
"We were aware of what had happened in New York City," Elliott said. "The security here is good, but it was increased."
The colonel, now assigned to an Army inspections office, said that as the plane zeroed in on the building, he began thinking about the 1941 Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor.
"It was like a kamikaze pilot. I felt it was going to ram the Pentagon," he said.
He said the craft clipped a utility pole guide wire, which may have slowed it down a bit before it crashed into the building and burst into flames.
"It took out a large section of the west wing of the building," Elliott said...The Hawk Eye Newspaper, September 13-14 2001
We went back to talking, but we were all preoccupied. Then a few seconds later, the building alarm went off, and they started evacuating the annex. I grabbed my backpack, got on the cell phone, and called my editor. I told him, "They're evacuating the annex. The Pentagon has been hit." Chris, my editor, asked, "Do you have your camera with you?"
I had my digital camera, and I started putting it together as I rushed out of the annex, hoping the batteries would last.
As I came out of the annex, there were Marines organizing themselves to watch the sky for more aircraft. A Marine NCO was barking out orders, setting up a watch, telling Marines to keep their eyes peeled for other stuff.
I flew down the stairs and was running down the hill toward the Pentagon. And there was a man standing there in the road that leads down from the annex to the highway next to the Pentagon. He was standing next to his brown pickup truck. His jaw was scraping the pavement. He had this dazed look. I asked him what happened. He said, "I was getting off the highway, and this huge plane came over my head, and I watched it fly into the Pentagon, and there was a fireball. The plane almost hit my truck."
I didn't have a reporter's notebook, just a big yellow legal pad. I was tucking it in the back of my pants after writing things down as I was running.
When you first looked at the Pentagon, because of the amount of smoke and the way the building just seemed to absorb the airplane, it didn't look like there was anything there. Fire trucks were already arriving. They were pouring water into the building. I shot a couple of frames, got around to one side, and I saw a piece of wreckage. You could see the American Airlines colors on it-silver and red and blue. I was trying to get closer, but the security guys were already yelling at me to get out of there.
I left there and came onto the triage area, which was just being set up. The whole area smelled like burning fuel. Part of me started thinking, maybe I needed to help, but there were already so many people responding that I decided I should do what I'm paid to do. And I started shooting pictures.
My first shot was of the triage area, with heavy smoke in the background. It was heavily backlit. It was hard shooting. I saw a priest come off the highway. He knelt down in the middle of the triage area, with the Pentagon burning in the background, and he started to pray. I shot him, too.
At one point, I knelt down to tie my shoe. And all over the highway and ground were these little itty-bitty pieces of green aluminum that make up the internal parts of jet aircraft. It's this light powdery green, very matte, that is a preservative they paint over the aluminum. In the Navy, I was a salvage diver, and I had helped bring up pieces of the Challenger space shuttle, and the Air Florida Flight 90 that crashed into the Potomac. These pieces looked the same. There was no piece of it bigger than a dime. Just little shards.The National Journal, August 31 2002
Kim Flyler, who was six months' pregnant, works for the Department of the Navy in Springfield, Virginia, as a contractor. That morning she was at the Pentagon when it was hit.
'I pulled into the Pentagon parking lot and was trying to sneak into a spot closer to the building because I was pregnant. The security guard saw I was pregnant, so he was being nice and he was chatting with me. At that moment I heard a plane and then a loud cracking noise. We both looked up into the sky and it hit the building at that instant. It was so loud it still echoes in my head when I think about it.
'Right before the plane hit the building, you could see the silhouettes of people in the back two windows. You couldn't see if they were male or female, but you could tell there was a human being in there. That's what shocked me more than anything else. I thought I was going into labour and I was holding my stomach trying to get out of there. I felt guilty because part of me wanted to stay and help, but I couldn't do it being pregnant.'The Guardian, September 8 2002
One eyewitness, State Department employee Ken Ford, said he watched from the 15th floor of the State Department Annex, just across the Potomac River from the Pentagon.
We were watching the airport through binoculars, Ford said, referring to Reagan National Airport, a short distance away. The plane was a two-engine turbo prop that flew up the river from National. Then it turned back toward the Pentagon. We thought it had been waved off and then it hit the building.The News Journal Extra, September 11 2001
<mp3>911_police_dispatch_tape.mp3|download</mp3>- Listen
Attacks Dispatch Transcript
By The Associated Press
Transcript of the Arlington police communications team dispatching units to the Pentagon attack on Sept. 11:
__
Officer Barry Faust: Delta three-fifty-two. Delta three-fifty-two.
Dispatcher Kyra Pulliam: Yes three-fifty-two.
Faust: I think we've just had an airplane crash, east of here, it must be in the District area.
Pulliam: OK.
Officer Richard Cox: Four-ten. It's an American Airlines plane, headed east down over the Pike, possibly toward the Pentagon.
Pulliam: Ten-four. Cruiser 50 direct.
Lt. Robert Medairos: Fifty. Ten-four.
First Unidentified Officer: This is 36. I'm en route. I see the smoke.
Pulliam: Delta 35.
Second Unidentified Officer: Delta 35. I'm en route also.
Pulliam: Any unit responding to check the area of the Pentagon, advise on channel one please, I have Delta 35, Cruiser 34 and Delta 352.
(Several units break in at once).
Pulliam: OK, one unit at a time. Motor 11.
Third Unidentified Officer: I'm direct, and there is visible smoke coming from that area, high visible smoke.
Pulliam: Motor 11 direct. Units once again ...
Pulliam: Keep all traffic on one-Adam, restricted until further notice. Units responding for the report of the plane crash advise on one-Adam one at a time. I have Motor 11, Cruiser 34, Cruiser 49, Delta 10, Delta 453, Delta 35 and Delta 352. Any other units stand by response air, like Cruiser 50, notify each other.
Fourth Unidentified Officer: Delta 23. I'm going to be carrier three-zero-four and I will be standing by for further instructions.
Pulliam: Twenty-three, ten-four, thank you. Cruiser 50?
Medairos: Indirect. In response.
Pulliam: Ten-four. Is that enough units to respond for now or do you request additional?
Medairos: No. Stand by until we see what we've got.
Pulliam: Ten-four.
Fifth Unidentified Officer: Motor 2 responding for traffic.
Pulliam: Who's that responding for traffic?
Fifth Unidentified Officer: Motor 2.
Pulliam: Copy. Motor 2 responding for traffic also.
Third Unidentified Officer: Motor 11.
Pulliam: Motor 11.
Third Unidentified Officer: I'm responding, I'm on 110, and it's a lot, it's bad.
breakingnews.morris.com/terrorism/stories/091801/918tapetranscript.html (now dead), Associated Press, September 18 2001
Pentagon 9/11
Technician Kat Gaines
Fairfax County Fire & Rescue
Certificate of Valor
Gaines was on her way to a part-time job at Reagan National Airport the morning of Sept. 11, 2001, after working a 24-hour shift at Fire Station 16 in Clifton.
Her commute to the airport took her south on Route 110, in front of the parking lots of the Pentagon. As she approached the parking lots, she saw a low-flying jetliner strike the top of nearby telephone poles. She then heard the plane power up and plunge into the Pentagon.Fairfax County Chamber of Commerce
"(The plane) was flying fast and low and the Pentagon was the obvious target," said Fred Gaskins, who was driving to his job as a national editor at USA TODAY near the Pentagon when the plane passed about 150 feet overhead. "It was flying very smoothly and calmly, without any hint that anything was wrong."
USA Today, September 12 2001
Steven Gerard, who works in the Justice Department across the Pentagon: "Out of the corner of my eye, I saw this plane coming down. I was talking on my cell phone to my wife about how close I was to the airport and then I saw the fireball."
Scripps Howard News Service, September 11 2001
I got on Interstate 395 and saw the plane come in. I didn't see the actual impact, but 395 curves around the Pentagon, and I saw that plane coming in and said to myself, "That plane is too low; it's going to crash."
Los Angeles Times, Quoted here
Afework Hagos, a computer programmer, was on his way to work but stuck in a traffic jam near the Pentagon when the plane flew over. "There was a huge screaming noise and I got out of the car as the plane came over. Everybody was running away in different directions. It was tilting its wings up and down like it was trying to balance. It hit some lampposts on the way in."
The Guardian, September 12 2001
The Washington Post, Quoted here
"Go back. It's not safe here!"
Those were the commands of uniformed personnel pushing people back from the Pentagon about 45 minutes after the 9:43 a.m. crash of a commercial airline into the west side of the building, according to Joe Harrington, a construction foreman working on Pentagon renovations of the building.
"Where is safe?" Harrington said.
Harrington was working on the installation of new furniture in Wedge One, when he was called out to the parking lot to talk about security with his customer moments before the crash.
"About two minutes later one of my guys pointed to an American Airlines airplane 20 feet high over Washington Blvd.," Harrington said. "It seemed like it made impact just before the wedge. It was like a Hollywood movie or something. Thank God all of our crew got out."
Cheryl Hammond was the person who called Harrington and his crew out into the parking lot. "I thought they'd put out an alert or something," Hammond said. "We saw the big American Airlines plane and started running."The Pentagram, September 14 2001
"Go back. It's not safe here!"
Those were the commands of uniformed personnel pushing people back from the Pentagon about 45 minutes after the 9:43 a.m. crash of a commercial airline into the west side of the building, according to Joe Harrington, a construction foreman working on Pentagon renovations of the building.
"Where is safe?" Harrington said.
Harrington was working on the installation of new furniture in Wedge One, when he was called out to the parking lot to talk about security with his customer moments before the crash.
"About two minutes later one of my guys pointed to an American Airlines airplane 20 feet high over Washington Blvd.," Harrington said. "It seemed like it made impact just before the wedge. It was like a Hollywood movie or something. Thank God all of our crew got out."
Cheryl Hammond was the person who called Harrington and his crew out into the parking lot. "I thought they'd put out an alert or something," Hammond said. "We saw the big American Airlines plane and started running."The Pentagram, September 14 2001
Many of my wifes friends and my relatives asked me: what did you see? what happened? So, I wrote this up to explain it from the view of the Navy Annex....
11 September 2001 - After a quick "jaunt" around the building I worked my way back into the "front office" of the Ballistic Missile Defense Organization, housed at the "Navy Annex" overlooking the Pentagon. There was a "buzz" in the secure conference room and I could hear "CNN breaking news." My friend Deborah Vinson, here TDY from the Joint National Test Facility to work our reorganization, met me in that passage way and asked, "I had heard?". "Heard what?" I replied. She motioned me to join her in the conference room where CNN was replaying the second aircraft impacting the world trade center in New York. The mood of all was already very somber and there was much talk and banter about the far-reaching implications of such a terrorist attack. Many BMDO people, Mike Cifrino our General Counsel; Rob Snyder the Executive Director; Deborah Vinson, were among several sitting down watching the events unfold. I just stood there in disbelief.
After a few moments, Lt Gen Ron Kadish, Director of the Ballistic Missile Defense Organization entered the Secure Conference Room to pursue the day's activities and do real work. Accordingly, I and the other staff members all quickly exited the room, each commenting on the horrific sights, which had just been displayed in New York. At approximately 9:45am I entered the old office of my friend Gary Ramos', directly adjacent to the executive director. This office, with two nice windows and a great view of the monuments, the Capitol and the Pentagon was "good digs" by any Pentagon standard. This was the office I'd been sharing while working the BMDO reorganization. Being a beautiful sunny September day in Washington, and with a head full of the horror in New York, I walked in the office and stood peering out of the window looking at the Pentagon. I pondered the breaking events of the day, wondering what this world was coming to. As I stood there, I instinctively ducked at the extremely loud roar and whine of a jet engine spooling up. Immediately, the large silver cylinder of an aircraft appeared in my window, coming over my right shoulder as I faced the Westside of the Pentagon directly towards the heliport. The aircraft, looking to be either a 757 or Airbus, seemed to come directly over the annex, as if it had been following Columbia Pike - an Arlington road leading to Pentagon. The aircraft was moving fast, at what I could only be estimate as between 250 to 300 knots. All in all, I probably only had the aircraft in my field of view for approximately 3 seconds.
The aircraft was at a sharp downward angle of attack, on a direct course for the Pentagon. It was "clean", in as much as, there were no flaps applied and no apparent landing gear deployed. He was slightly left wing down as he appeared in my line of sight, as if he'd just "jinked" to avoid something. As he crossed Route 110 he appeared to level his wings, making a slight right wing slow adjustment as he impacted low on the Westside of the building to the right of the helo, tower and fire vehicle around corridor 5. What instantly followed was a large yellow fireball accompanied by an extremely bass sounding, deep thunderous boom. The yellow fireball rose quickly as black smoke engulfed the entire Westside of the Pentagon, obscuring the whole of the heliport. I could feel the concussion and felt the shockwave of the blast impact the window of the Annex, knocking me against the desk.OurNetFamily.com
Simultaneously, Eugenio Hernandez, an AP video journalist, was driving by the Pentagon and saw the plane crashing. He borrowed a tourist's video camera and began shooting.
Broadcasting & Cable, September 17, 2001
The Washingtonian, quoted here
Congressional staff attorney Fred Hey was driving by on Route 50 at that moment. "I can't believe it! This plane is going down into the Pentagon!" he shouted into his cellphone. On the other end of the line was his boss, Rep. Bob Ney (R) of Ohio. Representative Ney immediately phoned the news to House Sergeant-At-Arms Bill Livingood, who ordered an immediate evacuation of the Capitol itself.
Christian Science Monitor, September 17 2001
Joe Hurst, is general manager of the Oval Room restaurant at Lafayette Square, ..." But he doesn't really complain about business. "I saw it go overhead, the plane," says Joe Hurst, describing the American flight that circled the White House.
His assistant saw it dive into the Pentagon as he drove to work.
"Last week, I was having flashbacks," he says.Boston Globe, September 21 2001, quoted here
Michael James, 37, a Navy information technician watched in horror from his car Tuesday as an airplane careened off a helicopter pad and smashed into the side of the Pentagon, where he spends about half of his day. "I was supposed to be in the Pentagon underneath all that rubble," said James, pressed into service directing gawkers away from a road leading to the compound. "If it would have happened 10 minutes later, I would have been down there."
He is often in the lower Corridor 4 offices of the Navy telecommucations center around 6 a.m., but Tuesday he was away taking a physical fitness exam.
After the workout he went home to shower and that's when he saw on TV a hijacked airplane smash into the World Trade Center.
As he rushed to get ready, he and his wife, Isabelle, saw the plane veer toward the Pentagon.
"The plane came over the top of us and brushed the trees, " he said. "Then it looked like it hit the helicopter pad and skipped up and went right into the first and second floors."Rocky Mountain News, September 12 2001
From time spent on military aircraft as part of his job at the Pentagon, Will Jarvis (who graduated with a bachelor of applied science in 1987 while attending New College) knows what aviation fuel smells like.
That smell was his only clue that a plane had crashed into the Pentagon, where he works as an operations research analyst for the Office of the Secretary of Defense. Jarvis, who was around the corner from the disaster, tried but failed to see the plane when he left the building. There was just nothing left. It was incinerated. We couldn�t see a tail or a wing or anything, he says. Just a big black hole in the building with smoke pouring out of it.
For someone sitting only 300 metres away from the carnage of American Airlines Flight 77, Jarvis and his officemates were surprisingly well insulated from it. We thought the plane was a dump truck backing into the building, because there was a lot of construction going on, he says. The group noticed that the sky was darker than normal, but still didn't think much of it. Then I saw little bits of silver falling from the sky, says Jarvis.University of Toronto Magazine, Winter 2002
Gertrude Jeffress sits in the kitchen of her house in the George Washington Carver cooperative in Arlington, absent-mindedly crumpling and uncrumpling a paper napkin as she describes the crusade by some members of the historic co-op to sell the property to developers...
And now the board of directors of Jeffress's small complex of pink stucco and cinderblock buildings -- which sits atop a hill overlooking the Pentagon -- also are considering offers to buy the property. The Carver homes sit on a potentially lucrative 3.35 acres of land just three miles from downtown D.C...
There are more recent memories, too. On Sept. 11, 2001, she was outside watering her flowers when American Airlines Flight 77 swooped by, so close that she could see the letters on its tail. She swears it almost nipped the telephone pole in the parking lot as it went by.The Washington Post, May 26 2005
'Today is my worst day yet,' said Megan Johnson of Bristow, Va., yesterday. She was on Interstate 395 when the terrorist plane flew directly in front of her car into the Pentagon. She felt she should go to church to deal with the nightmares that kept her up every night this week.
The Florida Times-Union, September 15 2001
Two civilians who saved several victims of the Sept. 11 Pentagon attacks were honored Monday with the Medal of Valor...
Jones, 25, is a medical student and volunteer firefighter with the Hyattsville unit of the Prince George's County, Md., Fire and EMS Department. He was driving through nearby Arlington, Va., when he saw the plane slam into the Pentagon's northwest outer wall. The impact of the jet cut through three of the five rings of offices that serve as headquarters for the nation's armed services.
After rescuing a firefighter whose protective clothing had caught fire as he battled the blaze from a ladder, Jones returned to assist other victims.Associated Press, July 15, 2002
As I was driving down 95 heading towards the Pentagon, one of my members, teammates, said, 'What is that plane doing?' And by the time I looked up, the plane was moving so fast all I saw was an explosion.
ABC Good Morning America, quoted here
Fire Truck 101 from the Arlington County Fire Department was one of the first on the scene Tuesday morning. The truck was coming back from a training exercise, and one firefighter on board noticed a plane flying too low as they drove past the Pentagon.
"Suddenly, we saw the huge explosion of the crash," said firefighter Andrea Kaiser. "We turned the truck and headed to the building as fast as we could." After fighting rush-hour gridlock, the team arrived and rushed to the building to search for survivors.
"I've been inside - it's terrible," she said, shaking her head and looking at the ground. "I have no idea how many people died. It's impossible to know." She and her team were headed back to the fire station around midnight to rest and return by morning.
"It's a horrible, tangled mess in there," said another distraught Arlington County firefighter, describing the wreckage of the plane and the remnants of smashed offices inside the rubble. "It's awful - like an earthquake hit, or something. It's like nothing you've ever seen."American Red Cross
Witnesses in nearby cars and apartments realized something was wrong when they saw a passenger jet traveling fast below treetop level over Interstate 395 just after 9:30 a.m.
Terrance Kean, 35, who lives in a 14-story building nearby, heard the loud jet engines and glanced out his window.
"I saw this very, very large passenger jet," said the architect, who had been packing for a move. "It just plowed right into the side of the Pentagon. The nose penetrated into the portico. And then it sort of disappeared, and there was fire and smoke everywhere. . . . It was very sort of surreal."Washington Post, September 12 2001
One of those who stood was Laurel Ritenbaugh, the church's former youth director who now teaches cosmetology at Plant City High School.
She said her brother, James Keglovich, 38, a carpenter working near the Pentagon, was on break across the street from that structure when the airliner tore into the building. He and his friends witnessed the plane approaching.
He told her they began exclaiming, "Where's he going? What's he doing?" when suddenly they saw the plane clip a taxi cab on the nearby bridge. The crash was exceptionally loud, he said. It shook the building and knocked people down who were closer to the point of impact.Tampa Tribune, September 15 2001
On Sept. 11, I was standing in a break room of an office . . . in downtown D.C., when I looked out the window to see an airplane descend into the side of the Pentagon, where the Navy offices where five friends and colleagues of mine were located. Twenty-four hours earlier, I had been in the Pentagon visiting those friends and others in the building.
As I watched the fireball and during the evacuation of Washington that followed, I can remember being overwhelmed by two things -- what can I do to help, and how never again would I leave a friend or loved one without telling them how much I cared for them. All over Washington, in the days that followed, I saw Americans helping in so many ways, giving testament that we are a great nation consisting of generous, caring individuals. But I truly learned that life can be lost at any moment, and that we must be grateful for every minute we have on this Earth.
-- Lesley Kelly, Cmdr. U.S. Navy (Ret.), GreshamOregonLive.com, September 11 2002
What immediately made me look up was the rumble of an airplane that had just flown over my shoulder, close enough that I could have hit it with a baseball. My friends and I were in the middle of the parking lot, having left our morning class at the Arlington Career Center, as a big passenger jet flew right above the building behind the career center. I am used to hearing planes because I live next to Spout Run, but it was obvious something was wrong. I've seen planes land, and this one was going much, much faster. And we were like, "Oh, man." I said, "Holy shit, that plane's crashing." There was probably three seconds between the plane going under the skyline and then the rumble from when it hit the Pentagon. At first, there was a white, pinkish smoke. I actually had a camera in my car. I took a picture of the smoke, and then after a couple seconds, it started getting darker.
My friends got in their car and I got in mine, and we were visibly shaking. It was weird seeing that plane and looking in the windows and thinking, wow, the last few minutes of someone's life. I wonder now if I had seen anyone, or if maybe they had seen me. I can barely comprehend it. I was scared of the uncertainty; I never thought, "I am in danger." Instead, I was just stunned, shocked. The anxious, shaky feeling brought on immediately would not go away for hours.
In the car, I turned on the radio to see what they were saying. It was really weird to hear them talking about it, because they didn't really know. The guy was just getting the news and could only say that something just happened to the Pentagon. Just to hear him say that, and for me to know that it was a commercial jet. I could make out the AA, American Airlines, on the plane when it went by, easily. It was weird to be in the know more than the news. The event made me aware of how naive the American lifestyle was before. In Israel, stuff like that happens every day. It made me appreciate how safe we are, living here,
and made me appreciate much, much more that this is not a daily occurrence.The National Journal, August 31 2002
D S Khavkin, of Arlington, Virginia, says her home has a panoramic view of the Pentagon and the downtown area of Washington DC.
"We were watching the events unfolding on TV in New York.
"Then, at about 9.40am Eastern Daylight Time, my husband and I heard an aircraft directly overhead.
"At first, we thought it was the jets that sometimes fly overhead. However, it appeared to be a small commercial aircraft. The engine was at full throttle."
She says the plane then headed for the Pentagon.
"It crashed on the lawn near the west side of the Pentagon.
"A huge fireball exploded with thick black smoke.BBC, September 12 2001
Aydan Kizildrgli, an English language student who is a native of Turkey, saw the jetliner bank slightly then strike a western wall of the huge five-sided building that is the headquarters of the nation's military.
'Nobody could believe it'
"There was a big boom," he said. "Everybody was in shock. I turned around to the car behind me and yelled ‘Did you see that?' Nobody could believe it."
Kizildrgli was found wandering in an Arlington neighborhood about five miles from the Pentagon an hour after the crash.USA Today, September 12 2001
Peter Kopf, director of information technology at USA TODAY, was stalled in traffic about 9:30 a.m. when the jet hit the Pentagon, creating a "huge fireball."
"People (on the highway) were freaking out," he said. "People were turning around and driving the opposite way getting out of their cars, talking on cell phones, crying."
When the Pentagon was struck, Kopf was listening on his car radio to reports that a second hijacked jet had been crashed into the World Trade Center in New York City.
"We wanted to get the hell out of (the vicinity of the Pentagon)," he said. " We felt a second one was imminent (at the Pentagon)."USA Today, September 12 2001
It was early morning when the teachers at Hoffman-Boston Elementary School heard what they thought was a plane crashing in their South Arlington neighborhood. They felt the impact...
Ann Krug's kindergarten class saw the plane crash outside the classroom's window.
"I actually pointed it out and said: 'Look at this plane; look at how low it's flying,' " Krug recalled. "And then we all saw it come down."Washington Post, November 15 2001, quoted here
"It was close enough that I could see the windows and the blinds had been pulled down. I read American Airlines on it." "I didn't hear anything, but I saw the aircraft above my head about 80 feet above the ground, 400 miles an hour. The reason, I have some experience as a pilot and I looked at the plane. Didn't see any landing gear. Didn't see any flaps down. I realized it wasn't going to land. I realized what it was doing."
ABC News, quoted here
"It's a horrible feeling because you're afraid all the time. You're afraid to go out," said District resident La Verne Le Grand, 60, who was riding in a car on Columbia Pike on the morning of Sept. 11 and saw the plane crash into the Pentagon. Since then, she has been admitted twice to Washington Hospital Center for treatment of severe anxiety.
The Washington Post, October 14 2001
A witness said an American Airlines passenger jet had earlier flown straight into the Pentagon and crashed into the first floor of the building.
"I saw this large American Airlines passenger jet coming in fast and low," said Army Captain Lincoln Liebner. "My first thought was I've never seen one that high. Before it hit I realised what was happening."
Sydney Morning Herald
"I saw this large American Airlines passenger jet coming in fast and low," said Army Captain Lincoln Liebner.
"My first thought was I've never seen one that high. Before it hit I realised what was happening," he said.
Captain Liebner says the aircraft struck a helicopter on the helipad, setting fire to a fire truck.
"We got one guy out of the [fire truck] cab," he said, adding he could hear people crying inside the wreckage.
Captain Liebner, who had cuts on his hands from the debris, says he has been parking his car in the car park when the crash occurred.
ABC News Online (Australia), September 12 2001
"I heard the plane first," he said. "I thought it was a flyover Arlington cemetery." From his vantage point, Maj. Leibner looked up and saw the plane come in. "I was about 100 yards away," he said. "You could see through the windows of the aircraft. I saw it hit."
US Medicine, quoted here
The OSU Observer, quoted here
"I looked in the rearview mirror to check the traffic and saw only a plane, flying very low. I followed it in my left outside mirror. I braked, looked out my left window and saw a large commercial aircraft aiming for the Pentagon." "The aircraft, so close to the ground, was banked skillfully to the right, leveled off perpendicular to the Pentagon's southwest side, then went full throttle directly toward the building. The plane vanished, absorbed by the building, and there was a slight pause. Then a huge fireball rose into the sky."
The Washington Post, September 20 2001, quoted here
I got home, by police order, by turning around and going the wrong way on Interstate 395.
I was driving northbound to work in the District on I-395 when the Pentagon was hit. I actually saw the plane in front of me, coming in at a very steep angle toward the ground and going fast -- I think I actually heard it accelerate -- and then it disappeared and a cloud of smoke started billowing.
Traffic stopped dead, of course; I was within sight of the first Washington Boulevard exit at that point. We sat there for about 45 minutes, pulling over to the side so emergency vehicles could get through. Most of us got out of our cars, walked around and talked to each other, comparing notes on what we'd heard and trying (mostly unsuccessfully) to reach people on our cellphones.
Police eventually made us get back in our cars and turn around, going back the wrong way down the highway. I got off at the Glebe Road exit (moving down the up ramp)...
The Washington Post, September 16 2001
Earlier, Mary Lyman, 47, of Alexandria, had been driving on the same highway, passing the Pentagon on her way to her job as a lobbyist in Washington. She witnessed the crash.
"I saw a plane coming what I thought was toward National Airport, which is very close. You see that all the time," said Lyman, an Andover native. "But this one looked different. It was at a very steep angle, and going very fast.
"I had been hearing about the World Trade Center before I left, and wondered, is this part of that? Then the plane disappeared, smoke started coming up, and traffic came to a complete stop," Lyman said. "We all got out of our cars. We heard another couple of explosions, and I ran and got back in my car."
"The police came and had us drive back the wrong way on the highway."The Boston Globe, September 12 2001
David Marra, 23, an information-technology specialist, had turned his BMW off an I-395 exit to the highway just west of the Pentagon when he saw an American Airlines jet swooping in, its wings wobbly, looking like it was going to slam right into the Pentagon: "It was 50 ft. off the deck when he came in. It sounded like the pilot had the throttle completely floored. The plane rolled left and then rolled right. Then he caught an edge of his wing on the ground." There is a helicopter pad right in front of the side of the Pentagon. The wing touched there, then the plane cartwheeled into the building.
TIME', September 12 2001
"I saw a big jet flying close to the building coming at full speed. There was a big noise when it hit the building," said Oscar Martinez, who witnessed the attack.
Authorities have not described the plane that hit the Pentagon, although eyewitnesses said it was clearly a big commercial jet.Associated Press, September 11 2001
Don Mason, 62, is a communications specialist who retired from the United States Air Force after 25 years of service. He has worked for the Pentagon Renovation Program Office on information management and telecommunications since 1996. At the time of the crash he was stopped in traffic west of the building. The plane approached low, flying directly over him and possibly clipping the antenna of the vehicle immediately behind him, and struck three light poles between him and the building. He saw his colleague Frank Probst directly in the plane’s path, and he witnessed a small explosion as the portable generator was struck by the right wing.The aircraft struck the building between the heliport fire station and the generator, its left wing slightly lower than its right wing. As the plane entered the building, he recalled seeing the tail of the plane. The fireball that erupted upon the plane’s impact rose above the structure. Mason then noticed flames coming from the windows to the left of the point of impact and observed small pieces of the facade falling to the ground. Law enforcement personnel moved Mason’s vehicle and other traffic on, and he did not witness the subsequent partial collapse of the building.
ACSE Building Performance Report
Two other witnesses, Daniel McAdams and his wife, Cynthia, said they were sitting in their kitchen drinking coffee in their third-floor condominium in Arlington, Va., just two miles from the Pentagon when they heard a plane fly directly overhead around 9:45 a.m.
It was unusually loud and low.
Seconds later, they heard a big boom and felt the doors and windows of their three-story building shake.
From their window, they could see a plume of black smoke coming from the Pentagon.The News Journal Extra, September 11 2001
I was heading to the Arlington National Cemetery for a graveside service and I took the wrong exit, the exit for the Pentagon. I had just finished doing a mass, so I hadn't heard any news about the World Trade Center. Traffic was at a complete standstill, and I was right in front of the Pentagon. I was anxious about being late to the service, when all of a sudden I realized a plane was about 20 or 25 feet above our cars. It clipped a light pole on the edge of the highway, which hit a taxi. In a fraction of a second, I saw the plane coming in for what looked like a landing, very controlled and straight, and plow into the Pentagon. I could see fire billowing out of the top windows of the building. I remember hearing a collective gasp, even though I had my window closed.
I immediately thought it was a tragic accident, and I had a strong sense that I was meant to be there. Three weeks earlier, I had an experience where I had failed to make a turn and ended up someplace where I never usually am. There was a serious accident and a man was being placed in an ambulance on a stretcher. In that case I failed to stop, and I remember feeling guilty afterward. I made a resolution that I was going to stop whenever there was a serious accident-of course, I was just thinking auto accidents-and provide spiritual help.
I got my prayer book and blessed oils that we use to anoint those who are sick or dying, and I got out of my car and jumped across the guardrail. Very soon there were a handful of injured people who had somehow made it out onto the lawn. I began to go from one person to another. I kept saying "Jesus is with you." I remember one woman who had been seriously burned. She had no clothes on the back of her; the fire had burned them off. She said, "Tell my mother and father that I love them."
In those first 45 minutes, I was picking up snatches here and there about hijacking and the World Trade Center, and so I picked up that this was not simply an accident. Other chaplains had arrived at the scene, and from then on, we followed the medics, to be ready to console anyone who was injured. There was a rumor that there was another plane. A couple of times someone ordered us to get out, "Get over to the bridge, a plane's coming in!" We stayed at the Pentagon for hours, just waiting for anyone whom we could help, and of course praying for those who might still be in there. Then it became a salvage operation, and we prayed for the dead.
I'd only been a priest for three months at that point. I was working as a lawyer at the Department of Justice for almost six years. I left the department in July 1997 and went to seminary, and I was ordained a priest in June of 2001.
Of all days to have that graveside service nearby and to make a wrong turn onto that exit at that precise moment-I have no doubt that the Lord wanted me to be there-for the help that I was able to give, but also maybe on a symbolic level. My being there was a visible sign that God was there.
The National Journal, August 31 2002
Father Stephen McGraw was driving to a graveside service at Arlington National Cemetery the morning of Sept. 11, when he mistakenly took the Pentagon exit onto Washington Boulevard, putting him in a position to witness American Airlines Flight 77 crash into the Pentagon.
"The traffic was very slow moving, and at one point just about at a standstill," said McGraw, a Catholic priest at St. Anthony Parish in Falls Church.
"I was in the left hand lane with my windows closed. I did not hear anything at all until the plane was just right above our cars." McGraw estimates that the plane passed about 20 feet over his car, as he waited in the left hand lane of the road, on the side closest to the Pentagon.
"The plane clipped the top of a light pole just before it got to us, injuring a taxi driver, whose taxi was just a few feet away from my car.
"I saw it crash into the building," he said. "My only memories really were that it looked like a plane coming in for a landing. I mean in the sense that it was controlled and sort of straight. That was my impression," he said.
"I hadn't heard about the World Trade Center at that point, and so I was thinking this was an accident. I figured it was just an accident.
"There was an explosion and a loud noise and I felt the impact. I remember seeing a fireball come out of two windows (of the Pentagon). I saw an explosion of fire billowing through those two windows.
"I remember hearing a gasp or scream from one of the other cars near me. Almost a collective gasp it seemed. I just knew right away what I needed to do."
"He literally had the stole in one hand and a prayer book in the other and in one fluid motion crossed the guardrail," said Mark Faram, a reporter from the Navy Times who witnessed McGraw in the first moments after the crash.
Within 45 seconds, McGraw was on the lawn of the Pentagon to provide spiritual comfort to the injured.
"My first memories -- there was of course a lot of confusion and disorientation by a lot of people, I'm sure myself included -- were that in those first moments there were already injured being brought to the far edge of the highway," he said.
McGraw said he saw people coming out of the building who had escaped serious injury and believes that some of these people assisted the gravely wounded in the initial moments before the paramedics arrived by carrying or helping them to the far side of the grass. McGraw said medical personnel were on the scene shortly after he arrived.The Pentagram, September 28 2001
JAMIE MCINTYRE, CNN CORRESPONDENT: That's right, Judy.
A short -- a while ago I walked right up next to the building, firefighters were still trying to put the blaze. The fire, by the way, is still burning in some parts of the Pentagon. And I took a look at the huge gaping hole that's in the side of the Pentagon in an area of the Pentagon that has been recently renovated, part of a multibillion dollar renovation program here at the Pentagon. I could see parts of the airplane that crashed into the building, very small pieces of the plane on the heliport outside the building. The biggest piece I saw was about three feet long, it was silver and had been painted green and red, but I could not see any identifying markings on the plane. I also saw a large piece of shattered glass. It appeared to be a cockpit windshield or other window from the plane....
WOODRUFF: Jamie, Aaron was talking earlier -- or one of our correspondence was talking earlier -- I think -- actually, it was Bob Franken -- with an eyewitness who said it appeared that that Boeing 757, the American jet, American Airline jet, landed short of the Pentagon.
Can you give us any better idea of how much of the plane actually impacted the building?
MCINTYRE: You know, it might have appeared that way, but from my close-up inspection, there's no evidence of a plane having crashed anywhere near the Pentagon. The only site is the actual site of the building that's crashed in, and as I said, the only pieces left that you can see are small enough that you can pick up in your hand. There are no large tail sections, wing sections, fuselage, nothing like that anywhere around, which would indicate that the entire plane crashed into the side of the Pentagon and then caused the side to collapse.CNN, September 11 2001
I was heading to a 10 a.m. meeting. It was a beautiful day and I had the car windows down. My radio was on and they broke in to report the second plane hitting the World Trade Center. I felt "behind the curve" because I hadn't known about the first plane. I hadn't watched TV that morning and had no idea about the level of destruction. Then the President came on the air, saying that we had been the subject of an apparent terrorist attack.
Traffic is normally slow right around the Pentagon as the road winds and we line up to cross the 14th Street Bridge, heading into the District of Columbia. I don't know what made me look up, but I did and I saw a very low-flying American Airlines plane that seemed to be accelerating. My first thought was just "no, no, no, no," because it was obvious the plane was not heading to nearby Reagan National Airport. It was going to crash.
At that point time just sort of stopped. In retrospect, I'm amazed there were no car crashes, as those on the road with me just stopped and helplessly watched the plane crash. I pulled out my cell phone to call 911. I heard sirens and, not sure what to do, I called my mom who works at a newspaper in Illinois. She told me to calm down and keep driving. Fire trucks started to appear, so I and others on the road tried to move out of the way.
Operating mostly on autopilot, I drove to the office, keeping an eye and ear on the sky. I was positive another plane was coming any minute. Once you've seen the unimaginable, you believe anything can happen. They were already evacuating my building when I got there but I came up to the office and turned on the TV. The phone was ringing when I walked in and continued ringing. I was glad I was there so I could let people know we were all right.
As I thought about it, aside from the incomprehensible feeling of the attack itself, the most shocking thing to me was that I could see the plane was a regular-sized, American Airlines flight. I was not aware from the early reports that hijacked domestic airliners were involved. As I kept replaying the scene in my mind, all I could think was, "This is all very wrong. It can't be real."University of Washington, December 2001
One day last week, Lapic ventured to Arlington National Cemetery to interview a groundskeeper who watched in horror as the plane crashed into the Pentagon.
The worker, William Middleton Sr., was running his street sweeper through the cemetery when he heard a harsh whistling sound overhead. Middleton looked up and spotted a commercial jet whose pilot seemed to be fighting with his own craft.
Middleton said the plane was no higher than the tops of telephone poles as it lurched toward the Pentagon. The jet accelerated in the final few hundred yards before it tore into the building.SouthCoast Today, December 12 2001
"I was right underneath the plane," said Kirk Milburn, a construction supervisor for Atlantis Co., who was on the Arlington National Cemetery exit of Interstate 395 when he said he saw the plane heading for the Pentagon. "I heard a plane. I saw it. I saw debris flying. I guess it was hitting light poles," said Milburn. "It was like a WHOOOSH whoosh, then there was fire and smoke, then I heard a second explosion."
Washington Post, September 11 2001
"Just as we got even with the Pentagon, I looked out to the front and saw, coming straight down the road at us, a huge jet plane clearly with American Airlines written on it, and it looked like it was coming in to hit us. I told my wife, 'It's going to hit the Pentagon.' It crossed about 100 feet in front of us and at about 20 feet altitude and we watched it go in. It struck the Pentagon, and there was no indication whatever that it was doing anything other than performing a direct attack on that building. The landing gear was up. There were no flaps down and it looked like a deadly missile on the final phase of its mission into the building."
"We saw what I estimate to be about the last seven seconds of the flight. It was a straight-in flight, angled slightly down, and there was--there was no intent to turn or to maneuver in any way. It was headed straight for its target and we were helpless to do anything about it but watch."CBS The Early Show, September 13 2001, quoted here
Vernett Jackson's grandson works at the Pentagon, went outside for just a minute on Sept. 11. Frederick Moore Jr. saw the plane come in.
The Virginian Pilot, September 22 2001
I had just reached the elevator in the 5th Wing of BMDO/Federal Office Building (FOB) #2 – call it approximately 9:36 AM. I was already trying to make some sense out of the World Trade Tower attacks having heard about them on the radio. The news was sketchy, but the fact that it was a terrorist attack was already known. I then realized that I was wearing sunglasses and needed to go back to Lot 3 to retrieve my clear lenses. Since it was by no means a short walk to my car, I was upset with myself for being so distracted. Approximately 10 steps out from between Wings 4 and 5, I was making a gentle right turn towards the security check-in building just above Wing 4 when I became aware of something unusual. I can’t remember exactly what I was thinking about at that moment, but I started to hear an increasingly loud rumbling behind me and to my left. As I turned to my left, I immediately realized the noise was bouncing off the 4-story structure that was Wing 5. One to two seconds later the airliner came into my field of view. By that time the noise was absolutely deafening. I instantly had a very bad feeling about this but things were happening very quickly. The aircraft was essentially right over the top of me and the outer portion of the FOB (flight path parallel the outer edge of the FOB). Everything was shaking and vibrating, including the ground. I estimate that the aircraft was no more than 100 feet above me (30 to 50 feet above the FOB) in a slight nose down attitude. The plane had a silver body with red and blue stripes down the fuselage. I believed at the time that it belonged to American Airlines, but I couldn’t be sure. It looked like a 737 and I so reported to authorities.
Within seconds the plane cleared the 8th Wing of BMDO and was heading directly towards the Pentagon. Engines were at a steady high-pitched whine, indicating to me that the throttles were steady and full. I estimated the aircraft speed at between 350 and 400 knots. The flight path appeared to be deliberate, smooth, and controlled. As the aircraft approached the Pentagon, I saw a minor flash (later found out that the aircraft had sheared off a portion of a highway light pole down on Hwy 110). As the aircraft flew ever lower I started to lose sight of the actual airframe as a row of trees to the Northeast of the FOB blocked my view. I could now only see the tail of the aircraft. I believe I saw the tail dip slightly to the right indicating a minor turn in that direction. The tail was barely visible when I saw the flash and subsequent fireball rise approximately 200 feet above the Pentagon. There was a large explosion noise and the low frequency sound echo that comes with this type of sound. Associated with that was the increase in air pressure, momentarily, like a small gust of wind. For those formerly in the military, it sounded like a 2000lb bomb going off roughly ½ mile in front of you. At once there was a huge cloud of black smoke that rose several hundred feet up. Elapsed time from hearing the initial noise to when I saw the impact flash was between 12 and 15 seconds.Coping.org, September 2001
James Mosley, 57, was four stories up on a scaffold, washing the windows of the Navy Annex building when the plane flew overhead.
"The building started shaking, and I looked over and saw this big silver plane run into the side of the Pentagon," said the "It almost knocked me off. I couldn't believe it."UCLA website, quoted here
Navy Times reporter Christopher Munsey was en route to work when he saw this morning’s attack on the Pentagon. This is his eyewitness account.
ARLINGTON, Va. — Traffic headed south on Interstate 395 just across the Potomac River and Washington, D.C. was light, but I was late for work and it was after the thick of the rush hour, about 9:30 a.m.
I was running late because I had to register my car in D.C. early that morning, an errand that fated me to witness a devastating act of destruction on American soil.
Already dumbfounded by the first, sketchy radio reports of the catastrophic attack on the World Trade Center towers in New York, I couldn’t believe what I was now seeing to my right: A silver, twin-engine American Airlines jetliner gliding almost noiselessly over the Navy Annex, fast, low and straight toward the Pentagon, just hundreds of yards away.
It was a nightmare coming to life.
The plane, with red and blue markings, hurtled by and within moments exploded in a ground-shaking “whoomp,” as it appeared to hit the side of the Pentagon.
A huge flash of orange flame and black smoke poured into the sky. Smoke seemed to change from black to white, forming a billowing column in the sky.
It all seemed so surreal. Sadly, it’s all too real.Navy Times, September 11 2001
"The plane exploded after it hit, the tail came off and it began burning immediately. Within five minutes, police and emergency vehicles began arriving," said Vin Narayanan, a reporter at USA TODAY.com, who was driving near the Pentagon when the plane hit.
USA Today, September 11 2001
At 9:35 a.m., I pulled alongside the Pentagon. With traffic at a standstill, my eyes wandered around the road, looking for the cause of the traffic jam. Then I looked up to my left and saw an American Airlines jet flying right at me. The jet roared over my head, clearing my car by about 25 feet. The tail of the plane clipped the overhanging exit sign above me as it headed straight at the Pentagon.
The windows were dark on American Airlines Flight 77 as it streaked toward its target, only 50 yards away.
The hijacked jet slammed into the Pentagon at a ferocious speed. But the Pentagon's wall held up like a champ. It barely budged as the nose of the plane curled upwards and crumpled before exploding into a massive fireball.
The people who built that wall should be proud. Its ability to withstand the initial impact of the jet probably saved thousands of lives.
I hopped out of my car after the jet exploded, nearly oblivious to a second jet hovering in the skies.
Hands shaking, I borrowed a cell phone to call my mom and tell her I was safe.
Then I called into work, to let them know what happened. But not once was I able to take my eyes off the inferno in front of me.
I think I saw the bodies of passengers burning. But I'm not sure. It could have been Pentagon workers. It could have been my mind playing tricks on me. I hope it was my mind playing tricks on me.
The highway was filled with shocked commuters, walking around in a daze.USA Today, September 17 2001
O'Brien has just taken off from Andrews Air Force Base on 9/11 when he's asked to identify a mystery plane. He reports what looks like a 757 at low altitude, then says it appears to have crashed into the Pentagon.
Northern Virginia resident John O'Keefe was one of the many commuters who witnessed the attack on the Pentagon.
"I was going up Interstate 395, up Washington Boulevard, listening to the radio, to the news, to WTOP, and from my left side, I don't know whether I saw or heard it first, this silver plane, I immediately recognized it as an American Airlines jet," says the 25-year-old O'Keefe, managing editor of Influence, an American Lawyer Media publication about lobbying. "It came swooping in over the highway, over my left shoulder, straight across where my car was heading.
"I'd just heard them saying on the radio that National Airport was closing, and I thought, 'That's not going to make it to National Airport.' And then I realized where I was, and that it was going to hit the Pentagon."
"There was a burst of orange flame that shot out that I could see through the highway overpass. Then it was just black. Just black thick smoke."
"The eeriest thing about it, was that it was like you were watching a movie. There was no huge explosion, no huge rumbling on ground, it just went pfff. It wasn't what I would have expected for a plane that was not much more than a football field away from me.
"The first thing I did was pull over onto the shoulder, and when I got out of the car I saw another plane flying over my head, and it scared the shit out of me, because I knew there had been two planes that hit the World Trade Center. And I started jogging up the ramp to get as far away as possible. "Then the plane-it looked like a C-130 cargo plane-started turning away from the Pentagon, it did a complete turnaround.
"There was nothing to see but black. The whole side of Washington Boulevard was black and on fire.
"I lost all sense of time. I think I was standing outside a good 20 minutes or so, and then, it was just 10 minutes until I got to the Memorial Bridge, which was closed, so I went up the GW Parkway and to a friend's house."National Law Journal, September 11 2001
Mare Ann Owens, a journalist with Gannett News Service - part of Newsquest's American parent company Gannett, which owns This is Local London - was driving along by the side of the Pentagon, on September 11, 2001, when a hijacked jet screamed overhead and ploughed into it. Here, she recalls the events of that horrific day and her feelings about the tragedy 12 months on.
THE sound of sudden and certain death roared in my ears as I sat lodged in gridlock on Washington Boulevard, next to the Pentagon on September 11.
Up to that moment I had only experienced shock by the news coming from New York City and frustration with the worse-than-normal traffic snarl ... but it wasn't until I heard the demon screaming of that engine that I expected to die.
Between the Pentagon's helicopter pad, which sits next to the road, and Reagan Washington National Airport a couple of miles south, aviation noise is common along my commute to the silver office towers in Rosslyn where Gannett Co Inc. were housed last autumn.
But this engine noise was different. It was too sudden, too loud, too encompassing.
Looking up didn't tell me what type of plane it was because it was so close I could only see the bottom. Realising the Pentagon was its target, I didn't think the careering, full-throttled craft would get that far. Its downward angle was too sharp, its elevation of maybe 50 feet, too low. Street lights toppled as the plane barely cleared the Interstate 395 overpass.
The thought that I was about to die was immediate and certain. This plane was going to hit me along with all the other commuters trapped on Washington Boulevard.
Gripping the steering wheel of my vibrating car, I involuntarily ducked as the wobbling plane thundered over my head. Once it passed, I raised slightly and grimaced as the left wing dipped and scraped the helicopter area just before the nose crashed into the southwest wall of the Pentagon.www.thisislocallondon.co.uk/search/display.var.208367.0.the_day_thought_i_was_going_to_die.php This Is Local London, September 2002 (now dead)
Zinovy Pak, Russian Munitions Agency director, was on his way to the Pentagon for negotiations over U.S. funding for a southern Urals chemical weapons destruction facility when he "saw a plane crash into the building."
Moscow Times?, quoted here
Steve Patterson, 43, said he was watching television reports of the World Trade Center being hit when he saw a silver commuter jet fly past the window of his 14th-floor apartment in Pentagon City. The plane was about 150 yards away, approaching from the west about 20 feet off the ground, Patterson said.
He said the plane, which sounded like the high-pitched squeal of a fighter jet, flew over Arlington cemetary so low that he thought it was going to land on I-395. He said it was flying so fast that he couldn't read any writing on the side.
The plane, which appeared to hold about eight to 12 people, headed straight for the Pentagon but was flying as if coming in for a landing on a nonexistent runway, Patterson said.
"At first I thought 'Oh my God, there's a plane truly misrouted from National,'" Patterson said. "Then this thing just became part of the Pentagon .‚.‚. I was watching the World Trade Center go and then this. It was like Oh my God, what's next?"
He said the plane, which approached the Pentagon below treetop level, seemed to be flying normally for a plane coming in for a landing other than going very fast for being so low. Then, he said, he saw the Pentagon "envelope" the plane and bright orange flames shoot out the back of the building.
"It looked like a normal landing, as if someone knew exactly what they were doing," said Patterson, a graphics artist who works at home. "This looked intentional."Washington Post, September 11 2001
The airliner crashed between two and three hundred feet from my office in the Pentagon, just around a corner from where I work. I'm the deputy General Counsel, Washington Headquarters Services, Office of the Secretary of Defense. A slightly different calibration and I have no doubt I wouldn't be sending this to you. My colleagues felt the impact, which reminded them of an earthquake. People shouted in the corridor outside that a bomb had gone off upstairs on the main concourse in the building. No alarms sounded. I walked to my office, shut down my computer, and headed out. Even before stepping outside I could smell the cordite. Then I knew explosives had been set off somewhere.
I looked to my right and saw a raging fire and smoke careening off the facade to the sky.McSweeney's Internet Tendency, September 19 2001
Scott Perry of Spotsylvania County heard a plane's engines rumbling above the Navy Annex building where he works, so he looked out his window, which faces the Pentagon.
"[The plane] was coming straight into the wedge," Perry said. "I saw it crash. There was about five seconds of disbelief, and the next thing I heard was, down the hallway, a friend of mine screaming."
Windows shook, he said, and people started pouring out of the Navy Annex. They stood around outside for a while. Then, fearing car bombs might go off, Marines ordered them into nearby Arlington Cemetery.fredericksburg.com, September 12 2001
I'd been in Boston the day before and gotten home late. That morning I repacked my suitcase because I was heading out to San Francisco on the 3:20 p.m. flight. I just needed a few hours in the office first, and now I was officially late for work.
I was at a complete stop on the road in front of the helipad at the Pentagon; what I had thought would be a shortcut was as slow as the other routes I had taken that morning. I looked idly out my window to the left -- and saw a plane flying so low I said, "holy cow, that plane is going to hit my car" (not my actual words). The car shook as the plane flew over. It was so close that I could read the numbers under the wing.
And then the plane crashed. My mind could not comprehend what had happened. Where did the plane go? For some reason I expected it to bounce off the Pentagon wall in pieces. But there was no plane visible, only huge billows of smoke and torrents of fire. Now I wanted to get as far away as I could, but that was impossible. The people around me had gotten out of their cars. At least half had cameras and the others were on their cell phones. I experienced a moment of irrelevant amazement that so many people had cameras in their cars.NAU Alumni Association, October 18 2001
Linda Plaisted, an artist, was sitting at her desk at home less than one mile from the Pentagon.
"...I jumped up from my chair as the screeching and whining of the engine got even louder and I looked out the window to the West just in time to see the belly of that aircraft and the tail section fly directly over my house at treetop height. It was utterly sickening to see, knowing that this plane was going to crash. The sound was so incredibly piercing and shrill- the engines were straining to keep the plane aloft. It is a sound I will never stop hearing- and I now imagine the screams of the innocent passengers were commingled with the sounds of the engines and I am haunted. I was unaware at this time that the World Trade center had been attacked so I thought this was "just" a troubled plane en route to the airport. I started to run toward my front door but the plane was going so fast at this point that it only took 4 or 5 seconds before I heard a tremendously loud crash and books on my shelves started tumbling to the floor.Wherewereyou.org, quoted here
Frank Probst, a member of the crew involved in ongoing Pentagon renovations was standing on the sidewalk at 9:38 a.m. "and I saw this plane coming right at me at what seemed like 300 mph. I dove towards the ground and watched this great big engine from this beautiful airplane just vaporize.
"It looked like a huge fireball, pieces were flying out everywhere," Probst said.
Military District of Washington News, September 12 2001
ACSE Building Performance Report
In light traffic the drive up Interstate 395 from Springfield to downtown Washington takes no more than 20 minutes. But that morning, like many others, the traffic slowed to a crawl just in front of the Pentagon. With the Pentagon to the left of my van at about 10 oclock on the dial of a clock, I glanced at my watch to see if I was going to be late for my appointment.
At that moment I heard a very loud, quick whooshing sound that began behind me and stopped suddenly in front of me and to my left. In fractions of a second I heard the impact and an explosion. The next thing I saw was the fireball.
I was convinced it was a missile. It came in so fast it sounded nothing like an airplane. Friends and colleagues have asked me if I felt a shock wave and I honestly do not know. I felt something, but I dont know if it was a shock wave or the fact that I jumped so hard I strained against the seat belt and shoulder harness and was thrown back into my seat.
My first instinct was to grab the phone and call one of our reporters. I did and screamed repeatedly into the mouthpiece: "the Pentagons been hit, the Pentagons been hit." There was no doubt in my mind that this was an attack by the same unknown foe attacking New York.
The scene on the highway was surreal. Certain images continue to flash in my memory like they were taken from a photo album. I can see two men, one jumping from a car and the other from a truck, both pointing frantically at the Pentagon as a dark, black cloud rose above the burning building.
I remember vividly that as I turned off my cell phone I was watching the almost serene image of thick pieces of flaming fiberglass insulation floating down onto the highway.
It all seemed to be happening in slow motion — the scenes were unreal, like something from a movie. I can remember thinking to myself: "I don’t believe this is happening."
But there was no mistaking that I had just witnessed an act of war. The scale of what had happened in New York and just a few kilometers from my office, all in less than an hour, was unfathomable.Space News, June 30 2005
While Rosati couldn't see the cause of the explosion, Wanda Ramey, a DPS master patrol officer, had had a bird's eye view. Ramey stood at the Mall plaza booth when she saw a low-flying airplane.
"I saw the wing of the plane clip the light post, and it made the plane slant. Then the engine revved up and crashed into the west side of the building," she said. "It happened so fast. One second I saw the plane and next it was gone."
Recalling those moments again, Ramey said it appeared the building sucked the plane up inside.
"A few seconds later, I heard a loud boom and I saw a huge fireball and lots of smoke," she said.Military District of Washington News, September 22 2001
Shirley Highway, or I-395, by the numbers, is Northern Virginia’s main street into Washington, and each day deposits tens of thousands of commuters into the capital. Wending its way through Springfield, Annandale, Alexandria and Arlington, it divides at the Pentagon and empties into the Potomac River bridges. Traffic is usually awful, drivers are aggressive and rude, and if a commuter’s blood isn’t boiling by the end of the ride, it is certainly moving.
But no trip along that highway, over more than 20 years, prepared me for what I saw on September 11.
As I approached the Pentagon, which was still not quite in view, listening on the radio to the first reports about the World Trade Center disaster in New York, a jetliner, apparently at full throttle and not more than a couple of hundred yards above the ground, screamed overhead.
Although airplanes regularly fly over the Pentagon on their way to Reagan National Airport, just a mile or two south, this plane was too low and going too fast. As I watched it disappear behind bridges and concrete barriers I knew it was about to crash.
At almost the same moment the radio announcer mentioned the likelihood that the World Trade Center had been hit by terrorists, although it was not yet clear whether the planes that hit it were small or large, private or commercial, or what any of the circumstances were. My first thoughts were that this, too, must be the act of a terrorist.
Seconds before the Pentagon came into view a huge black cloud of smoke rose above the road ahead. I came around the bend and there was the Pentagon billowing smoke, flames and debris, blackened on one side and with a gaping hole where the airplane had hit it.Online Human Events, week of September 17, 2001
"The plane came in at an incredibly steep angle with incredibly high speed," said Rick Renzi, a law student who was driving by the building.
Arkansas Democrat-Gazette, September 12 2001
I took these pictures less then 1 minutes after I watched the american airlines 757 airplane crash into the pentagon on september 11 2001. I left shortly after the picture were taken in fear of further attacks.
Feel free to contact me anytime if you have questions about my pictures.
Yes, I did actually see the plane impact the building.
CriticalThrash
I went back to my office around 9:20. A short time later a friend of mine called, an Air Force officer, and we spoke awhile about the strikes in New York. I was standing, looking out my large office window, which faces west and from six stories up has a commanding view of the Potomac and the Virginia heights. (When I hired on my boss said we had the best view in town. True, most days.) The Pentagon is about a mile and half distant in the center of the tableau. I was looking directly at it when the aircraft struck. The sight of the 757 diving in at an unrecoverable angle is frozen in my memory, but at the time, I did not immediately comprehend what I was witnessing. There was a silvery flash, an explosion, and a dark, mushroom shaped cloud rose over the building. I froze, gaping for a second until the sound of the detonation, a sharp pop at that distance, shook me out of it. I shouted something both extremely profane and sacrilegious and told my friend, "They hit the Pentagon. We're under attack. Gotta go."
National Review Online, April 9 2002
(On a Metro train)
I saw the plane but I saw it as it was about to hit. I didn't see it coming in, because he just caught my attention. He yelled, and I looked up and ... I just saw very little of it. All I could tell it was a mid-sized plane, then it was gone, then there was just all this smoke... It went straight for the Pentagon.The Washington Post (video), September 11 2001
One area resident, who witnessed the Boeing 757 American Airline flight approaching its target, stood with onlookers at the partially demolished structure.
"I was on the street driving, and then the plane went over the top of my car, just over the treetops," Joseph Royster said. "It was a big aircraft just on its course."University Wire, September 13 2001
Vice Adm. Darb Ryan, chief of naval personnel, was in his office at the Navy Annex about halfway between Trapasso's home and the Pentagon. Having learned that New York had been attacked, he was on the telephone recommending the evacuation of the Pentagon "when out of the corner of my eye I saw the airplane" a split second before it struck.
Ryan was overheard reporting some of the initial damage assessment, which included spaces belonging to the chief of naval operations (CNO), the Navy's tactical command center on the D-ring, an operations cell and a Navy intelligence command center. These included up to four special, highly classified, electronically secure areas. Many of the enlisted sailors involved were communications technicians with cryptology training who are key personnel in intelligence gathering and analysis. Some personnel were known to be trapped alive in the wreckage.Aviation Week, September 17 2001
What made me look up was the sound. Because typically you would hear planes flying over and they make a steady sound like (mimics) when they're coming to land it's pretty steady. Well I heard (mimics) and so I looked up and when I looked up-
On your left?
On my left, right above me - a little over. I see an American Airlines plane, silver plane, I could see AA on the tail. I noticed the landing gear was up ... I had just heard about what happened at the World Trade Center. ...
How high he was?
Within a hundred feet. It was very low. At that point he tilted his wings this way and this way (mimics), And the plane was slow, so that happened concurrently with the engines going down. (mimics) And then straightened out sort of suddenly and hit full gas. (mimics) It was so loud it hurt my ears. It was just so loud. He just went straight in at that point. ...
And you saw it hit the Pentagon?
No, at that point it went down because I was approaching a hill. And at that point it went straight down over the hill and a moment later I heard this terrific boom, a very deep boom sound. Then immediately I saw all the orange and yellow sort of ball of fire and then thick black smoke go up into the air. The plane was low enough that I could see the windows of the plane. I could see every detail of the plane. In my head I have ingrained forever this image of every detail of that plane. It was a silver plane, American Airlines plane, and I recognized it immediately as a passenger plane.Digipress interview, transcription here
"The whole building shook. We heard a loud bang, and wall of fire came at us," said Qawiy Sabre, a data processor who was working in the outer ring when he saw the plane coming toward the Pentagon. He ducked to the floor and flames passed over him. He then fled the building, along with his co-workers.
The Washington Times, September 12 2001
Don Scott, a Prince William County school bus driver living in Woodbridge, was driving eastward past the Pentagon on his way to an appointment at Walter Reed Army Medical Center:
"I had just passed the Pentagon and was near the Macy's store in Crystal City when I noticed a plane making a sharp turn from north of the Pentagon. I had to look back at the road and then back to the plane as it sort of leveled off. I looked back at the road, and when I turned to look again, I felt and heard a terrible explosion. I looked back and saw flames shooting up and smoke starting to climb into the sky."Washington Post, September 16 2001, quoted here
Many courageous men and women have been recognized and honored for actions at the World Trade Center and Pentagon following the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks.
Only one has both an Airman's Medal and Purple Heart as a result of those actions.
Master Sgt. Noel Sepulveda, who received the awards from Air Force Chief of Staff Gen. John P. Jumper during a special ceremony at the Pentagon April 15, remembers with considerable clarity and detail the events of Sept. 11. He left Bolling Air Force Base, D.C., that morning enroute to a meeting at the Pentagon, only to arrive and be told the meeting had been cancelled.
Sepulveda walked back to his motorcycle and saw a commercial airliner coming from the direction of Henderson Hall, adjacent to the Pentagon and where the Marine Corps has its headquarters. He said he noticed the airplane was not following the Potomac River, the normal flight path to Ronald Reagan Washington National Airport.
He saw the plane fly above a nearby hotel and drop its landing gear. The plane�s right wheel struck a light pole, causing it to fly at a 45-degree angle, he said. The plane tried to recover, but hit a second light pole and continued flying at an angle. "You could hear the engines being revved up even higher," Sepulveda said.
The plane dipped its nose and crashed into the southwest side of the Pentagon.
"The right engine hit high, the left engine hit low," Sepulveda said. "For a brief moment, you could see the body of the plane sticking out from the side of the building. Then a ball of fire came from behind it."
An explosion followed, sending Sepulveda flying against a light pole. When he regained his balance, he started running to the crash site.
Upon arrival, he saw an entire side of the Pentagon obliterated. He said he believes that if the airliner had not hit the light poles, it would have slammed into the Pentagon�s 9th and 10th corridor "A" ring, and the loss of life would have been greater.Air Force Print News, April 15 2002
Philip Sheuerman, Class of 1977, is associate general counsel for the U.S. Air Force. His office is in the Pentagon. On the morning of the attack, he was exiting the freeway, turning into the parking lot of the Pentagon, when he noticed a passenger plane — American Airlines Flight 77 — descend at increasing speed with its wheels up.
Sheuerman, who had just heard about the attacks on the World Trade Center minutes before, realized that “it was perfectly obvious what (the plane) was going to do.” He saw the plane slam into the Pentagon.The Berkleyan, September 20 2001
KING: Joining us now outside the Pentagon in Arlington, Virginia is firefighter Mark Skipper. Been a firefighter for seven years, including four years in the military on crash fire rescues, now at the Fort Myer, Virginia fire department, one of three civilian firefighters on duty at the Pentagon when the plane hit. Where were you when it hit the Pentagon, Mark?
MARK SKIPPER, FIREFIGHTER, PENTAGON ATTACK SURVIVOR: First of all, Larry, I'd like to say that our hearts and prayers go out to the firefighters and their families that were injured in New York and also here at the Pentagon.
To answer your question, we were about 300 feet from the impact site from the collapsed building side. Me, myself and Al Wallace (ph) were standing outside when we saw the plane, not too far from where we are sitting right now, and as soon as we saw it, we started running toward the north side of the building, and that's when we heard the explosion and the incredible crash.CNN, September 15 2001
A Pendleton High School graduate watched as the plane that crashed into the Pentagon building in Washington sailed 200 feet over her head before hitting its target.
Elizabeth Smiley, 29, was on her way home from work.
"I saw the plane not more than 200 feet over my head," Smiley said.
The matter hits close to home for Smiley. She works in terrorist intelligence for the Federal Aviation Administration.
She was on her way home from the FAA building when the attacks occurred. She decided to walk the one mile home from her metro stop at the Pentagon instead of taking the bus. That's when the plane flew overhead and struck the building.www.mvonline.com/midvalleyextra/091201/volunteers.html Mid-Valley Online, September 12 2001 (now dead)
Eight voice/data/video (VDV) workers from the Walker Seal Companies, a Fairfax, Va.-based electrical contractor, narrowly escaped from the Pentagon Sept. 11, 2001, when American Airlines Flight 77 smashed into Wedge One, where they were working at 9:45 a.m. (EDT). Steve Snaman, manager of the datacom division for Walker Seals, watched in horror from Fort McNair (across the river) as the jetliner came in low at full throttle, banked left and smashed into the wall of the Pentagon.
"We saw the plane hit the Pentagon," Snaman said. "My first reaction was to get on the Nextel to reach my men, but I couldn´t get a signal. They were in Wedge One."National Electrical Contractors Association, September 14 2001
SGT Dewey Snavely was driving along Arlington's Quaker Lane when the radio blasted the morning's first harrowing reports, then warned that a third plane was heading his way. Minutes later, jet engines rumbled overhead.
"The guy I was with looked up and said: 'What the hell is that plane doing?' Then we heard an explosion and the truck rocked back and forth." Snavely, a member of the Engr. Co. on transition leave, knew deep in his gut that the Pentagon was under attack.Soldiers Online, October 2001
Staff at the Space Transportation Association watched Flight 77 hit the Pentagon from its headquarters a half-mile away.
Eric Stallmer, president of the association, said he alerted his co-workers Tuesday morning when he spotted a low-flying commercial jet approach the Pentagon.
"We saw the plane hit the Pentagon from my window," Stallmer said. Hours later, the association's office manager, Bernice Coakley, learned that her nephew and his wife, Kenneth and Jennifer Lewis, both American Airlines [AMR] flight attendants, had requested to work that flight together and were among the dead, Stallmer added.Satellite News, September 17 2001
Capt. G. T. Stanley, of the Defense Protective Service, was on Route 27 getting off the Columbia Pike when he saw the jetliner:
"That plane was screaming. The engines were so loud ... I followed the plane down with my eyes. I saw it hit the building."Washington Post, October 18 2001, quoted here
Levi Stephens, 23, a courier for the Armed Forces Information Service, spoke of the crash:
"I was driving away from the Pentagon in the South Pentagon lot when I hear this huge rumble, the ground started shaking … I saw this [plane] come flying over the Navy Annex. It flew over the van and I looked back and I saw this huge explosion, black smoke everywhere."Stars and Stripes, September 12 2001
Steve Storti, who used work as a fire lieutenant in Cranston , was asleep in Crystal City apartment when he was roused by a phone call from a friend ". . . 'What's going to happen next,' Storti, 46, recalls thinking as he stood on his balcony. Then he caught the glint of silver out of the corner of his eye. He looked up to see a passenger plane with the trademark stainless-steel fuselage and stripes of American Airlines. Time seemed to slip into slow motion as he watched the plane cross over Route 395, tip its left wing as it passed the Navy annex, veer sharply and then slice into the Pentagon. 'I remember thinking that whoever is flying this knows what they’re doing,' Storti said. "The plane traveled straight as an arrow.'(sic)
When it had plunged in as far as its tail fin, there was huge explosion"Providence Journal, September 12 2002, quoted here
According to Sucherman, "whoever was flying the plane made no attempt to change direction. It was coming in at a high rate ofspeed, but not at a steep angle--almost like a heat-seeking missile was locked on its target and staying dead on course."
The New American, August 23 2004
USA Today, September 11 2001, quoted here
Jim Sutherland, a mortgage broker, was driving near the Pentagon at 9:40 a.m. when he saw a 737 airplane 50 feet over Interstate 395 heading in a straight line into the side of the Pentagon. The fireball explosion that followed rocked his car. Drivers began pulling over to the side - some taking pictures - not quite believing what they were seeing.
Scripps Howard News Service, September 12 2001]
I work in a different location, not in the Pentagon. I got there around 8 o'clock, my normal time, came in and checked my email and noticed here was an email asking me to come over to the Pentagon as soon as possible. So I got in my car, rushed over there, found a parking space, and as soon as I got out of my car, I looked over my shoulder and you can hear the plane coming in, it was just so loud. Normally you don't see planes on that side of the Pentagon, and that was my first thought. I thought, 'What is he doing on that side of the Pentagon, it's so strange.' And then you could just see him descend and just keep descending lower and lower, until he was almost on top of Route 27 that runs alongside the Pentagon. And then he just slammed into the Pentagon, you just knew he was going to hit the Pentagon, I mean there was no way he could not have hit it.
We Were On Duty documentary, quoted here
American Airlines Flight 77, a Boeing 757 with 58 passengers and a crew of six aboard, hit the west side of the building at 9:41 a.m. EDT, half an hour after it left Dulles International Airport en route to Los Angeles.
"I glanced up just at the point where the plane was going into the building," said Carla Thompson, who works in an Arlington, Va., office building about 1,000 yards from the crash.
"I saw an indentation in the building and then it was just blown-up up--red, everything red," she said. "Everybody was just starting to go crazy. I was petrified."Los Angeles Times, September 12 2001
Henry Ticknor, intern minister at the Unitarian Universalist Church of Arlington, Virginia, was driving to church that Tuesday morning when American Airlines Flight 77 came in fast and low over his car and struck the Pentagon. "There was a puff of white smoke and then a huge billowing black cloud," he said.
UU World, January/ February 2002
A pilot who saw the impact, Tim Timmerman, said it had been an American Airways 757. "It added power on its way in," he said. "The nose hit, and the wings came forward and it went up in a fireball."
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2001/sep/12/expertopinions.charlieporteronmensfashion
BOB FRANKEN, CNN: We do also have somebody to talk with us who was an eyewitness to the actual crash. He was watch from Arlington, Virginia, which is a suburb. His name is Tim Timmerman.
Mr. Timmerman, are you with us right now?
TIM TIMMERMAN, EYEWITNESS: I sure am.
FRANKEN: You are a pilot. Tell us what you saw. TIMMERMAN: I was looking out the window; I live on the 16th floor, overlooking the Pentagon, in a corner apartment, so I have quite a panorama. And being next to National Airport, I hear jets all the time, but this jet engine was way too loud. I looked out to the southwest, and it came right down 395, right over Colombia Pike, and as is went by the Sheraton Hotel, the pilot added power to the engines. I heard it pull up a little bit more, and then I lost it behind a building.
And then it came out, and I saw it hit right in front of -- it didn't appear to crash into the building; most of the energy was dissipated in hitting the ground, but I saw the nose break up, I saw the wings fly forward, and then the conflagration engulfed everything in flames. It was horrible.
FRANKEN: What can you tell us about the plane itself?
TIMMERMAN: It was a Boeing 757, American Airlines, no question.
FRANKEN: You say that it was a Boeing, and you say it was a 757 or 767?
TIMMERMAN: 7-5-7.
FRANKEN: 757, which, of course...
TIMMERMAN: American Airlines.
FRANKEN: American Airlines, one of the new generation of jets.
TIMMERMAN: Right. It was so close to me it was like looking out my window and looking at a helicopter. It was just right there.
FRANKEN: We were told that it was flying so low that it clipped off a couple of light poles as it was coming in.
TIMMERMAN: That might have happened behind the apartments that occluded my view.
And when it reappeared, it was right before impact, and like I said, it was right before impact, and I saw the airplane just disintegrate and blow up into a huge ball of flames.
FRANKEN: So there was a fireball that you saw?
TIMMERMAN: Absolutely. And the building shook, and it was quite a tremendous explosion.
FRANKEN: What did you see after that?
TIMMERMAN: Nothing but the flames. I sat here, and I took a few pictures out of my window, and I noticed the fire trucks and the responses was just wonderful. Fire trucks were there quickly. I saw the area; the building didn't look very damaged initially, but I do see now, looking out my window, there's quite a chunk in it. But I think the blessing here might have been that the airplane hit before it hit the building, it hit the ground, and a lot of energy might have gone that way. That's what it appeared like.
FRANKEN: There is, of course -- we heard some discussion about the fact that it could have been worse had it actually gone a little bit higher and gone into what is the called the ring, the center ring...
(CROSSTALK)
FRANKEN: This is a five-sided building.
TIMMERMAN: As you know, the rings are A, B, C, D, E. It is just across the E ring on the outside, and that's why I felt it didn't look as damaged as it could be. It looked like on the helipad, which is on that side.
FRANKEN: Did you see any people being removed, any injured being removed, that type of thing?
TIMMERMAN: No, sir. I am up about a quarter a mile -- it may be a little bit closer -- and at that point, I saw nothing like that.
FRANKEN: Tim Timmerman, thank you very much -- an eyewitness, Judy, to the crash.CNN, September 11 2001
"I glanced up just at the point where the plane was going into the building," said Carla Thompson, who works in an Arlington, Va., office building about 1,000 yards from the crash.
"I saw an indentation in the building and then it was just blown-up up--red, everything red," she said. "Everybody was just starting to go crazy. I was petrified."Los Angeles Times, September 12 2001
There is no doubt in my mind that last week’s attack on America was an act of war.
I fought in the Gulf War. I saw bombs and missiles explode overhead. I saw people die. And when, on my way to work Sept. 11, I saw an American Airlines jet come overhead and slam into the Pentagon, it all came back. Hard.
I was sitting in heavy traffic in the I-395 HOV lanes about 9:45 a.m., directly across from the Navy Annex. I could see the roof of the Pentagon and, in the distance, the Washington Monument.
I heard the scream of a jet engine and, turning to look, saw my driver’s side window filled with the fuselage of the doomed airliner. It was flying only a couple of hundred feet off the ground — I could see the passenger windows glide by. The plane looked as if it were coming in for a landing — cruising at a shallow angle, wings level, very steady. But, strangely, the landing gear was up and the flaps weren’t down.
I knew what was about to happen, but my brain couldn’t quite process the information. Like the other commuters on the road, I was stunned into disbelief. The fireball that erupted upon impact blossomed skyward, and the blast hit us in a wave. I don’t remember hearing a sound.MilitaryCity.com, September 2002
Michael Tinyk, 32, a lawyer, was at work on the 10th floor of the U.S. Trademark Office in Crystal City, when he saw a dark orange and blue commercial airliner just above the tree line "coming in lower and lower" on what he instantly registered as the "wrong side" of the flight path to the airport.
"There was no reason for a plane to come in that low, that fast" ... The plane took "a flight path straight up 395," and Tinyk thought to himself, "Oh, my
God. They're going after the Pentagon. Oh, my God."The Providence Journal-Bulletin, September 13 2001, quoted here
Darlene Tortorici, whose husband Frank is SPI's treasurer and global general manager of fluoropolymers with Atofina Chemicals Inc. in Philadelphia, was about to work out at the [Ritz Carlton] hotel gym and was thinking about how it was a pleasant, late summer day when she opened the curtains to her hotel room.
"I opened the curtains and saw the plane hit the Pentagon," she said. "At first it was just black smoke and then it was fire. ... It's like you are watching something and you don't really believe it."Plastics News, September 17 2001
Thomas D. Trapasso, a political appointee in the Clinton Administration who is now looking for work, was making telephone calls from his deck in Arlington Village, about 1 mi. south of the Pentagon and just west of the Interstate 395 (I-395) highway. He was startled by the large American Airlines aircraft flying about 300 ft. overhead. "The engines were just screaming, and the wheels were up," Trapasso said. "It disappeared over the trees, and I heard a boom. I knew something awful had happened--that an airplane had crashed somewhere in Washington, D.C. Then the cell phone went dead. I was scared."
Aviation Week, September 17 2001
Army Brig. Gen. Clyde Vaughn was attending a morning meeting in Northern Virginia Sept. 11 when his cell phone rang with an urgent call from his boss. The message: Return to the Pentagon immediately. Terrorists have attacked the World Trade Center.
Vaughn, the Army's deputy operations director, coordinates military support to civil authorities during emergencies. While Vaughn raced to his car, Americans across the country began turning on their televisions to watch in disbelief as a commercial airliner slammed into the World Trade Center's south tower, minutes after the north tower had similarly been hit. Before the morning was over, millions of television viewers would watch in horror as the famous twin towers imploded, one after the other, leveling the heart of the financial district.
As he drove north on Interstate 395 toward the Pentagon, Vaughn thought about the enormity of the task awaiting him in lower Manhattan. The city probably would need security forces, medical support, communications equipment, engineers, help transporting people and supplies and perhaps much more.
He had just turned onto an exit ramp that would take him to one of the Pentagon's sprawling parking lots when he noticed a commercial airliner near the Georgetown skyline that was clearly out of place. Before his mind could register what was happening, he watched what would turn out to be another hijacked jet - American Airlines Flight 77 - make a sharp turn and plow into the Pentagon, flying so low to the ground it sheared the tops off light poles before plunging into the building and exploding in an enormous fireball.Government Executive, October 1 2001
Three months ago, on September 11 at 9:38 a.m., a Tuesday, Jose Velasquez heard the rumble of imminent death overhead. "I knew something was wrong. The planes come more from the north and west [to land at Reagan National Airport] not from the south. And not so low."
He was talking on the telephone that morning to a friend who was feeding him gauzy reports about airplane crashes at the World Trade Center in New York. But Velasquez slammed down the receiver and raced outside when he felt the gas station he supervises suddenly begin to tremble from a too-close airplane.
"It was like an earthquake," the Costa Rican native said last week. What Velasquez felt above him almost within touching distance was American Airlines Flight 77 just seconds before impact.
His gas station, open only to Department of Defense personnel, is the last structure between the Pentagon and the hillside that, hours later, would become a wailing knoll. "By the time I got outside all I could see was a giant cloud of smoke, first white then black, coming from the Pentagon," he said. "It was just a terrible, terrible thing to be so close to."
Today, Velasquez still trembles when he talks about the incident that has forever changed the military, government, and technology polyglot that is Northern Virginia. "Even today," said Velasquez, "people who come here tell me they are frightened to come to work. You can see it in their eyes."
Velasquez says the gas station's security cameras are close enough to the Pentagon to have recorded the moment of impact. "I've never seen what the pictures looked like," he said. "The FBI was here within minutes and took the film."National Geographic, December 11 2001
We had walked past the right front corner of the crash truck (Foam 161) and were maybe 10-15 feet in front of the truck when I looked up toward my left side. I saw a large frame commercial airliner crossing Washington Blvd, heading towards the west side of the Pentagon! The plane had two big engines, appeared to be in level flight, and was approximately 25 feet off the ground, and about 200 YARDS from our location. I later said the plane approached the Pentagon at about a 45 degree angle but later drawings showed it was closer to 60 degrees. The airplane appeared to be a Boeing 757 or an Air Bus 320 — white, with blue and orange stripes. Mark later recalled the plane was silver and even identified that it was American Airlines.
So many people think Mark and I watched the plane hit the building. We did NOT. We only saw it approach for an instant, I would estimate not longer then half a second. Others didn’t understand why we didn’t hear it sooner. We did not hear it until right after we saw it. I estimate that the plane hit the building only ½ a second after we saw it.
What I am saying is, immediately after we saw it we heard the noise, the engines, I’m sure. I described that as a terrible noise — loud, scary, and horrible. At the time we saw the plane, I said “LET’S GO!” and Mark and I ran away from the area. I turned and ran to my right, going north. (I do not remember which way Mark went, since I did not see him until I crawled out from under the Ford Van.)
As I recall, I had several clear thoughts and feelings as I was running:
1) the noise from the engines of the airplane 2) awareness that now WE are being attacked 3) planning to run until I catch on fire, then maybe dive to the ground and then figure out what to do 4) hearing the sound of the plane crashing into the Pentagon, which I later described as a “crunch” 5) sensation of a lot of pressure 6) feeling very, very hot very quickly 7) “we’re certainly not going to bum up!”
Later that morning when I began to look at the distances of everything from the fire truck, I thought the plane hit the building 200 feet south of the front of the fire truck. I had only apparently run about 20 feet when the plane hit the building. I ran another 30 feet or so until I felt I was on fire. I thought I had done everything I could do for myself. I decided to get down below the fire and fireball. So I dove face first to the blacktop. At this time, it just happened that I was right beside the left rear tire of the Ford van. (I presume that the debris from the Pentagon and airplane was being propelled away from
the impact site.) I immediately crawled very quickly under the van for cover and safety. At this time, I noticed a lot of heat and decided to crawl to the end of the van. Very soon the heat was unbearable and I decided to get out from under the van and get farther away from the impact site. It was then that I saw Mark Skipper to my left — out in the field 50-75 feet away. He was standing, looking back to the impact site and seemed to be swinging his arms. I immediately ran over to him to ask if he was OK. He said he was, and then said “I’m glad you saw that airplane!” I said “get your gear on — we have a lot of work to do; I’m going to the fire truck.”
MIKE WALTER, "USA TODAY LIVE": I was heading north bound on 27 in the traffic this morning. It was the typical rush hour. It had ground to a standstill. And I looked off. I was, you know -- looked out my window. I saw this plane, the jet, American Airlines jet coming. And I thought, this doesn't add up. It's really low. And I saw it.
It just went -- I mean, it was like a cruise missile with wings, it went right there and slammed right into the Pentagon. Huge explosion. Great ball of fire. Smoke started billowing out, and then it was just chaos on the highway as people either tried to move around the traffic and go down either forward or backwards. We had a lady who in front of me who was backing up and screaming, "Everybody go back, go back. They have hit the Pentagon." And you know, it's just sheer terror.
MCINTYRE: What goes through your mind when you see something like that?
WALLACE [WALTER?]: I have asked that question of a million people. And the only thing -- I just kept uttering it over and over again, oh my God, oh, my God, I can't believe this. And I think that's what goes through your mind, is that you just can't believe that something like this could happen.
And yet I was sitting there listening on the radio to the accounts of what had happened in New York. I had just listened to the president. And you'd think as a journalist I would put two and two together and think, oh, my God. But it didn't even occur to me.
MCINTYRE: Obviously this was an enormous tragedy. But did you witness any of the rescue or any of the victims?
WALLACE [WALTER?]: I have to tell you, I got out and walked over and I saw parts of the plane. The debris was actually on the overpass there. And I watched as this military personnel just came running out with stretchers and tarps and set up a triage unit. And I just couldn't help but feel for these guys. Those are their friends and comrades in there, and yet they immediately jumped into action. It was unbelievable to watch.
And the toughest thing for me right now is I have a 14-year-old daughter and a lot of her friends have parents who work in the Pentagon. And I just talked to her on the phone and those kids are going through the agony. They don't know if they are okay. So it's tough. I mean, this really hits home.
CNN, September 11 2001
"...it turned and came around in front of the vehicle and it clipped one of these light poles ... and slammed right into the Pentagon right there." "Now there are some people who say that it skipped and went into the Pentagon and it may have gone that way, but that’s not what I saw. What I saw was the jet went very low into the Pentagon and it went straight." "It seemed like it was a slow, graceful bank and then once it straightened out, that's when it sped up." "...you could see chunks of the wreckage on the ground, pieces of the plane.... It literally disintegrated on impact. It hit, and as it went into the side of the building it sheared off the wings."
... a cruise missile with wings?
"I said that as a metaphor. To me it was like a missile was fired at a building. It exploded as you'd imagine a missile to explode. ... It was an American Airlines jet. And I watched it go into the building. I saw the big 'AA' on the side.."Digipresse interview, quoted here
Rodney Washington, a systems engineer for a Pentagon contractor, was stuck in stand-still traffic a few hundred yards from the Pentagon when the American Airlines jet roared overhead from the southwest.
"It was extremely loud, as you can imagine, a plane that size, it was deafening," Washington said.
The plane was flying low and rapidly descended, Washington said, knocking over light poles before hitting the ground on a helicopter pad just in front of the Pentagon and essentially bouncing into it.
It "landed there and the momentum took it into the Pentagon," Washington said. "There was a very, very brief delay and then it exploded."
Washington speculated that it could have been worse: "If it had kept altitude a little bit higher it probably would have landed in the middle of the Pentagon, in that court."Boston Globe, September 12 2001
Keith Wheelhouse, of Virginia Beach, still has a vivid image of that fireball etched in his mind.
He and several family members, including his sister, Pam Young, of Surry County, were leaving a funeral at Arlington National Cemetery when they watched the hijacked American Airlines jet nose-dive into the nation's military headquarters.
They also saw a second plane.
At first, they weren't sure whether the second plane was involved in the attack.
But Wheelhouse, a three-year Army veteran, thought it looked like aC-130, although he wasn't certain.
Tuesday, he was pleased to hear the military is finally verifying what he's been telling people.
Wheelhouse and at least two other witnesses to the Pentagon attack were troubled that Pentagon spokesmen had until now said they were unaware of a C-130 being in the area at the time.
"So I wasn't losing my mind," he said.
In the days immediately following the Sept. 11 hijackings, the Pentagon had no knowledge of the C-130's encounter, because all reports were classified by the Air National Guard, the Pentagon spokesman said.
"It was very hard to get any information out," McClellan said.
Wheelhouse said the Pentagon explanation of the cargo plane's role that day makes sense. The pilot of the C-130 was unable to prevent the attack, he said.
"He's in a transport plane, you watch a jumbo jet flying low, drop its nose and gun it," Wheelhouse said. "What's he going to do?"Daily Press, October 17 2001
On 9/11, I was working the Pentagon entry booth to the loading dock, which is off Route 27. It's right beside the heliport, so we're used to planes going over top, toward the airport. I was at the window, looking straight ahead. And my co-worker, Rodney, he was at the computer. The booth is about 300 to 400 feet from the building.
We had a little radio that we were listening to, and they just interrupted, saying the trade center tower had been hit. And then someone was saying another one had been hit. I said, "Rodney, for some reason, I wouldn't be surprised if they were on their way here now." I think sometimes people think that the president is at the Pentagon a lot more than he is. I think that's what made me think that. Or, it's close enough to the White House that something might affect here.
Then one of the Defense Department police officers came up and said, "Hey guys, we might be closing down. The defense alert has gone up, so we might be shutting the loading dock completely down." I was ready to go into the Pentagon for a break to get some pictures from MotoPhoto. I would have been walking inside the building, and the entrance I would have had to walk through was right near the heliport. Somebody came up to give me a break, but I said no, I would wait.
Ten minutes later, this plane was just coming at a crazy angle. It was coming in fast! All of a sudden it got very, very big. It just got loud and big. You ever hear the wind howling real loud out your window? It was like, VOOVOOOVOOO. I said, "Oh, shit!" and the plane took a nosedive. It looked like it hit the bottom of the building and blew up into the building. A big ball of orange flame comes up. Glass is flying. Pieces of building were flying. (I actually still have a piece of the building.)
Pieces of the plane were hitting our booth. It was fire, flame, smoke, everything. It was like a movie. It was very surreal. I just remember feeling the wind-the power from this plane that just hit and exploded. It just kind of tossed us to the ground. The impact itself just kind of shook us. "Whoa!" and boom! And then you stay down there for a minute, like, "What the heck has happened?"The National Journal, August 31 2002
AP reporter Dave Winslow also saw the crash. He said, "I saw the tail of a large airliner ... It ploughed right into the Pentagon."
The Guardian, September 12 2001
At the Pentagon, first on the scene was the Associated Press mainly because AP Radio reporter Dave Winslow lives across the street from the Defense Department headquarters. He looked out his window and saw the plane plow into the building. He called in to AP, confirmed what had happened, and went immediately on air.
Broadcasting & Cable, September 17, 2001
The Washingtonian, quoted here
Ian Wyatt glanced into the sky just as a commercial airplane roared by about 100 yards off the ground.
"I was so scared I thought it was coming after me and just ducked for cover," said Wyatt, a 1999 graduate of Mary Washington College who was walking to his federal job when terrorists struck at the heart of the nation's defense yesterday morning.
"It was going so fast and it was so low," he said, standing on Army-Navy Drive. "The only intelligent thought that came into my head was, 'Oh my God, they hit the Pentagon.' I could then hear cars squealing all around and people were just stunned."fredericksburg.com, September 12 2001
...some VDOTers were viewing a television replay of the second airplane crashing into the WTC. Jimmy Chu, manager of the VDOT Smart Traffic Center (STC) in Arlington, and several of his staff were watching, too. Then, at 9:37 a.m., Chu and other STC employees heard the window-rattling noise of a fast-approaching aircraft. It was close -- much too close!
Madelyn Zakhem, executive secretary at the STC, had just stepped outside for a break and was seated on a bench when she heard what she thought was a jet fighter directly overhead. It wasn't. It was an airliner coming straight up Columbia Pike at tree-top level. "It was huge! It was silver. It was low -- unbelievable! I could see the cockpit. I fell to the ground.... I was crying and scared," Zakhem recalls.
Two seconds later, perhaps three, as Chu looked out his office window, he saw a hijacked plane explode into the fortress-like walls of the Pentagon on the plain just below him. STC staffers remember a loud thud, then a terrible explosion, and then a fireball burgeoning from the core of America's military power...
"If I had been on top of our building, I would have been close enough to reach up and catch it," Madelyn Zakhem, an executive secretary in the Smart Traffic Center (STC) in Arlington, said two days after the terrorist plane rocketed directly over her.
In the final few seconds before the terrorist-commandeered plane exploded into the Pentagon, the plane roared down on Columbia Pike, almost skimming the roof of the STC after barely missing the Sheraton Hotel. The noise, VDOT team members said, was unbelievably loud, and most felt the hijacker was nosing down the plane at full throttle. "It was so close the building was shaking," recalls Jimmy Chu, STC manager.
Some VDOTers were sure the plane had shifted its direction slightly to avoid a 100-foot-tall cellular tower adjacent to the STC building. As the plane went over the STC, the hijacker banked the plane, lifting the right wing up, in order to swoop down the hill into the target.
Just before impact, the plane clipped off two VDOT light poles on Washington Boulevard, a football field or two away from the Pentagon. In the same area, the blast from the plane's impact damaged the lenses of one of VDOT's traffic monitoring cameras and knocked the camera sideways.Roads To The Future, September 21 2001
Zuckerman launched his Weblog on Sept. 1, 2001. Days later, he started regretting his Washington, D.C., location.
"On Sept. 11, I saw the plane go into the Pentagon from the balcony of my apartment," he said. "I couldn't get to my office for a couple of days because it was within the perimeter of White House security."..
Zuckerman is a journalist who spent 10 years in Knight Ridder's Washington bureau. He quit in 1984 to start publishing his own newsletter, "Public Finance." The subscribers are lawyers, lobbyists, campaign managers and political operatives.
A couple of years ago, he started a Web site called Government News & Info, govtnews.com. It pulled together news releases posted on a thousand government Web sites. Journalists subscribe to it to avoid the hassle of poring through individual sites.
This month, Zuckerman started a new e-mail service called For Your Political Information. It sends journalists an e-mail log of press releases from think tanks and trade associations.Charleston Daily Mail, September 20 2004
Unnamed
U.S. Medicine, October 2001
CNN, September 11 2001
Cox News Service, 15 September 2001, quoted here
Miller said a co-worker watched the plane descend toward the military headquarters and said "Oh my God, they've just got the Pentagon. He saw the plane dive straight into the Pentagon. All I had to do was stand up at my desk and I saw it."
"I can just see the smoke billowing out. I saw the flames like one second after it hit," Miller said.CNS News, September 11 2001
BBC
Center for Laparoscopic Obesity Surgery
Punk Princess weblog, quoted here
Usenet message, September 14 2001
Usenet message, June 13 2002
Signs of a plane
It was shortly before 9 a.m., Tuesday, Sept. 11, when Lt. Col. Ted Anderson walked into his office at the Pentagon, heard the news about two commercial jets crashing into the World Trade Center in New York and felt the hair on the back on his neck stand on end. "Call it intuition, call it 19 years in the Army," says Anderson, 41, who had served as a paratrooper for 17 years before beginning his current stint in the Army's office of legislative liaison. Nervous energy drove him down the hall to the nearest security point, where he asked guards to "call their supervisor and ask unequivocally for an upgrade in security. I said we were a tremendous target for terrorists, and they agreed."
He was finding it difficult to focus on work, when his wife, a sixth-grade teacher in Fayetteville, N.C., called at about 9:40 a.m. She asked him to talk to her class about the New York incidents. "I told her it appeared too well coordinated to be coincidence, it was probably terrorist activity, but we shouldn't jump to conclusions about who did it," he said. "I reminded her how we had rushed to judgment on Oklahoma City." I heard her say to the class, 'Yes, we remember Oklahoma City.' Then there was this boom! And the whole building rocked. The ceiling caved in. The electricity went out. I told my wife, 'There's been a bombing, I've got to go.' And I started screaming for everyone to get out.
"When you're in the military, your first thought is to immediately get out in case there's a second explosion. I ran out in the corridor and people were running out of their offices. Everyone was in shock, yelling, 'What was that?' The Desert Storm veteran barked orders, screaming at people to get out of the building. There were a couple of generals standing there, looking at each other, and I ordered them out too," he said. Anderson then ran down the hall to an emergency exit and out into the parking lot. As the crowd surged away from the building. Anderson looked to his left and "everything I could see, as far as I could see, were chunks of steel, some huge, some small, and I immediately knew it was an airplane." As Anderson ran toward the debris, he looked over his shoulder and noticed two strangers, an Army sergeant and civilian, had joined him. Without exchanging words, they became a team. "We ran to the end of our building, turned left and saw nothing but huge, billowing black smoke, and a brilliant, brilliant explosion of fire."Newsweek Web Exclusive, September 28, 2001
Once they stabilized Brian, they transferred him to George Washington Hospital where...the best, cutting edge burn doctor in the U.S. The doctor told him that had he not gone to Georgetown first, he probably would not have survived because of the jet fuel in his lungs.
USMA, July 18 2002
Early Friday morning, shortly before 4 a.m., Burkhammer and another firefighter, Brian Moravitz, were combing through debris near the impact site. Peering at the wreckage with their helmet lights, the two spotted an intact seat from the plane's cockpit with a chunk of the floor still attached. Then they saw two odd-shaped dark boxes, about 1.5 by 2 feet long. They'd been told the plane's "black boxes" would in fact be bright orange, but these were charred black. The boxes had handles on one end and one was torn open. They cordoned off the area and called for an FBI agent, who in turn called for someone from the National Transportation Safety Board who confirmed the find: the black boxes from American Airlines Flight 77. "We wanted to find live victims," says Burkhammer. But this was a consolation prize. "Finding the black box gave us a little boost," he says.
Newsweek Web Exclusive, September 28, 2001
QUESTION: One thing that's confusing -- if it came in the way you described, at an angle, why then are not the wings outside? I mean, the wings would have shorn off. The tail would have shorn off. And yet there's apparently no evidence of the aircraft outside the E ring.
EVEY: Actually, there's considerable evidence of the aircraft outside the E ring. It's just not very visible. When you get up close -- actually, one of my people happened to be walking on this sidewalk and was right about here as the aircraft approached. It came in. It clipped a couple of light poles on the way in. He happened to hear this terrible noise behind him, looked back, and he actually -- he's a Vietnam veteran -- jumped prone onto the ground so the aircraft would not actually -- he thinks it (would have) hit him; it was that low.
On its way in, the wing clipped. Our guess is an engine clipped a generator. We had an emergency temporary generator to provide life-safety emergency electrical power, should the power go off in the building. The wing actually clipped that generator, and portions of it broke off. There are other parts of the plane that are scattered about outside the building. None of those parts are very large, however. You don't see big pieces of the airplane sitting there extending up into the air. But there are many small pieces. And the few larger pieces there look like they are veins out of the aircraft engine. They're circular.The Patriot Resource, September 15 2001
Rich Fitzharris, 52, is an electrical engineer and a former residential contractor. He has been the operations group chief of the Pentagon Renovation Program Office since 1996. He was in the Modular Office Compound at the time of the crash and rushed to the site on foot, arriving before the partial collapse. He recalls that the building—near the area of impact—was in flames, and he remembers seeing small pieces of debris, the largest of which might have been part of an engine shroud. He was at the heliport when a portion of the structure collapsed. The collapse initiated at the fifth floor along the building expansion joint, proceeded continuously and was completed within a few seconds. According to the Arlington County after-action report, this occurred at 9:57 a.m., or 19 minutes after impact.
ACSE Building Performance Report
Don Fortunato, a plainclothes detective with the Arlington (Va.) Police Department, was walking into his office, when he heard a muffled explosion--construction, he thought. Then his radio started squawking news of a plane crash at the Pentagon. "I grabbed my radio, ran to my car and pulled on my bulletproof vest and headed toward the thick, black smoke billowing out of the sky," he said. "Traffic was at a standstill, so I parked on the shoulder, not far from the scene and ran to the site. Next to me was a cab from D.C., its windshield smashed out by pieces of lampposts. There were pieces of the plane all over the highway, pieces of wing, I think."
Newsweek Web Exclusive, September 28, 2001
Mike Kurtz didn't lose his wife of 31 years, but Louise Kurtz was burned over nearly 70 percent of her body, the worst of the Pentagon patients. September 11 had been her second day as an accountant, working one floor below Birdwell and Cheryle Sincock. She was standing at a fax machine three windows from where the plane hit. She never saw the plane, but she heard it and could smell the jet fuel. Suddenly, everything was dark, smoky, and quiet. She climbed out a window, not realizing her hair had been burned off. "I was baked from the heat," she says of the 1,470-degree temperature.
US News and World Report, September 16 2002
CLAYSON: Lieutenant Shaeffer, you were sitting just a few feet away from Stephanie's husband, can you tell us what happened when that plane hit?
Lt. SHAEFFER: Sure, Jane. I like to tell everyone that everyone has that mental snapshot of when the second plane hit that second tower and the orange fire ball that erupted. And I can tell you that that's exactly what happened inside of the Navy Command Center...
CLAYSON: And beyond the burns, once you got to the hospital, you had two cardiac arrests. You--you came very close to death, didn't you?
Lt. SHAEFFER: Yes. You know, I like to say that I hit bottom. You can't go too--too far lower than I--what I hit. I ingested jet fuel that morning because Flight 77 actually struck the command center and went right through our office space. And so the jet fuel I ingested caused infections and just started really taking their toll on my body.CBS News, September 11 2002
FBI evidence teams combing the area of impact along the building's perimeter found parts of the fuselage from the Boeing 757, said Michael Tamillow, a battalion chief and search and rescue expert for the Fairfax County, Virginia, Fire Department. No large pieces apparently survived.
CNN, September 12 2001
"I was listening to a lot of the coverage on the radio, and as soon as I got off on Washington Boulevard toward the Pentagon, sure enough there was traffic. I just kept inching forward and as time went by, I heard the reports on the radio saying that it was a plane. It was a terrorist attack. And I heard President (George W. Bush) go on the air and do his speech about the attacks on the World Trade Center buildings and, of course, we're inching closer to the Pentagon. And at that point I kept trying to call my boss at the National Theater to let him know I was stuck in traffic by the Pentagon. It was a beautiful day, too. Not too hot, just cool and sunny and I had my windows down.
"Around 9:40 a.m. I reached the heliport area (beside the Pentagon) and was just listening to more of the testimonials on the radio. And this whole time it didn't even connect that right next to me was a possible target. You think to yourself, `That's New York all the way up there and, we're here.' You would think that the terrorists were done.
"So I got about 100 yards or so past the heliport and then all of the sudden I heard this loud screeching sound that just came out of nowhere and it intensified. This huge WHOOSH! And something made me look in my rearview mirror and by the time I looked up I saw the side of the Pentagon explode.
"I was stunned. It was just so surreal, like something out of a movie, like `Die Hard.' The side of a building just exploded! As the fireball got higher and higher, you saw this debris go up in the air. I'm watching this in my rearview mirror, and then I thought, `Oh my God, there's debris coming toward me!' So my reaction was, I ducked into my passenger seat and I heard the pitter-patter of pebbles and concrete bouncing off my car. And the next thing you know, I heard this big crash come from somewhere. It sounded like glass being shattered and I thought maybe, at first, it was one of my windows so I popped up to look but everything was fine. But when I looked to the car next to me I realized that something went through (the driver's) rear windshield and shattered it. There was a hole where you could see that something went through it...
"Pulling away from the Pentagon there was tons of stuff on the ground, big pieces of metal, concrete, everything. We got up to a certain point and there was this huge piece of something -- I mean it was big, it looked like a piece of an engine or something -- in the road. And there was somebody, definitely a security guard or maybe a military person, with his car in front of it making sure no one touched it."Counselling Today Online, reproduced here
On Tuesday, Army Staff Sgt. Mark Williams witnessed a combat zone for the first time in his 11 years of service. He never imagined it would be inside the Pentagon. One of the first recovery personnel to enter the crippled headquarters building after a hijacked Boeing 757 smashed into it, the urban search-and-rescue specialist found a gruesome sight. "If anyone has ever burned a pot roast, they'll know what the victims looked like," Williams, 30, said Thursday after another 12-hour shift of searching for 190 bodies — those of 126 missing Pentagon personnel and the 64 aboard the doomed jetliner.
The fireball occurred when the jetliner's full fuel tank exploded on impact and roared down corridors so fast that "90% didn't know what happened to them," he said.
Many were sitting at their desks or behind partitions. One woman was found frozen in a sitting position, her arms posed as if reading a document.
Several bodies were found huddled in groups near televisions. Pentagon workers were apparently watching the carnage taking place at the World Trade Center when the hellish scene on TV became reality for them, too.
When Williams discovered the scorched bodies of several airline passengers, they were still strapped into their seats. The stench of charred flesh overwhelmed him.
"It was the worst thing you can imagine," said Williams, whose squad from Fort Belvoir, Va., entered the building, less than four hours after the terrorist attack. "I wanted to cry from the minute I walked in. But I have soldiers under me and I had to put my feelings aside."...USA Today, September 14 2001
Gannet News Service, September 12 2001
Sun-Times, September 16 2001
Washington Post, September 11 2001
Washington Post, September 12 2001
Personal effects
Online Athens, September 10 2004
The Gilroy Dispatch, September 11 2003
My dad, George Simmons, was on the plane because he was accompanying his wife, Diane, to go to her father's funeral in Hawaii. They were going with the ashes, which were to be spread in Kauai...
The FBI contacted us to get DNA samples, so they could identify the victims-they had to take blood from each one of us. It was awful. We're in my dad and Diane's house in Great Falls, having to tell the FBI exactly what they look like, and look for the name of their dentist, and identify in detail what jewelry they may have been wearing, what clothes. They told us to save samples of their hair from their brushes upstairs, and their toothbrushes...
We got his wedding band back. We got his business card with his name on it. We got his day planner, and it was only charred along the outside rim, but it's completely readable, each page. And his address book-it was charred on the outside as well. It was like a leather binder, and every page was readable. They would probably have been in his carry-on bag, which he usually brought, a canvas one, so it was kind of bizarre-it makes you think, did he really suffer through this? How long did he suffer before they passed away, because, if all that is so readable, it's pretty disturbing. The smell of the items was horrible, horrific. It was so overpowering. The FBI sent it wrapped in plastic, and when I opened it in my apartment, my entire apartment smelled like that for a couple days. They found Diane's Visa credit card and her checkbook.The National Journal, August 31, 2002