Was the Pentagon on 911 hit by an aircraft or a cruise missile?

Question

I have heard that some groups of educated Americans have concluded that the strike at the Pentagon on 911 came from a cruise missile. One professor at an Ivy League university is a member of this group. Within the last two weeks he was put on permanent leave from the university. Am I wrong or is there more to this than just some group ranting about not enough evidence at the Pentagon site to be a commercial airliner which crashed?

Answer 1

There was no cruise missile. A plane did impact the pentagon, I lost three good friends there. Some actually saw the plane comming in but could not warn others in time. The blessing is that that side of the Pentagon was just renovated and reinforced. If it had been another side, there would have been greater deaths.

Anyone who says it was a cruise missile is entertaining themselves with dilusions of grandeur in their anit-American sentiment. A lot of professors teaching in universities are very anti-government and anti-American

Edit:

For David W:

Read all you want. Believe the conspiracies. My friends saw the plane hit. They still talk about it today. You cannot debunk the eye witness of more than 20 people.

If you believe that is wasn't a plane, so be it. We, at least, know the truth.

Answer 2

Forget the conspiracy theories. Check the source below - it's an article by a guy who cites a very credible witness who actually saw the plane that hit the Pentagon.

The very notion of being able to pass off a cruise missile as a passenger jet is ridiculous. You'd have to fool all the witnesses who saw the pentagon get hit, in the heart of a very heavily populated area. Also, you'd have to hide the actual jet and all its passengers... that alone would require hundreds if not thousands of people to be in on the conspiracy, and with that many people in on it, it's a certainty that the truth would leak out. Even if the 9/11 strikes were the result of some nefarious plot within the U.S. government, it would be much easier and simpler for the plotters to hijack a plane and crash it, rather than hide a plane and all its passengers, fire a cruise missile, and try to make people think a cruise missile was an airliner.

The pentagon was hit by a plane. Deal with it.

Answer 3

STOP LISTENING TO IDIOT CONSPIRACY THEORISTS!

These whack-jobs will come up with anything possible to try and put any establishment in a bad light. They have what seems to be an inherent need to portray themselves as 'the only one who can see the light', when what they are really doing is showing that they just have a severe need for attention.

The video has shown it was a plane. The parts of the wreckage showed it was a plane. Eyewitnesses will tell you it was a plane.

To think that the government is going to blow up the Pentagon or the WTC's is completely ludicrous.

Also to think that an Ivy League professor is inherently reputable in the matters like this, is ludicrous. Most professors have a severe liberal agenda. Just because someone is a supposed 'expert' in one area, does not inherently make them an expert in another area. Ben and Jerry may know ice cream, but I do not take their analysis of quantum physics as guaranteed accurate information.

Answer 4

Having read all the previous answers, it appears that none of the responders have done any research at all. So I will go into a bit of detail.
Much of this infornation has been extracted from the site below.

The official story is that American Airlines flight 77, a Boeing 757, tail number N644AA, with 64 aboard, including the hijackers, was hijacked by 5 Arabs while on route from Dulles airport (DC) to LA. It was said to be hijacked at about 8.55 and said to hit the Pentagon at 9.45.

The incriminating anomaly is that the US air force did not scramble a single fighter jet to intercept any of the hijacked planes.


A little research into aviation regulations and historical precedent demonstrates that every one of those planes should have been intercepted by jet fighters before it got anywhere near its crash destination. The failure to launch any intercepts is only explainable by a systematic nation-wide stand down of routine air defence procedures. FAA regulations state that if any plane deviates from its flight path, and fails to respond to ATC commands or communications, it is automatically declared an emergency. This is because is it has become a hazard to other planes - even if no malicious intent is suspected. If ATC is any doubt as to whether an emergency exists, it is to be considered as one.

The most spectacular example is that of the Pentagon strike. Two planes had already been said to have hit the WTC by 9.03 and yet this plane was allowed to fly for another 42 minutes, off course towards Washington, untroubled by the world's most powerful air force. Only 10 miles from the Pentagon is Andrews Airbase, a huge installation which is responsible for air defence around the DC area, and maintains two squadrons of fighter jets on permanent standby for this very purpose, since the security of the White House, State dept, Capitol and the City of DC are also at stake. This was not an unforseen contingency. The Pentagon had twice in the last two years conducted drills specifically simulating a plane strike, and for decades, US security services had been wrestling with the potential problem of a hijacked airliner taking a suicide plunge into the Whitehouse.



On Sept 11, they had nearly an hours warning of the Pentagon attack - and grounded the entire air force - in violation of standard operating procedures that are automatically implemented even in the case of a single plane accidentally deviating from its course with no obviously hostile intent.

Snip

First , lets take AA77, the plane which is supposed to have hit the Pentagon. This is one of the most heavily monitored and defended buildings in the world, and yet somehow they can't come up with any footage of the crash. Because it never happened. Something hit the pentagon but it wasn't a Boeing 757 or anything anywhere near that size. There are numerous photos of the aftermath and nowhere is to be seen any evidence of wreckage of such a plane. A 757 has a wingspan of 125 ft, a tail height of 40 ft and a length of 155 ft. The hole in the Pentagon wall was about 16 ft wide, 12 ft high and collapsed only the first ring of the building - about 40 ft deep. There is no sign of any Boeing debris anywhere. No wings, no tail, no protruding fuselage. The tail couldn't fit through the hole even if the plane was sliding along the ground. And because the grass outside is smooth, green and undamaged, even that is impossible. And because the angle of entry of the mystery object was about 45 degrees , 125 ft wingspan would cause an impact about 180 ft wide. A giant aircraft has supposedly passed through a hole many times smaller than itself, without breaking off any parts, and then totally vanished.



Furthermore, official aviation records from the US bureau of transportation say that the alleged AA 77 flight did not exist. The BT keeps a record of details about every flight ever scheduled from a US airport - even cancelled flights. No such record exists of AA 77 on Sept 11. Early reports said that the incident at the pentagon was caused by a truck bomb. Witness reports are confused and contradictory, but some mention a missile or small fighter jet.

------------------------
So, we know that
- Flight AA77 didn't exist
- If another flight existed, it should have been intercepted
- If a Boeing 757 had hit the Pentagon, it would have had to leave some plane parts and black boxes lying around, it must have damaged the lawn, and it must have made a larger hole.

Also, after exhaustive searches and enquiries, not one reliable witness who saw the plane himself has been found. Some so-called witnesses know someone else who says they saw a plane!!

It therefore seems logical to conclude that the official story has holes in it bigger than those in the wall of the Pentagon.

So, if not a plane, what was it.

It seems that it could have been a cruise missile, but some researchers say it was quite likely a Global Hawk, maybe painted in AA colours. A Global Hawk is a drone, unpiloted small aircraft that can be used as a missile.

Answer 5

Anybody that believes it was a missile is a cook.

There are hundreds of witnesses (firefighters, police, EMTs, etc.) that picked up the pieces of the plane. The plane is missing from the inventory of the airlines. 84 families have dead family members that were on the missing plane. Only a nut would overlook the obvious evidence to try to find a conspiracy.

Answer 6

Here is all the debunking of the missile crackpot theory you need.
Heck, there are even people on this site who worked in the area and saw the plane. And just because someone is an Ivy League professor does not mean they are not insane.

http://www.911myths.com

Answer 7

The group of "educated" scholars you are referring to is called the 911 Scholars for Truth. Having listened to several members of this group, I can confirm that they are indeed nutcases. Virtually all of their claims have been debunked by numerous sources, with the most thorough being a report issued by Popular Mechanics.

http://www.popularmechanics.com/science/defense/1227842.html?page=4&c=y

Answer 8

There is footage of the attack, but you really can't see exactly what hits the Pentagon. I really don't think it's a conspiracy, though. If it was a cruise missle, what happened to all the people on the "missing" flight?

Answer 9

It was actually just a bottle rocket. But it was one of those big ones that cost like a dollar each. I saw the video!!


Do you really think that if it was a missile and a conspiracy that the people doing it wouldn't have enough sense to scatter some plane wreckage around to make it look like a jet liner?

Answer 10

Nobody who is educated whould think it was a missile.
The very person who witnessed it says it was a plane.

THis is the same guy whose clip makes u think it was missile.
Yet the whole video of his interview, he says plane went into bldg 'like a missile.

Besides there is more than enough video proof to show it was a plane.