RE: [Flightgear-devel] Flight Simulation, Hijacking, and Solutions?

[Jon S. B. <js...@ha...>]

> What i found interesting is the fact that the plane didn't lose a single
> piece while flying into the building!!!

It was flying very, very fast. Imagine each particle of the aircraft having
its own inertia and trying to maintain the same momentum. There really
wasn't time for any of the forward portions of the aircraft to "communicate"
what was going on in front to the aft portion. If you remember the Russian
fighter nosing into the ground in Paris several years ago it looked very
similar. The aircraft is a thin-skinned can. You could probably fly one into
a rock face of a mountain at high speed and see the same thing. Also, a
building has a lot of airspace in it and the aircraft likely did *initially*
fly partially intact through it. By "intact" I mean lengthwise in sections
ten feet high - as high as a floor in the building. One of the video clips
seemed to show a wingtip slicing through the skin of the building just
interior to the windows over halfway through the building. Also, it almost
appears as though part of the forward fuselage emerges from the building on
the other side. Some debris did: an engine, tires, etc.

> One would expect at least the tail and wing tips to break when entering
> the structure, but somehow this light metal aircraft is capable of
> destructing a completely steel construction.

The twin towers likely did not fail due to structural damage created by the
impact, but by support structure failing due to the intense heat of the
resulting fire.