UA 93: Is this crater too small?

[John Doe II]

There are no official data available about the size of the crater. This is pretty unfortunate as having a look at the crater one might have doubts if a Boeing 757 (which apparently managed a perfect 90° crash) really fits into this crater.





But there are some witnesses who estimated the crater:
“The apparent point of impact was a dark gash, not more than 30 feet wide , at the base of a gentle slope just before a line of trees.”
(Pittsburgh Post Gazette, 9/12/01 b)

“The plane left a crater 20 feet wide and 15 feet deep ”
(Plain Dealer, 9/12/01 b)

The crash impact left a crater estimated to be 10-feet deep and 20-feet wide.
(Cox News Service, 9/12/01 c)

“The crash left a V-shaped gouge in a grassy field surrounded by thick woods, just below a hilltop strip mine. The gouge was 8 to 10 feet deep and 15 to 20 feet long , said Capt. Frank Monaco of the Pennsylvania State Police. “
(AP, 9/12/01 e)
http://www.courier-journal.com/localnews/2001/09/12attack/ke091201s69779.htm

“King saw the pushed-up earth and the crater that measured thirty feet or more in diameter. ”
(Among the Heroes, 302)

In the late afternoon reporter Michelle Wright estimated a much bigger crater:
“Pittsburgh's WTAE-TV reporter Michelle Wright toured the crash scene and said that a crater of about 30 to 40 feet long, 15 to 20 feet wide and 18 feet deep was created by the crash. ”
(Cleveland Newschannel, 9/11/01)
So, based on the witnesses we have a crater that is 15 – 40 feet long and 15-20 feet wide and 8 – 18 feet deep.

I think the following statement concerning the depth of the crater is not necessarily a contradiction:
“The cockpit data recorder, one of the so-called black boxes would be excavated fifteen feet into the crater and the cockpit voice recorder at twenty-five feet.”
(Among the Heroes, 303)

But how to explain that a plane which tail has a height of 44 feet and 6 inches can be in the crater that by the most generous estimation is 40 feet long?

[Borg]

1. Comparison is impossible

Seeing the picture I always noticed the absence of persons and cars.

[spooked911]

2. Good point about the tail. One can see a faint tail imprint on one side

next to it. It is hard to imagine the whole tial went in the hole. More likely it got blown up after the impact. But where did the debris go? The tail is quite big and hard to see that it went far.

Of course another possibility is the whole hole is a hoax of some sort.



This picture gives some people but doesn't show the crater well. Nonehteless, the crater seems fairly big but maybe not big enough for the length of the wings.

[seemslikeadream]

3. Have you seen this?

original thread

LIHOP/MIHOP Don’t Matter: Bush is still RESPONSIBLE for 9/11
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_topic&forum=104&topic_id=1453480

Eyewitness Confirms Shootdown of Flight 93 on Stern today


Howard Stern Show | April 21 2004

A caller to the Howard Stern Show related the story of how he saw Flight 93 in flames while it was in the air and two other aircraft circling it.

listen here
http://www.prisonplanet.com/articles/april2004/042104flight93.htm


Red_Viking (468 posts) Wed Apr-21-04 01:12 PM
Response to Reply #1

11. The pilots are "unavailable"


No joke--all the pilots scrambled on 9/11 were sequestered and no one has spoken to them. Wouldn't they be the best ones to answer these questions?

This came out during the 9/11 Commission questioning of NORAD officials. They said the pilots were unavailable for questioning. I said, "huh?"

Also, foreign news sources did a lot of reporting on the condition of the crash site. Very peculiar. Wreckage was scattered up to 8 miles away. Not consistent with a plane hitting the ground, where wreckage would be fairly linear. This stuff was blown all the heck over the place, kinda like the plane was blown out of the sky.

Makes me say hmmmmmm.

By the way, it is legal for them to do this. I'm not sure why no one will admit the plane was ordered shot down. The plane was hijacked. I suppose it's because the shock would be too much.

Must_B_Free
16. It was on the Johnstown PA TV news


early that day till it got scrubbed. They aired footage of an interview with a farmer that corroberates this account. He said "I saw the big plane and them other little planes by it"


Bjornsdotter (19 posts) Wed Apr-21-04 12:48 PM
Response to Original message

5. Too True!


Hi,

Two days after Flight 93 was shot down, I received a call from a business aquaintance...he told me he saw it shot down. He has since left the country.

Later in the week I spoke with a air traffic controller at O'Hare...he told me "No Comment" when I asked if the plane was shot down.

I do believe it was shot down...for those of you who don't....ask yourself one question; Why has there NEVER been a photo published showing the crash site?

Cheers,
Kim

LisaM (1000+ posts) Wed Apr-21-04 02:57 PM
Response to Original message

13. Strange. Interesting.

Edited on Wed Apr-21-04 03:26 PM by LisaM
Just last night, I accidentally listened to KVI (local hate radio station) for several minutes and the played a transcript of the ATC talking to Flight 93 (it was edited so that it played through in four minutes, so either some parts were classified, or they just edited out the dead air.) Anyway, there was a part right near the end where an air traffic controller confirmed from a pilot on another flight that there was smoke on it, and it also appeared that other flights were trying to keep it in their sights.

No2W2004 (122 posts) Wed Apr-21-04 03:07 PM
Response to Reply #13

14. Right


Brave Americans fighting their captors is much better for propaganda than Air Force shoots down commercial airliner.

I still remember hearing on 9/11 witnesses saying the plane was shot down, then, in the following days, they all stopped talking and the heroic version took root.

Has anyone ever explained why one engine of flight 93 was found miles away from the crash site?

rhino47 (292 posts) Thu Apr-22-04 01:27 AM
Response to Original message

24. I live in western Pa


I saw that flight that day.I know that it was flight 93.My nephew is an air traffic controller out of youngstown ohio.On 9/11 when I heard that the skies where cleared and I saw that jet I was rather frightened being where as it started towards cleveland and came back around southeast.I did see two planes shortly there after.I called my nephew but the lines where all done.I got the all circuits are busy.I did manage to get a hold of him later on that day about 6 pm .He said that flight had went down near pittsburg.

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_topic&forum=104&topic_id=1449593





Here's an aerial view of the whole strip mine where Flight 93 crashed.

Here's the deal: after following the links below, the real crash
location of Flight 93 is a couple hundred yards away from Skyline Road
near Lambertsville and Shanksville. I had to find it by finding
Lambertsville, PA on the map, then go south. Lambertsville Road in the
photo is on the far left. Then Skyline Road forks down in a southeast
direction in the mine area. Now somewhere in that area, you'd mark an X
to mark the crash site. Keep in mind this photo is 2 levels out: more
detail could be retrieved, BUT bear in mind this photo has to be OLD
because it's in black and white. So it's before the crash happened,
see.

The deal with the mine itself is: a company called Svonavec owns the
area where the mine is, and they LEASE it to both Rollock Inc. and PBS
Coals Inc.

Religious folks are heavily leaning on that LAMBertsville name, meaning
the Lord did it to prove this and that, something or other...

Does that help? Sheesh! Just try to find an overhead satellite photo
of the Flight 93 crash, and it's like pulling TEETH! But now you got
the photo, Kent. I'm done for tonight... Happy Thanksgiving!

http://www.cyberspaceorbit.com/warrant25.htm



Seismographs of the sonic boom, recorded at approximately 9:22 AM local time on 9/11

The presence of this particular sonic boom at 9:22 A.M. refutes the story we have been told of the military's response to 9/11.

The North American Aerospace Defense Command, or NORAD, issued a press release one week after the attacks. The timeline told of Air National Guard fighter jets taking off from bases in Massachusetts and Virginia at 8:46 A.M. and 9:30 A.M., respectively. The first jets, two F-15's from Otis Air National Guard Base, responded to an 8:40 A.M. scramble order and screamed towards New York City six minutes later. The second group, F-16's from Langley AFB, responded to a 9:24 A.M. order and again were en route to their target in six minutes, this time pointing towards Washington D.C. and the threatened Pentagon.

The problem with this story is that neither group of fighters could have made the sonic boom recorded in Pennsylvania by 9:22.

The F-16's from Langley hadn't even been told to get into the air yet, so they're out. The F-15's from Otis reached New York at 9:06, 3 minutes too late to stop the second World Trade Center impact, having averaged a speed of around 800 miles per hour to get there. They could have covered the 207 miles from NYC to the seismic station in Pennsylvania in a mere 15 minutes at that speed. But this would have required them to leave New York City undefended at 9:07, merely one minute after arriving.

It would also have required a sixth sense, since the FAA didn't even warn NORAD that Flight 93 was considered a possible threat until 9:16.

While we don't know where the jet that created the sonic boom came from, we can safely assume that any aircraft moving supersonically over the continental U.S. by 9:22 on September 11th was part of our own military. And not knowing the fighter's home base does little to change the fact that it would have been in excellent position to intercept Flight 93 well before it crashed at 10:06.

Major General Paul A. Weaver Jr., Director of the Air National Guard, has told reporters that National Guard aircraft "weren't even close" to the fourth hijacked airliner. Thanks to the seismic record, we can now suggest there was little gold in his remarks.

Tracking aircraft in flight with seismic networks is not a new idea. NASA has looked at ground-recorded sonic boom signatures of aircraft like the F-18 and the SR-71; scientists at the California Institute of Technology have examined data from existing networks for events like the landing of the space shuttle Discovery.

Seismic networks have also been used to determine the time of aircraft crashes; indeed, when the United States Army wanted to know with greater accuracy exactly when Flight 77 struck the Pentagon on 9/11, they turned to seismologists at the Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory at Columbia University, and the Maryland Geological Survey. Won-Young Kim and Gerald R. Baum were unable to definitively set the impact time of the Pentagon crash, but they were able to determine the time of Flight 93's impact to within 5 seconds (10:06:05 ±5, EDT).

In the days and weeks following the crash, rumors circulated of a shoot-down, the scenario being that the military brought the airliner down before it could reach a more populated area. It should be said that just because we now know a fighter was close enough to do the grim job, it doesn't necessarily follow that the job was done: there is still no direct proof that the unknown fighter chose to fire upon Flight 93.

The question, however, remains:

Why would NORAD misrepresent where their fighters were if they didn't shoot it down?

http://www.flight93crash.com/flight93_seismic_event.htm

Catching the FBI in a Big Fat Lie



The Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection released this photo a few days later

The pattern of impact is consistent with an aircraft with significant lateral movement,
a "fan" pattern where debris is blown in the direction the aircraft was headed.
Debris found two and eight miles from the crash was explained by this "splatter" effect, bolstered by
winds reported in the area at the time. The effect of the wind can be seen in the burned trees as well.



The grass in this farmer's field is similar to that replanted in stripmine reclamation projects.
Windspeed at the time of this accident was recorded as 15 knots. As you can see, fire from the
wreckage was spread through the grass by the wind. You can clearly determine the direction
of the wind by the way the fire spread. Just like the FBI and PDEP photos.

Except....




This showed two important things. First, that the impact indeed occured on the border between
flammable grassland and equally flammable forest.

Second, and much more importantly, it showed me which way was north.
Something the other photos oddly enough didn't bother to indicate.

http://www.bartcop.com/flight93.htm

[John Doe II]

4. Thanks a lot for all this info!

Really interesting stuff!
:toast:

[John Doe II]

5. Anybody an idea

how a Boeing 757 fits into this crater?

[Old and In the Way]

6. What are the odds that all 4 crashes on 9/11 leave no visual

evidence of their crashes? Amazing...

[spooked911]

7. Well, yes, I think it is very weird that all four planes essentially

disappeared. The ones that went into the WTC, I can understand. The one that went into the Pentagon, maybe.

But this one too? I call bullshit.

[DoYouEverWonder]

8. I recently met a fellow

who worked at Boeing at the time said that they never recovered enough of any of the four planes to be able to do their usual investigation that they do for every crash.

[spooked911]

11. I think that is incredibly interesting. Was he suspicious of that fact?

[DoYouEverWonder]

20. That's why he told me

He also told me that the day of the attack the folks that investigate civilian crashes were all going nuts and were in high gear trying to gather info and doing whatever it is they usually do when there's a crash. However, the next day Boeing shut them down and transfered the investigation to their unit that investigates military crashes. Since that unit's work is usually secret, very little information came out about the crashes after that.

[John Doe II]

17. Interesting

That's very interesting in view of the claim of the FBI that both AA 77 and UA 93 were recovered by 95%. For UA 93 I opened a new thread as the coroner only speaks of 8%.

[philb]

9. Is this another case of total disintegration? Where did they find DNA?

Shouldn't the tail at least be outside the crater? How could it be in a crater that size when the plane was much longer and taller?
and hardly any debris seen?

[spooked911]

12. Exactly. This crash is easily the most fishy of all the 9/11 crashes, IMO

[stickdog]

10. The Mysterious Crater of Flight 93

Evidence presented here:

http://www.airdisaster.com/forums/archive/index.php/t-53041.html


So here is the question at hand:

Did 75%+ of the dirt displaced from this crater:













which was formed by this explosion:







somehow miraculously fall right back into the tiny crater, covering the majority of a 757 with 30+ feet of dirt?

Or could it be that the crater was just a tiny smoking gash considering the FBI's explanation for the crash? And that's why they had to pretend that it was really 40 feet deep and that 30-32 feet of the rock and dirt--displaced by an explosion energetic enough to supposedly blast a 20 square foot piece of metal fuselage hundreds of yards away, a one ton plus piece of engine well over 600 yards away and charred, bolt-sized pieces of metal several miles away--somehow magically deposited itself right back into the crater in complete defiance of the most rudimentary physics of impact cratering.

Does it look like it collapsed on itself like a sandbox or a bowl of jello, or does it look like 8-12 feet was excavated by a high energy impact, as would be expected in any high energy impact?

Unfortunately, almost every picture Flight 93's supposed crater was taken from a long distance and a shallow angle (and most after digging had begun), but just to give another idea of what a real crater formed by a real high energy impact (the wing of a 747) looks like see this picture of the crater formed by Pan Am Flight 103:





Note that the hole was excavated, the ground was hardened as it compacted, 90%+ of the excavated debris was sent flying, and precious little was buried.

Does anyone know of another example of an airplane in the entire history of air disasters that managed to bury part of itself 30+ feet below the 10 foot impact crater it formed? Besides Flight 93, of course.

[spooked911]

13. Excellent post. I have to agree that the flight 93 crater makes no sense

whatsoever.

Great link with the airdisaster forum!

[spooked911]

15. On the other hand, we have "The Electra Story" which seems

highly relevant to flight 93:

http://www.airdisaster.com/forums/archive/index.php/t-53041.html

"Here is an excerpt from "The Electra Story" , published in 1963

This is the description of a 4 engine plane that crashed in a midwest field in Indiana in a 600 mph plunge.

The airliner's fuselage emerged from the black cloud minus its entire right wing and with only a large stub of the left wing still attached. For a few seconds it continued in level flight ... and then it began an almost vertical plunge to earth, trailing smoke and fire like a spent rocket.
It struck a field at 618 MPH. Mud, dirt, grass, shrubs and mottled snow were tossed 250 ft into the air. The debris fell back around a muddy crater forty feet wide. From this gaping wound in the earth poured smouldering smoke. There were pieces of wreckage around the perfectly formed rim. Some other metal fragments were hurled fifteen hundred feet away. But the one hundred foot fuselage itself had disappeared entirely.

In the crater, buried twelve feet under this smoking cauldron, was what was left of Northwest Airlines flight 710 - and the 33 men, 21 woman and 8 children and 1 infant aboard.

...

The residue of flight 710 was something even the most veteran investigators had never come across before. There were no bodies.

Newsman quickly noticed that shirts, towels, slips and other items of clothing were hanging from nearby trees. They phoned in stories that the clothes had been stripped from the victims bodies by the explosive impact. Their observation was accurate, but their analysis was faulty. The items draped on the tree branches were from a bale of old clothing that NW was shipping to its maint shop in Miami for use as grease rags. When impact burst open the baggage compartment, the clothing was flung into the air and fluttered down amoung the trees.

Where were the victims? Masked workers DUG into the smoking crater. They dug down a full 12 feet before they found what they were seeking. The huge fuselage had telescoped and compressed into a mass of molten metal only 1/3 its original length. Of the 63 occupants, there was not enough left to identify-eventually-more than seven.

The crater itself measured 40 feet from N to S and 30 feet from E to W.


Now note what the story says. The fuselage had gone from 100 ft to about 30 ft, and was buried 12 feet BELOW the bottom of the crater, thus the front of the plane was about 40 feet below the original bottom of the crater. (Story never mentions how deep the crater was to start with, but consistently describes it as a crater, so obviously it had some initial depth to it as well).

The speeds involved were about the same, the fuselage construction would have been about the same (hasn't changed that much) the plane still flys today as the Navy's P3V.

What is interesting is depending on when and how the depth of the crater is reported: to the bottom of the crater, to the where one first finds wreckage or to where the wreckage ends one will get quite varing figures very similar to the ones that you keep insisting represent something sinister, but each one could be reported as the crater depth. Its all in interpretation of what that means and what it means at any given time."


The difference here is that the flight 710 plane lost its wings, and I'm not sure how that would affect the impact. But on a simple level, it appears as though there is precendetn fro what happened to flight 93, as improbably as it seems.

[stickdog]

21. The real story of Electra Flight 710

Flight 710 "buried itself" no more than 31 feet, and probably a lot less because they kept digging for several feet until there was no sign of any further debris. There is no mention that the debris found 1,500 feet away was metal, and there is no mention that the fuselage telescoped or turned into "molten metal." On the contrary, the description says it basically disintegrated. There is also no mention of the speed with which the craft supposedly impacted the ground, and considering all these other discrepancies, I don't think it's wise to put too much faith in some random message board poster's supposedly accurate reproduction of some book of unknown veracity.

Here is the actual accident report of the Electra:

http://www.avsaf.org/reports/US/1960.03.17_NorthwestAirlines_LockheedElectra.pdf

Look on page 5.

It says,

"The soil at the point of impact was soft and contained no rocks. ... Impact forces formed a crater that was 30 feet across its top from east to west and 40 feet from north to south; it was 12 feet deep. Most of that portion of the aircraft which struck the ground forming this crater disintegrated and was buried within it. ... Portions of the vertical tail were imbedded in the west rim of the crater with the crumpled upper end of the rudder protruding from the ground. ... The impact explosion hurled small pieces of wreckage (stickdog says: note that there is no mention of that this wreckage was metal) in all directions from the crater, the greatest distance being approximately 1,500 feet to the east and south-east. ...

"Upon removal of the wreckage from the crater it was apparent that the fuselage with its tail, most of the left wing, and the No. 2 powerplant had contacted the ground in an almost vertical nose-down position. All structure removed from the crater was found to be severely fragmented from ground impact. ...

"The excavation of the crater continued to a DEPTH OF 31 FEET until there was no further evidence of any structure remaining in either the sidewalls of the bottom."

[spooked911]

14. Here is a longer post from that forum that sums things up pretty well

93questions
08-17-2002, 05:15 AM
OK, can we now agree on these facts:

1) A PA police spokesman, witnesses and other authorities initially reported the depth of the crater as 8-12 feet.

2) It took almost 48 hours to find the Flight Data Recorder which a Senator and other authorities reported was found at 15 feet, putting an absolute limit on the initial depth of the crater at less than 15 feet.

3) It took over another day to find the Cockpit Voice Recorder, which was an FBI spokesperson said was found at 25 feet.

4) Various authorities, including the FBI source who leaked the supposed contents of the CVR to Newsweek for the heroes' story, whoever briefed the media and victims' families when they played the CVR for the families and the coroner who was put in charge of Flight 93 state that the final depth of the crater was 45-50 feet.

5) Even taking the upper limit of the initial crater and the lower limit of the final reported depth, we are talking about a plane that buried itself in 30 feet of dirt and rock, and covered itself with twice the depth of dirt and rock that was excavated from the crater.

6) Only 8% of the bodies were recovered and almost none of these body parts were found in the hole.

7) No pieces of wings or fuselage bigger than 6 x 7 feet survived the blast.

8) The official story is the Flight 93 hit the ground at 575 mph at a steep angle and that the extreme pulverization of the debris and the 25+ square mile debris field were caused by the extreme energy of this impact.

Any disagreements so far? I didn't think so.

OK.

So we supposedly have a plane crash that was energetic enough to:

1) toss light debris 8-10 miles away from the crash site,

2) toss light debris 3-6 miles to the northeast even though the wind was blowing southeast,

3) toss charred bolt-sized pieces of sheet metal 2-3 miles to the northeast even though the wind was blowing southeast,

4) pulverize/vaporize the entire plane such that an extensive search yielded only 8% of the body parts of the victim,

5) pulverize/vaporize the entire plane such no piece of wing was found that was bigger than 6 x 7 feet,

6) pulverize/vaporize the entire plane such that the biggest piece of fuselage found was a 6 x 7 foot piece that was tossed into a drainage ditch 2,500 yards (or 2,500 feet or "it depends on what your definition of distance is") away,

7) toss a piece of engine weighing over 1,000 lbs more than 600 yards from the crash site,

8) toss other debris--like bones--around for miles,

9) cause "an awful lot of dirt to be moved and then a film of dust" to settle over a large area,

10) burrow itself 45 to 50 feet into the ground.


However, the initial crater looks like the kind of a hole that would be caused by firing a sidewinder into the ground or if the Flight 93 hit at a shallow angle and skidded into the trees (as reported in some 9/11 and 9/12 accounts)--not the kind of long and wide crater we would expect from such an amazingly energetic crash of an entire 757, wings, engines and all.


<BLOCKQUOTE><font size="1" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">quoteNow note what the story {of Electra Flight 710} says. The fuselage had gone from 100 ft to about 30 ft, and was buried 12 feet BELOW the bottom of the crater, thus the front of the plane was about 40 feet below the original bottom of the crater.


You are assuming 100% vertical telescoping. I sincerely doubt this was the case.

Let's compare the details of the official version of Flight 93's crash to "The Electra Story." Please correct me if I'm wrong on any of theses points.

1) Flight 710's fuselage weighed more than that of a 757. Plus it came down at a higher estimated velocity (618 vs. 575 mph).

2) Flight 93's crater: ~10 x ~20 by ~10 to ~50 feet deep. Electra's crater: 40 x 30 by 12 to ? feet deep. Note the bigger width and length of the Electra's crater even though it came down with just part of one wing attached. Also note that the comparative area of the crater (200 vs. 1200 sq. ft) is critical when analyzing how much displaced dirt and rock is likely to fall back into the crater.

3) Flight 93: tossed metal pieces at least 2-3 miles. Electra: tossed metal pieces just over 1/4 mile.

4) Flight 93: A 6 x 7 foot piece of main body fuselage (with four windows) was found at least hundreds of feet away (initial estimate of 2,500 yards later revised to 2,500 feet then to an amount much smaller only after estimator--who knows the victims' families personally--was made aware of the possible ramifications). Only pieces smaller than 6 x 7 feet were found in the crater. The FDR and CVR were found operable and in good condition in the crater, not fused to molten metal. Electra: the fuselage had telescoped and was found in a large molten mass in the crater.

Questions:

1) If fuselage construction has remained the same, why did Flight 710's fuselage end up in a giant molten telescoped mess while Flight 93's broke into a bunch of tiny pieces? And how did a relatively intact 6 x 7 foot piece of 93's fuselage "frisbee" hundreds of yards away instead of telescoping? Why did the 93's fuselage generally disintegrate or get flung through the air while Flight 710's melted and telescoped?

2) Where are the expected big pieces of Flight 93's wings? In what other disasters were both wings of a large commercial passenger jet completely destroyed while leaving a crater width of only 10-20 feet?

3) Basically, the energy of Flight 93's crash either went into pulvervizing the plane and launching metal debris over absurdly long distances (assumption: the ground is rock hard) or it went into burrowing itself deep into the ground and melting the fuselage (assumption: the ground is soft and the FBI is not coming clean about the large molten pieces of fuselage it found).

Contradictions:

1) The supposed depth of Flight 93's crater, the debris field generated by Flight 93 and the fact that the wings supposedly were pulverized on impact (without marking the ground?) indicates a more energetic impact than that of the Flight 710. If so, then why wasn't Flight 93's crater longer, wider, deeper and more excavated?

2) If the ground was soft enough such that pieces of Flight 93 managed to bury themselves 35-42 feet under the initial crater, how was the energy generated to toss so much debris so far northeast in a 10.5 mph southeasterly wind? Please consider the type of gun you need to launch ordinance 2-3 miles vs. 1/4 mile.

Biggest reasons to doubt Flight 93 crashed as officially recounted:

1) No other airplane crash in history has ever launched pieces of metal 2-3 miles against the wind.

2) We are supposed to believe that the very first plane crash in the history of air disasters that was energetic enough to accomplish such a feat could be described by the official in charge of the scene thusly:

He was stunned at how small the smoking crater looked, he says, "like someone took a scrap truck, dug a 10-foot ditch and dumped all this trash into it."

And that it looked like this:

[John Doe II]

18. Very good post

the first witnesses of the crater speak of a depth of 8 to 15 feet. Yet much of the wreckage including the black box was found at a depth of 20 to 25 feet.

[stickdog]

22. The second black box was reportedly found about 45 feet deep.

I can't find the exact link.

However

10/08/01 -- REVISED SIZE OF CRATER IS NOW 45-50 FEET DEEP!!! THERE ARE 200 CLEAN UP WORKERS--ALMOST A MONTH LATER AFTER THE INITIAL 400 DID THEIR CLEAN UP THING, VAPORIZED VICTIMS.

Originally from:

http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/localnews/134349512_tizon04.html

(now archived)

Search-and-rescue teams have gone over the crash site of Flight 93 in Shanksville, Pa., numerous times already, of course, but investigators said a recent windstorm might have dislodged debris or exposed remains not found earlier. More than 200 workers from 13 counties were recruited for the effort. This field was owned by a local coal-mining company but rented out to a farmer who used it to grow oats. Oat stubble was all that met the Boeing 757 when it bore into the ground at 500 miles per hour, leaving a burned-out crater 45 feet deep. The only road to the site was barricaded and guarded by police and state troopers. It's considered a crime scene, and searchers were told not to talk publicly about what they were finding.

Many of the searchers stayed in the same hotel, the Ramada in Somerset, about 12 miles away. In the evenings, they filled the hotel bar. One night, in the lobby, a beefy guy in a baseball cap and T-shirt that read "Natural Bridge Fire & Rescue - Co. 11," spent 40 minutes on his cell phone, describing in detail what he'd done that day. He talked loud enough for anybody nearby to hear. He said groups were assigned to comb square sections of the field. He'd spent the entire morning and afternoon on his hands and knees, and found enough human remains to fill two plastic freezer bags. Most were bone fragments and pieces of skin and flesh. A couple of his colleagues found fingers and toes. One finger still wore a ring. He also found jewelry, purse items, paper and camera film, which will be sent to families when possible. The largest piece of debris found that day was 6 feet by 2 feet, some unidentified part of the plane. Most was the size of a quarter or smaller. Basically, the plane and the 44 people on board were "vaporized."

[Zaphod 36]

16. Satellite

Hi John Doe!



This is a work of Zeitmaschine. I had the idea to size the crater with a satellite picture before.
It seems the furrows has the wingspan size of 38 meters(Boeing 757).
But I don´t think the crater was created by a Boeing 757. I think it was digged by hand and/or a dredger.

[John Doe II]

19. Thanks for this

That the crater shows the exact wingspan size of a Boeing 757 is quite amazing. Or let's call it another of the 911 miracles. But still the question of the tail remains. With the height of 44 feet it is simply to big for the gouge (at least according to all witness' accounts).
So what happened to the tail?

[spooked911]

23. flight 710 in 1960 seems relevant but I'm not sure what happened to the

tail.

http://www.cs.clemson.edu/~steve/Spiro/electra1.html

On March 17, 1960, Northwest Airlines flight 710 left Minneapolis-St. Paul on schedule. It made a scheduled 1/2 hour stop at Chicago and took-off again for the warmth of Miami. On board were 33 men, 23 women, and one baby riding as passengers, along with six crew members. At about 1pm, the 63 people were cruising above a cloud layer at 18,000 feet over Tell City, Indiana.

Then something happened.
Witnesses on the ground heard tearing sounds in the sky. They looked up and saw the thick fuselage of the Electra emerging from the clouds. The entire right wing was missing, and only a stub of the left wing remained attached to the Electra.

The airliner seemed to float for a while, defying the laws of gravity. But then it dipped, diving straight down toward the ground, trailing white smoke and pieces of aircraft. The 63 people entombed in the fuselage struck the muddy ground, vertically, at 618 miles per hour.

All 63 people on board were killed, but there were no bodies- and hardly any aircraft wreckage! The tremendous velocity of the aircraft caused the Electra to telescope when it struck the earth. It created a 60 foot deep crater. Rescuers found nothing at the site of impact larger than a spoon.

[stickdog]

24. Why the fuck are you posting this disinfo?

Didn't you read the actual Civil Aeronautics Board report for Flight 710 I posted here?

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=125x39361#43052

[spooked911]

25. No, sorry I didn't see that. Thanks.

[spooked911]

26. By the way, I don't suppose there is any similar document for flight 93

is there?

[John Doe II]

27. Excuse NEED HELP!!!

Isn't there anybody on DU who can explain me how the plane managed to cause this crater? Where are all theses experts that explain the Pentagon hole. Here it's much easier we're only talking about a soft ground.

[John Doe II]

28. NOBODY

can up with the slightest explanation how a Boeing 757 can fit into this crater?

[savemefromdumbya]

29. suppose it was blown up in the air and a large piece caused the crater

flight 93 did not exist