portland imc - 2013.02.11 - 9/11/01 -- Did flight 93 crash or was it shot down?

Shanksville, Pennsylvania: Complete 911 Timeline

11.Feb.2013 23:33

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Complete 911 Timeline
Shanksville, Pennsylvania

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(Between 9:40 and 10:00 a.m.) September 11, 2001: Johnstown Airport Control Tower Is Evacuated Following Reports of Approaching Plane
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Johnstown-Cambria County Airport.Johnstown-Cambria County Airport. [Source: JMSA Today]At some time shortly before 10 a.m.�as early as 9:40 a.m. according to one report�air traffic manager Dennis Fritz, in the control tower at Johnstown-Cambria County Airport, 70 miles east of Pittsburgh, receives a call from Cleveland Air Traffic Control reporting a large, suspicious aircraft about 20 miles south of them, descending below six thousand feet. Despite the clear day, Fritz and his colleagues can see no plane approaching through binoculars. Soon afterwards, in response to another call from Cleveland, Fritz orders trainees and custodial staff to evacuate the tower, yet he is still unable to see any plane approaching. Less than a minute later, though, Cleveland calls a third time, saying to disregard the evacuation: The plane has turned south and they have lost radar contact with it. [Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, 9/12/2001; Knight Ridder, 9/13/2001; Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, 10/28/2001; Longman, 2002, pp. 197] Wells Morrison is the agent in charge of the FBI's Mon Valley Resident Agency, a satellite of its Pittsburgh field office. He too receives a phone call informing him of this flight, though he doesn't say whom it is from. He contacts the Johnstown FBI office and instructs its agents to head to the Johnstown Airport. [Kashurba, 2002, pp. 109-110] Flight 93 crashes around 10:03 a.m. or soon thereafter (see (10:03 a.m.-10:10 a.m.) September 11, 2001), going down in a field just 14 miles south of Johnstown. [Washington Post, 9/13/2001]

Entity Tags: Dennis Fritz, Wells Morrison

Timeline Tags: 9/11 Timeline

Category Tags: All Day of 9/11 Events, Flight UA 93, Shanksville, Pennsylvania
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(Before 10:06 a.m.) September 11, 2001: Witnesses See Flight 93 Rocking Wings as It Slowly Descends
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In the tiny town of Boswell, about ten miles north and slightly to the west of Flight 93's crash site, Rodney Peterson and Brandon Leventry notice a passenger jet lumbering through the sky at about 2,000 feet. They realize such a big plane flying so low in that area is odd. They see the plane dip its wings sharply to the left, then to the right. The wings level off and the plane keeps flying south, continuing to descend slowly. Five minutes later, they hear news that the plane has crashed. Other witnesses also later describe the plane flying east-southeast, low, and wobbly. [New York Times, 9/14/2001; Longman, 2002, pp. 205-206] "Officials initially say that it looks like the plane was headed south when it hit the ground." [News Channel 5 (Cleveland), 9/11/2001]

Entity Tags: Brandon Leventry, Rodney Peterson

Timeline Tags: 9/11 Timeline

Category Tags: All Day of 9/11 Events, Flight UA 93, Shanksville, Pennsylvania
(10:03 a.m.-10:10 a.m.) September 11, 2001: Flight 93 Crashes; Seven-Minute Discrepancy in Exact Timing of Crash
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Smoke rising, minutes after Flight 93 crashes in Pennsylvania.Smoke rising, minutes after Flight 93 crashes in Pennsylvania. [Source: CNN]Exactly when Flight 93 crashes is unclear. According to NORAD, Flight 93 crashes at 10:03 a.m. [North American Aerospace Defense Command, 9/18/2001] The 9/11 Commission gives an exact time of 11 seconds after 10:03 a.m. It will claim this "time is supported by evidence from the staff's radar analysis, the flight data recorder, NTSB [National Transportation Safety Board] analysis, and infrared satellite data." It does note that "[t]he precise crash time has been the subject of some dispute." [9/11 Commission, 6/17/2004] However, a seismic study authorized by the US Army and drafted by scientists Won-Young Kim and Gerald Baum to determine when the plane crashed will conclude that the crash happened at 10:06:05 a.m. [Kim and Baum, 2002 pdf file; San Francisco Chronicle, 12/9/2002] The discrepancy is so puzzling that the Philadelphia Daily News will publish an article on the issue, titled "Three-Minute Discrepancy in Tape." This notes that leading seismologists agree on the 10:06 a.m. time, give or take a couple of seconds. [Philadelphia Daily News, 9/16/2002] The New York Observer will note that, in addition to the seismology study, "The FAA gives a crash time of 10:07 a.m. In addition, the New York Times, drawing on flight controllers in more than one FAA facility, put the time at 10:10 a.m. Up to a seven-minute discrepancy? In terms of an air disaster, seven minutes is close to an eternity. The way our nation has historically treated any airline tragedy is to pair up recordings from the cockpit and air traffic control and parse the timeline down to the hundredths of a second. However, as [former Inspector General of the Transportation Department] Mary Schiavo points out, 'We don't have an NTSB (National Transportation Safety Board) investigation here, and they ordinarily dissect the timeline to the thousandth of a second.'" [New York Observer, 2/15/2004]

Entity Tags: 9/11 Commission, North American Aerospace Defense Command, Federal Aviation Administration, Won-Young Kim, Mary Schiavo, Gerald R. Baum

Timeline Tags: 9/11 Timeline

Category Tags: All Day of 9/11 Events, Flight UA 93, Shanksville, Pennsylvania
Just Before 10:06 a.m. September 11, 2001: Locals Hear a Missile Before Flight 93 Crashes?
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Several local people believe they hear a missile overhead just before Flight 93 goes down. Barry Lichty, a US Navy veteran and mayor of Indian Lake Borough (just to the east of where Flight 93 crashes), is watching television with his wife. He says he hears "a loud roar above the house that sounded like a missile.... Shortly thereafter, we heard an explosion and a tremor. My first reaction, as a former utility employee, was that maybe someone shot a missile into the substation." He says Flight 93 "did not come over my house. I don't know what we heard." [Kashurba, 2002, pp. 158-159] Joe Wilt, who lives a quarter-mile from the crash site, hears a "whistling like a missile, then a loud boom." He says, "The first thing I thought it was, was a missile." [Boston Globe, 9/12/2001; Washington Post, 9/12/2001] And Ernie Stuhl, the mayor of Shanksville, later says, "I know of two people - I will not mention names - that heard a missile. They both live very close, within a couple of hundred yards.... This one fellow's served in Vietnam and he says he's heard them, and he heard one that day." [Philadelphia Daily News, 11/18/2001] Officials will emphatically deny that Flight 93 was shot down, as some people later suggest (see September 14, 2001). [Pittsburgh Tribune-Review, 9/14/2001; Longman, 2002, pp. 264] However, a number of witnesses report seeing a small, white jet plane near the crash site, around the time Flight 93 reportedly goes down (see (Before and After 10:06 a.m.) September 11, 2001).

Entity Tags: Barry Lichty, Joe Wilt

Timeline Tags: 9/11 Timeline

Category Tags: All Day of 9/11 Events, Flight UA 93, Shanksville, Pennsylvania
(Before 10:06 a.m.) September 11, 2001: Witnesses See Flight 93 Flying Erratically and Making Strange Noises
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Numerous eyewitnesses see and hear Flight 93 just before its crash:
bullet Terry Butler, at Stoystown: He sees the plane come out of the clouds, low to the ground. "It was moving like you wouldn't believe. Next thing I knew it makes a heck of a sharp, right-hand turn." It banks to the right and appears to be trying to climb to clear one of the ridges, but it continues to turn to the right and then veers behind a ridge. About a second later it crashes. [St. Petersburg Times, 9/12/2001]
Accounts of the plane making strange noises -
bullet Laura Temyer of Hooversville: "I didn't see the plane but I heard the plane's engine. Then I heard a loud thump that echoed off the hills and then I heard the plane's engine. I heard two more loud thumps and didn't hear the plane's engine anymore after that." (She insists that people she knows in state law enforcement have privately told her the plane was shot down, and that decompression sucked objects from the aircraft, explaining why there was a wide debris field.) [Philadelphia Daily News, 11/15/2001]
bullet Charles Sturtz, a half-mile from the crash site: The plane is heading southeast and has its engines running. No smoke can be seen. "It was really roaring, you know. Like it was trying to go someplace, I guess." [WPXI 11 (Pittsburgh), 9/13/2001]
bullet Michael Merringer, two miles from the crash site: "I heard the engine gun two different times and then I heard a loud bang... " [Associated Press, 9/12/2001]
bullet Tim Lensbouer, 300 yards away: "I heard it for ten or 15 seconds and it sounded like it was going full bore." [Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, 9/12/2001]
Accounts of the plane flying upside down -
bullet Rob Kimmel, several miles from the crash site: He sees it fly overhead, banking hard to the right. It is 200 feet or less off the ground as it crests a hill to the southeast. "I saw the top of the plane, not the bottom." [Longman, 2002, pp. 210-211] Eric Peterson of Lambertsville: He sees a plane flying overhead unusually low. The plane seemed to be turning end-over-end as it dropped out of sight behind a tree line. [Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, 9/12/2001]
bullet Bob Blair of Stoystown: He sees the plane spiraling and flying upside down, not much higher than the treetops, before crashing. [Daily American, 9/12/2001]
Accounts of a sudden plunge and more strange sounds -
bullet An unnamed witness says he hears two loud bangs before watching the plane take a downward turn of nearly 90 degrees. [News Channel 5 (Cleveland), 9/11/2001]
bullet Tom Fritz, about a quarter-mile from the crash site: He hears a sound that "wasn't quite right" and looks up in the sky. "It dropped all of a sudden, like a stone," going "so fast that you couldn't even make out what color it was." [St. Petersburg Times, 9/12/2001]
bullet Terry Butler, a few miles north of Lambertsville: "It dropped out of the clouds." The plane rose slightly, trying to gain altitude, then "it just went flip to the right and then straight down." [Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, 9/12/2001]
bullet Lee Purbaugh, 300 yards away: "There was an incredibly loud rumbling sound and there it was, right there, right above my head�maybe 50 feet up.... I saw it rock from side to side then, suddenly, it dipped and dived, nose first, with a huge explosion, into the ground. I knew immediately that no one could possibly have survived." [Independent, 8/13/2002]
Upside down and a sudden plunge -
bullet Linda Shepley: She hears a loud bang and sees the plane bank to the side. [ABC News, 9/11/2001] She sees the plane wobbling right and left, at a low altitude of roughly 2,500 feet, when suddenly the right wing dips straight down, and the plane plunges into the earth. She says she has an unobstructed view of Flight 93's final two minutes. [Philadelphia Daily News, 11/15/2001]
bullet Kelly Leverknight in Stony Creek Township of Shanksville: "There was no smoke, it just went straight down. I saw the belly of the plane." It sounds like it is flying low, and it's heading east. [Daily American, 9/12/2001; St. Petersburg Times, 9/12/2001]
bullet Tim Thornsberg, working in a nearby strip mine: "It came in low over the trees and started wobbling. Then it just rolled over and was flying upside down for a few seconds... and then it kind of stalled and did a nose dive over the trees." [WPXI 11 (Pittsburgh), 9/13/2001] Some claim that these witness accounts support the idea that Flight 93 is hit by a missile. [Philadelphia Daily News, 11/15/2001] While this theory certainly can be disputed, it is worth noting that some passenger planes hit by missiles continued to fly erratically for several minutes before crashing. For instance, a Korean Airline 747 was hit by two Russian missiles in 1983, yet continued to fly for two more minutes. [Korean Air, 8/31/1983] Kelly Leverknight, whose home is a couple of miles from the Flight 93 crash site, adds that planes going overhead are nothing unusual here because the area is a "military flight corridor." [Daily American, 9/12/2001]

Entity Tags: Terry Butler, Kelly Leverknight, Eric Peterson, Linda Shepley, Lee Purbaugh, Rob Kimmel, Tim Thornsberg, Michael Merringer, Tim Lensbouer, Tom Fritz, Bob Blair, Laura Temyer, Charles Sturtz

Timeline Tags: 9/11 Timeline

Category Tags: Flight UA 93, All Day of 9/11 Events, Flight UA 93, Shanksville, Pennsylvania
(Before 10:06 a.m.) September 11, 2001: Flight 93 Breaks Up Prior to Crash?
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Flight 93 apparently starts to break up before it crashes, because debris is found very far away from the crash site. [Philadelphia Daily News, 11/15/2001] The plane is generally obliterated upon landing, except for one half-ton piece of engine found some distance away. Some reports indicate that the engine piece was found over a mile away. [Independent, 8/13/2002] The FBI reportedly acknowledges that this piece was found "a considerable distance" from the crash site. [Philadelphia Daily News, 11/15/2001] Later, the FBI will cordon off a three-mile wide area around the crash, as well as another area six to eight miles from the initial crash site. [CNN, 9/13/2001] One story calls what happened to this engine "intriguing, because the heat-seeking, air-to-air Sidewinder missiles aboard an F-16 would likely target one of the Boeing 757's two large engines." [Philadelphia Daily News, 11/15/2001] Smaller debris fields are also found two, three, and eight miles away from the main crash site. [Independent, 8/13/2002; Mirror, 9/12/2002] Eight miles away, local media quote residents speaking of a second plane in the area and burning debris falling from the sky. [Reuters, 9/13/2001] Residents outside Shanksville reported "discovering clothing, books, papers, and what appeared to be human remains. Some residents said they collected bags-full of items to be turned over to investigators. Others reported what appeared to be crash debris floating in Indian Lake, nearly six miles from the immediate crash scene. Workers at Indian Lake Marina said that they saw a cloud of confetti-like debris descend on the lake and nearby farms minutes after hearing the explosion... " [Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, 9/13/2001] Moments after the crash, Carol Delasko initially thinks someone had blown up a boat on Indian Lake: "It just looked like confetti raining down all over the air above the lake." [Pittsburgh Tribune-Review, 9/14/2001] Investigators say that far-off wreckage "probably was spread by the cloud created when the plane crashed and dispersed by a ten mph southeasterly wind." [News Journal (Wilmington, DE), 9/16/2001] However, much of the wreckage is found sooner than that wind could have carried it, and not always southeast.

Entity Tags: Federal Bureau of Investigation, Carol Delasko

Timeline Tags: 9/11 Timeline

Category Tags: All Day of 9/11 Events, Flight UA 93, Key Day of 9/11 Events, Shanksville, Pennsylvania
(Just Before 10:06 a.m.) September 11, 2001: Lights Go Out Before Flight 93 Crashes, Allegedly Indicating a Missile Being Fired
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John Fleegle, a manager at the Indian Lake Marina about 1.5 miles from where Flight 93 crashes, is indoors with some colleagues, watching the televised coverage of the World Trade Center attack. Then, as he later describes, "All of a sudden the lights flickered and we joked that maybe they were coming for us. Then we heard engines screaming close overhead. The building shook. We ran out, heard the explosion and saw a fireball mushroom," following the crash. When he later describes this incident while on a training course in Atlanta, Fleegle will be told that what happened means Flight 93 "was shot down." A man there who says he is a retired Air Force officer will tell Fleegle, "[W]hen your lights flickered, [it was because] they zap the radar frequency on everything before they shoot. Your lights didn't flicker from the impact�your lights flickered because they zapped the radar system before they shot it." However, William "Buck" Kernan, a retired four-star Army general, will dispute this claim, saying, "[R]egarding an aircraft engaging an airborne target having an electrical disruption on the ground, no, this would not be a result of lock on or any electromagnetic pulsing." He will suggest it is "possible that overpressure from explosions could momentarily disrupt microwave connections or cause sensations on ground relays, wiring, etc." that might result in the lights having flickered. [Pittsburgh Tribune-Review, 9/14/2001; Lappe and Marshall, 2004, pp. 35-36] But, consistent with Fleegle's allegation, a number of local residents�including military veterans�say they heard the sound of a missile overhead just before the time of the crash (see Just Before 10:06 a.m. September 11, 2001). Another local resident, Val McClatchey, will report her lights and phone going out around the time of the crash. [Pittsburgh Tribune-Review, 9/11/2002] According to Barry Lichty, the mayor of Indian Lake Borough, the town's electricity goes out around this time. He later learns that the plane crash had disrupted service to the borough. [Pittsburgh Tribune-Review, 9/12/2001] Interestingly, one alternative theory later suggested is that Flight 93 could have been brought down using "electromagnetic interference" (see August 13, 2002). The US Air Force and Pentagon have in fact "conducted extensive research on 'electronic warfare applications' with the possible capacity intentionally to disrupt the mechanisms of an airplane in such a way as to provoke, for example, an uncontrollable dive." [Independent, 8/13/2002]

Entity Tags: Barry Lichty, Val McClatchey, John Fleegle, William Kernan

Timeline Tags: 9/11 Timeline

Category Tags: All Day of 9/11 Events, Flight UA 93, Shanksville, Pennsylvania
(Before and After 10:06 a.m.) September 11, 2001: Witnesses See Low-Flying, Small White Jet at Flight 93 Crash Site
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Looking straight down onto the Flight 93 crash site. North is to the top. Note the impact point north of the road, and the burned trees to the south of it.Looking straight down onto the Flight 93 crash site. North is to the top. Note the impact point north of the road, and the burned trees to the south of it. [Source: FBI]A second plane, described "as a small, white jet with rear engines and no discernible markings," is seen by at least ten witnesses flying low and in erratic patterns, not much above treetop level, over the crash site within minutes of United Flight 93 crashing. [Independent, 8/13/2002]
bullet Lee Purbaugh: "I didn't get a good look but it was white and it circled the area about twice and then it flew off over the horizon." [Mirror, 9/12/2002]
bullet Susan Mcelwain: Less than a minute before the Flight 93 crash rocked the countryside, she sees a small white jet with rear engines and no discernible markings swoop low over her minivan near an intersection and disappear over a hilltop, nearly clipping the tops of trees lining the ridge. [Bergen Record, 9/14/2001] She later adds, "There's no way I imagined this plane�it was so low it was virtually on top of me. It was white with no markings but it was definitely military, it just had that look. It had two rear engines, a big fin on the back like a spoiler on the back of a car and with two upright fins at the side. I haven't found one like it on the Internet. It definitely wasn't one of those executive jets. The FBI came and talked to me and said there was no plane around.... But I saw it and it was there before the crash and it was 40 feet above my head. They did not want my story�nobody here did." [Mirror, 9/12/2002]
bullet John Fleegle and two work colleagues arrive at the crash site "before any fireman or paramedics or anybody." According to Fleegle, "When we got there, there was a plane flying up above and he was smart, he flew straight for the sun so you couldn't look at it and see exactly what type of plane, if it was a fighter or what it was." However, Fleegle claims the plane "was decent sized. It wasn't just a little private jet or something like that, from what we could see." [Lappe and Marshall, 2004, pp. 35-36]
bullet Dennis Decker and/or Rick Chaney, say: "As soon as we looked up [after hearing the Flight 93 crash], we saw a midsized jet flying low and fast. It appeared to make a loop or part of a circle, and then it turned fast and headed out." Decker and Chaney described the plane as a Learjet type, with engines mounted near the tail and painted white with no identifying markings. "It was a jet plane, and it had to be flying real close when that 757 went down. If I was the FBI, I'd find out who was driving that plane." [Bergen Record, 9/14/2001]
bullet Kathy Blades, who is staying about quarter of a mile from the impact site, runs outside after the crash and sees a jet, "with sleek back wings and an angled cockpit," race overhead. [Philadelphia Daily News, 11/18/2001]
bullet Anna Ruth Fisher says, "After the crash, another jet went near over to look." Her mother, Anna B. Fisher, adds, "We were looking at the smoke cloud when we saw the jets circling up there." [Kashurba, 2002, pp. 27]
bullet Jim Brandt sees a small plane with no markings stay about one or two minutes over the crash site before leaving. [Pittsburgh Channel, 9/12/2001]
bullet Bob Page sees a large plane circling the crash site for about two or three minutes, before climbing almost vertically into the sky. He cannot see what kind of plane it is or if there are any markings on it, but says, "It sure wasn't no puddle jumper." [Pittsburgh Tribune-Review, 9/12/2001]
bullet Tom Spinelli: "I saw the white plane. It was flying around all over the place like it was looking for something. I saw it before and after the crash." [Mirror, 9/12/2002]
The FBI later claims this was a Fairchild Falcon 20 business jet, directed after the crash to fly from 37,000 feet to 5,000 feet and obtain the coordinates for the crash site to help rescuers (see 10:07 a.m. September 11, 2001). [Pittsburgh Channel, 9/15/2001; Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, 9/16/2001] The FBI also says there was a C-130 military cargo aircraft flying at 24,000 feet about 17 miles away (see 10:08 a.m. September 11, 2001), but that plane wasn't armed and had no role in the crash. [Pittsburgh Channel, 9/15/2001; Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, 9/16/2001] Note that this is the same C-130 that flies very close to Flight 77 right as that planes crashes into the Pentagon (see 9.36 a.m. September 11, 2001).

Entity Tags: Anna B Fisher, Dennis Decker, Anna Ruth Fisher, Bob Page, Susan Mcelwain, Kathy Blades, Federal Bureau of Investigation, John Fleegle, Tom Spinelli, Lee Purbaugh, Jim Brandt, Rick Chaney

Timeline Tags: 9/11 Timeline

Category Tags: Key Day of 9/11 Events, All Day of 9/11 Events, Flight UA 93, Shanksville, Pennsylvania
(10:06 a.m.) September 11, 2001: Flight 93 Crashes into Filled-in Mine in Pennsylvania Countryside
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Flight 93 crashed in the Pennsylvania countryside. Resue vehicles arrive in the distance.Flight 93 crashed in the Pennsylvania countryside. Resue vehicles arrive in the distance. [Source: Keith Srakocic/ Associated Press]Flight 93 crashes into an empty field just north of the Somerset County Airport, about 80 miles southeast of Pittsburgh, 124 miles or 15 minutes from Washington, D.C. Presumably, hijackers Ziad Jarrah, Ahmed Alhaznawi, Ahmed Alnami, Saeed Alghamdi, and all the plane's passengers are killed instantly. [CNN, 9/12/2001; North American Aerospace Defense Command, 9/18/2001; Guardian, 10/17/2001; Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, 10/28/2001; USA Today, 8/13/2002; Associated Press, 8/21/2002; MSNBC, 9/3/2002] The point of impact is a reclaimed coal mine, known locally as the Diamond T Mine, that was reportedly abandoned in 1996. [Pittsburgh Tribune-Review, 9/12/2001; St. Petersburg Times, 9/12/2001; Pittsburgh Tribune-Review, 9/11/2002] Being "reclaimed" means the earth had been excavated down to the coal seam, the coal removed, and then the earth replaced and planted over. [Kashurba, 2002, pp. 121] A US Army authorized seismic study times the crash at five seconds after 10:06 a.m. [Kim and Baum, 2002 pdf file; San Francisco Chronicle, 12/9/2002] As mentioned previously, the timing of this crash is disputed and it may well occur at 10:03 a.m., 10:07 a.m., or 10:10 a.m.

Entity Tags: San Francisco Chronicle, Ziad Jarrah, Ahmed Alhaznawi, Saeed Alghamdi, NBC, Ahmed Alnami

Timeline Tags: 9/11 Timeline

Category Tags: Key Day of 9/11 Events, All Day of 9/11 Events, Flight UA 93, Shanksville, Pennsylvania, Ziad Jarrah, Other 9/11 Hijackers
(10:06 a.m.) September 11, 2001: Nearby Cottage Destroyed When Flight 93 Crashes
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The local structure most severely damaged when Flight 93 crashes in rural Pennsylvania is a stone cottage, an estimated 1,000 feet from the crash site. Located within thick trees, the cottage belongs to Barry Hoover who is away at work at the time of the crash. Reportedly, "every window and door" has been "blown off and obliterated, its ceilings and floor tiles had been blasted loose and much of the interior was wrecked." Hoover describes it as "like what you see after a tornado or hurricane goes through�a total ruin." The garage adjacent to it has its door blown off by the shockwave from the crash. According to Somerset County Solicitor Dan Rullo, "The way it was described to me was that it must have been blown up, the springs snapped, and it came back upside down." The surrounding area is scattered with remains and debris. [Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, 9/14/2001; Kashurba, 2002, pp. 122; Washington Post, 5/12/2002]

Entity Tags: Barry Hoover

Timeline Tags: 9/11 Timeline

Category Tags: All Day of 9/11 Events, Flight UA 93, Shanksville, Pennsylvania
(10:06 a.m.) September 11, 2001: Local Resident Captures 'One-of-a-Kind' Photo of Flight 93 Crash Explosion
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A local resident is able to take the only photo showing the Flight 93 crash in the seconds after the plane went down. Val McClatchey lives just over a mile away from the crash site. [Wall Street Journal, 9/12/2006] She is at home watching television when she hears the surge of a plane engine, sees a silver flash outside, and then hears a loud boom that causes her house to shake. Luckily she has her new digital camera ready by her door. She was planning to photograph a friend who had promised to fly over in a helicopter on this day. [Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, 6/29/2003; Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, 8/6/2006; Tribune-Democrat (Johnstown), 9/9/2006] She grabs it and from her front porch manages to take a picture of the smoke cloud rising into the sky, "approximately five seconds after impact," she says. [Pittsburgh Tribune-Review, 9/11/2002; Windsor Park Stories, 3/23/2003] Her photo will appear in numerous newspapers and magazines. According to the FBI, it is the only known image taken within seconds of the crash. Considering the sparsely populated area in which Flight 93 went down, Pittsburgh FBI agent Jeff Killeen calls it "one-of-a-kind." [Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, 8/6/2006; Tribune-Democrat (Johnstown), 9/9/2006; Wall Street Journal, 9/12/2006]

Entity Tags: Val McClatchey

Timeline Tags: 9/11 Timeline

Category Tags: All Day of 9/11 Events, Flight UA 93, Shanksville, Pennsylvania
After 10:06 a.m. September 11, 2001: Emergency Dispatch Reports Second Suspicious Plane Heading Toward Johnstown Airport?
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Soon after Flight 93 has crashed, Sherry Stalley, who is a reporter with a Johnstown, Pennsylvania, television station, is traveling in a car and hears a dispatch over the scanner (a type of radio receiver used by reporters), reporting that apparently another plane, possibly with a bomb onboard, is heading towards the Johnstown airport (located about 14 miles north of the Flight 93 crash site). According to Stalley, "The scanner was jammed with talk. Emergency crews and firefighters were being sent to the airport. Police were being dispatched to shut down roads. Every available unit within a thirty-mile radius was asked to help." [Gilbert et al., 2002, pp. 111] The control tower at the Johnstown airport was evacuated at around 10 a.m., following reports of a suspect aircraft heading towards it (see (Between 9:40 and 10:00 a.m.) September 11, 2001).

Entity Tags: Sherry Stalley

Timeline Tags: 9/11 Timeline

Category Tags: All Day of 9/11 Events, Flight UA 93, Shanksville, Pennsylvania
(After 10:06 a.m.) September 11, 2001: Fighter Said to Fly Past Flight 93 Crash Site
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"Up above, a fighter jet streak[s] by," just after Flight 93 crashes, according to ABC News. [ABC News, 9/15/2002] It isn't clear what evidence this ABC News claim is based on. There are other accounts of a fighter or fighters in the area before the crash, mentioned previously.

Timeline Tags: 9/11 Timeline

Category Tags: All Day of 9/11 Events, Flight UA 93, Shanksville, Pennsylvania
10:07 a.m. September 11, 2001: Business Jet Asked to Help Locate Flight 93 Crash Site
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Falcon 20 business jet.Falcon 20 business jet. [Source: Portuguese Air Force]According to some accounts, following a request from the FAA's Cleveland Center, a Fairchild Falcon 20 business jet reports seeing puffs of smoke in the area of Flight 93's last known position. [Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, 9/16/2001; Federal Aviation Administration, 9/17/2001 pdf file] The FBI later says the business jet was within 20 miles of Flight 93 when it crashed, at an altitude of 37,000 feet, and on its way to Johnstown. It was asked to descend to 5,000 feet to help locate the crash site for the benefit of the responding emergency crews. [Pittsburgh Channel, 9/15/2001] Stacey Taylor appears to be the Cleveland Center controller who made the request. She later recalls: "I had another airplane [other than Flight 93] that I was working. And I told him, I said, 'Sir,' I said, 'I think we have an aircraft down.' I said, 'This is entirely up to you, but if you'd be willing to fly over the last place that we spotted this airplane�and see if you can see anything.'... So he flew over and at first he didn't see anything and then he said, 'We see a great big plume or a cloud of smoke.'" [MSNBC, 9/9/2006] The business jet belongs to VF Corp, a Greensboro, North Carolina clothing firm. [Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, 9/16/2001] According to David Newell, VF Corp's director of aviation and travel, Cleveland Center contacted the plane's copilot Yates Gladwell when it was at an altitude "in the neighborhood of 3,000 to 4,000 ft," rather than 37,000 feet, as claimed by the FBI. He will add: "They got down within 1,500 ft. of the ground when they circled. They saw a hole in the ground with smoke coming out of it. They pinpointed the location and then continued on." [Popular Mechanics, 3/2005] This incident occurs around 40 minutes after the FAA initiated a nationwide ground stop, which required planes in the air to land as soon as reasonable (see (9:26 a.m.) September 11, 2001). [Time, 9/14/2001; 9/11 Commission, 7/24/2004, pp. 25] The FBI will claim the VF Corp business jet is probably the plane some witnesses on the ground see up above, shortly after the crash of Flight 93 (see (Before and After 10:06 a.m.) September 11, 2001). [Pittsburgh Channel, 9/15/2001] However, at least two witnesses say they saw a plane overhead even before the time of the Flight 93 crash, and one of them describes it as "definitely military," rather than a business jet. Also, some will describe it as flying much lower than the Falcon 20 was�just "40 feet above my head," according to one witness. [Bergen Record, 9/14/2001; Mirror, 9/12/2002]

Entity Tags: Cleveland Air Route Traffic Control Center, Federal Bureau of Investigation, Stacey Taylor, Yates Gladwell

Timeline Tags: 9/11 Timeline

Category Tags: All Day of 9/11 Events, Flight UA 93, Shanksville, Pennsylvania
(10:07 a.m.-10:15 a.m.) September 11, 2001: United Airlines Headquarters Learns of Smoke Plume Rising at Flight 93's Last Known Location
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Hank Krakowski.Hank Krakowski. [Source: Unisys]After seeing Flight 93's radar track stopping over Pennsylvania, a senior United Airlines official contacts an airport in that area and receives confirmation of what appears to be an airplane crash nearby. Along with other United Airlines managers, Hank Krakowski, United's director of flight operations, has just been watching Flight 93 on a large screen in the crisis center at the airline's headquarters, outside Chicago (see (9:36 a.m.-10:06 a.m.) September 11, 2001). A dispatcher has determined the plane's last position was south of Johnstown, Pennsylvania, so Krakowski tries phoning the Johnstown airport. However, due to an apparent power failure, there is no reply. He has to call the airport manager's cell phone number. He asks the manager: "We might have a plane down in your area there. See anything unusual?" The manager reports a black smoke plume visible about 30 miles to the south of the airport. Krakowski thinks, "We just watched one of our airplanes crash." [Longman, 2002, pp. 214; USA Today, 8/13/2002] Therefore, by 10:15 a.m. according to the 9/11 Commission, United Airlines headquarters has "confirmed that an aircraft [has] crashed near Johnstown, Pennsylvania, and [it] believed that this was Flight 93." [9/11 Commission, 8/26/2004, pp. 47 pdf file]

Entity Tags: United Airlines, Hank Krakowski

Timeline Tags: 9/11 Timeline

Category Tags: All Day of 9/11 Events, Flight UA 93, Shanksville, Pennsylvania
After 10:06 a.m. September 11, 2001: Paper Debris Survives Flight 93 Crash
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Paper debris found in New Baltimore, six miles from the crash site.Paper debris found in New Baltimore, six miles from the crash site. [Source: Steve Mellon / Pittsburgh Post-Gazette] (click image to enlarge)Despite the apparent lack of plane wreckage and human remains at the Flight 93 crash site (see (After 10:06 a.m.) September 11, 2001 and 10:45 a.m. September 11, 2001), a large amount of paper debris is found there, mostly intact. Faye Hahn, an EMT who responds to the initial call for help, finds "pieces of mail" everywhere. [McCall, 2002, pp. 31-32] Roger Bailey of the Somerset Volunteer Fire Department finds mail "scattered everywhere" around the site. He says, "I guess there were 5,000 pounds of mail on board." [Kashurba, 2002, pp. 38] Some envelopes are burned, but others are undamaged. Flight 93 had reportedly been carrying a cargo of thousands of pounds of US mail. [Longman, 2002, pp. 213-214] Whether this is later examined as crime scene evidence is unclear: According to Bailey, over subsequent days, whenever a lot of this mail has been recovered, the post office will be called and a truck will come to take it away. Several of the first responders at the crash site also see an unscorched bible lying open on the ground, about 15 yards from the crash crater. [Kashurba, 2002, pp. 43, 110 and 129; Arkansas Democrat-Gazette, 6/13/2006] Local coroner Wallace Miller will later come across a second bible at the warehouse where the Flight 93 victims' belongings are kept. [Washington Post, 5/12/2002] Other paper debris rains down on the nearby Indian Lake Marina (see (Before 10:06 a.m.) September 11, 2001). According to witness Tom Spinelli, this is "mainly mail," and also includes "bits of in-flight magazine." [Mirror, 9/12/2002] Other paper items will be recovered from the crash site in the following days. These include a fragment of Ziad Jarrah's passport and a business card linking al-Qaeda conspirator Zacarias Moussaoui to the 9/11 hijackers. [CNN, 8/1/2002; Washington Post, 9/25/2002] A flight crew log book and an in-flight manual belonging to Lorraine Bay, a flight attendant on Flight 93, will also be recovered. [National Museum of American History, 9/20/2003]

Entity Tags: Tom Spinelli, Faye Hahn, Roger Bailey

Timeline Tags: 9/11 Timeline

Category Tags: All Day of 9/11 Events, Shanksville, Pennsylvania
(After 10:06 a.m.) September 11, 2001: Witnesses Report Lack of Plane Wreckage at Flight 93 Crash Scene
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The Flight 93 crater later in the morning. Notice the destruction of the airplane is nearly total.The Flight 93 crater later in the morning. Notice the destruction of the airplane is nearly total. [Source: Associated Press]Numerous individuals who see the Flight 93 crash site describe a lack of plane wreckage:
bullet Jon Meyer, a reporter with WJAC-TV, says, "I was able to get right up to the edge of the crater.... All I saw was a crater filled with small, charred plane parts. Nothing that would even tell you that it was the plane.... There were no suitcases, no recognizable plane parts, no body parts. The crater was about 30 to 35 feet deep." [Newseum et al., 2002, pp. 148]
bullet According to Mark Stahl, who goes to the crash scene, "There's a crater gouged in the earth, the plane is pretty much disintegrated. There's nothing left but scorched trees." [Associated Press, 9/11/2001]
bullet Frank Monaco of the Pennsylvania State Police says, "If you would go down there, it would look like a trash heap. There's nothing but tiny pieces of debris. It's just littered with small pieces." [Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, 9/12/2001]
bullet Scott Spangler, a photographer with a local newspaper, says, "I didn't think I was in the right place. I was looking for a wing or a tail. There was nothing, just this pit.... I was looking for anything that said tail, wing, plane, metal. There was nothing." [Newseum et al., 2002, pp. 149]
bullet According to Ron Delano, a local who rushes to the scene after hearing about the crash, "If they hadn't told us a plane had wrecked, you wouldn't have known. It looked like it hit and disintegrated." [Pittsburgh Tribune-Review, 9/12/2001]
bullet Gabrielle DeRose, a news anchor with KDKA-TV, views the crash site from a hill overlooking it. She says, "It was very disturbing to think all the remains just disintegrated... . There were no large pieces of airplane, no human remains, no baggage." [Sylvester and Huffman, 2002, pp. 160-161]
bullet Local assistant volunteer fire chief Rick King, who sees the crater at the crash site, says, "Never in my wildest dreams did I think half the plane was down there." King sends his men into the woods to search for the plane's fuselage, but they keep coming back and telling him, "Rick. There's nothing." [Longman, 2002, pp. 216]
bullet Bob Craig of the FBI's evidence-gathering team later explains what is supposed to have occurred: "Turn the picture of the second plane hitting the World Trade Center on its side, and, for all intents and purposes, the face of the building is the strip mine in Shanksville [where Flight 93 crashed]." [Longman, 2002, pp. 260] When the plane's two black boxes are later discovered (see September 13-14, 2001), they are reportedly found 15 and 25 feet inside the crater. [Longman, 2002, pp. 217; Washington Post, 5/12/2002]

Entity Tags: Gabrielle DeRose, Frank Monaco, Scott Spangler, Ron Delano, Jon Meyer, Mark Stahl, Rick King

Timeline Tags: 9/11 Timeline

Category Tags: All Day of 9/11 Events, Flight UA 93, Key Day of 9/11 Events, Shanksville, Pennsylvania
(10:06 a.m.-10:25 a.m.) September 11, 2001: FBI Informed of Plane Crash; Agents Head to Flight 93 Crash Scene
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Wells Morrison is the supervisory special agent in charge of the FBI's Mon Valley Resident Agency, a satellite of the bureau's Pittsburgh field office. [Pittsburgh Tribune-Review, 4/13/2003] He receives a call informing him that a plane has crashed in Somerset County. Another phone call informs him that Westmoreland County 911 received a call saying a plane had been hijacked. (This is the call believed to have been from Flight 93 passenger Edward Felt (see 9:58 a.m. September 11, 2001).) He sends an agent out, who quickly seizes the tape of the call from the emergency dispatchers. Morrison also has agents sent to the Flight 93 crash site and subsequently goes there himself, being one of the first FBI agents to arrive at the scene. [Washington Post, 9/12/2001; Kashurba, 2002, pp. 109-110] Patrick Madigan of the Pennsylvania State Police, who arrives at the crash site around 10:20 a.m., says the first FBI agent gets there soon after him. Initially, four or five FBI agents will be there. [Department of the Army and the Air Force National Guard Bureau, 2002 pdf file; Kashurba, 2002, pp. 60 and 110] In the subsequent days, about 150 agents will be involved in the recovery effort (see (September 11-27, 2001)). [Longman, 2002, pp. 259] As it is a crime scene, the FBI is in charge of the Flight 93 crash site and the subsequent investigation. [Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, 11/4/2001; Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, 2/17/2002]

Entity Tags: Patrick Madigan, Federal Bureau of Investigation, Wells Morrison

Timeline Tags: 9/11 Timeline

Category Tags: All Day of 9/11 Events, Shanksville, Pennsylvania
10:08 a.m. September 11, 2001: Military Cargo Plane Pilot Asked to Verify Flight 93 Crash
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Lt. Col. Steve O'Brien standing in front of a C-130.Lt. Col. Steve O'Brien standing in front of a C-130. [Source: CBC]Cleveland Center air traffic controller Stacey Taylor has asked a nearby C-130 pilot to look at Flight 93's last position and see if he can find anything. Remarkably, this C-130 pilot, Lt. Col. Steve O'Brien, is the same pilot who was asked by air traffic control to observe Flight 77 as it crashed into the Pentagon earlier on (see 9.36 a.m. September 11, 2001). O'Brien tells Taylor that he saw smoke from the crash shortly after the hijacked plane went down. [Guardian, 10/17/2001; MSNBC, 9/11/2002; 9/11 Commission, 6/17/2004] An article in the London Independent will later suggest that Flight 93 might have been brought down by the US military using "electronic warfare applications" that can disrupt the mechanisms of an airplane (See August 13, 2002); it will refer to this C-130, since "in 1995 the Air Force installed 'electronic suites' in at least 28 of its C-130s�capable, among other things, of emitting lethal jamming signals." [Independent, 8/13/2002]

Entity Tags: Stacey Taylor, Cleveland Air Route Traffic Control Center, Steve O'Brien

Timeline Tags: 9/11 Timeline

Category Tags: All Day of 9/11 Events, Flight UA 93, Shanksville, Pennsylvania
(After 10:20 a.m.) September 11, 2001: Jet Plane Allegedly Carrying United Airlines Executives Circles Flight 93 Crash Site
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Patrick Madigan, the commander of the Somerset Barracks of the Pennsylvania State Police, arrives at the Flight 93 crash scene around 10:20 a.m. [Department of the Army and the Air Force National Guard Bureau, 2002 pdf file] He says that at some point later in the day (he does not specify a time), a "strange incident" occurs: "We were there at the site and an airplane started circling. It was a jetliner circling the crash site very low. No one knew what to expect because we knew that all of the planes were supposedly grounded." (The FAA had, at about 9:45 a.m., ordered that all aircraft be instructed to land at the nearest airport (see (9:45 a.m.) September 11, 2001).) After a few minutes of uncertainty, it is announced that the plane is carrying United Airlines executives, who are circling the site to view it before they land in nearby Johnstown. [Kashurba, 2002, pp. 63] Another low-flying jet plane was witnessed over the site earlier on, around the time Flight 93 went down (see (Before and After 10:06 a.m.) September 11, 2001).

Entity Tags: Patrick Madigan, United Airlines

Timeline Tags: 9/11 Timeline

Category Tags: All Day of 9/11 Events, Shanksville, Pennsylvania
10:45 a.m. September 11, 2001: Coroner Unable to Find Human Remains at Flight 93 Crash Site
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Wallace Miller.Wallace Miller. [Source: Steve Mellon / Pittsburgh Post-Gazette]Wallace Miller, the coroner of Somerset County, is one of the first people to arrive at the Flight 93 crash scene. However, he is surprised by the absence of human remains there. He later says, "If you didn't know, you would have thought no one was on the plane. You would have thought they dropped them off somewhere." [Longman, 2002, pp. 217] The only recognizable body part he sees is a piece of spinal cord with five vertebrae attached. He will later tell Australian newspaper The Age, "I've seen a lot of highway fatalities where there's fragmentation. The interesting thing about this particular case is that I haven't, to this day, 11 months later, seen any single drop of blood. Not a drop." [Age (Melbourne), 9/9/2002] Dave Fox, a former firefighter, also arrives early at the crash scene, but sees just three chunks of human tissue. He says, "You knew there were people there, but you couldn't see them." [Pittsburgh Tribune-Review, 9/11/2002] Yet, in the following weeks, hundreds of searchers are able to find about 1,500 scorched human tissue samples, weighing less than 600 pounds�approximately eight percent of the total body mass on Flight 93. Months after 9/11, more remains are found in a secluded cabin, several hundred yards from the crash site. [Washington Post, 5/12/2002]

Entity Tags: Dave Fox, Wallace Miller

Timeline Tags: 9/11 Timeline

Category Tags: All Day of 9/11 Events, Shanksville, Pennsylvania, FBI 9/11 Investigation, 9/11 Investigations
(10:50 a.m.) September 11, 2001: Local Farmer Flies over Flight 93 Crash Site
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James K. Will.James K. Will. [Source: WTAE-TV]After hearing a plane has crashed in his area, a farmer flies over the Flight 93 crash site to take photos of the wreckage. James K. Will, who is an aerial photographer as well as a farmer, had just landed his Cessna on a private airstrip at his farm in Berlin, Pennsylvania, after visiting nearby Altoona. His mother rushed out and told him there were reports of a plane having crashed near Shanksville. He'd grabbed his camera and set off in his plane for the site, to take photos of the wreckage. He later recalls that he circles the Flight 93 crash scene around 45 minutes after the crash occurred. He says, "I thought it was just an accident." He is then intercepted by a state police helicopter, which escorts him to the Johnstown airport. He will be questioned and briefly detained there before being released. His plane will be searched and then released. [Pittsburgh Channel, 9/15/2001; Pittsburgh Tribune-Review, 9/15/2001] At around 9:45 a.m., all FAA facilities had been ordered to instruct every aircraft to land at the nearest airport (see (9:45 a.m.) September 11, 2001). About 20 minutes earlier, the FAA had initiated a nationwide ground stop, which prohibited takeoffs and required planes in the air to land as soon as reasonable (see (9:26 a.m.) September 11, 2001). [Time, 9/14/2001; 9/11 Commission, 7/24/2004, pp. 25 and 29]

Entity Tags: James K. Will

Timeline Tags: 9/11 Timeline

Category Tags: All Day of 9/11 Events, Shanksville, Pennsylvania
11:30 p.m. September 11, 2001: FBI Uninterested in Flight 93 Witness's Evidence
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Susan Mcelwain, who lives two miles from the Flight 93 crash site, had seen a small jet plane flying very low overhead as she was driving home. She later recalls that it had been "heading right to the point where Flight 93 crashed and must have been there at the very moment it came down." But it was only later in the afternoon, after returning home and turning on the TV, that she'd realized what she'd seen was connected to the attacks in New York and Washington. While she was confused that a Boeing 757�not a small jet plane�was being reported as having gone down near where she'd been, she'd then realized that the small plane was flying in a different direction to that being described for Flight 93. So she got her husband to tell the police about what she'd witnessed. Consequently, late in the evening, the FBI turns up to talk to her about it. Yet, as Mcelwain later recalls, "They did not want my story." They keep asking her how big the plane she'd seen was. When she tells them it was small, not much bigger than her van, one of the agents tells her, "You don't know what a 757 looks like." She retorts, "Don't be condescending towards me. If you don't want to believe me, that's fine, but I thought I should report what I saw. You ought to know there was something else in the air at the same time this was going on. We want to make sure it was ours and not somebody else's." After this, she will recall, the agent "did seem to get a little nicer. Told me that it was a white Learjet. Somebody was taking pictures. And I said, 'Before the crash?' and he says, 'Well, we've got to go,' and that was the end of it." [Bergen Record, 9/14/2001; Mirror, 9/12/2002; Lappe and Marshall, 2004, pp. 38-40] Numerous other witnesses also saw a small jet plane flying above the crash site around the time Flight 93 reportedly went down (see (Before and After 10:06 a.m.) September 11, 2001).

Entity Tags: Susan Mcelwain, Federal Bureau of Investigation

Timeline Tags: 9/11 Timeline

Category Tags: All Day of 9/11 Events, FBI 9/11 Investigation, Shanksville, Pennsylvania, 9/11 Investigations

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9/11/01 -- Did flight 93 crash or was it shot down?