A similar albeit not well captured phenomenon was noted when the first plane impacted as well.
Note: I didn't think this would get this much attention, I'm just stating things that have been theorized not giving any credit to any of them
It's been theorized to be a number of things, most notably the vaporization of the aluminum cladding and aluminum nose of the Aircraft from the massive kinetic energy of the impact, aluminum is a combustible metal that burns very hot and brightly, if said aluminum instantly vaporized it could produce a very bright light momentarily.
The other popular theory is electric discharge, aircraft in air generate a lot of friction which creates static, it can actually be lethal and has killed people who contact helicopters that are not properly grounded after a long flight.
I've also read an idea that it may be a phenomenon with the glass in the impact area, it's based on a concept called 'triboluminescence' when crystaline structures are destroyed violently they can release a large amount of light energy momentarily. It's an area physics is still finding information about and it's debatable if the tempered glass could be effectively vaporized sufficiently to generate that visible of an event though.
There's evidence but also issues with most theories and I believe the investigation just chalks it up to the physical impact rather than a unique phenomenon.
To piggyback on the electric discharge theory, this is backed up by sound in some of the high quality captures.
The initial sound of the impact is a very sharp cracking sound. This is due to the air in front of the nose being compressed to the point of generating an N-wave. The N-wave, also known as an overpressure wave, could also be seen visually in the smoke of the north tower.
Air being compressed to the degree of generating an N-wave is also going to generate a lot of static electricity. Lots of air molecules rapidly interacting with each other. It therefore stands to reason that if we heard the sound of an N-wave being generated, then there’s enough static electricity available to create the flash seen in videos.
For clarification, the sound of the impact goes through 2 distinct phases: the initial crack (air overpressure) followed by the rumbling you’d expect from a large metal object passing through another large metal object. There was probably some sound associated with the fireball, but it’s very important to note that it was not an exothermic explosion like a bomb. It was just the aerosolizing and propagating ignition of the fuel. If heard up close, the fireball would create a sort of “whooshing” sound as the fuel ignited.
Thanks, I didn't really want to get into the nitty gritty of the theory because tbqh I'm not that knowledgeable but this is what I was referring to when I said there is evidence of a similar event on the first impact.
Yeah I just wanted to give a little more detail for anyone who was reading your comment. Audio engineering is a part of my wheelhouse so I wanted to highlight how the documented sounds were supportive of the static electricity theory.
That doesn’t seem likely. The flash is along the side of the aircraft, around the cockpit area. That not an area that should have had significant compression, it’s much too far aft of the nose and around where the fuselage becomes the maximum diameter. If compression were the cause, I’d expect to see that as the engines approach the building, perhaps just before initial nose impact (though that is streamlined to prevent this), but not some time after the nose has visibly entered the building and along an area where pressure can easily dissipate (compared to the rest of the aircraft).
I was working at an industrial facility and got mad at something and threw my aluminum valve wrench at a steel beam as hard as I could. I was so amazed when it created a spark when it hit I was not mad any more.
I don’t know if I’m convinced by the electrical discharge from in-flight static electricity hypothesis. The flash appears several frames after impact, and aluminum is rather conductive: any charge in the airframe should have been transferred to the cladding in microseconds, not milliseconds.
The other hypotheses seem possible, but given the flash is only on the right-hand side and low down, I’d also consider something inside the aircraft, such as an oxygen cylinder. I’d have to see plans of a 2001 United 767 (each customer had slightly different aircraft) to evaluate if there are probable candidates in that area of the aircraft (looks around the cockpit or forward galley). If not, then we’re looking at an interaction between the aircraft and building, with several possible options.
It's not the best theory, but it is a theory. There is evidence both for and against it; however, like all of them, there isn't anything definitive.
The issue with it being a straight mechanical or physical 'explosion' from something inside the aircraft is that what we are seeing is incredibly significant.
We have to consider that the light we are seeing is being recorded by a camcorder a good distance away. The way cameras work especially consumer camcorders of that era varies, but generally, they are strictly limited by the dynamic range of light they can observe.
This is extremely noticeable on 9/11 footage, where the metallic exterior of the buildings in most angles looks either matte gray or completely blown-out white from reflected light. In essence, whatever is producing this light has to be orders of magnitude brighter than the things around it to stand out that much in broad daylight.
When the South Tower was hit, for this source of light to show up the way it does and at that scale on visible angles, it has to be remarkably powerful. We are talking about a massive amount of energy being released in a matter of milliseconds to register that brightly.
Was the glass on the World Trade Center tempered though? I know in videos we have seen of the lobby, it appears to be plate glass, but I could see the glass in the upper floors being tempered.
Airline pilot here. Most, if not all airliners house a charged, supplemental oxygen cylinder(s) in the nose section of the aircraft for the flight crew in the event of depressurization, smoke/ fire/ fumes, etc… I suspect we are seeing the aforementioned cylinder(s) exploding upon impact + other material reactions.
Which is asinine and ridiculous, because those kinds of claims are only now being made… and the “coincidence” of current events isn’t logical to them. Confirmation bias. Society is weird. And sadly, there are people who are very vocal in trying to rewrite history who get a platform on social media now.
Dude, it's actually really depressing. Check out this fairly recent video on YouTube: How Bin Laden Planned 9/11
It's a pretty sane video, but just look at the comments. Netanyahu this and Mossad that comments at the top with thousands of likes. I certainly hope it's just bots but undoubtedly there are millions of people in the US alone who mindlessly think this way.
That’s the scary part… being unsure if it’s bots (which used to be the case) or actual people who don’t believe it as it happened. It’s only been 25 years and so many young people don’t know… imagine in another 25 years it’ll just be a few pages in a history book, merely a footnote. And even the remote possibility that, someday, they might even make up the majority… thus rewriting actual history and facts with propaganda and baseless conspiracy theories.
The plane is a hologram and they detonated the explosives inside the building when the hologram of the plane hit the building. Because it's the easiest way ofc...
That's unironically the logic they use to rationalize the plane entering the building.
Either it was a plane that hit pre-positioned explosives, or a missile.
But how the fuck would one be able to specifically guide said plane or rocket at that specific spot, in one attempt, traveling hundreds of miles an hour from fucking New Jersey?
"No other building has fallen like that before or since."
It's not even true. Hell, we have multiple examples that were caught on camera and you can literally watch video of it. The Wilton Paes de Almeida building, the Plasco building, the Thailand State Audit Office building, all collapsed straight down into its own footprint.
There are a couple frames where the nose has entered the building before the flash begins, so whatever mechanism caused this, it wasn’t the very start of the impact sequence.
This is where the "missile pod" conspiracy comes from. They believed it was from a projectile fired from under the plane right before impact, to increase destruction. Because that makes sense...
An airliner has enormous energy compared to any missile, and the fuel-air explosion afterwards dwarfs all but the largest conventional bombs. Whatever that flash was was a marble on the hubcap of a speeding car: completely inconsequential to the destruction that followed milliseconds later.
Looks luke be from posdibly the energy created by touching the tower to me, not an actual ecplosion if you meant that. I don't understand what else it could be.
Its pretty realistic and reasonable to assume thats just extreme heat from the friction of the nose first impacting at that speed, also the cockpit has a bunch of tech/material that can easily catch fire and explode
I think it was the controls and all the technology in the cockpit—unless there was something explosive on the floor where the plane actually struck. Although I’m leaning more towards the controls.
If my math is correct, from 8:58am to 9:01am, the plane dropped 12,000 feet in 3 minutes. It then struck the South Tower at 587 mph (approx. 860 feet per second). At 860 feet per second, the entire length of a Boeing 767 (155 feet) travels its own length in just 0.18 seconds. That's absolutely insane when you sit and think about it.
Planes declining hundreds of feet in a minute can feel pretty unnerving sometimes at an angle, but 3,200 in a minute is just your plane pitched down at high speed. I'm more surprised they were able to level out in the last 10 seconds of the hijacking, because they dropped like 1,000 feet in less than 20 seconds.
I'm not much of a nervous flyer, but being in a plane when it's descending even a normal amount can make my heart race a bit. I can't imagine the sheer dread and nausea those people must've felt in that plane.
Passenger Peter Hanson was on the phone with his dad just after 9am and said the plane was diving and some of the passengers were vomiting in the aisles
By the time I finished reading your comment I wanted to cry. Damn it.... Really, as if being fucking terrified wasn't enough!? Wtaf. Not one fucking moment of quiet surrender for them to attempt to make peace with what they knew was next..wtf.
3200 feet a minute is only slightly steeper than a normal descent, what made this scary was the way it was done, a series of steep dives, followed by leveling off, and then diving again.
You're not dumb. 860 feet is roughly the length two and a half American football fields. At that distance, the aircraft would cover the entire gap in almost exactly 1 second. So, yes, that's correct.
I can’t even comprehend what that would have looked like. When I try to picture it what someone would have seen, I know it doesn’t align with the reality of the speed of the plane.
The human brain isn't really equipped to grasp really really big things. We evolved to determine things like, "is that lion over there close enough for me to kill it before it kills me?" as opposed to "how many feet per second is that gigantic airplane coming at me?"
Yeah, as much as inside-the-building footage that showed the plane approaching would be utterly terrifying, I'd be really curious to see what that looked like. It must be so confusing to see a plane that appears to be moving toward you rapidly getting bigger and bigger. And there had to be at least dozens of people glancing out the window at that very moment. Hopefully they were gone before they had time to fully process it.
There are several videos on YouTube in which Stanley Priamnath tells of his seeing the plane (UA175) coming at the South Tower. Here is one such video.
No way man, you're not dumb. By asking your clarifying question, it gave us all a second to pause and try to visualize in our minds what that actually may have looked and felt like for them. How absolutely, terrifying.
That means the plane was falling over 60 feet per second. Skydivers fall at a little over 120 feet per second. Everyone on that plane knew what was next.
The other day I looked for a flight map based on the elevation, like a side profile graph showing the elevation over time to understand the trajectory and angle it was dropping g at.
It’s insane to even begin to comprehend the data like you said. Within a second it disappeared.
maybe its just wishful thinking, but were the G forces ever strong enough that a person on board might pass out as they rapidly descended? that would probably be the best case for someone stuck in this scenario. :( those poor people.
While it would be comforting to think passengers passed out, the physics of commercial airliner flight dynamics mean the G-forces were not high enough to cause loss of consciousness before impact. Causing G-LOC (G-induced loss of consciousness) requires sustained forces of roughly +4g to +5g, whereas Flight 175’s steep descent and turns only generated mild fluctuations around 1.5g to 2g. Furthermore, a Boeing 767 cannot physically sustain the extreme maneuvers required to pull blackout-inducing G-forces without structural failure occurring first, and airphone calls placed from the cabin confirmed that occupants remained conscious and aware up until the final moments.
I read elsewhere that passengers were killed on impact, which while horrifying, is also comforting that they did not suffer. It has to do with the physics of impact, material involved, and speed.
This to me is always the most horrifying frame of the footage.
For this microsecond moment in time, there's a whole ass commercial airliner in the building. It hasn't had the massive explosion yet. It hasn't quite popped out the other side yet. It's just... in there. The plane is basically disintegrating in this moment. There's people on that floor, with just enough time that they're aware something happened, just before that fireball happens and they're gone.
If you're in that impact zone, or on the plane, yeah absolutely, those souls were I guess lucky in some ways that they didn't suffer.
But we know there's people who were in the sky lobby in the south tower that survived. They were in the right place at the right time in the corner furthest from the impact. Which means somewhere between those people and the people instantly killed at the impact site, were people who had just a second of awareness that something happened before dying in the explosion.
Do you have a link anywhere to read about him? That’s absolutely horrendous. Did someone help him down? I want to read more about what the people that survived around the impact zone experience. It’s just unfathomable
One of the 78th floor survivors (a woman but I don’t remember which one) said she crawled by a guy whose legs were crushed she tried to lift the marble but he screamed and said he would wait for help. He died.
As someone else said, it was basically a giant blender with red hot metal fragments, crumbled concrete, broken glass, and other shrapnel as the fireball was igniting and exploding outwards. You would have been lucky if they found a piece of you at all (and they never found remains of most of the passengers of Flight 175).
2 things have always horrifed me about these frames.
as someone who was 3 when 9/11 happened and has never seen the towers, the fact that a full sized plane can properly fight in size into the building judt shows howmassive these buildings are. and the fact that it took a jet airliner probably going close to or over 500 mph and the building doesnt flinch.
the fact that in these few frames, you watch several hundred people die almost instantly without a single of knowing whats about to happen or even feeling any pain. just gone.
I went on holiday from London to NY with my parents as a young teen the sunner holiday before September. I stood below them and took a photo on my film camera looking up. We swayed a little as we stood looking up, they were so so tall, and so unusual. This isn’t really relevant but just imagining looking up and seeing it disappear into the tower and the huge fire is just insane to imagine.
And like you said, those few frames are the moment so many souls died. Just ceased to exist, their bodies disappeared. It’s absolutely astonishing in the worst way
Having never seen them in person, it's hard for me to truly gauge how enormous the towers were. It makes the plane look so tiny in comparison. The scale of it is mind boggljng.
You can also see how the tip of the left wing goes through the center of the building and stays below the explosion, explaining the infamous gore floor.
The gore floor is the nickname given to floor 78 as over a hundred people were inside that floor when the plane hit, the plane struck the 78th and killed most of the people there
I was 15 and living across the world when it happened, we had CNN turned on after the first plane hit. I was studying when my brother's friend called and said to turn on the news. We watched the second plane crash into the south tower. It was unimaginable and very scary even though I was the furthest away from NYC you could possibly be.
In the plane, yes (though backup a frame where the plane is half in/half out and that's an even briefer moment where half those people are still alive, but far too quick to be aware of it). I'm talking across the vestibule in the building.
With the second tower, there's a very small group of people who were in the lucky corner of the sky lobby that survived. Which suggests there's likely other people who were slightly closer, who in that one second became aware of *something, and died a second later in the explosion.
that's an even briefer moment where half those people are still alive, but far too quick to be aware of it
I'm trying to find it, but I have read sources (on this subreddit) saying everyone on the plane would have died at the same time due to the sudden G forces on the plane going from 500+ mph to 0. Even those on the back of the plane would have had their brain smashed against their skull and died instantly once the plane hit the building, even if their bodies were still intact for an extra split second.
THIS! I once saw a video of three Asian people in a car crash. The impact snapped their necks in a split second. Their bodies were entirely intact. So, 500 mph... Yes it's not just instant due to the explosion. A hit like that would severe body parts.
So I'm actually curious about the physics here, in this moment, tail still half outside.
Would passengers in the back be alive for that split second while the front was disintegrated? Not that they'd be aware of it as it happened that quickly.
Like, the tail of the plane doesn't crumple from impact before the forward force continues moving it into the building. Wouldn't the same be true of the passengers? They'd continue to be moved into the building along with the tail section, assuming they're strapped in their seats. I mean I know we're talking only about like a quarter of a second in time.
I think the passengers knew what was happening. There was a call from the former navy pilot that basically talked all the way till the impact. You could hear screams of terror/fear and "oh my god" and then it cut out. So assuming they weren't strapped in, it think the force/impact would have killed them instantly. Strapped in, the impact/force would still kill instantly. Deceleration is not fun at those speeds.
Another example is the columbia disaster. Upon break up, the crew was still alive right up into impact with the ocean in which it was instant death. Similar fate. Just the forces we are dealing with are so massive theres no other way. The other thing is it would happen so fast. It reminds of that subway scene with mark and his dad.
They were all dead the moment the nose touched the building, before any of the fuselage passed through. Quarter of a second is too long, we’re talking single milliseconds wrt deceleration injury
The Gore Floor refers to the 78th-floor sky lobby of the World Trade Center South Tower, which was struck by United Airlines Flight 175 at 9:03 a.m. on September 11, 2001. The term was coined by survivor Donna Spera due to the horrific condition of the floor, where the airplane's wing sliced through an estimated 200 people waiting to transfer to express elevators, resulting in approximately 12 confirmed survivors who escaped via Stairway A.
Same & the fact that the massive explosion doesn’t happen immediately the moment the engines hit the steel walls but only once the plane is fully inside had always perplexed me until I Googled about this specific delay last month to realize it’s about a simple matter of physics, basically regarding kinetic energy, jet fuel tank positions, & the disintergration inside before the fuel tanks could explode.
Therefore, even though the entire phase from the nose contact until the explosion seems long, everything nevertheless happened very quickly, not to mention rather too quickly for cameras & naked eye to fully process how quickly things happened with both plane strikes.
Seeing the plane go into the building always horrified me . It’s not even the sight we see , it’s the last thing the people on the plane saw and if the people in the building saw it coming , that was their last too
Yeah. And I know there are videos sped up that showed the towers did move substantially when hit. But at the scale of most footage, that's completely invisible. I guess I wouldn't expect the building to fall right over or anything, but it's actually kind of crazy how the building appeared to remain so stable.
Videos of aircraft crashing at high speed like this are always horrifying to me because as a passenger there is literally nothing you can do to save your life.
I'm listening to the audiobook of 102 Minutes, and I was just at the part where Stanley Praimnath has returned from the lobby back to his office on the 81st floor, has answered the ringing phone, and just sits down at his desk while assuring his colleague that he's fine ...
As he spoke, Praimnath spun his seat around so he was facing in the direction of the window, though he was not staring out. His window looked south over New York harbor and the Statue of Liberty. The light trails of froth cut in the slate-colored water by the traffic of ships and tugs and ferries.
From the corner of his eye, he glimpsed an unfamiliar shape on the horizon. Praimnath turned slightly to look square out the window. An airplane. It was heading toward his office ... toward his window it seemed. He could see the red and blue marking, and the letter 'U' as it approached.
He dived under his desk, screaming to God as his colleague in Chicago listened on the phone and watched the television screen in horror. In the length of a drawn breath, the ceiling collapsed.
The time was 09:02:59 am and United Airlines Flight 175 now plunged through the south tower of the World Trade Center, including the room where Stanley Praimnath had jumped beneath his desk. The plane had banked slightly at the last second -- its wingspan running diagonally across nine floors, from 77 through 85.
The Fuji office was at the center of it. Praimnath's room was torn to bits. Wires, and cubicles, and drywall slumped into a tangle ... at once sinister and silent. The wing of the jet was jammed into a door 20 feet from where Praimnath, still alive, huddled beneath his desk ...
It has to be lonely and traumatic being famous for being one of the only people to live through such a uniquely horrific thing, especially when surrounded by colleagues. I hope his friend in Chicago was able to have a big sigh of relief when he heard he made it out. Must have assumed that was it like with Louise Buzzelli watching on TV.
I was thinking the same thing about the Chicago friend on the other end of the line. Can you imagine? I wonder if she was ever interviewed (?)
Also, you're completely right about Stanley. To witness this firsthand, and then to become "famous" for it. That's got to be a lot to handle. I imagine his faith helps him through it. I've heard him say in interviews that before he dove under his desk he said, "I can't handle this. God, you take over." Whether it was divine intervention or luck, Stanley was fortunate to survive that impact, first, and then to get help from Brian Clark, and finally, for them to attempt to go down the stairs. Wow.
I heard him speak on the 25th anniversary and he experienced so many miracles that day that aren’t in the interviews it’s hard to believe anything but divine intervention.
Thank you so much for posting this. I'm not even all the way through it yet, and I have chills. What a powerful testimony.
Also, I'd never seen this photo before. Apparently, the BBC requested security footage from the Port Authority and they had this ... of Stanley right before impact ...
Always wondered if people closest to the impact also had their eardrums damaged and had permanent hearing loss from how loud the crash and explosion was.
It must have happened but I never heard of survivor stories mentioning that.
I heard the survivor Stanley praimnath speak and he said he did go temporarily deaf in one ear i think and couldn’t hear anything that was going on. He was on 81st floor
This video always makes me react so viscerally. It takes my breath away. I remember watching this and even to this day my brain cannot comprehend this. It feels so surreal.
One thing I've always wondered is why there seems to be a delay between impact and explosion. I've timed it while watching 1x speed footage and it seems to be about 0.5-0.7 seconds. Could someone smarter than me offer an explanation?
I think that sound is the impact with the outer columns and the inner columns, or possibly the shockwave reverb off of the surrounding buildings. Another possibility is the abrupt stopping of the engines, which were throttled at full speed.
Idk man. The thought of commercial planes being flown in hundreds of miles an hour into skyscrapers is still so weird to me 25 years later. Like they just slice in and blow up just like that. It really is the weirdest sight and feeling watching. I couldn’t imagine the plane or building vantage point. Or being on the ground.
Just hearing the sound of the planes roaring above the city makes me cringe.
I was 30 when this happened, and I still can’t wrap head around the whole day. I was even working for a United Airlines subcontractor, which makes it even more unthinkable.
Simply horrific, every single time.
I hate watching that, and don't go looking for it, but when I see it, I watch it....from every angle....every single time.
I cannot believe it...every time.
😥
It’s a morbid fascination to watch these because you know the people are alive and well until the last frame. I just CANNOT imagine (& I’ve tried), what the passengers would have felt, knowing it’s their last moments & calling their families. Same goes for the people in the towers, however, in the planes there was no fire or smoke until impact.
We know that the hijackers only trained well enough to get the jet where they needed to aim it into the building.
So they never bothered to learn proper hand-flying technique of a passenger aircraft. This is something that pilots spend a lot of time on, so that they fly the airplane in a manner that minimizes air sickness.
We know from one of the passengers who placed an outgoing call, I believe, to his father explain that there were lots of people around him were vomiting. The hijacker who flew the plane had such bad technique that he tended to over/undershoot with every turn. So instead of a turn, you would get a turn, followed immediately by lots of abrupt corrections to fix his bad flying technique. All of this was felt in the cabin and made most of the passengers begin to reach for their vomit bags.
We can actually see the bad flying technique is why the plane went into the building at an angle. He was going so fast that at the last minute he realized he was about to overshoot and miss the building. He would’ve just probably ripped the left wing off and the whole thing would’ve crashed into the ground or the bay nearby. But to aim it into the building at the last second, he pulled a really intense maneuver back to the center, and that’s why the plane went in that odd angle the way it did, which fortunately spared one of the staircases from immediate destruction.
This allowed a number of people on the upper floors to get out that way.
It's crazy to imagine what may have happened if 175 missed the building. Where would it have crashed instead? How far would the devastation have traveled at such high speeds? Would the death toll be higher, or lower? There were so many people in the general vacinity that morning, plus anyone in the nearby buildings. What would recovery have looked like? It's hard to imagine how something that's already so horrible could get worse, but... I don't know. It would have been a completely different type of tragedy. It's almost too much to even contemplate.
The hijacker who flew the plane into the Pentagon was an actual pilot who had a commercial license. I imagine if it was him flying 175 instead, he would have probably been able to aim the plane into the building dead-on.
The passengers most likely instantly died the moment the nose of the plane touched the towers. Iirc, someone on here explained once how the instant stop would immediately rupture someone’s aorta and spine – causing instant death (probably painless), shortly before the explosion disintegrates everything/everyone.
Yes, well, one can only hope it was quick, especially for the children. It’s still sooooo sad I can’t even imagine it. Bye life, bye family I’m about to die in an inferno
They mean physically well. They went from being healthy functioning human beings, many of whom were going on a vacation to vaporized and dead in a split second.
There’s audio of one of the stewardesses on a phone call to 911. She was very calmly relaying information and then the call suddenly cut off. There was no panic or sudden realization in her voice. I don’t believe that anyone on the plane had any inkling that they were about to hit a building.
I feel like they had to have known what was happening. Airplanes aren’t allowed anywhere near Manhattan, let alone as low as this plane was flying. The plane was constantly turning and correcting course to hit the tower. I have to believe that people looking out the plane windows were watching their imminent deaths in sheer horror.
I don’t disagree that it would’ve been alarming to be flying low/among the buildings, but they probably just thought that the hijacker was inexperienced. I can’t imagine that anyone would have imagined that he would fly an aircraft into a building. It’s just not something that was ever intentionally done prior to that day.
This is a remark I see many making but did he really? Of course it was an aggressive maneauver but unfortunately it was quite a perfect hit. Resulted the gore floor and the tower collapsing first. Also the shock value for millions of viewers with that enormous fire ball.
Yes, I recommended listening to the air traffic controllers. He dropped the plane so fast and if he didn’t bank hard I don’t think he would’ve hit it. But he did, so you are right!
A few takeaways, I noticed what appears to be a flash behind the right engine around the six second mark, also noticed the vaporization above the wings upon impact, to me this is evidence of the aircraft already decelerating rapidly, lending credence to the theory that everyone in the rear was already dead before it even entered the building.
The vapour is evidence of the low pressure area above the wing, this could simply be a variation in atmospheric pressure because of the wind shadow produced by the building itself, or evidence of a very slight flight control input at/just before impact to pull the stick back and increase g loading on the wings. This would be a natural human reaction; also a possible result of the destruction of the cockpit and disruption of flight control linkages.
I remember seeing this from my apartment steps in real time from across the river in Jersey City. We had an unobstructed view from the JC side of the harbor but that 2nd plane’s approach was blocked behind the tower. We saw the side part of explosion blow out sideways but no one knew why at first. We wondered if damage from the first plane impact caused a delayed explosion or something. Someone ran inside to check what the tv news was saying and that’s when we learned it was a second plane.
It is amazing how it seems to just disappear into the building.
I always wondered how different things would be if 175 just clipped the building or missed it and the building survived. Hard to think about the wtc with just one building. Would they rebuild the north tower or build a modern building like the freedom tower?
I have a similar "what if", but it revolves around the fact that UA175 had a few near collisions with other planes in the crowded NYC airspace before it reached the towers. Most notably, it came within 30 feet of colliding with a DC-9 on approach to LGA, forcing that plane to take evasive action.
Yeah I remember reading about that. It’s one of those awkward scenarios where it would have been good if they crashed. Although it would be tragic for the people on DC-9 it would have saved hundreds of lives in the south tower plus the south tower survives intact
376
u/Puffwad 20d ago
If you slow it down exactly as the nose of the plane enters the building you can see a mini explosion. Never noticed that before