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[yellow submarine]

Theres also a transcript from the cockpit voice recorder recovered from United 93 (canf find original link but heres the Wikimedia transcript) . The audio suggests that the hijackers were taken by surprise with the Passengers trying to ram into the Cockpit - try to roll the plane to stop the revolt, and then crash the plane when they realize they can't stop them.

IMO it makes absolute sense to me, I'm sure if there had been no other option, then they would of taken down the plane, but the passengers forced their captors hand before that was even an option. Unlike the people on the other flights, those on 93 seemed to have enough time, alongside calls to friends and family, to realize what was going on, or what might happen. They stopped being scared and confused, and realized that they had to do something - regardless if they survived or not.

Wow, reading that transcript made me have goosebumps. Unreal.

 

[ConfusingJazz]

Questions:

what was the last airplane hijacking before 9/11?

How is it known that some of the hijackers did not know it was a suicide mission?

How do you get box cutters on a plane? Weren't there metal detectors?

1. Chechens on a flight between Istanbul and Moscow on March 15, 2001. Last American was FedEx Flight 705 in 1994 who wanted to ram it into FedEx HQ. Last American Passenger was Pan Am Flight 73 in 1986, which was a standard hijacking. Naturally, wikipedia can help you out: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_aircraft_hijackings

2. Never heard of it.

3. No idea.

2. The misconception: We know how the hijackers seized the planes. Within days of Sept. 11, Americans believed they knew how the planes were grabbed: Terrorists had taken control by stabbing pilots, passengers, and flight attendants with box cutters and knives.

What's wrong with the story: It's incomplete and misleading. We don't really know what happened on the planes. The cockpit voice recorder survived neither New York crash and was damaged beyond salvage in the Pentagon crash. The Flight 93 voice recorder doesn't start until several minutes after the hijackers took the plane. What little we know about tactics and weapons comes from phones calls made by passengers and flight attendants. As Edward Jay Epstein has pointed out, the evidence is incredibly paltry. No one on United Flight 175, which crashed into the World Trade Center, reported anything about weapons or tactics. One flight attendant on American Flight 11, which also crashed into the World Trade Center, said she was disabled by a chemical spray, while another flight attendant said a passenger was stabbed or shot. On the Pentagon plane, American Flight 77, Barbara Olson reported hijackers carrying knives and box cutters but did not describe how they took the cockpit. And on United Flight 93, passengers reported knives but also a hijacker threatening to explode a bomb. The box cutter-knives story isn't demonstrably false, but it serves to divert attention from the other weapons and to mask the fact that we don't have any idea how the hijackings happened.

 

[scorcho]

in the audio released by Rutgers Law/NYTimes, the flight attendant on Flight 11 who called back to Boston stated multiple times that several of the stewardesses were stabbed.

 

[Jobiensis]

in the audio released by Rutgers Law/NYTimes, the flight attendant on Flight 11 who called back to Boston stated multiple times that several of the stewardesses were stabbed.

She also said that there was something in the air, possibly mace.

 

[Zenith]

121 rounds each wasn't enough? I know it takes less than a second to empty it but aircraft are so fragile.

 

[XMonkey]

121 rounds each wasn't enough? I know it takes less than a second to empty it but aircraft are so fragile.

It probably wasn't enough for a guaranteed takedown, which is the only choice you have in the situation they were in. That plane had to 100% go down from their perspective.

 

[LordCanti]

121 rounds each wasn't enough? I know it takes less than a second to empty it but aircraft are so fragile.

I've watched war documentaries where pilots land military aircraft, and find out that they've got a bunch of bullet holes all over their planes. I know very little about the logistics of trying to hit something with front cannons while flying at hundreds of miles per hour, but a few hundred bullets doesn't seem like quite enough. The quoted bullets were just standard rounds, and not HE rounds or anything like that. I've seen the mythbusters shoot all manner of crap that just wouldn't explode with anything less than a tracer round.

I'm sure they would have expended all their bullets first, but I don't think they'd have even considered ramming the aircraft if they thought their bullets would be enough.

 

[way more]

121 rounds each wasn't enough? I know it takes less than a second to empty it but aircraft are so fragile.

I don't know about that. Commercial planes are built to last 2x as long as they project using them. If you had two cranes you could even lift them up by the two tips on the wings. And 121 seems like a scant amount given how rapidly they fire.

 

[DrForester]

121 rounds each wasn't enough? I know it takes less than a second to empty it but aircraft are so fragile.

They could probably take out the engines.

 

[KHarvey16]

I came to post this.

This sobering tale is kind of covering up this major blunder.

What good is spending billions on defense if we can't get armed aircraft up over the capital within minutes?

Jesus what a major blunder. Good thing it wasn't a full blown invasion. Please tell me they've fixed this fuck-up.

We would see any invasion coming in plenty of time to arm any and every plane with a pilot. This wasn't an invasion.

121 rounds each wasn't enough? I know it takes less than a second to empty it but aircraft are so fragile.

Likely not, especially since debris is a consideration and they wanted to bring it down as fast as they could and, preferably, in a location of their choosing.

 

[jchap]

the amount of money we all spend on national defense, we should have auto-training destructo lasers cutting any possible air threats into pieces.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vqLkpcHavZE