There are other tapes that show the "plane" hitting the pentagon, and although these tapes were taken away, the loose change video shows the angle of the CCTV's of a nearby hotel, road traffic camera and that of an filling station (not the actual tapes, just what they could have seen), which would have shown what hit the pentagon, along with other inconsistancies of the actual impact.
Ah, yes. They are mentioned on the 9-11 Research too, I just didn't pay any particular attention this time
(as it's only few weeks since I was reading the darned thing).
However the tape that they released, you have to agree, shows nothing. Yeah it looks like a stabiliser, but if this is true it would mean that the whole lenght of the plane is contained behind the little booth thingy which logically doesnt make sense (you would at least see the tip of the plane), anyway its the quality is so so bad its hard to make anything out of it. I cant say that it is a missile, but in the same breath i cant say its a plane either and no one can. If they wanted to help us out they would release the other tapes. Simple, but they wont.
Certainly agreed on the quality. It's very, very bad. There might be an army of Yogi Bears dancing in there, and you couldn't see it.
You are right about the tip, most likely that would be the only thing visible.
I did some investigating as to how much of B757 should be visible from that angle. Note that this is not meant to be some kind of definitive answer about what you should see, but rather a rough estimate of how much of the plane
might be visible.
1. I borrowed an
aerial photo of Pentagon from Google Maps. Most annoyingly they are rebuilding it and it doesn't look like it used to four and half years ago.
2. Then I borrowed an aerial photo showing the
assumed path of the B757, from Cooperative Research's
Complete 9/11 Timeline. Another quite good site, btw.
3. Then I overlaid the latter on top of the former, and figured out where the camera is. Drew couple of lines, one for the approaching plane and one from the camera, over the booth-thingy towards the plane.
Like so
(click for larger version):
...and calculated the angle. It's not accurate, but it gives some idea. So, instead of looking at side view of B757, we are looking at it roughly from a 45 degree angle
(or 135, depending on how you think of it). Thus it looks shorter than it would from a side view. ...and fits better behind that booth.
Notice how the two pictures don't match exactly; the other is taken from a slightly different perspective, I believe. I matched the part of Pentagon that the plane struck.
4. Off to find a picture of B757 in the said angle.
Here it is. Well, more or less, there's no way of knowing the exact angle and the camera is bit too high, but it'll have to do.
5. Took the CCTV frame and overlaid the 757 on top of it, using the tail to scale it to correct size. I fudged a bit and placed the 757 bit higher than would seem appropriate on first glance. Two reasons; the tail seemed to fit better width-wise if it was higher and the CCTV picture is so bad, plus out of focus at that distance
(it's focused at the booths) that the real tail might actually extend bit higher than appears from that picture.
I believe that the perspective is bit screwed up
(since the plane photo was taken from much higher than the CCTV camera is).
There's also the issue of the CCTV camera being equipped with a rather wide angle lens; you can see how the booth on the right and Pentagon's facade are actually bent in that picture. That too would affect how the plane looks like... but I was going for a rough estimate here.
So, based on that there might be a small bit of the nose sticking out there, but considering that the tail seems rather dark in the CCTV frame
(you are looking at the shadow side, after all) and the quality is so horrible... I wouldn't be surprised if a tiny bit
(smaller than in my calculations though, I believe) actually
is visible in that frame. Just mangled by the "great" quality of it.
If the 757 was lower in that picture
(so that the height of the tail would match the CCTV frame) the nose should be more visible, over the grass. ...however, I tried it and the perspective looks very wrong. I don't believe that it could have been that low, otherwise it should have hit the lawn by the looks of it.
There's
(at least) one more option: I didn't scale it down to small enough. If the 757 was smaller, the tail could fit the height
(and you could discount the width seen in the CCTV frame as being out of focus blur) and it would most likely hide the plane entirely behind the booth.
Anyway, no matter what the reality is, I believe that the visible part of that plane
(other than the tail) is quite small.
Anyway, whatever you think of the loose change video, dont discard it entirely, it does show some good scientific proof and i believe is worth the watch.
Oh, I'm not discarding it completely. For example I think that the Operation Northwoods is quite real
(well, the plans were) and shows something about the lengths US administration is willing to go. That's one of the reasons why the "objectivity" of Loose Change annoys me so much; it throws away what credibility the more serious parts might have had by being so biased.
Just a quick note about the steel; many of the sites tell you that steel melts in temperature X, which can't be reached by burning jet fuel
(or anything other in the towers, for that matter). All well and good, except that steel loses a lot of its structural strength at temperatures far below that. It's not some digital on/off thing - you don't have to melt it to goo to make it weaker.
I believe that most often quoted figures were that when heated to half of the melting point, it has lost 80% of its strength
(down to one fifth, if you want to say it that way). Now, consider the fact that the safety factor used in calculations for WTC was six and that the towers lost some structural integrity when the planes took few columns with them... the collapse doesn't seem so outlandish after that.
