- Source of this report:
- http://www.flight93crash.com/flight93_heroes.html#nov26
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- Personal details and a memorial:
http://www.unitedheroes.com/whotheywere.html
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- Face with the names memorial:
http://www.flight93.org
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- The flight took off at 8:42 after a 40 minute delay on
a crisp Tuesday morning in Newark. That delay probably saved target number
4. The heroes had time to be informed, and air defense had more time to
become aware we were under attack. The passengers on this flight are heroes
and deserve all the credit and medals they get.
-
- Investigators learned from the cockpit voice recorder
from UA Flight 93, which crashed in rural Pennsylvania, that a hijacker
had joined the flight crew.
-
- The FBI source said the hijacker, disguised as a pilot,
was invited into the cockpit for the flight from New Jersey's Newark Airport
to San Francisco.
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- http://www.news.com.au/common/
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- Comment: This explains why the passengers reported 3
hijackers. One of the 4 hijackers was in a Pilot's uniform and was already
in the cockpit. Later another hijacker joined him and they locked the cockpit.
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- At 9:39 a.m., a third plane smashed into the Pentagon
-- and Flight 93 suddenly made a U-turn. Air traffic control picked up
a transmission from the San Francisco-bound flight as it neared Cleveland.
A stuck microphone revealed something wrong in the cockpit. "Get out
of here," controllers heard. The microphone cut off but then came
back on, with the sounds of an apparent scuffle. "Get out of here!"
someone yelled.
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- Eventually, a man speaking in broken English announced:
"There is a bomb on board. This is the captain speaking. Remain in
your seat. There is a bomb on board. Stay quiet. We are meeting with their
demands. We are returning to the airport." http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/
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- 9:28 a.m. Cleveland controller hears screams and scuffling
over the radio channel between the cockpit and the ground. Asks if somebody
called and gets no answer.
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- 9:29 a.m. Controller hears one of the pilots yelling:
"Get out of here, get out of here." http://www.msnbc.com/news/662607.asp
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- Some investigators speculate that the hijackers may have
slashed the throats of the pilots as the two men were still strapped into
their seats. The cockpit voice recorder picked up the sound of someone
choking. When a hijacker took over the controls, he knocked the plane off
autopilot. http://www.msnbc.com/news/662607.asp
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- It was about 9:35 a.m. on Sept. 11... "We still
don't know who said Get out of here,' whether it was a pilot or the hijacker,"
one of the sources said. "We heard a lot of scuffling and racket from
the cockpit just as the words were yelled, so it's likely it was the pilot."
...
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- The controller watched the blip make a sharp turn over
Cleveland and head back toward Pennsylvania.
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- Whoever was at the controls filed a new flight plan,
listing the destination as Reagan National Airport in Washington, D.C.
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- "By that time the FAA had been alerted about what
was going on," the source said. "But for the controllers, there
was really nothing they could do but clear the skies and get everyone out
of the way."
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- http://www.cleveland.com/n
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- The radio transmissions "each about 10-20 seconds
long ," contain the sounds of a "loud and violent encounter,"
said one person who had heard a tape of the transmissions. Another said
it appeared the pilots were being murdered. Several people described the
recording as deeply disturbing. http://www.usatoday.com/news/nation/2001/09/24/cockpit.htm
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- Comment: The cockpit scuffle often played on TV was the
first thing that happened in the Flight 93 hijacking. And the ATC was clearing
planes out of the way immediately.
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- THE HEROES
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- Mark Bingham 31, 6-foot-5 Bingham was a former rugby
star at the University of California at Berkeley. Ran with the bulls in
Pamplona, Spain, just this summer, and he had once wrestled a gun away
from a mugger.
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- Comment: It's widely been reported in newsgroups that
Mark was gay - not that it matters... but if it helps alter the opinion
of one homophobe into cutting gays some slack then I suppose it's worth
noting.
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- Todd Beamer Beamer, a basketball and baseball player
in college and a take-charge guy, said he thought he and the others could
"jump the terrorist with the bomb." http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2001/09/17/MN40630.DTL
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- Comment: It's widely reported in newspapers that Todd
was a devout Christian - not that it matters... but if it helps alter the
opinion of one anti-Christian zealot into cutting devout Christians some
slack then I suppose it's worth noting.
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- Jeremy Glick He was an all-state wrestler for Saddle
River Day School in Northern, N.J., a judo champion. [A friend] insisted
"Those attackers are pretty f----, sorry, because they ran into the
toughest son of a bitch I've ever known ... http://espn.go.com/columns/wojnarowski/1251966.html
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- Tom Burnett: Burnett told his wife, Deena, that he and
two other passengers were "determined to do something" to take
Flight 93 back..."He came up through the football camps. He started
in the camps in the third grade and never missed a summer," Waldner
said. "We had some great quarterbacks (at Jefferson) who were highly
talented. None were as self-made as Tom Burnett. http://www.pioneerplanet.com/columnists/docs/SANSEVERE/docs/139019.htm
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- Lou Nacke: 42, a 5-foot-9, 200-pound executive who wore
a "Superman" tattoo on his left shoulder, that Nacke is believed
to have been involved in the plan, according to Robert Weisberg, Nacke's
father-in-law.
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- Donald F. Greene (trained pilot): There was also a trained
pilot among the passengers, , 52, executive vice president of Connecticut-based
Safe Flight Instrument Corp.
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- http://www.washingtonpost.com/
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- Comment: Basically, there were some pretty tough guys
on board - and a Pilot to keep it in the air. 757's have been reported
as very easy to fly. It seems reasonable that other heroes may have joined
in. Also, I've added below that the Flight Attendants were boiling hot
water to throw on the hijackers. Other stories have noted they may have
used fire extinguishers and other handy items to fight with.
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- THE TERRORISTS
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- They boarded the flights in teams of five. The exception
was the four aboard United Airlines Flight 93, which authorities believe
crashed in a Pennsylvania field after passengers took on the hijackers.
http://europe.cnn.com/2001/US/09/19/hijacked.planes/index.html
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- The four men who are suspected of having hijacked the
plane had trained for years, authorities believe, learning to fly, practicing
martial arts and procuring some of the information they needed over the
Internet. Passengers saw men with red headbands, holding a red box that
they said contained a bomb. They were armed with ceramic knives and box
cutters. http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2001/09/17/MN40630.DTL
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- "You must make your knife sharp and you must not
discomfort your animal during the slaughter," it read. "Completely
forget something called 'this life.' The time for play is over and the
serious time is upon us." http://www.post-gazette.com/headlines/20011028flt93mainstoryp7.asp
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- Comment: Ceramic knives are the latest craze as seen
in some of the popular cooking TV shows. These knives are composed from
zirconium oxide ceramic, a high-tech material. The knives stay razor sharp
for years and don't set off metal detectors.
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- Three thousand miles from Boston an attractive woman
is waking up in London. Over the past two weeks she has twice met the same
group of five Arabs. The first time is at the China White club in Air Street.
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- Although the place is famous for its celebrity clientele,
the backbone of its business is big-spending oil-rich Arabs and wealthy
Palestinians, though these five fit into neither group. The management
don't know them. "These men looked more like athletes than lounge
lizards," the woman will later tell police. "They were all quite
young, below 40, and they were very fit.
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- "We started chatting but they wouldn't tell me what
they did for a living," just that they'd soon be leaving for New York
where they had a big job to do." http://www.newsoftheworld.co.uk/news/4319025
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- At 5 feet, 11 inches and about 180 pounds, Jarrah surprised
Rodriguez with his stamina. The training included flat-out fighting. At
one point, the trainer went at the student with a baseball bat to teach
him disarming techniques.
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- The young man, who told Rodriguez he was training to
become a pilot, could go 10, 15 or 20 minutes in unrelenting combat. The
battle techniques Jarrah came to learn involved thinking -- figuring out
ways to make an opponent's moves work against him; throwing attackers off-balance;
keeping composure under stress.
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- Jarrah, Rodriguez said, was very calm and a quick learner.
"He was in very, very good shape. He was a great person to work with,"
Rodriguez said. "I told him, 'If you have someone to practice with,
practice these techniques.' He told me, 'Oh, yeah, I have some roommates
I can train with.' " http://www.post-gazette.com/headlines/20011028flt93mainstoryp7.asp
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- Basically, these guys have trained to fight with their
hands and defend multiple attackers - and knew they were on a one way trip.
These 4 men may have been training for more than a year. Some hijackers
are reported to have taken the same flights a number of times as part of
their training - checking security and becoming familiar with the combat
zone.
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- SET-UP
-
- Deena Burnett was waking up at her home in San Ramon,
Calif. She'd gone down to the kitchen to fix breakfast for her three daughters.
The phone rang. She recalls it was around 6:20 a.m. -- 9:20 Eastern time.
It was Tom.
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- "Are you all right?" she asked.
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- "No. I'm on United Flight 93 from Newark to San
Francisco. The plane has been hijacked. We are in the air. They've already
knifed a guy. There is a bomb on board. Call the FBI." Deena Burnett
dialed 911. http://www.post-gazette.com/headlines/20011028flt93mainstoryp7.asp
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- In an equally calm and businesslike way, Beamer rattled
off the details (3 hijackers, 2 with knives; 10 passengers in first class,
27 in coach, 5 flight attendants; no children that he could see). A flight
attendant had relayed to him that there were two people, "she believed
they were the captain and first officer," lying dead or gravely wounded
on the floor in first class.
-
- http://www.msnbc.com/news/662607.asp ... Beamer's group (in back of plane) was being guarded by a
man who claimed to have explosives strapped to his midsection.
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- http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/articleThe
remaining passengers and crew were broken up into two groups; some were
herded together in the first-class compartment, but most were told to sit
on the floor in a galley at the rear of the 757-200's 110-foot cabin, Beamer
told Jefferson.
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- http://www.wash
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- Comment: Passengers on floor are not strapped in - this
was planned, like everything else, as we'll see later.
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- Todd Beamer placed a call on one of the Boeing 757's
on-board telephones and spoke for 13 minutes with GTE operator Lisa D.
Jefferson, Beamer's wife said. He provided detailed information about the
hijacking and -- after the operator told him about the morning's World
Trade Center and Pentagon attacks -- said he and others on the plane were
planning to act against the terrorists aboard, Lisa Beamer said. http://www.bostonherald.com/attack/investigation/auscall09172001.htm
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- "They may have realized that (the hijackers) were
planning to do the same thing with their plane," Beamer said Sunday
in a telephone interview from her Hightstown, N.J., home. "So they
chose to do what they could to prevent other people from being hurt."...
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- ...Beamer said that her husband placed the call at 9:45
a.m. Tuesday and told Jefferson that there were three knife-wielding hijackers
on board and one had what appeared to be a bomb tied to his chest with
a red belt. Two of the hijackers were in the cockpit with the door locked
-- the pilot and co-pilot were forced out -- and the man with the apparent
bomb stayed in the rear of the aircraft. (where Beamer was)
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- http://www.thepittsb
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- Comment: If the two times above are correct and are talking
about the same phone call, then we have a call originating at 9:45am and
lasting 13 minutes. Ending 12 minutes before crash time.
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- ASSAULT
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- Lisa Beamer said her husband called Jefferson on a GTE
Airfone at 9:45 a.m., after the passengers aboard his flight had learned
that Flight 11 hit the World Trade Center. By that time, the hijackers
aboard Flight 93 had stabbed one passenger to death. The United pilots,
Jason Dahl and Leroy Homer, had also been injured, Beamer told Jefferson,
though he did not say how seriously.
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- http://www.washington
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- Comment: So we've got one passenger dead, two pilots
out of action, 2 terrorists in locked cockpit, 1 terrorist guarding rear
of plane, 1 terrorist guarding front of plane.
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- "Deena," Todd Beamer told her, "If they're
going to crash the plane into the ground, we have to do something. We can't
wait for the authorities. We have to do something now." http://www.post-gazette.com/headlines/20011028flt93mainstoryp7.asp
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- Beamer, a , and the GTE supervisor recited the Lord's
Prayer... Beamer dropped the phone and was heard saying: "God help
me. Jesus help me."...
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- "Are you guys ready?" the operator heard the
32-year-old Beamer ask fellow passengers aboard United Airlines Flight
93, which crashed into the Pennsylvania countryside 80 miles southeast
of Pittsburgh on Tuesday. Then he said: "Let's roll."
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- http://www.washingtonpost.co
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- Comment: Well there isn't much we can do here other than
speculate. Cell phone witnesses heard a couple sets of screams with silence
in between and that's it.
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- The predominate theory seems to be that these guys made
it into the cockpit in and forced the plane down. I want to point out that
the transcripts I've seen have the heroes saying "We want to take
the plane back" and "Hold on, I'll be right back". They
do not plan to crash the plane. That doesn't make sense. Would you plan
to do that? Americans would beat the hell out of the terrorists and try
to fly that baby home. The alternative ending is the terrorists realised
they were under assault and crashed the plane themselves.
-
- Even if they managed to overpower the hijacker standing
guard over them, the men in the back of the aircraft would have had to
run -- single file, down a narrow aisle about 37 yards to the cockpit.
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- http://www.washingtonpost.com/w
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- Comment: The next time you get on a plane think about
this. I flew 3 weeks after 9-11-01 and those aisles are very tight.
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- MORE HEROES
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- Bradshaw said he took his wife's call about 9:30 a.m....
"Have you seen what's happening? Have you heard?" Sandy asked
her husband in a calm voice. "We've been hijacked."...She said
the hijackers put most of the people in the rear of the plane and a few
in first class... While Sandy talked, she and other flight attendants were
boiling water to toss on the hijackers. Nearby, many passengers were making
cell phone calls, a few were plotting an uprising.
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- Bradshaw thinks they talked for five or 10 minutes...
Around Sandy, three men were whispering the 23rd Psalm. "The Lord
is my shepherd. I shall not want..." Then one of the men apparently
made the call to charge the hijackers. "We're all running to first
class," were her last words. LINK
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- Comment: Now we've got more Heroes. Sandy Bradshaw -
a part time flight attendant that worked only 4 days per month and her
coworkers. She says they are running to first class... so maybe the rear
guard was fairly far away from the group. This makes some sense... he would
have wanted to see them coming. The timing of this call doesn't seem to
match the others - the call was taken at 9:30 and lasted 10 minutes before
the rush IF Bradshaws husband recalled correctly that would put the attack
at 9:40.
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- A fight ensued, likely one attacker at a time. If the
rear guard was overwhelmed and dogpiled (as was the plan) the front hijacker
may have rushed the dogpile with a weapon and taken care of the attackers
while they were on the ground in a weak position. OR the first class hostages
may have risen against the front terrorist simultaneously.
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- If both terrorists were overwhelmed I surmise that that
heroes would have regrouped before attempting to break into the locked
cockpit. If so, they surely would have returned to the cell phone to report
victory. There were active cell phones all over that flight.
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- But that didn't happen.
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- I assert this is what probably happened. On attack, the
hijackers probably screamed to alert the flight crew of the attack. With
all their training, the flight crew should have planned for this contingency.
They may have thrown the plane into a climb, a dive or a hard turn in order
to throw the attackers off their feet. A couple times a year passengers
are severely injured when planes hit rough air and passengers aren't wearing
seat belts. A Fed-Ex pilot had thwarted a hijacking by doing something
similar - The FedEx crew eventually subdued the attacker and landed safely.
Calloway was convicted of attempted aircraft piracy and sentenced to life
in prison. James Tucker, the FedEx pilot who rolled the cargo jet upside
down to throw the attacker off balance, said he was horrified by the calculated
brutality of Tuesday's "act of war" -- and its simplicity. http://www.accessatlanta.com/ajc/terrorism/nation/0913inside.html
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- The plane was witnessed to have been wagging it's wings,
this would sync with the idea that the pilots were keeping those passengers
bouncing around the cabin until they were incapacitated. It could indicate
a cockpit struggle or a terrible pilot too. (written 9-22-01)
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- On 11-25-01, this new information was reported in an
exclusive by Newsweek - and then seemingly reinterpreted by a number of
other news outlets with interesting variations. Chris Matthews asked Newsweek's
Evan Thomas if he heard the recording. Thomas answered NO that he was writing
the article from a transcript provided to him by the FBI. Given the FBI's
record of highly accurate information dissemination surrounding this incident,
that doesn't really give me a super-warm-comfy-feeling inside. Surprisingly,
the Newsweek reporters seem to feel after reading this partial transcript
that the heroes got close to, but not into the cockpit.
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- Beginning at 9:57, the cockpit voice recorder began to
pick up the sounds of a death struggle. There is the crash of galley dishes
and trays being hurled, a man's voice screaming loudly. The hijackers can
be heard calling on each other to hold the door. One of the passengers
cries out, "Let's get them!" More crashing and screaming. In
a desperate measure to control the rebellion, a hijacker suggests cutting
off the oxygen. http://www.msnbc.com/news/662607.asp
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- The one at the controls decides to try to knock the passengers
off their feet as a last line of defence by putting the aircraft into a
steep dive. He is heard mumbling to himself about cutting off oxygen to
the passenger compartment but cannot find the right control. As half a
dozen men charge up the aisle towards the cockpit, the hijackers, hearing
this bedlam, suddenly realise that two of their team are left outside and
are heard dragging them inside to safety as they push away the first of
their assailants. http://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/0,,2001540007-2001550826,00.html
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- Comment: I imagined two months ago that the pilot would
try to to bank, dive or climb to knock the passengers off their feet. The
only thing the reporter leaves out is the fairly obvious fact (in my mind)
that it would have worked.
-
- It's very difficult to walk, let alone run or fight in
a dive. The heroes would be weightless in a dive of more than a 2 seconds.
-
- Another thing this story adds is now the heroes would
have had to have gotten by MORE than 2 terrorists, possibly 4, locked in
the cockpit. Tough mission. No divide and conquer option, and the passengers
would still have to attack one at a time through the narrow cockpit entrance.
Also, 9:58 to 10:06 isn't well accounted for. They basically say "There
must have been a continued struggle all that time". Which would be
sorta right. There was struggle to fly the plane during that time, but
probably because the plane started falling apart somewhere in there and
then an engine fell off.
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- Later on in my article on this page you'll see that over
2 months ago, I also offered the possibility that the terrorists may have
either tried to crash themselves, or lost control. (from the email's I
get, I'm pretty sure a lot of people never read that.)
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